Among patients with depression, the presence of many aspects of illness which may be associated with bipolar disorder does not appear to be associated with treatment resistance - evidence against the common hypothesis that some cases of difficult-to-treat depression are actually unrecognized bipolar disorder. However, many patients with depression also report psychotic-like symptoms, such as hearing voices ...

A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation provides equivalent protection against depressive relapse as traditional antidepressant medication. The results are published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. ...

The rate of depression treatment increased between 1998 and 2007 but at a slower rate than during the previous decade, and the percentage of patients treated with psychotherapy continued to decline, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ...

Teens with hard-to-treat depression who reach remission after 24 weeks of treatment are still at a significant risk for relapse, according to long-term, follow-up data from an NIMH-funded study published online ahead of print November 16, 2010, in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The long-term data reiterate the need for aggressive treatment decisions for teens with stubborn depression. ...

Recognition of others' emotions is an important aspect of interpersonal communication. In major depression, a significant emotion recognition impairment has been reported. It remains unclear whether the ability to recognize emotion from facial expressions is also impaired in anxiety disorders. There is a need to review and integrate the published literature on emotional expression recognition in anxiety dis ...

Depressed and suicidal individuals have low levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood and saliva. They also have substances in their spinal fluid that suggest there is increased inflammation in the brain. These findings could help to develop new methods for diagnosing and treating suicidal patients. ...

This study addresses depression and burn-out among a sample of psychiatrists collected at a professional congress. Within several constraints, the results indicate an high self-rated lifetime prevalence of depression of 41.6% among the sample. Also noteworthy is that a fifth (20.3%) of the sample showed evidence of acute depressive symptoms. ...

A study that appears in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics addresses the association between use of aspirin and statins and the risk of major depression. Chronic disease states characterized by inflammation are often accompanied by depression. Furthermore, depression is commonly reported among patients following exposure to cytokine-based immunotherapy, systemic inflammation has been impl ...

Pathological gamblers are risking more than their money, they are also three times more likely to commit suicide than non-betters. A new Montreal inter-university study has shown these gamblers are also plagued by personality disorders. These findings, published in a recent issue of the Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, may have implications for developing improved targeted suicide prevention programs. ...

Diabetes appears to be associated with the risk of depression and vice versa, suggesting the relationship between the two works in both directions, according to a report in the November 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ...