Category: Mental Health

Acting like a playboy (being a sexist man) and enjoying having power over women are both strongly linked to this mental cost.

Men who think they are playboys have more mental health problems, new research finds.

Dr Y. Joel Wong, the study’s lead author, said:

“In general, individuals who conformed strongly to masculine norms tended to have poorer mental health and less favorable attitudes toward seeking psychological help, although the results differed depending on specific types of masculine norms.”

The results come from studies on almost 20,000 people on traditional views of masculinity.

The view tested attitudes linked (by some) to masculinity, including:

• Sexual promiscuity,
• risk-taking,
• desire to win,
• dislike of homosexuality and many more.

People who espoused masculine norms were more likely to be depressed and have low life satisfaction.

Three norms of masculine behaviour were particularly strongly associated with poor mental health:

• Playboy behaviour
• Self-reliance
• Power over women

Dr Wong said:

“The masculine norms of playboy and power over women are the norms most closely associated with sexist attitudes.

The robust association between conformity to these two norms and negative mental health-related outcomes underscores the idea that sexism is not merely a social injustice, but may also have a detrimental effect on the mental health of those who embrace such attitudes.”

Sexist man

Men who conformed to masculine stereotypes were also less likely to seek treatment for mental health problems, the researchers found.

Giving a high priority to work, though, was not linked to mental health, Dr Wong explained, despite it being part of the masculine ethos:

“Primacy of work was not significantly associated with any of the mental health-related outcomes.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the complexity of work and its implications for well-being.

An excessive focus on work can be harmful to one’s health and interpersonal relationships, but work is also a source of meaning for many individuals.”

The study was published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (Wong et al., 2016).

Masculine image from Shutterstock

The findings could be used to help develop new methods of brain training for treating depression and anxiety.

Doing simple maths in your head has been linked to better emotional health by a new study.

The reason is that the same areas of the brain are involved in both emotional processing and mental maths.

The research could be the first step towards creating brain training exercises to help anxiety and depression.

Mr Matthew Scult, the study’s first author, said:

“Our work provides the first direct evidence that the ability to regulate emotions like fear and anger reflects the brain’s ability to make numerical calculations in real time.”

The study involved brain scans of 186 people who were doing mental math problems from memory.

Researchers were interested in an area of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

This area has been linked to depression and anxiety.

When people learn cognitive-behavioural therapy, more activity is seen in this area of the brain, suggesting it is critical in dealing with emotional problems.

The researchers found that more activity in this region was linked to more emotional adaptability.

Mr Scult said:

“We don’t know for sure why that is, but it fit into our hypothesis that the ability to do these more complex math problems might allow you to more readily learn how to think about complex emotional situations in different ways.

It is easy to get stuck in one way of thinking.”

The more activity was seen in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the lower people’s levels of depression and anxiety.

It’s not yet clear if mental maths really causes better emotional control.

However, Mr Scult said:

“We hope, with these and future studies, that we can inform new strategies to help people regulate their emotions, and to prevent symptoms of anxiety and depression from developing in the first place.”

The study was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science (Scult et al., 2016).

Is it the amount of wind, rain or sun that affects your  mental health?

The one weather variable that really matters to mental health is the amount of sunlight hours, new research finds.

Rain, air pollution, wind and high or low temperature have relatively little effect.

It is the amount of time between sunrise and sunset that is linked to people’s mental health.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“Seasonal changes in sun time were found to best account for relationships between weather variables and variability in mental health distress.

Increased mental health distress was found during periods of reduced sun time hours.”

Professor Mark Beecher, the study’s first author, elaborated:

“That’s one of the surprising pieces of our research.

On a rainy day, or a more polluted day, people assume that they’d have more distress.

But we didn’t see that.

We looked at solar irradiance, or the amount of sunlight that actually hits the ground.

We tried to take into account cloudy days, rainy days, pollution . . . but they washed out.

The one thing that was really significant was the amount of time between sunrise and sunset.”

The researchers drew on data from 16,452 people’s emotional health, along with advanced weather information.

They looked at rainfall, solar irradiance, wind speed, wind chill and so on.

But in the end it all came down to daylight hours.

It also didn’t matter if people had seasonal affective disorder or SAD, the results were the same.

Professor Lawrence Rees, a study co-author, explained the genesis of the research:

“Mark and I have been friends and neighbors for years, and we often take the bus together.

And of course you often talk about mundane things, like how are classes going?

How has the semester been?

How ’bout this weather?

So one day it was kind of stormy, and I asked Mark if he sees more clients on these days.

He said he’s not sure, it’s kind of an open question.

It’s hard to get accurate data.”

The study was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders (Beecher et al., 2016).

One particular type of stress takes the greatest toll on your appearance.

Financial stress takes the greatest toll on your appearance, a new study concludes.

People who have experienced the most financial stress across a decade looked the oldest, researchers found.

Professor Margie Lachman, who led the research, said:

“It may be that people who are under a lot of financial stress do not pay much attention to their appearance.

