FEATURES
By NEW YORK TIMES | November 22, 2007
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.
NEWS
By Denise Gellene | September 4, 2007
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.
SPORTS
By Ken Murray | June 1, 2007
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.
FEATURES
By Holly Selby | September 13, 2007
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?
NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen | February 10, 1999
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.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Diana K. Sugg | October 10, 1999
"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.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Story by Patricia Meisol | November 14, 1999
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.
NEWS
By Carl T. Rowan | June 11, 1999
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...
NEWS
By T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. | October 10, 1999
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?
ENTERTAINMENT
By Patricia Meisol | December 12, 1999
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.