Archive for the 'Depression' Category

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Literacy and behavior problems

Published on 26 May 2006 in Acting in, Acting out, Autism, Depression, News and Research. 0 Comments

Here’s an abstract from PubMed discussing links between behavior disorders and literacy problems.

Literacy and mental disorders.

Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2006 Jul;19(4):350-354

Authors: Maughan B, Carroll J

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review examines recent evidence on the comorbidity between literacy problems and psychiatric disorder in childhood and discusses possible contributory factors. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent studies confirm the substantial overlap of literacy problems with a range of emotional/behavioural difficulties in childhood. Literacy problems and inattention may share genetic influences, contributing to associations with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. To an extent, links with conduct problems may be also mediated by attentional difficulties. In addition, findings suggest bidirectional influences whereby disruptive behaviours impede reading progress and reading failure exacerbates risk for behaviour problems. Associations between literacy problems and anxiety disorders are not entirely mediated by inattentiveness. Rather, comorbid anxiety disorders seem likely to arise from the stressors associated with reading failure. Findings in relation to depression are less consistent, but suggest that poor readers may be vulnerable to low mood. Children with autism seem more likely to face problems in reading comprehension than the decoding difficulties more prominent in other disorders. SUMMARY: Literacy problems are associated with increased risks of both externalizing and internalizing disorders in childhood, with different mechanisms likely to be implicated in each case. When comorbid problems occur, each is likely to require separate treatment.

PMID: 16721162 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Link to the PubMed source.

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Adolescent depression

Published on 4 January 2006 in Acting in, Depression, News and Research. 1 Comment

Depression continues to be a common problem among adolescents in the US, and it also continues to go untreated, according to a report based on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health released by the Office of Applied Studies in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) late in December. The proportion of adolescents reporting depression increases with age (see Figure 1).

  • In 2004, 9.0 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 (an estimated 2.2 million adolescents) experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year
  • Among adolescents aged 12 to 17 who reported having experienced an MDE in the past year, less than half (40.3 percent) received treatment for depression during that time
  • Adolescents who had experienced a past year MDE were more than twice as likely to have used illicit drugs in the past month than their peers who had not (21.2 vs. 9.6 percent)

Pardon my choice of words, but these data are pretty depressing. I am not sure whether educators can reduce the proportion of adolescents who experience a MDE, but at the least we ought to be do a better job of helping those who do experience depression. We need to develop and implement a program that helps educators spot the signs of depression among adolescents and sensitively refer those with symptoms for services. We need to provide support and appropriate services.

Link to HTML or PDF summary of the report

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Dolphins redux

Published on 27 December 2005 in Acting in, Depression, Musings and Research. 2 Comments

In November of 2005 I covered a report from the British Medical Journal about a study of so-called “dolphin therapy.” In brief, the researchers solicited people with depression to travel to a tropical area where they were promised the opportunity to swim with dolphins. As people arrived, some were diverted into a control group that simply went swimming and others actually got to swim with dolphins. When asked to complete a self-report inventory about depression after a couple of weeks, those who swam with dolphins gave answers showing lower levels of depression than those who did not swim with dolphins. I previously enumerated problems with this study.

Welp, I learned that Eric Nagourney of the New York Times has covered the same study, though less critically, in an article entitled “Therapies: A Dose of Dolphins for Moderate Depression.” Mr. Nagourney noted another concern about the therapy: “Some conservationists, however, frown on swim-with-dolphin programs, contending they are stressful to the animals.”

John Grohol’s Pysch Central blog reprinted part of Mr. Nagourney’s article. Psych Central offered no further analysis of the study.

Intrigued by the spread of the story, I used “dolphin therapy depression ‘British Medical Journal’” as a search term in Google and Yahoo. Whew! It appears this study has legs! There were 1000s of hits (~2400 in Yahoo; ~12000 in Google). To be sure, not all of the hits will link to uncritical reports of the study, but there’s enough buzz clearly hooked to the study that its results will probably become accepted as fact. Sigh.

This seems to me to be another instance of the appeal of a novel therapy causing people to accept results from a study that we might otherwise question strongly. Perhaps I’m being hypercritical…. I sure would like to see the invitation that went to the people who participated in the therapy; it would tell a lot. How were the people recruited? I do not recall that the study documented this clearly. Oh well. The study will be a good example to use in research classes.

Have you ever touched a dolphin? I have and I am not depressed. So there! It must work.

Link to Mr. Nagourney’s article and a link to Psych Central’s entry.

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Dolphin therapy

Published on 29 November 2005 in Acting in, Depression, News and Research. 2 Comments

People with depression who spent an hour a day for two weeks in water with dolphins reported lower levels of depression than others who have spent comparable time in water without dolphins, according to a report by Christian Antonioli and Michael A. Reveley published in the British Mental Journal. The study, which was conducted in Honduras primarily with 40-year-old women, employed a single-blind design with random assignment to conditions.

Although this report will provide great encouragement to advocates of so-called holistic approaches to therapy, it will also provide multiple opportunities to discuss the potential for research to overlook the obvious. I’ll leave the detailed analysis for another day, but note in passing that factors such as (a) recruiting people for a given experience and then redirecting those in the control group to a different treatment, (b) using self-report data as the dependent variable when reporters know what therapy they are getting and even sought it, and (c) capitalizing on the temporary benefits of just about any therapy call these results into question. Furthermore, as the wonderful folks at Annals of Improbable Research have noted, this study illustrates the Gillinov Effect: Commenting on a different study, Marc Gillinov said, “I’m not surprised at all that something that makes people feel good also makes them feel less anxious, has measurable physiological effects.”

Link to an HTML version of the BMJ article by Mr. Antonioli and Mr. Reveley.

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Antisocial behavior

Published on 20 March 2005 in Acting out, Assessment, Behavior management, Bookshelf, Bullying, Causes, Conduct disorder, Delinquency, Depression, Families, Research, The press and Treatment. 0 Comments

The most recent of a series of books examining the characteristics, causes, treatment, and consequences of antisocial behavior in children and youths, this volume by the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) team examines the behavioral processes that build and sustain deviant interactions between children and their families (as well as teachers and others). Professors Patterson and Reid have been working on this topic for more than 40 years and they have examined these processes using many different scientific methods. They have assembled chapters from an all-star cast of people with whom they have worked during that time and the contributed chapters cover both the development of and intervention in antisocial behavior.

Reid, J. B., Patterson, G. R., & Snyder, J. J. (Eds.). (2002). Antisocial behavior in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis and model for intervention. Washington, D.C., American Psychological Association.

Learn more about the book from a page on the Web site of the American Psychological Association. To learn more about the OSLC, check the link in the sidebar. During my graduate studies, I worked with this research group for a bit more than a year; I learned a tremendous amount from the interactions and readings I had during that period.

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