Menopause, the Later the Better
Women today are hitting menopause 18 months later than their mothers' generation did, according to new research. The average age for menopause (officially marked by having gone a year without a...
View ArticleWhat makes a good partner?
Imagine a government being interested in how its citizens think and feel about intimacy. Well the Australian government was interested. It found, in a national survey, that Australians want their...
View ArticleBlocking Blue Light Prevents Postpartum Depression!
A special light bulb designed for use in infant nurseries has been announced by physicists at John Carroll University. Its secret? The special bulb lacks the blue light rays that suppress melatonin...
View ArticleNew Yorkers Have a Great Source for Information on Mental Health
Families and loved ones of those suffering from mental illness can tap into a bonanza of information in The Patient @ Family Library and Learning Center. In all my years of doing research on...
View ArticleBye Bye to Herbs for Hot Flashes
According to the 2000 census, about two million women turn 50 every year, and 51 is the average age of menopause. Many of these women experience menopausal symptoms of varying intensity. Unfortunately,...
View ArticleEpidemic: Teen Mental Illness
A new survey has discovered a silent epidemic of mental illness among teenagers. In 2005, TeenScreen, a large, school-based mental health screening program developed at Columbia University, screened...
View ArticleGotten SAD Over the Holidays?
Light therapy is a newly recognized, non-drug treatment for depression. The lightboxes have traditionally been used for winter depression (SAD, or seasonal affective disorder), researchers in the Dept....
View ArticleTreating Depressed Mothers is Crucial to Child Welfare
Children of depressed parents are three times more likely to develop a mental illness in childhood! A new study by Myrna Weissman, the grandmother of psychiatric epidemiology, and the STAR*D Child Team...
View ArticleTherapy Reduces Risk of Postpartum Depression
Can postpartum depression be prevented? The answer is Yes, even in high-risk mothers. Preventive counseling reduced the risk of postpartum depression from 20 percent to 4 percent within three months of...
View ArticleSAD,SAD,SAD?
The first big surprise about SAD is that you don't have to be sad to have it--any more than you have to be sad to have depression. The second big surprise is that SAD actually IS depression. A...
View ArticleScanning a Woman's Menstrual Brain
Imagine this! Someone has finally conducted an MRI scan tracking womens brains across the menstrual cycle. Sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone fluctuate throughout a woman’s monthly...
View ArticleMenopause Before 40? Oh god.
Do some women actually hit menopause before 40? They do. Menopause, which marks the end of a woman’s reproductive years, usually occurs around age 50 or 51. But for various reasons different types of...
View ArticleSexual Compatibity May Lie In Your Genes
A new study has found that romantic "chemistry" is, in fact, chemical. How sexually attracted we'll be to someone else is affected by our genes! Christine Garver-Apgar, a psychologist at the university...
View ArticleMothers of Infants Are 7 Times More Likely to Suffer Mental Illness
A recent study in Denmark shows that 10 to 19 days after giving birth, women with newborns are seven times more likely than women with older infants to suffer severe mental illness. Problems range from...
View ArticleShaky Relationships Take a Toll on the Immune System
Feeling insecure in close relationships with others may take a toll on the immune system, preliminary research suggests. Italian researchers studying 61 healthy women found that those with difficulty...
View ArticleMenopause and the Brain
What has the brain got to do with menopause? Plenty, researchers at the University of Texas are betting. They've received a 1.4 million grant from the National Institue on Aging to find study whether...
View ArticleA Warning on the new Anti-Period Pill
Pills to completely eliminate menstruation? This week the FDA announced it has has approved Lybrel, by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a pill designed to get rid of a woman's menstrual period. Women are being...
View ArticleNatural Prevention of Post Partum Depression
Breastfeeding can counter the effects of depression in new mothers. New Hampshire researcher Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, has found evidence supporting a connection between breast feeding and mental...
View ArticleGirls' Dieting and Depression: An Adolescent Crisis
Girls' dieting often has a relationship to depression. Some girls start dieting as a way of coping with depression. Others become depressed because extreme dieting affects their serotonin levels.
View ArticleWomen's Strength: The Myths That Shrink Us
Women's strength has historically been denied, producing the false concept of a "weaker sex'. Research shows that women's physical potential is vastly underestimated.
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