Depression

Nursing home residents with proper glasses enjoy life more and are less depressed than those with uncorrected vision problems, a study has found. Obvious? Perhaps, but nursing home residents have three to 15 times higher rates of uncorrected vision impairment than seniors living independently. Before testing their vision, researchers led by Cynthia Owsley, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, scored 150 nursing home residents on scales of quality of life and depression.

Diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents have risen fortyfold since 1994, according to a new study released yesterday. Researchers attributed the rise in part to overdiagnosis of the serious psychiatric disorder. The report in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry said bipolar disorder was found during 1,003 of every 100,000 office visits by children and adolescents, compared with 25 of 100,000 office visits in 1994. The diagnosis of bipolar disorder among adults increased twofold during the same period, researchers said.

NFL players who endured at least three concussions are three times more likely to suffer from depression than a player who had none, according to the University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of Retired Athletes. In a self-report survey of 2,552 retired NFL players over a period of four years, the center demonstrated a sharp increase in risk of depression with three concussions. Twenty percent of the 595 players who remembered having at least three concussions were clinically diagnosed with depression later in life, compared with 10 percent who recalled one or two concussions.

Depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans who are 65 years or older, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But often the symptoms of depression, which can include fatigue, overall sadness and loss of interest in activities, go unidentified or ignored among the elderly, says Veronica Poklemba, a clinical nurse specialist at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital in Baltimore. Why is it of particular importance to identify and treat depression in the elderly?

Emma A. Shiloh, who worked as a welder in a Baltimore shipyard during World War II and later became an administrator at Locke Insulators Inc., died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at her Baltimore Highlands residence. She was 82.Mrs. Shiloh, who was twice widowed, retired from Locke in 1982. She had begun her career in the South Baltimore plant as a factory worker in 1947.A longtime Baltimore Highlands resident, the former Emma Barefoot was born and raised in Johnston County, N.C., the daughter of a cotton and tobacco farmer.

"Night Falls Fast," by Kay Redfield Jamison. Knopf. 432 pages. $25.So many people throughout time have died from suicide, written about it, tried to make sense of it. In this new book, Kay Redfield Jamison attacks this complex, emotionally charged topic without fear. She has created a single, fresh text that answers the question so many have agonized over for so long: Why?In a sweeping, authoritative look at suicide, laced with the compelling tales of those who died or nearly died at their own hands, including herself, Dr. Jamison exposes the truth: Suicide is not one isolated moment of madness for otherwise rational people, but mostly an impulsive act of a patient trying to end the awful pain of a psychiatric illness.

It was her last hope.On a snowy Sunday in March, 33-year-old Lauri Hogle asked her church elders to pray over her. In James 5:13-15, she'd read she should invite them -- Is anyone among you sick? the disciple had asked the crowd. Call the elders of the church to pray over you, and the prayer will heal you.The unexplained numbness in Lauri's hands, the headaches, the blurred vision had stolen her ability to hold her babies or play the piano. Medicine puffed up her pretty face, straightened her shoulder-length dark hair, dulled the sparkle in her brown eyes.

WASHINGTON -- Mental illness has always been something to hide. So great has been the stigma of mental illness that, in most societies, it has been political suicide for any leader to admit any association with it.But now we get what, incredibly, is the first White House conference ever on mental illness with the woman who wants to be first lady, Tipper Gore, pleading for an end to "the last great stigma of the 20th century" while the woman who is first...

Q. I just finished reading your column on helping a sad or depressed child. My 2-year-old grandson shows many of the symptoms you described. Since his sister was born last December, he has lost a lot of weight, experiences frequent fatigue and doesn't seem interested in physical activity -- but he likes reading, videos and quiet activities.He is under the care of pediatric specialists who are doing tests to rule out physical causes of his weight loss. But if the root of this is psychological, how is it treated?

Since she published a new book on suicide, Johns Hopkins medical school psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison has been struck by how photographers always seem to render her as dour. The professor who brought mental illness out of the closet is anything but: animated and friendly, a thin, tousled blond, she wears a large smile often painted coral.This despite tough times lately: In recent weeks, Jamison, 53, has spent more time at Hopkins quizzing oncologists treating her husband than teaching residents in psychiatry.

