Harvard Mental Health Letter articles from June 2006

Harvard Mental Health Letter archives from June 2006

Borderline personality disorder: Origins and symptoms.(Disease/Disorder overview)
June 1, 2006... One of the most complicated -- and common -- serious problems that confronts psychotherapists is a disorder characterized by consistent inconsistency (or stable instability) in mood, thinking, personal relationships, and self-image. About 2% of...

Antidepressants for children and adolescents: An update.
June 1, 2006... New research is shedding light on the hotly debated question of whether antidepressant medications developed for and tested mainly on adults can help many depressed children and adolescents -- and whether some of these drugs may raise the risk...

In Brief; Gays' mental health: New data.
June 1, 2006... Homosexual and bisexual men and women and their heterosexual brothers and sisters report similar overall mental health, although there are some significant differences. That conclusion comes from a study comparing gays and lesbians with...

In Brief; Variable schizophrenia.
June 1, 2006... A study of three areas hardly more than 100 miles apart in the same country shows that, despite what is sometimes suggested, schizophrenia does not occur at the same rate everywhere and in all human groups. Researchers counted people with...

In Brief; Predicting successful marriages.(Clinical report)
June 1, 2006... A simple psychological experiment suggests that it's possible to judge a marriage's prospects for success just by listening to the partners in conversation for a few minutes -- and the basis for that judgment may be surprising. Some 47...

In Brief; BMI and suicide.(body mass index)(leanness leads to suicides)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Swedish researchers have found that the thinner a man is in youth, the more likely he is to kill himself later in life. They counted suicides among more than a million men whose height and weight were measured at age 18 during a mandatory...

In Brief; Placebos are not all alike.(comparative analysis of acupuncture and amitriptyline)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Can one placebo be better than another? That's the conclusion suggested by a study in which acupuncture was compared to the antidepressant amitriptyline and to placebo versions of both in the treatment of repetitive strain injury. Nearly...