How brain imaging can help us understand mental health problems and their treatment is another service that the mental elf team will hopefully be able to offer. By blogging about interesting new studies we hope to help you pick up a wee bit of how MRI, CT, EEG and MEG adds to our understanding. While [read the full story…]
Some days even the most committed of Elves can be a little reluctant to return to work in the woodland. What must it be like though to feel like that every day? Apathy (diminished motivation, lack of emotion, interest or concern) is thought to be a frequent complication of stroke associated with poorer outcomes, but [read the full story…]
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is common with a prevalence of between 5 and 8%. It is often thought of as a problem with young people and is most commonly diagnosed in individuals while they are attending school. Unfortunately ADHD can have disruptive effects across the lifetimes of those affected. It can be and is [read the full story…]
Depression is a serious mental health threat proclaimed to be the greatest disease burden in the industrialised world by 2020 (Simon, 2003). In the pharmaceutical combat against depression, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the current treatment of choice. Indeed, SSRIs are the most prescribed antidepressant medicine (Helms & Eric, 2006). As the name suggests, they increase [read the full story…]
Depression is one of the most common mental health problems, with around 1 in 5 people in the UK suffering from depression during their lifetime (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2012) including an estimated 4% of children (NHS Choices, 2012). Treatments for depression are different in children and young people, for example some antidepressant medications used [read the full story…]
What’s the relationship between violence and psychosis? It’s an emotive debate that’s been running for years. On the one hand we have the net curtain-twitching, tabloid-reading brigade who picture axe-wielding psychopaths as soon as they read the word schizophrenia. On the other we have patients, carers, mental health charities and many clinicians who claim that [read the full story…]
Nearly 10 million people were in prison in 2008, according to estimates provided by the World Prison Population List (Walmsley, 2009). The United States tops the imprisonment league table with 2.3 million individuals behind bars, that’s 756 per 100,000 of the population. Whatever your view on the US legal system and incarceration, it’s interesting to [read the full story…]
Vascular dementia is the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. It’s caused by damage to the network of blood vessels supplying the brain. Some symptoms are similar to those associated with Alzheimer’s and stroke, but in particular people with vascular dementia often experience difficulty thinking quickly, concentrating and communicating, as well as [read the full story…]
Schizophrenia is a debilitating illness that affects an estimated 25 million people worldwide. People with the condition can experience a huge amount of disability (both social, physical and psychological), but we know that early intervention can help reduce the duration of the illness and prevent further episodes of relapse. People with schizophrenia usually experience a [read the full story…]
Work-related stress is everywhere these days. Obviously us elves are pretty much immune, but looking at the Bristol Stress and Health at Work Study (Smith 2000) I can see that more than 50% of human respondents reported being extremely, very or moderately stressed at work. You lovely people do suffer from lots of emotional and [read the full story…]