Stress can also accelerate the aging process.”

The study tracked 200 people from the mid-1990s for a decade.

Each had their photo taken before and after.

Their photos were judged for apparent age by 19 reviewers.

The results showed that people with the greatest financial stress over the decade looked the oldest.

Financial stress had the greatest impact on apparent ageing, in comparison to other sources.

This is consistent with the finding that people say that financial stresses are the most problematic in their lives.

Financial and work stress also makes people feel older themselves.

The study also revealed that:

• Most people believed that they looked younger than they were.
• People who felt healthier also felt younger.
• Women were more likely to think they looked younger than they actually did.
• Younger people felt much the same age as they appeared to others.
• Older people generally felt younger than they looked.

The study was published in the journal of Research on Aging (Agrigoroaei et al., 2016).

Image credit: Sander van der Wel

For the research, people played a game during which they were sometimes given mild electric shocks.

Electric shocks are more painful when they are uncertain than when they are definitely coming, a new study finds.

It confirms just how stressful uncertainty can be compared with knowing what is coming.

Dr Robb Rutledge, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“When applying for a job, you’ll probably feel more relaxed if you think it’s a long shot or if you’re confident that it’s in the bag.

The most stressful scenario is when you really don’t know.

It’s the uncertainty that makes us anxious.

The same is likely to apply in many familiar situations, whether it’s waiting for medical results or information on train delays.”

For the research, people played a game during which they were sometimes given mild electric shocks.

Sometimes people could predict when they were going to get a shock, other times they could not.

It was the unpredictable nature of the shocks which made them more stressful, the results showed.

Mr Archy de Berker, the study’s first author, said:

“It turns out that it’s much worse not knowing you are going to get a shock than knowing you definitely will or won’t.

We saw exactly the same effects in our physiological measures – people sweat more and their pupils get bigger when they are more uncertain.”

Dr Sven Bestmann, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“From an evolutionary perspective, our finding that stress responses are tuned to environmental uncertainty suggests that it may have offered some survival benefit.

Appropriate stress responses might be useful for learning about uncertain, dangerous things in the environment.

Modern life comes with many potential sources of uncertainty and stress, but it has also introduced ways of addressing them.

For example, taxi apps that show where a car is can offer peace of mind by reducing the uncertainty about when it will arrive.

Real-time information boards at bus stops and train platforms perform a similar role, although this can be undermined by unspecified delays which cause stress for passengers and staff alike.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (de Berker et al., 2016).

Looking up image from Shutterstock

Around 30% of people are thought to carry the parasite often caught from a common domestic pet.

People with impulsive anger problems could have a parasite in their brain, a new study suggests.

Those who continually display behaviours like road-rage could be infected with a common parasite rather than having a psychological disorder.

Around 30% of people are thought to carry the toxoplasma gondii parasite — it is often present in, and caught from, cat faeces.

Professor Emil Coccaro, who led the research said:

“Our work suggests that latent infection with the toxoplasma gondii parasite may change brain chemistry in a fashion that increases the risk of aggressive behavior.

However, we do not know if this relationship is causal, and not everyone that tests positive for toxoplasmosis will have aggression issues.”

The conclusions come from a study of 358 adults.

The results showed that people with ‘intermittent explosive disorder’ (that’s rage issues to you and me!) were twice as likely to test positive for the toxoplasma gondii parasite in comparison to a healthy control group (22% versus 9%).

Across all the people in the study, those who tested positive for the toxoplasma gondii parasite had significantly higher levels of aggression and anger.

Dr Royce Lee, a study co-author, said:

“Correlation is not causation, and this is definitely not a sign that people should get rid of their cats.

We don’t yet understand the mechanisms involved–it could be an increased inflammatory response, direct brain modulation by the parasite, or even reverse causation where aggressive individuals tend to have more cats or eat more undercooked meat.

Our study signals the need for more research and more evidence in humans.

Professor Coccaro said:

“It will take experimental studies to see if treating a latent toxoplasmosis infection with medication reduces aggressiveness.

If we can learn more, it could provide rational to treat IED in toxoplasmosis-positive patients by first treating the latent infection.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Coccaro et al., 2016).

Image credit: Alvaro Tapia

This approach to stress may protect your heart from its damaging effects.

People who experience a lot of stress do not necessarily have more unhealthy hearts, new research finds.

How you react to stress is more important than the amount of stress you experience.

While negative reactions to stress are known to trigger heart disease, some people cope better than others.

To investigate, researchers measured people’s heart-rate variability.

Dr Nancy L. Sin, the study’s first author, explained the significance:

“Higher heart rate variability is better for health as it reflects the capacity to respond to challenges.

People with lower heart rate variability have a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death.”

Along with the heart-rate variability, participants agreed to eight daily telephone interviews to monitor stressful events that had occurred.

The results showed that it was the perception of the stressful events that predicted an unhealthier heart.

