Lifeline Anxiety Disorder Newsletter |
News and views for people - and families of people - who suffer from the panic brought about by fears, anxieties and phobias. |
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April 27th, 2004. A study of both published and unpublished data on clinical trials of SSRIs for treating children in the current issue of the British medical journal, Lancet, concludes that there is a clear risk of suicidal behaviour for depressed patients aged 5 to 18 taking Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and Celexa and no benefit. Prozac, however, was found to be effective and carried no risk of suicidal behaviour. The researchers go on to point out that Zoloft is approved for treating obsessive compulsive disorder in this age group and the drugs might be safe, in this respect as well, for anxiety and other problems. Meantime, the April issue of Psychiatric Services is reporting on a study showing that it's not just a matter of doctors prescribing antidepressants to older children and adolescents, but - in increasing numbers - to preschoolers. The percentage of preschool girls on antidepressants doubled from 1998 to 2002, while among boys age 5 and under use increased by 64 percent. Doesn't it really come down to putting some emphasis on finding a way to confirm that people - children and adults - actually are truly chemically imbalanced before treating them with these drugs that alter the chemical balance of the brain? This - not the pros and cons of SSRIs - is the real dilemma and it seems to have been forgotten.
April 24th, 2004. Amid the current international controversy over whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) antidepressant drugs are or are not effective for treating children, result in more or less completed suicides, have or have not been oversold, etc., cognitive behaviour therapy, which has been proving itself as versatile and effective against mental illness as any antidepressant time and again over two decades, is all but ignored. Why? Lack of support, information and understanding on the part of primary physicians for the treatment mostly, together with lack of full insurance coverage and, of course, the brainwashing of the pill manufacturers. There is currently a shortage of trained specialists but, like anything else, only demand for a product/service ensures a demand being met. Cognitive behaviour therapy works by having people make changes in the way they think and act that result in lasting recovery. Unfortunately people associate it with traditional psychoanalysis, while it's formulators, psychologist, Aaron Beck and psychologist, Albert Ellis actually developed it as a rejection of psychoanalysis. They argued against depression being caused by unconscious forces and reasoned that conscious negative assumptions and thinking could be counteracted by being recognized as bad habits, and broken, given the right tools. Developed originally to treat depression, the treatment is highly effective for numerable mental health problems including anxiety, sleep and eating disorders, pain, hypochondria and chronic fatigue syndrome.
April 21st, 2004. Repeat stimulation with magnets of certain brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, which is known to play a role in mediating responses to stressful situations, helps to alleviate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies undertaken at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel and reported in the current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry document the evaluation of the therapeutic effects of low- and high-frequency magnetic therapy as compared with fake therapy in 24 patients with PTSD. High-frequency therapy showed greater beneficial effects than low-frequency or fake therapy and patients in the high frequency group also showed far greater reductions in anxiety than those in the low-frequency group. Several patients in both magnetic therapy groups reported improvements in sleep after being treated. The small, preliminary study indicate further trials of high-frequency magnetic therapy to be important research areas in controlling the effects of PTSD.
April 18th, 2004. While it has only been acknowledged during the past decade that children suffer from anxiety disorders, it is now estimated that, at some point, anxiety has significant enough impact on the lives of as many as 20 per cent, to be considered an anxiety disorder. Fortunately they can be treated with cognitive behaviour therapy and medication. The problem is diagnosing them. Parents want to believe anxiety in young people is transitory and often trivialize it but, if not treated it can cause depression, agoraphobia and low self esteem. Generalized anxiety disorder is most common anxiety disorder affecting children and adolescents and manifests itself in restlessness, irritability and inability to concentrate. Separation anxiety disorder - the conviction that something awful will happen to their family members if they are separated - makes children clingy. Social phobia or social anxiety disorder - the persistent fear of embarrassment or humiliation - usually starts in adolescence and prevents its victims from functioning socially and at school. Children with anxiety disorders think catastrophically, believing that they are inferior to others, that nobody likes them, etc. Parents, teachers and anybody involved with children should learn about anxiety disorders and understand that the issues are real, kids are in pain and if nobody will listen to their pain, they will get worse. Panic attacks can cause heart attacks in healthy people by inducing spasms in the coronary arteries and we're not talking about people with underlying heart problems. One to two per cent of people are esitmated to be affected and it is more likely in women than men. Young women, normally considered as a group to be at lower risk of heart attack are highly susceptible to heart attack from panic disorder. A drug is currently being tested at the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia which will protect people with panic disorder from heart attacks.
April 15th, 2004. Statistics Canada's most recent health survey shows that phobias affect 6.6% of adult Canadians. This compares with 5% each for those far better recognised conditions diabetes and heart disease research and support for which is so proudly supported by donations and fundraising programs. In contrast, anybody trying to help, protect or even just attempt to explain the behaviour of the phobic is perceived as being manipulated by, a child, husband, wife, partner, sibling who is too lazy, arrogant or wimpy to do what is expected of them. And making these statistics even worse is the fact that many more people with phobias are either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed quite simply because of this stigma that must be born by phobics and their families.
