Today's Science Daily Research News Update includes the latest developments in asthma medication, sleep-as-spring-cleaning, laughter-as-medicine, music-as-medicine, exercise programs for persons with migraine headache, methamphetamines' effect on prenatal babies, yet another reason to stop smoking, and much more. ...

Keeping up with the latest research on mental health medications and their side effects can be a difficult proposition for psychologists since in most states they are not allowed to prescribe. The National Institute of Mental Health recently released a "Mental Health Medications" as a free 30 page PDF e-book. The e-book is clearly written and organized with coverage of medications for major depression, schi ...

Today's update from the National Institute of Health/National Institute of Mental Health includes newly announced research on autism, ADHD, and child abuse. The ADHD story discusses an important update to the now classic Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) study so be sure to view that article. ...

A recent meta-analysis* revealed that smokers who use a pharmacotherapy to aid in smoking cessation were twice as likely, on average, to maintain complete abstinence from cigarettes. Researchers analyzed 70 randomized controlled trials comprising 32,908 participants. Seven approved pharmacotherapies at 6 and 12 months of use were evaluated, including gum, inhaler, nasal spray, patch, and tablet nicotine the ...

I want to introduce a new topic to our readers. I regularly track several key websites who publish fairly constant news updates about important ongoing mental health scientific research. Due to this volume, key stories are significantly delayed or never written about here. Hence, I have created a new section entitled, "NIH/NIMH Research News Update" that will be regularly updated. The Behavioral Medicine Re ...

Autism Speaks and the Autism Clinical Trials Network report that a new low dose, melt-in-your-mouth version of Fluoxetine failed to reduce repetitive behaviors in children and adolescents diagnosed with Autism. Physicians' clinical observations that Fluoxetine controlled these behaviors spurred this research. Fluoxetine is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) that is commonly referred to as a "anti ...

The American Medical Association publishes free online documents (PDF) called the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement that provide specific overviews of many common physical and mental health conditions, such as hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and adult diabetes. These  "Clinical Performance Measures" include a nice summary of important information relevant to the sp ...

No better way to kick off a new research website than with controversial research. Let's start first with the concept of a "placebo effect." The placebo effect is very common in most forms of healthcare. When people who are ill (mentally or physically) believe that they will get better - guess what - they do. These are real changes though the placebo effect may wear off over time. ...