In bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive disorder, a person experiences mood changes that fluctuate between periods of abnormally high energy and extreme depression. Bipolar disorder is estimated to affect approximately 1-3% of adults, but also can affect children and adolescents.
Sleep remains one of the big mysteries in biology. All animals sleep, and people who are deprived of sleep suffer physically, emotionally and intellectually. But nobody knows how sleep restores the brain.
At least one-third of the time, the symptoms of bipolar disorder first appear in childhood or adolescence. However, in children, it can be difficult to distinguish bipolar symptoms from those of other disorders, notes the May 2007 issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Older adults who have had symptoms of depression?whether those symptoms occurred once, increased or remained steady over a 10-year period?may be more likely to develop diabetes than those without depressive symptoms, according to a report in the April 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are comparing two common stimulant drugs with a placebo to evaluate their effect on sleep and behavior in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Chronic depression or depression that worsens over time may cause diabetes in older adults, according to new Northwestern University research. This is the first national study to suggest that depression alone — and not lifestyle factors like being overweight ?can trigger Type 2 diabetes in adults 65 and older, a population with a high prevalence of diabetes and depression.
A study at the University Clinics of Bonn and Cologne gives people with therapy-resistant depression reason for hope. The doctors treated two men and a woman with what is known as deep brain stimulation.
Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.
Scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine are the first to report that the stress hormone epinephrine causes changes in prostate and breast cancer cells that may make them resistant to cell death.
Positive thinking and regular exercise can help deal with depression, revealed by US physicians.