Bipolar4LifeSupport

“*Bipolar Disorder Improves With Routine Sleep Patterns?*”

Researchers that sleep is connected to bipolar disorder. That is, past research has shown that bipolar patients have difficulty with sleep and often suffer from sleep-related problems. Now new research is showing that routine sleep schedules can actually be beneficial to the outcomes of bipolar disorder.

A new study which appears in this month’s issue of the journal, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ANCP), examined two groups of adult bipolar patients receiving different treatment therapies and found that the group of patients who participated in interpersonal and rhythm therapies–these therapies involved the patients monitoring their daily routines–had longer periods without mania and depression. Researchers have believed for some time that bipolar disorder is greatly affected by the circadian rhythm or the body’s internal clock, and these new findings only further support this idea.

It seems that sufferers of bipolar disorder tend to have more sensitive circadian systems than do others, and as a result, a change in routine or sleep schedule can throw the internal clocks of bipolar sufferers off (more so than with the healthy population), and result in more frequent manic and depressive episodes for bipolar patients.

Ellen Frank, Ph.D., who conducted the new study at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine had this to say about the findings:

Having already found that disruption in daily routines can make individuals with bipolar disorder vulnerable to new episodes of illness, we have now learned that working with patients to achieve and maintain regular social rhythms — including regular sleep patterns and adequate physical activity — will help to protect them against episodes of mania or depression, we have now learned that working with patients to achieve and maintain regular social rhythms — including regular sleep patterns and adequate physical activity — will help to protect them against episodes of mania or depression…

Resource Pendelum….

is known that certain areas of the brain are responsible for certain functions of the body. The cerebellum, a structure found in the back of the skull, is known to be important for the control of movement, while the frontal cortex is responsible for cognitive functions such as short-term memory and decision making. However, as researchers continue to unlock the mystery of how billions of neurons in the brain interact, it is becoming more apparent that it is not that black and white.

Dr. Nuo Li, assistant professor of neuroscience and a McNair Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine, and his colleagues have found the first direct evidence that the cerebellum does more than just control muscle activity. It also plays a role in cognitive functions.

“We knew that the frontal cortex and the cerebellum are anatomically connected with each other,” Li said. “We also knew that in humans, cerebellar damage has been known to cause memory or planning problems, so the two might be connected.”

Li and his colleagues examined activity in the cerebellum during time periods when animals are not moving, but instead are thinking. To do this, the researchers trained mice in a task that required them to make decisions based on short-term memory. Mice were shown a single object in a specific location. After a delay, the animal had to remember where the object was and indicate its location by licking in a left or right direction. The delay represented a moment when the mice had to use short-term memory to recall where the object was before acting out the correct movement.

Making moves and memories

In previous work, researchers have found memory activity in the frontal cortex during the delay period that predicted what future movement the mice will make. Li and colleagues found that memory activity during the delay period was seen in both the frontal cortex and the cerebellum. Researchers silenced areas of the cerebellum during the delay period, which led to incorrect responses but did not interfere with the movement. At the same time, the memory activity in frontal cortex also was disrupted. This showed that memory activity in frontal cortex was dependent on the cerebellum. They then silenced areas in the frontal cortex, which stopped memory activity in the cerebellum.

“We found that the output of the cerebellum targets the frontal cortex and vice versa. When we disrupt the communication between the two areas of the brain, memory activity is disrupted. Our results show that activity orchestrating a single behavior is coordinated by multiple regions of the brain,” Li said.

The cerebellum is known to guide our movement by learning from errors. Li explains that when we learn to shoot a basketball, we initially have lots of missed shots. However, the brain can adjust our shots by adjusting our movements based on errors from the missed shots and eventually produce accurate shots. It is known that the cerebellum is responsible for this motor learning. It combines errors from the missed movements and the movement that was made to produce a more accurate movement.

Li’s team currently is pursuing experiments testing this hypothesis that the cerebellum may perform a similar function on brain activity related to thoughts, such as when playing a game of chess.

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Materials provided by Baylor College of Medicine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

With the rise of managed health care, which emphasizes cost-efficiency and brevity, mental health professionals have had to confront this burning question: How can they help clients derive the greatest possible benefit from treatment in the shortest amount of time?

Recent evidence suggests that a promising approach is to complement psychological counseling with additional activities that are not too taxing for clients but yield high results. In our own research, we have zeroed in on one such activity: the practice of gratitude. Indeed, many studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.

We set out to address these questions in a recent research study involving nearly 300 adults, mostly college students, who were seeking mental health counseling at a university. We recruited these participants just before they began their first session of counseling, and, on average, they reported clinically low levels of mental health at the time. The majority of people seeking counseling services at this university in general struggled with issues related to depression and anxiety. The problem is that most research studies on gratitude have been conducted with college students or other well-functioning people. Is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns? And, if so, how?

Is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns? And, if so, how?

We randomly assigned our study participants into three groups. Although all three groups received counseling services, the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.

