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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September 22nd - While computers do not have the capability of replacing therapists, a new pilot study, published in the journal Depression and Anxiety, finds that a new computerized therapy application called cognitive bias modification (CBM) can help to relieve social anxiety. CBM helps individuals relieve anxiety and view new situations in a calm manner. Participants in the study improved their scores on a standardized measure of anxiety and on a public speaking task after completing two simple exercises twice a week for four weeks. Investigators hope CBM can provide a new option for anxiety sufferers who cannot find or pay for a qualified therapist, who are afraid to try cognitive behaviour therapies where they directly confront their fears, or who can’t or don’t want to try medications. However, clinicians recognize how very difficult it is to help people with anxiety and how much effort and time it takes in therapy and are, naturally, sceptical. The study is the first to combine two techniques of CBM to treat social anxiety disorder: one that seeks to enhance subjects’ control over what they pay attention to and another that trains them to interpret situations less anxiously. In the “attention” part of the study, participants are trained by the computer program to ignore a worrying social cue and instead to complete a task. Subjects were quickly shown both a disgusted face and a neutral face on a split screen. One face would quickly be replaced with a letter, either an E or an F. The subjects’ task was to report which letter they saw. For those receiving the therapy, the neutral face was always the one replaced, meaning the subjects had to divert their attention from the worrisome disgusted face. For the placebo group, either face had an equal chance of being replaced. The objective is to train anxiety sufferers to assign non-threatening interpretations to social situations. Participants self-reported their anxiety level dropped by 25 percent using a standard anxiety scale and were also evaluated by trained personnel who did not know if the individuals were part of the test group or the placebo. The evaluators judged individuals on a public speaking task, a five-minute impromptu speech, at the beginning and the end of the study. The scores showed a significant improvement in those who received the therapy, while the speaking scores of the placebo group got worse. Researchers also asked participants if the therapy was credible and acceptable and found that they were generally positive. CBM still needs larger trials and longer followup times before clinicians can feel completely comfortable in recommending it to their patients. New government ruling in the UK enforces that provisions for children who are unable to attend school to be taught full-time. This means that children who have a medically recognised phobia about going to school must have their education needs met by the school boards. Back in 2009, the Suffolk board of education was forced to apologise to a boys' parents who they prosecuted for failing to ensure that their son attended school. They were cleared after the boy’s GP and a psychologist confirmed his condition. Children are classed as suffering from school phobia when they exhibit a complex and extreme anxiety about school. Symptoms include nausea, fatigue, shaking, racing heartbeat and panic attacks. September 20th - In case you've not noticed, there's a new comedy on CBC on Wednesday evenings. It's called Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays and stars Matt Watts who plays 30-year-old Michael, a man who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder, and Bob Martin as his psychiatrist who specializes in cognitive behavioural therapy. Michael is based on Matt's own life-long struggle with anxiety disorder which he says makes his an ideal job - too anxious to do anything or if he has anxiety issues on set, people have to be patient and understanding because if he weren't anxious, the show wouldn't exist! He is very happy with the public reaction so far. "Every time I talk about the show to people, I've had so many people come up to me and confess their own anxiety and panic issues, which is so nice in a way . . . I think everybody has anxiety issues, but they don't feel comfortable talking about them because it's kind of a private thing. I certainly didn't talk about it for years, I would just lie -`No I can't go to that movie, I don't want to go, I don't want to see it' - but really I was just terrified of being in a movie theatre. . . It's a public service announcement, this show." September 11th - Prescriptions for antipsychotic medication for patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders currently show a significant increase despite the fact that there a few studies on safety and efficacy of the medications for these disorders due to off-label use for patients with a range of anxiety disorder by office-based psychiatrists. Researchers from Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, the Mental Health Department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry studied data from a random sample of 4,166 outpatient visits to psychiatrists, from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of office-based physician visits from 1996 to 2007, that resulted in the diagnosis of traumatic stress disorders (including posttraumatic stress disorder and acute stress), panic disorder/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias or other anxiety disorders. Comparison between visits to office-based psychiatrists made from 1996 to 1999 with visits made from 2004 to 2007 showed a 4.5 percent increase in visits resulting in an anxiety disorder diagnosis, an increase of nearly 9 percent in the number of all visits leading to the prescription of an antipsychotic medication and an approximate doubling of visits for the specific treatment of anxiety disorders involving the prescription of antipsychotics (from 10.6 percent to 21.3 percent). New patients and individuals with private insurance comprised the most significant comparative increase in prescriptions for antipsychotic medications. The researchers suggest that that among the reasons for the rise are physicians' increased focus on symptom reduction and the availability of new antipsychotic medications with less negative side-effects than the earlier versions of these drugs, their belief that second-generation antipsychotics are less problematic than benzodiazepines in terms of cognitive side effects, withdrawal and potential for abuse. However, the study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, calls for further studies investigating the risks and benefits associated with this form of treatment for anxiety disorders. September 8th - Women who have an abortion face an increased risk for mental health problems including substance abuse, anxiety, and depression say the authors of a study published in the current issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The researchers analyzed data on 877,000 women, including 164,000 who had an abortion and found women who had an abortion experienced an 81 percent increased risk for mental problems. They were 34 percent more likely to develop an anxiety disorder, 37 percent more likely to experience depression, 110 percent more likely to abuse alcohol, 155 percent more likely to commit suicide and 220 percent more likely to use marijuana. An Australian study shows that people diagnosed with mental health problems such as depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder have a much higher risk of developing a dependence on alcohol. The study used data from 8,841 participants in the 2007 Australian Mental Health and Well-Being survey. All the participants were interviewed to assess if they had a mental disorder and if they had a dependence on alcohol or showed signs of alcohol misuse. People who had been diagnosed with depression within the last 5 years were were found to be five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than the general population. People who had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder were seven times more likely and people with anxiety disorders were three times more likely. Patients with a pre-existing diagnosis prove to be at higher risk of alcohol use problems but it is not possible to say whether the condition is the cause. The information could be used to identify people who are at increased risk of developing alcohol problems in the fact that if self-awareness of alcohol use disorders, during consultation with patients, were communicated it might help to reduce the onset of disorders. September 5th - Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), in Toronto, research shows that women who marry while adolescent have higher rates of lifetime mental illness than women who marry as adults. In the first of its kind study, published in the current issue of Pediatrics researchers studied statistics from the U.S. National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions and found significant mental health trends common among American women who were married before the age of eighteen, to the extent that being married at this age is associated with a 41 per cent increase in the prevalence of psychiatric disorder. The most common mental health problems among these women are mood and anxiety disorders. They are also more likely to have a lower level of education and income, in terms of the United States, come from rural areas. Although based on US data the research has implications for countries, especially in developing countries, where child marriage is far more common, therefore having the potential to be a global public health concern. |