More young seek mental health aid

There has been a 30% increase in the number of children seeking treatment for mental health issues in the last two years, experts said.

Organisers of this year's National Mental Healthcare Conference said some frontline clinics see the recession has caused a surge in children suffering from social dysfunction, withdrawal, and depression.

Chairman Dr Ian Gargan said the economic collapse has considerably increased stress in the home, impacting on parental relationships and in turn on their children.

"In a recession, the stress experienced by children tends to increase significantly and we're certainly now seeing a corresponding escalation in those experiencing stress and mental health issues and coming in to avail of services," he said. "At our clinics the numbers of children and young people being treated has increased by around 30% since 2010."

Dr Gargan said the big challenge is to respond to the different treatment that children need, according to the Independent.

28th August 2012

Psychopaths Tweet Differently: Twitter Exposes Your Mental Health

While psychopaths, often described as people who are superficially charming and extremely intelligent, are very hard to spot in the real world, they are easily exposed virtually on Twitter, scientists claim.

Researchers found that a person's tweets can reveal whether they are a psychopath, especially if they often use words like "die", "kill" and "bury."

A person who frequently swears may also be a psychopath, according to computer science researchers at the London's Online Privacy Foundation.

The scientists claim that word choice can indicate personality traits and that the latest findings could be used by authorities to identify potential threats or by employers to make hiring decisions, according to Medical Daily.

28th August 2012

HIW: Some mental health patients in Wales coerced

A watchdog body has criticised the support offered to mental health patients in Wales, claiming some feel coerced into treatment. Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) also found outdated consent forms, security breaches and patients not being made aware of their rights, according to the BBC website.

24th August 2012

Major steps made in understanding the genetic architecture of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Two papers that will appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, both receiving advance online release, may help identify gene variants that contribute to the risks of developing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or Tourette syndrome (TS). Both multi-institutional studies were led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, and both are the first genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the largest groups of individuals affected by the conditions.

"Previous studies of these disorders have demonstrated that both TS and OCD are strongly heritable and may have shared genetic risk factors, but identification of specific genes has been a huge challenge," says Jeremiah Scharf, MD, PhD, of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit (PNGU) in the MGH Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology, a co-lead author of both papers and co-chair of the Tourette Syndrome Association International Consortium for Genetics. "These new studies represent major steps towards understanding the underlying genetic architecture of these disorders."

Read more at Medical News Today.

15th August 2012

NHS watchdog claimed that whistleblower Kay Sheldon was 'mentally ill'

When CQC board member Kay Sheldon spoke out against the health watchdog, it immediately began a concerted campaign to discredit her, she tells Nina Lakhani.

The head of the health watchdog, Dame Jo Williams, cast doubt about the mental stability of a high-profile whistleblower who she wanted the Health Secretary to remove from the board,The Independent can reveal.

Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), was subject to ‘priority monitoring' and declared a ‘risk’ to the regulator after she had raised concerns that public safety was being compromised by poor leadership and performance.

Internal documents show the plan to unseat Mrs Sheldon began as soon as she spoke out at the public inquiry into the scandal at Mid Staffordshire hospital last November.

15th August 2012

Discrimination payouts hit record high in 2011

Workplace discrimination not only causes detriment to the victim, it can also prove expensive for employers, as new figures revealing that total compensation awarded in discrimination cases reached a record high in 2011 demonstrate.

A total of £8,774,403 was awarded to victims of discrimination in the workplace last year – £3.5 million more than in 2010, according to a survey by the Equal Opportunities Review (EOR).


The data is based on cases at the Bury St Edmunds employment tribunal as well as those sent to the EOR and incorporates two particularly large payouts made by the NHS last year, writes HR Review.

14th August 2012

Mental health and well-being strategy for Scotland launched

A strategy which aims to improve the mental health and well-being of people in Scotland has begun.

The Scottish Government said the issue was one of the top public health challenges in Europe.

In the new review the government has underlined 36 commitments, including providing faster access to mental health services for young people.

Mental disorders are estimated to affect more than one-third of the population every year, the review said.

The most common of these being depression and anxiety, according to the Mental Health Strategy for Scotland: 2012-2015.

Read more on the BBC website.

13th August 2012

Chronic fatigue syndrome: Brain training is most cost-effective treatment

Exercise and behavioural therapies are the most cost-effective and successful ways to treat Chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME, an analysis shows.

A study of 640 patients showed these treatments had the potential to save the economy millions of pounds if they were widely adopted.

The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.

However, another treatment favoured by patients' groups was shown to offer little value.

Nobody knows what causes the condition, yet a quarter of a million people in the UK are thought to have it.

The symptoms include severe tiredness, poor concentration and memory as well as muscle and joint pain and disturbed sleep.

An earlier version of this research, published last year, showed that cognitive behavioural therapy (changing how people think about their symptoms) and graded exercise therapy (gradually increasing the amount of exercise) were the most effective treatments.

Read more on the BBC website.

8th August 2012

Mental health spending falls for first time in 10 years

Total government expenditure on services down by £150m, the first reduction since 2001, says Department of Health report.

Although one of the coalition's first big policy announcements was to declare that mental health ought to have "parity with physical health in the NHS", investment in mental health for working-age adults dropped by 1%, once inflation is taken into account, to £6.63bn. For the elderly the recorded fall in real terms spending was 3.1% to £2.83bn.

In total, spending on mental health services in England dropped by £150m, the first fall since 2001. However this drop comes after a decade of rising investment: in 2001 just £4.1bn was spent on working-age adults mental health.

Read more about the report here with The Guardian. 

8th July 2012

Mild mental illness 'raises risk of premature death'

People with mild mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression are more likely to die early, say researchers.

They looked at the premature deaths from conditions such as heart disease and cancer of 68,000 people in England.

The research suggested low level distress raised the risk by 16%, once lifestyle factors such as drinking and smoking were taken into account.

More serious problems increased it by 67%, the University College London and Edinburgh University team said.

The risk among those with severe mental health problems is already well documented. Read more about this story here.

6th August 2012