Mindframe

As if depressed or anxious people needed another thing to worry about, a new study from UC San Francisco suggests that depression and anxiety may be as bad for the health as smoking or obesity. First author Dr. Andrea Niles and senior author Dr. Aoife O’Donovan of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the San Francisco VA Medical Center examined the records of 15,000 adults over four years. Of that sample, 16% were found to be noticeably depressed or anxious. Compared to their non-depressed, non-anxious counterparts, those 16% of respondents were 65% more likely to have a heart condition, 64% more likely to have had a stroke, 50% more likely to have high blood pressure, and a whopping 87% more likely to have arthritis. (They were not found to be at greater risk for cancer, but that’s not much of a silver lining, considering.) Clearly, depression and anxiety are not a simple bad mood, or a weakness of character, but a serious medical condition. Clearly, something mu...

Studies show that senior citizens are more connected to the web than ever before. According to the Pew Research Group , smartphone ownership among those 65 and older has increased by 24 percentage points since just 2013, and more than a third of this group use social media.   And that’s potentially a good thing, says new research from the University of Michigan. By now, we’re all familiar with the complaints against social media. It shortens attention spans. It decreases face-to-face social skills. We don’t notice the world around us when all we do is stare at our phones all day. We are becoming a nation of screen-obsessed zombies. However, there’s a flip side to that Facebook habit. As Western society has moved away from a family model in which elders continue living with their offspring, isolation has increasingly become standard for those living in their golden years. Friends and spouses die, seniors relocate to nursing homes or other care facilities far from their...

Suicide: the word itself is sobering. In the U.S., there are 38,000 suicides a year. This makes it one of the top ten causes of death in the country; twice as common as homicide, which in recent years has declined. Roughly 38,000 people also die annually on U.S. highways, but that number is also on its way down; we've experienced a 50% drop in highway fatalities since the seventies. Unfortunately, the suicide rate has not followed suit. In fact, overall it is ticking upwards. So why do people kill themselves? Experts on suicide are among the first to admit that their own understanding is limited. It's not something people feel particularly comfortable talking about, which makes research tough. Big Pharma has offered no solution; there are no anti-suicide drugs for sale. In fact, it's almost the opposite: a number of drugs list suicide as a possible side effect. From looking at the statistics, we do know some factors increase chances of suicidal behavior. Th...

When this holiday season is over and you've exhausted your patience, credit card, and yule spirit, here's something to ponder while you attempt to surgically remove tangles of lights from the prickly brown death trap that's become your Christmas tree. Question: Lots of little computers woven together in ever-changing patterns, connecting and reconnecting, sharing information at lightning speed--quick, what are we talking about? That's too easy, you say, the answer is the internet.  Or, if you've been reading this website for a while and you're a smart aleck, the Victorian telegraph system . Or, if you've got good pattern recognition and you're familiar with the premise of this blog, the human brain as revealed to us through neuroscience. It's not a perfect analogy but it's been on my mind since reading this month's Discovery Magazine. Carl Zimmer, award-winning biology writer and author of The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evol...