What did we find? Compared with the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended. This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns. In fact, it seems, practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is brief.

And that’s not all. When we dug deeper into our results, we found indications of how gratitude might actually work on our minds and bodies. While not definitive, here are four insights from our research suggesting what might be behind gratitude’s psychological benefits.
1. Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions

First, by analyzing the words used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to understand the mechanisms behind the mental health benefits of gratitude letter writing. We compared the percentage of positive emotion words, negative emotion words, and “we” words (first-person plural words) that participants used in their writing. Not surprisingly, those in the gratitude writing group used a higher percentage of positive emotion words and “we” words, and a lower proportion of negative emotion words, than those in the other writing group.

It was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.

However, people who used more positive emotion words and more “we” words in their gratitude letters didn’t necessarily have better mental health later. It was only when people used fewer negative emotion words in their letters that they were significantly more likely to report better mental health. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.

Perhaps this suggests that gratitude letter writing produces better mental health by shifting one’s attention away from toxic emotions, such as resentment and envy. When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences.
2. Gratitude helps even if you don’t share it

We told participants who were assigned to write gratitude letters that they weren’t required to send their letters to their intended recipient. In fact, only 23 percent of participants who wrote gratitude letters sent them. But those who didn’t send their letters enjoyed the benefits of experiencing gratitude nonetheless. (Because the number of people who sent their letters was so small, it was hard for us to determine whether this group’s mental health was better than those who didn’t send their letter.)

Only 23 percent of participants who wrote gratitude letters sent them.

This suggests that the mental health benefits of writing gratitude letters are not entirely dependent on actually communicating that gratitude to another person.

So if you’re thinking of writing a letter of gratitude to someone, but you’re unsure whether you want that person to read the letter, we encourage you to write it anyway. You can decide later whether to send it (and we think it’s often a good idea to do so). But the mere act of writing the letter can help you appreciate the people in your life and shift your focus away from negative feelings and thoughts.
3. Gratitude’s benefits take time

These results are encouraging because many other studies suggest that the mental health benefits of positive activities often decrease rather than increase over time afterward. We don’t really know why this positive snowball effect occurred in our study. Perhaps the gratitude letter writers discussed what they wrote in their letters with their counselors or with others. These conversations may have reinforced the psychological benefits derived from the gratitude writing itself. It’s important to note that the mental health benefits of gratitude writing in our study did not emerge immediately, but gradually accrued over time. Although the different groups in our study did not differ in mental health levels one week after the end of the writing activities, individuals in the gratitude group reported better mental health than the others four weeks after the writing activities, and this difference in mental health became even larger 12 weeks after the writing activities.

For now, the bottom line is this: If you participate in a gratitude writing activity, don’t be too surprised if you don’t feel dramatically better immediately after the writing. Be patient and remember that the benefits of gratitude might take time to kick in.
4. Gratitude has lasting effects on the brain

We used an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity while people from each group did a “pay it forward” task. In that task, the individuals were regularly given a small amount of money by a nice person, called the “benefactor.” This benefactor only asked that they pass the money on to someone if they felt grateful. Our participants then decided how much of the money, if any, to pass on to a worthy cause (and we did in fact donate that money to a local charity). About three months after the psychotherapy sessions began, we took some of the people who wrote gratitude letters and compared them with those who didn’t do any writing. We wanted to know if their brains were processing information differently.

We found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. This suggests that people who are more grateful are also more attentive to how they express gratitude.

We wanted to distinguish donations motivated by gratitude from donations driven by other motivations, like feelings of guilt or obligation. So we asked the participants to rate how grateful they felt toward the benefactor, and how much they wanted to help each charitable cause, as well as how guilty they would feel if they didn’t help. We also gave them questionnaires to measure how grateful they are in their lives in general.

We found that across the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity was distinct from brain activity related to guilt and the desire to help a cause. More specifically, we found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. This suggests that people who are more grateful are also more attentive to how they express gratitude.

Most interestingly, when we compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding suggests that practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time.

Though these are just the first steps in what should be a longer research journey, our research so far not only suggests that writing gratitude letters may be helpful for people seeking counseling services but also explains what’s behind gratitude’s psychological benefits. At a time when many mental health professionals are feeling crunched, we hope that this research can point them—and their clients—toward an effective and beneficial tool.

Regardless of whether you’re facing serious psychological challenges, if you have never written a gratitude letter before, we encourage you to try it. Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things we currently don’t have. Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things we do.

Among the various types of data that are being collected about you while you browse the internet, you can bet that your spending habits are one of them. That raises the question of just how much someone knows about you when they have a record of your purchases.

There are some obvious conclusions that can be drawn. If you’re regularly buying dog food, you probably have a dog. But can spending habits reveal deeper psychological tendencies? Is your credit card bill the window into your soul?

A new study suggests that, at least to some degree, people’s psychological traits can be guessed from spending records. In the study, researchers from University College London and Columbia University used machine learning techniques to predict different personality traits based on shopping history.

