Today I read in the newspaper that another important film director had died: Michelangelo Antnioni. His movies Identificazione di una Donna and Blow Up made an ever lasting impression on me, more than any other movie by Ingmar Bergman. Not that those two film makers could easily be compared, their style and themes differed remarkably. Reading about Ingmar Bergman I was surprised to learn that he suffered from depression and even had to be hospitalised for his depression. I wondered whether Antonioni also suffered from depression during his life. In an obituary in the Herald Tribune I learned that In .....read more »

In a recent article in British Medical Journal it is concluded that an association was found between deployment for more than a year in the past three years and mental health that might be explained by exposure to combat. In other words: Personnel who were deployed for 13 months or more in the past three years were more likely to fulfil the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, scored worse on the general health questionnaire, and have multiple physical symptoms.Related posts: Everyday Memory not affected by ECT on the longer term Google and Microsoft battle on health 10 Fun Ways to Live longer ..read more »

The death yesterday of Swedish cinema legend Ingmar Bergman drew stirring tributes in his homeland as well as other countries form all over the world. An article on news.com.au. drew my attention to the fact that Ingmar Bergman suffered form depression. He was hospitalised for depression. According to a biography it was in the year 1976 which was a traumatic one in the life of Ingmar Bergman. On January 30, while rehearsing Strindberg's "Dance of Death" at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre, he was arrest by two plainclothes policeman, booked like a common criminal, and charged with income-tax fraud. The impact .....read more »

This book by Mark Frauenfelder, the founding editor of BoingBoing.net holds a treasure of useful information on the WEB. It's a guide to getting things done with the web. It has a companion website which to my opinion doesn't ad much to all the information in this book. The book is divided in 11 chapters. The first chapter is about creating and sharing, it has a lot of information on building websites, blogs, wikis and what have you, on the web. Chapter 2 holds information about browsing and searching the web. Mainly about Google, but then this is the best .....read more »

A new study has found that there is a set of cells in the top rear of the brain that apparently keeps score. A team of Duke University researchers report in PLoS Biology that they discovered a pocket of "accumulator neurons" in the region of a monkey brain called the parietal cortex that appears to integrate and sum up the total quantity of individual items. Researchers focused on this region of the brain because previous human studies indicated that damage to the intraparietal portion of the brain impairs numerical processing. The researchers speculate that the information in these intraparietal neurons .....read more »

This myth about depression in old age is one of many. If you know another myth about aging please tell me in a comment. When people get older a lot can happen, you can loose your spouse, have to take medication for all kinds of ilnesses, you loose friends etc. Feeling blue is a normal part of life at any age. When this turns into depression it is something completely different. Depression increases the risk of suicide, it is not self limiting, and can be treated. The best advice is to consult your family doctor and visit the website from .....read more »

The answer is because alfa males spreads smells that attracts female. At least in rodents this is proven by a study with a nice design. They first exposed female mice to soiled bedding from male mice as a source of pheromones. They proofed that a 7-day exposure of female mice to soiled male bedding increased the production and survival of new neurons in the hippocampus. The authors also exposed female mice to the bedding of castrated males. Castration removes pheromones from the urine by eliminating circulating testosterone. Bedding from castrated males did not stimulate neurogenesis. This pheromone-induced neurogenesis .....read more »

In clinical trials of intensive case management for people with severe mental illness inconsistent effects on the use of hospital care are reported. In a systematic review published in the British Medical Journal this seems to be related to high hospital use by the participants. Intensive case management works best when participants tend to use a lot of hospital care and less well when they do not. It might not be necessary to apply the full model of assertive community treatment to achieve reductions in inpatient care, but focus on the patients that get hospitalised frequently.Related posts: 5 Motives for Residents .....read more »

Teen depression or depression during adolescence can be hard to discover. Even young good looking kids can suffer from it. In an article called: Depression has many faces, the author Jessica Lopez describes the "faces of depression" in teens and the troubles these teens can experience. Besides mentioning the symptoms of depression there is also a myth versus fact part in this article. Myth: Telling an adult that a friend might be depressed is betraying a trust. If someone wants help, he or she will get it.Fact: Depression, which saps energy and self-esteem, interferes with a person's ability or .....read more »

Symptoms of depression in adolescents look like those of depression in adults. Before the late 1970s the existence of depression in adolescents was controversial. The last two decades research has shown that adolescents are capable of experiencing episodes of depression comparable to adults. As a beginning psychiatrist I wouldn't believe that adolescents could be depressed, all other diseases starting in young life such as ADHD, Autism I did accept. Depression such as adults can experience, no.Epidemiological studies estimate the prevalence of depression in adolescents is 5-8%. Despite similarities there are also notable differences in treatment response of depressed adolescents .....read more »