Associated Press :
May 8, 2007
Study: Cut teen TV time Teenagers who watch television for three or more hours per day may have a higher risk of attention and learning difficulties in their adolescent and early adult years, a medical journal reported.
Jeffrey G. Johnson, a researcher with Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons* and colleagues [found that] "television viewing
time at age 14 years was associated with elevated risk for subsequent frequent attention difficulties, frequent failure to complete homework assignments, frequent boredom at school, failure to complete high school, poor grades, negative attitudes about school, overall academic failure in secondary school and failure to obtain post-secondary education."
The Scientist :
April 5, 2007
Growing a New Antidepressant René Hen sits in his corner office on the seventh floor of the New York State Psychiatric Institute in upper Manhattan. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, Hen remembers that he didn't want to invest too much time in Santarelli's neurogenesis project, and says that his hesitation was warranted. "When you think of classic hippocampal functions, you think [of] learning and memory," says Hen. "You wouldn't have thought changes in the hippocampus could change mood."
New York Times :
April 3, 2007
Many Diagnoses of Depression May Be Misguided, Study Says About one in four people who appear to be depressed are in fact struggling with the normal mental fallout from a recent emotional blow, like a ruptured marriage, the loss of a job or the collapse of an investment, a new study suggests. To avoid unnecessary diagnoses and stigma, the standard definition of depression should be redrawn to specifically exclude such cases, the authors argue... His co-authors were Mark F. Schmitz of Temple University, Allan V. Horwitz of Rutgers University, and Dr. Michael B. First, a psychiatrist at Columbia who edited the current version of the psychiatric association’s diagnostic manual.
:
March 17, 2007
Should Congress enact mental health parity?
The cause of mental health parity -- equal insurance coverage for mental health care --
is far too important to wait for the results of November's elections.
Never before have so many members of Congress -- on both sides of the aisle -- called for mental health parity. We mustn't let the chance for achieving full mental health parity slip away.
Healthday :
February 2, 2007
Scientists Get Closer to Depression''''s DNA ... new findings from a team of U.S. researchers.
"We should be able to hone more finely into the gene," said Myrna Weissman, co-author of one of the papers and a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University and head of clinical and genetic epidemiology at New York State Psychiatric Institute, both in New York City. "Then, we can see mutations and develop treatments," she said.
San Francisco Chronicle :
January 23, 2007
Parents reflect, schools mobilize to curb suicide After a teen suicide, family and friends often are left wondering if there were signs they missed, whether they should have seen it coming. Indeed, there are signs, but they can be subtle and difficult to spot -- especially for parents and friends who don''''t know what to look for, or who don''''t want to admit that a child is depressed.
Schools are seeking new ways to deal directly with the threat of suicide. Three private schools in San Francisco, including St. Ignatius, are trying a program called TeenScreen developed at Columbia University to identify students in trouble. The program includes a questionnaire for ninth-graders about whether they have been depressed, have a problem with alcohol and drugs or have tried to kill themselves.
New York Times :
January 19, 2007
Study Detects a Gene Linked to Alzheimer’s
A variant gene involved in Alzheimer’s disease has been detected through study of Dominican families living in Manhattan, scientists are reporting today. The families have about three times the usual incidence of Alzheimer’s, a finding that led Dr. Richard Mayeux of Columbia University in 1994 to start looking for anything in their environment that could be touching off the disease. Finding nothing, Dr. Mayeux decided to search for a genetic cause, a task that seemed worth trying
because the Dominican Republic, where the families came from, is a single, long-isolated population in which variant genes are easier to detect.
Scientific American :
January 4, 2007
Human, Sea Slug Brains Share Genes for Alzheimer''''s and Parkinson''''s The ancestors of humans and sea slugs diverged more than a half billion years ago, but scientists have now unexpectedly found genes that are remarkably similar in the brains of both. These findings could help shed light on the evolution of the brain in the animal kingdom and the mechanisms of human disorders such as Alzheimer''s disease.
The small numbers and large sizes of brain cells in sea slugs make the animals ideal for brain research. Indeed, neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for research in the snails that shed light on how memories form.
Reuters :
February 2, 2007
Children and preadolescents who show signs of depression may turn to alcohol sooner rather than later, researchers report. All the more reason, they say, to catch and treat early-life depression.
"Little is known about the impact of depression on the onset of alcohol use in adolescents," *Dr. Ping Wu from Columbia University*, New York,told Reuters Health.
"The finding that early life depressive symptoms may lead to earlier onset of alcohol use has important clinical and policy implications," *Wu* told Reuters Health, "because studies have shown that people who had early onset of alcohol use were much more likely to develop alcohol abuse/dependence later in their lives."
Therefore, "it is important to identify and treat depression in preadolescent children," *Wu *emphasized.
Los Angeles Times :
October 30, 2006
Truth is, it's best if they know
Truth sometimes hurts. But for children closing in on adolescence, a firm grasp on the truth about one's standing with classmates and peers can be healthy, even when it does hurt a bit.
Those initiatives, including a model program designed at Columbia University called TeenScreen, aim to steer kids who are more likely to develop depression toward help before their emotional difficulties lead them to risky behaviors, academic failure or suicide attempts. In recent years, six states — Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Iowa and New Mexico — have moved to adopt programs that screen schoolchildren for warning signs of mental illness, including depression.