They found several patterns:

Buying more plane tickets was related to openness
Spending more on food and drink was related to extraversion
Donating money was related to higher agreeableness and lower materialism
Saving money was related to consciousnessness
Buying jewelry was related to materialism

These correlations don’t tell the entire story of someone’s personality. Rather, the spending behaviors analyzed each tended to explain between 1 and 10 percent of the variation in their corresponding personality traits. But they do seem to reveal something, and they might reveal even more when combined with other types of data.

Overall, the researchers found that while these spending measures were informative, they weren’t as informative as Facebook likes and Facebook statuses. That is, algorithms can probably infer more about your personality from Facebook social media profile than your spending history. On the other hand, more sophisticated algorithms than the one used in this study might be able make better guesses about your psychological makeup.

This study is a good reminder that when your data is collected online, the data itself isn’t the whole story. Rather that data can be pieced together to make inferences about who you are as a person. You probably aren’t enthusiastic about the prospect of other people going through your shopping history in the first place, but those records might say more about you than it appears at first glance!

The public is deeply skeptical about the profession—but given the problems of addiction, depression and other forms of mental illness, we need it more than ever

By Nathaniel P. Morris on August 11, 2016

Psychiatry needs help.

Mental health has become a national issue, as growing numbers of mentally ill people have filled our streets and our jails. Yet the public remains deeply skeptical of psychiatrists, our doctors best equipped to care for these patients.

In a 2012 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans surveyed felt that medical doctors have “high” or “very high” standards of honesty and ethics. By comparison, just 41 percent attributed the same traits to psychiatrists, though psychiatrists are in fact medical doctors. That Gallup even separated psychiatry from the rest of medicine in the survey says a great deal about perceptions of the field.
Despite recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, many still view the work of psychiatrists as a kind of pseudoscience, somewhere between neuroscience and voodoo. A recent British study presented to the Royal College of Psychiatrists found 54 percent of surveyed patients did not know that psychiatrists have a medical degree. Even more troubling, 47 percent of these respondents said they would feel uncomfortable sitting next to a psychiatrist at a party.

These misconceptions have a crippling effect on mental health care. In the US, psychiatry remains among the least desired specialties to apply into, struggling every year to recruit new doctors. Psychiatry programs attract medical students with lower board scores and fewer academic honors on average compared to other specialties. Friends and family often deride applicants for choosing psychiatry, including me when I joined the field.
So at a time when we need psychiatrists most, we instead face a growing shortage of these critical providers. According to a study published last month in Health Affairs, the ranks of practicing physicians in the US as a whole increased by 14.2 percent between 2003 and 2013, whereas the number of practicing psychiatrists actually declined by 0.2 percent. Many patients with mental health needs face lengthy waiting times and difficulty getting the right care.

So where do we go from here?

Mental health advocates have called for an array of policy changes. Better salaries might draw more providers into the specialty. More funding for mental health research could fuel discoveries like blood tests or novel therapies that propel psychiatric care in new directions. Tying the classification of mental disorders more closely to neuroscience might enhance public trust in the validity of these diagnoses.
These reforms are badly needed. But, to save the field, psychiatrists also need a wake up call. When it comes to reinforcing stigma against the profession, we can be some of the worst offenders.

In hospitals across the nation, psychiatrists often distance themselves from their medical training, refusing to perform physical exams on patients and consulting other specialists for basic medical questions. Don’t we also complete medical school and residency? Psychiatrists must be able to maintain their clinical skills and to recognize the varied medical causes of psychiatric symptoms. We need to work at the interface of mind and body in order to provide the best care for our patients.

Then there’s the matter of medications. Many label psychiatrists as “pill pushers,” and higher insurance reimbursements for drugs over talk therapy have indeed driven increased prescription practices. Yet psychiatrists also bear some of the blame for this reputation. Too often, we turn to the prescription pad when we should be taking the time to sit down and to figure out the root causes of a patient’s symptoms. It’s far easier to change a dose or add another pill than to do the hard work necessary to treat mental illness. These shortcuts are convenient, but detrimental to both the profession’s reputation and patient care.

In the media, psychiatrists who misuse their expertise further harm the credibility of the field. Despite warnings from the American Psychiatric Association, psychiatrists regularly analyze public figures, like President Obama or Donald Trump, without ever meeting these individuals. Others use their credentials to promote pseudoscientific ideas, whether claiming demonic possession is real or analyzing Superman’s emotional issues.

Psychiatry has come a long way from the barbarisms of lobotomy and the fallacies of Freud. Today, it can be among the most inspiring medical specialties. We stabilize the acutely suicidal and care for those gripped by depression, ensure the safety of the psychotic and save patients from the ravages of addiction.

But the field still struggles to be taken seriously, even as our patients need us more than ever. To restore it, psychiatrists must not only step into the policy arena, but we also have to address these self-inflicted wounds. In doing so, we can lessen the pervasive stigma against mental illness and help turn around our ailing profession.