April 12th, 2004. After analyzing data from five published trials of the three antidepressant selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, Australian researchers have come out strongly against pediatricians, family physicians and other nonchild-psychiatrists initiating the prescribing of the drugs to depressed children and adolescents. They found the drugs to have very little benefit over placebos and, since they also have significant risks, they should not be prescribed for children and adolescents except in extreme circumstances. British and Canadian drug regulators cautioned physicians some months ago and, in the US, the FDA recently issued a warning that all patients taking antidepressants should be closely monitored by their doctors. Articles in at least two newspapers over the weekend - The Denver Post and The Toronto Star - slammed the powerful pharmaceutical companies for raking in billions of dollars from what amounts to the effects of poor diagnoses and over-prescribing of SSRIs that are a direct consequence of Big Pharma's exploitation of both the medical profession and the public. The propaganda spewed out by the drug companies and targeted to consumers, and the non-expert professionals easily accessed by them, must be stopped. Not only is it putting inadequately diagnosed patients at risk, it is also trivializing the real thing - clinical depression and anxiety disorders have only, in recent years, come to taken seriously and recognized for the debilitating conditions they are. We can't afford for them to become perceived as whatever's ailing those self-absorbed wimps depicted in pharmaceutical advertising who get a little nervous about making a presentation or are too stressed out to appreciate the simple beauty of a butterfly.
April 7th, 2004. An evaluation of the medical records of 42 children and adolescents with chronic stomachaches and 38 without at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center showed that 81% of the stomachache group had either anxiety disorders or depression, with this frequently being the case among those under twelve. 79% suffered from an anxiety disorder - usually separation anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder or social phobia and 43% were diagnosed with some form of depression - 31% with severe depression. Anxiety disorders usually started at age nine - about three years before the pattern of stomachaches began.
April 4th, 2004. There's an article in the New York Times Magazine today called The Quest to Forget. It chronicles a Harvard Medical School study of volunteers from among injured patients visiting the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital who took part in a controlled study on the effect of propranolol in reducing risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. Propranolol impacts on stress hormones such as adrenaline and norepinephrine which, when elevated, consolidate memories to strengthen the recollection of highly emotional events. Taken after a traumatic event, it prevents destructive memories of this type from leading to post-traumatic stress. The drug was traditionally used to treat hypertension and, unlike other beta blockers, it acts directly on the brain and has generally been replaced by newer medications for this reason. Its success in the Harvard study indicates that could be very effective in preventing PTSD given immediately following a traumatic event. However, the problem now is how to determine which patients are at risk for the disorder and which are not...
April 3rd, 2004. Enhancements to behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders and phobias from two different sources are currently being reported. In its ongoing studies on how mice acquire, express and extinguish conditioned fear, the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute has found that a substance in yohimbe tree bark helps mice learn to overcome fear faster by enhancing the effects of the natural release of adrenaline. However, this is not a go-ahead for self-medicating with yohimbine, which is most commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction. A doctor’s supervision is needed since it can cause anxiety in susceptible persons. Meanwhile, virtual reality therapy, being done at a San Diego hospital, is expected to help hundreds of people conquer anxiety, phobias. Heart and breathing monitors help you to learn how to control your anxiety while you are doing the thing you fear most. The surround sight and sound therapy is showing a more than a 90 percent success rate in fear of flying, public speaking, heights, driving, claustrophobia, panic disorder, agoraphobia phobia and fear of spiders, and virtual programs for eating disorders, weight loss, and autism are expected to be up and running by the summer.
April 1st, 2004. The differences in methodology and reporting involved in the various studies on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), currently being reviewed by researchers at Columbia University for the FDA in order to determine risk of suicidal thoughts being caused by antidepressants used to treat depression in childen, are the root cause of the associated problems having taken so long to come to public attention. The reason? Well, the studies are conducted and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the drugs... so self harm incidents were getting reported as "accidental injury". The investigations are the result of the release, in the UK last summer, of previously suppressed studies that showed increased suicidal thoughts among teenagers taking paroxetine and the subsequent ban on doctors prescribing the drug to anyone under the age of nineteen there. Interviews with US service personnel show nearly 4% meeting the criteria for panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, with veterans deployed in the first Gulf War having approximately twice the rates for all anxiety conditions compared with non-Gulf War veterans and enlisted personnel being more likely than officers to have an anxiety disorder as well as regular military personnel as compared with National Guard or Reserve personnel. Some tips for controlling anxiety from What Really Works in Natural Health: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need by Susan Clark, alternative-health columnist for The Times (UK) - Rubbing lavender oil on the inside of both wrists, adding it to your bath or inhaling the aroma will quite effectively calm you down, as will Australian Bush Flower Essences. She also advises avoidance of stimulants such as caffeine, alcohol, chocolate and refined sugar.
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