Some people in the study experienced many more stressful events, but had healthier hearts at least partly because their attitude was better, the study suggests.

Dr Sin said:

“These results tell us that a person’s perceptions and emotional reactions to stressful events are more important than exposure to stress per se.

This adds to the evidence that minor hassles might pile up to influence health.

We hope these findings will help inform the development of interventions to improve well-being in daily life and to promote better health.”

The results back up another recent study finding that:

“Dealing with the minor stresses and strains of everyday life in a positive way is key to long-term health.

The research found that people who remained calm or cheerful in the face of irritations had a lower risk of inflammation.

Chronic inflammation can lead to health problems like cancer, heart disease and obesity.

The study provides further evidence of how people’s emotional response to everyday stressors impacts their health.”

The new study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Sin et al., 2016).

Heart image from Shutterstock

Serious temporary problems with brain function linked to commonly used drugs.

Common antibiotics could be linked to serious temporary problems with brain function, a new review concludes.

The review found that 54 different antibiotics were linked with cases of delirium.

Delirium is mental confusion often accompanied by agitation and even hallucinations.

Dr Shamik Bhattacharyya, the study’s first author, said:

“People who have delirium are more likely to have other complications, go into a nursing home instead of going home after being in the hospital and are more likely to die than people who do not develop delirium.

Any efforts we can make to help identify the cause of delirium have the potential to be greatly beneficial.”

Since all the patients had an active infection, the study can’t rule out the possibility that that could have been the cause of the delirium.

Dr Bhattacharyya said:

“More research is needed, but these antibiotics should be considered as a possible cause of delirium.

Recognition of different patterns of toxicity could lead to a quicker diagnosis and hopefully prevent of some of the negative consequences for people with delirium and other brain problems.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Bhattacharyya et al., 2016).

Image credit: cora alvarez

The research involved 700 people who had schizophrenia and donated their brains for research after their deaths.

Scientist have made a major breakthrough in the understanding of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a very serious mental health condition which tends to run in families.

It’s long been suspected that there is a strong genetic component (it’s about 90% inherited).

Now scientists have discovered the genes that cause problems with a process called synaptic pruning.

Synaptic pruning is the process by which unneeded connections between brain cells are destroyed during childhood.

In normal development this helps speed up the brain — we don’t need the incredible number of neurons and connections we grow as infants.

In schizophrenia, though, it looks like this process of pruning goes into overdrive.

Dr Thomas Lehner, a director at the National Institute of Mental Health, explained:

“Normally, pruning gets rid of excess connections we no longer need, streamlining our brain for optimal performance, but too much pruning can impair mental function.

It could help explain schizophrenia’s delayed age-of-onset of symptoms in late adolescence/early adulthood and shrinkage of the brain’s working tissue.

Interventions that put the brakes on this pruning process-gone-awry could prove transformative.”

The research involved 700 people who had schizophrenia and donated their brains for research after their deaths.

This and other genetic data was compared with people who did not have schizophrenia.

Finding the gene that is responsible, at least in part, is a major breakthrough.

However, it will be years before new treatments or preventative strategies can be developed from this information.

Dr Steve McCarroll, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Since schizophrenia was first described over a century ago, its underlying biology has been a black box, in part because it has been virtually impossible to model the disorder in cells or animals.

The human genome is providing a powerful new way in to this disease.

Understanding these genetic effects on risk is a way of prying open that block box, peering inside and starting to see actual biological mechanisms.”

The study was published in the journal Nature (Sekar et al., 2016).

If the hallucination is irritating, there could be a way to reduce its effect.

Phantom vibration syndrome is when it feels like your phone is vibrating in your pocket…

…but actually there’s no incoming call, text message or other alert.

It’s a hallucination that 90% of people with mobile phones say has happened to them.

Dr Robert Rosenberg, author of a new study on the modern phenomenon, said the hallucination is easily produced:

“[The] phone sifts around in your pocket, “I’m getting a call.”

Your pant leg rustles, “I’m getting a text.”

You have a muscle spasm in your leg, “I’m getting another call again.”

But the whole time, just a phantom vibration.”

Phantom vibration syndrome was first identified in the era of pagers.

The hallucination could be down to a kind of bodily habit, Dr Rosenberg said:

“Think about wearing a pair of glasses.

If you’re accustomed to your glasses and they almost become a part of you, you can forget that you’re even wearing them sometimes.

The phone in your pocket is like this.

Through bodily habit, your phone actually becomes a part of you and you become trained to perceive the phone’s vibrations as an incoming call or text.

So, due to these kinds of habits, it becomes really easy to misperceive other similar sensations.”

There is no reason to be concerned by the hallucination but if it’s irritating there could be a way to reduce its effect.

Dr Rosenberg suggests moving the phone around to different pockets.

This should help stop the bad habit forming — or at least slow it down.

Watch the accompanying video from Georgia Tech:

The study was published in the journal Computers In Human Behavior (Rosenberg, 2015).

Puffing man image from Shutterstock