Question: : My 17-year-old son is feeling depressed. He is sad and tired and would sleep all day long if we allowed it. The doctor prescribed Prozac, but after the second day of taking it, my son said he had thoughts of suicide. I immediately stopped giving it to him. I would like to know more about the alternatives for treating depression. It is very hard for him to focus, so he didn't do well in school. The only thing that seems to interest him is composing songs and playing his guitar.

The Duncans of Rockville were a "nice Irish-Catholic family" with 13 kids, one of whom grew up to be mayor, Montgomery County executive and a candidate for Maryland governor. They're also a family so stricken by mental illness that the National Institutes of Health used them, in the 1960s, in a case study of depression. Doug Duncan's paternal grandfather was hospitalized for manic depression in the 1930s, and he remained hospitalized until his death 20 years later. Duncan's father suffered from the same illness and was forced to take a medical retirement from his job at the National Security Agency.

Pedestrian is hit, killed on U.S. 29 2 A pedestrian was struck and killed early Saturday while attempting to cross U.S. 29 near U.S. 40 in Howard County, police said. The pedestrian, whose identity was not released pending family notification, was hit about 1:22 a.m. in the slow lane of southbound U.S. 29 by a Toyota 4-Runner driven by Roland Ronald Ward of Ellicott City. Ward was not injured. The victim was wearing dark clothing, police said. The investigation was continuing. Hanah Cho Man's body found near burning car in Howard 3 Howard County authorities are investigating the death of a man whose body was found near a burning car late Friday.

Fire Chief James Clack aims to keep us out of blazes - in Baltimore and in the hereafter. The city fire chief just became a deacon in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, so he can save people in more ways than one. He'll be introduced during Mass at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown on Saturday. What sounds like an odd resume combo is old hat to Clack, who was ordained as a deacon in St. Cloud, Minn., in 2003, when he was with the Minneapolis Fire Department. "They are different, but ... both are vocations where your main focus is helping others," Clack said.

Trips off the tongue, doesn't it? "The worst recession since the Great Depression." Special interests seeking bailouts, politicians pushing legislation and even some news organizations assure us it's true. Except it's not. Not yet. From what we know so far, this recession isn't even close to being as painful as the terrible slump of the early 1980s. Not the deepest. Not the longest. By some gauges, it's not even as bad as several less severe downturns. The economy is on an alarming course, and it may well break post-Depression records before we're done.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recently said the city is entering into a period "worse than the Depression." This week, Jim Press, vice chairman of Chrysler, told the Associated Press, "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a depression." These leaders are far from alone in their apocalyptic thinking. In an unscientific, online survey in The Baltimore Sun, 46 percent of respondents agreed that "the U.S. is heading for an economic downturn on a par with the Great Depression."

With all the news about the economic crisis, is it any wonder that some of us feel stressed out about our financial futures? Although experiencing some stress may be a reasonable reaction to the global financial situation, feeling deeply anxious during tough economic times doesn't have to be inevitable, says Jack Vaeth, staff psychiatrist at Sheppard Pratt Health System, who also is in private practice in Hunt Valley and Annapolis. Given the reports about the economy these days, is feeling more anxious than usual about our financial futures unavoidable?

Louis Galambos is scared about the economy and cautiously optimistic at the same time, which sounds about right. "Am I nervous?" says the professor of economic history at the Johns Hopkins University. "Yes, I'm nervous. You are, too. We're all nervous. Anybody who looks at this and thinks about it should be nervous. This could be another big one. And it could have really major implications for the society." But as one with a better perspective on U.S. business trends than almost anybody else, Galambos, 77, knows more than most of the people who speak blithely about another "depression."

People with otherwise untreatable depression improved in a small clinical trial after receiving electrical stimulation of a part of the brain that scientists believe regulates sadness. A report this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry said 12 of 20 patients with chronic major depression benefited from the electronic device - including seven whose disease went into remission. The benefits were sustained over the course of the one-year study, researchers said. "These were patients at the end of the road.

He was a slim, twitchy guy with red hair and rage - and as I recall, he worked as hard or harder than any of us rookie docs back when a best-seller called House of God had just blown the cover on the grueling days and nights, raunchy jokes and general misery of U.S. medical trainees. In those days, high-tech hospitals were just a gleam in some muckety-muck's eye. In other words, at our vaunted citadel, there were no fancy scans, no computerized labs, and certainly no one but the lowest grunt on the totem pole to hang blood or push meds or run EKGs between taking histories and probing organs and orifices of the seemingly endless stream of new arrivals on the ward.