Key To Preventing Suicides : Male Desire To Be Strong And Protect Family

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Masculine ideals of strength coupled with strong loved ones ties can assist men combat depression and overcome thoughts of suicide, according to University of British Columbia study.

In a research to appear in a forthcoming issue of Social Science and Medicine, UBC researchers John Oliffe and John Ogrodniczuk looked at how men's ideas of masculinity served or hindered them during bouts of severe depression. Their findings shed light on risk factors and prevention strategies for suicide.

The authors analyzed qualitative data from interviews with 38 guys between 24 and 50 years of age living in Vancouver and Prince George. The participants were self-identified or were formally diagnosed with depression.

The analyze suggests that males can finest counter suicidal thoughts by connecting with other people - namely intimate partners and loved ones - to regain some stability and to secure emotional help from other people.

"Support from friends and connecting to other things including spirituality is often the conduit to men seeking professional help to overcome the suicidal thoughts that can accompany severe depression" says lead author Oliffe, an associate professor in the School of Nursing.

Men die by suicide at least three times more than ladies even though it's ladies who are diagnosed at twice the rate of men for depression. Guys aged 20-29 have the highest rate of suicide. Statistics Canada reports that in 2003, the last year for which data is obtainable, more than 2,900 guys committed suicide.

The investigators found that most study participants expressed a strong commitment to their families and turned away from suicide for the hurt and trauma it would cause loved ones.

"Here, men's strong sense of masculine roles and responsibility as a provider and protector enables men to hold on while seeking support to regain some self-control," says Oliffe.

But Ogrodniczuk says the "stoic warrior" ideal also presents a downside that may lead guys to shut down and look for escape. In these situations, analyze participants chose to mute their feelings or disconnect from others. They usually overused alcohol and other drugs.

"Instead of finding respite from their emotional, mental and physical pain, self-harm emerged as the most common outcome of these actions," says Ogrodniczuk, an associate professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry

The analyze received assistance from the Canadian Institutes of Health Study (CIHR)

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Gene Linked To Mental Health Has Different Effects

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Scientists have long eyed mutations in a gene known as DISC1 as a possible contributor to schizophrenia and mood disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder. Now, new research led by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that perturbing this gene during prenatal periods, postnatal periods or both may have different effects in mice, leading to separate types of brain alterations and behaviors with resemblance to schizophrenia or mood disorders. Withdrawing doxycycline turned this gene on. When the mice were about 2 months old, the researchers put the animals through a battery of behavioral tests designed to measure characteristics similar to schizophrenia and depression in humans, such as abnormal social interactions and heightened aggression under stress, comparing these animals with "control" animals that didn't express the mutant gene.

Because previous studies have shown that male mice with mutant DISC1 have such altered traits, the researchers tested male mice in each of the groups by placing them in a cage with a normal male mouse and allowing them to mingle for 10 minutes. Pletnikov and his colleagues found that the Pre+Post and Post groups spent significantly less time in non-aggressive social interaction with their partners than the mice of the NO group. Those in the Pre+Post group also demonstrated significantly more aggressive attacks on their partners than control mice that did not express mutant DISC1. Mice thought to exhibit depression-like behavior spend more time immobile than non-depressed mice.

Pletnikov's team found that only female mice of the Post group spent significantly more time immobile in the forced swim test than mice that did not express mutant DISC1. Female mice in the Pre+Post group spent significantly more time immobile in the tail suspension test than control mice . Male mice in each of the groups displayed similar behavior in these tests.

Finally, when the researchers examined the brains of the mice, they found significant differences between animals in different groups. Those in the Pre group had significantly smaller brain volume than the other mice. Both female and male mice in the Pre, Post and Pre+Post groups had fewer neurons that produce GABA, a brain chemical that regulates nerve cell firing, than mice in the NO group.

While selective prenatal expression led to smaller brain volumes but mild behavioral effects, pre- and postnatal expression led to behaviors and brain alterations in male mice similar to schizophrenic humans, and postnatal expression produced abnormalities in female mice similar to depression.

The researchers aren't sure why the animals varied according to sex. However, Pletnikov notes, schizophrenia and depression also vary between the sexes in humans, with schizophrenia more prevalent in males and depression more prevalent in females. He and his team plan to study these sex-related differences in future studies.

Source
Johns Hopkins Medicine

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Half Of Depressed Americans Go Untreated

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

A national survey of 15,762 households by UCLA/Wayne State University researchers found that only 21 percent of Americans suffering from clinical depression receive medical care consistent with American Psychiatric Association guidelines. Half receive no treatment at all.

The majority of treated patients, nearly 45 percent, received psychotherapy with no medication. Only 34 percent of patients were prescribed antidepressants. Of that number, Mexican Americans and African Americans were prescribed antidepressants a third less often than Caucasians. Factors such as education, health insurance and income did not explain the lower rates of medication use.

Impact
Lack of health insurance partly explained the disparity for Mexican Americans, but not for African Americans' low levels of treatment, suggesting other variables are at play.

Journal
The Archives of General Psychiatry publishes the findings in its January 2010 edition.

Funding
The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Coauthors
William Vega, professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Hector González, professor of family medicine and gerontology at Wayne State University, are available for interviews.

Source
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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