Anxiety Disorders

WHO Dr. Jordan Smoller WHAT Smoller, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has just written a book called "The Other Side of Normal. " Q. You write in your book that psychiatrists are just starting to try to understand what it means to have "normal" mental health. Why is it important to understand normalcy? A. The biology of normal teaches us about both our everyday life and also mental illness.

WHO Dr. Jordan Smoller WHAT Smoller, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has just written a book called "The Other Side of Normal. " Q. You write in your book that psychiatrists are just starting to try to understand what it means to have "normal" mental health. Why is it important to understand normalcy? A. The biology of normal teaches us about both our everyday life and also mental illness.

Some 38 percent of Europeans, or 165 million people, suffer from mental illness or neurological disorders on a broad spectrum ranging from anxiety to dementia, a new study published Tuesday says. Most are not being treated, though some experts said many may not need psychiatric help. Researchers drew on previous surveys of mental health and applied specific criteria to determine how many people had a disorder. The data covered more than 500 million people in the 27 European Union countries plus Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, according to the study paid for by the non-profit European...

Some 38 percent of Europeans, or 165 million people, suffer from mental illness or neurological disorders on a broad spectrum ranging from anxiety to dementia, a new study published Tuesday says. Most are not being treated, though some experts said many may not need psychiatric help. Researchers drew on previous surveys of mental health and applied specific criteria to determine how many people had a disorder. The data covered more than 500 million people in the 27 European Union countries plus Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, according to the study paid for by the non-profit European...

The lights are low, the music soft, as eight women lie on mats and follow the command to let their knees drop to one side, look over their opposite shoulder, and let out a long breath. Instructor Anna Dunwell leads them gently from one pose to another. The yoga class, held in a Boston Medical Center lobby for staff and patients, features postures vetted for people with back pain. It was a prototype for an ongoing study exploring the use of yoga in the city's poorer neighborhoods.

Anyone who follows psychiatry has noticed that the field is now in the midst of a debate that galvanizes its members every 10 to 20 years. At the center of the hubbub is psychiatry's most sacred text: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM, for short, is a compendium of over 350 ways our minds can fail us, from autism to kleptomania to voyeurism. What makes it onto the list matters: The DSM's definition of "mental illness" can dictate whether an insurance company covers a treatment, or even whether a murderer is fit to...

A DECADE ago, after a particularly painful loss, I lapsed into major depression for the first time in my life. This was no surprise, and perhaps even predictable. On my mother's side of the family there have been multiple suicides; on my father's side a long history of anxiety disorders. After many months and having tried other treatments, reluctantly and skeptically I agreed to take an SSRI, a type of antidepressant. On the 21st night of taking the medication I went to sleep one person and woke up the next morning quite another - one that I had never been before in my...

Does your teen show normal nerves about the weekend party, or always stay home? Nearly half of teenagers say they're shy, perhaps a bit surprising in our say-anything society. But a government study finds a small fraction of those teens show signs of a troubling anxiety disorder that can be mistaken for extreme shyness. The report challenges criticism that the terms "social phobia" or "social anxiety disorder" medicalize normal shyness. "Shyness is a normal human temperament," says lead researcher Dr. Kathleen Merikangas of the National Institute of Mental Health, whose...

CHICAGO -- Authors of a new analysis of antidepressants for children and teenagers say the benefits of treatment trump the small risk of increasing some patients' chances of having suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The risk they found is lower than the one the Food and Drug Administration identified in 2004, the year the agency warned the public about the risk of the drugs to children. After the warning, youth suicides increased and some mental health specialists said reluctance to try antidepressants might be to blame.

Despite the stereotype, fat people are not more jolly than people of normal weight, according to a study that instead found obesity strongly linked with depression and other mood disorders. Whether obesity might cause these problems or is the result of them is not certain, and the research does not provide an answer, but there are theories to support both arguments. Depression often causes people to abandon activities, and some medications used to treat mental illness can cause weight gain.

FALL CITY, Wash. - Ben Alexander spent nearly every waking minute playing the video game “World of Warcraft.’’ As a result, he flunked out of the University of Iowa. Alexander, 19, needed help to break an addiction he calls as destructive as alcohol or drugs. He found it in this suburb of high-tech Seattle, where what claims to be the first residential treatment center for Internet addiction in the United States has opened its doors. The center, called ReSTART, is somewhat ironically located near Redmond, headquarters of Microsoft Corp.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The defense for fired HealthSouth Corp. chief executive Richard Scrushy depicted a main prosecution witness yesterday as a rich deal-maker on a "mood-altering" drug but failed to shake his claim that Scrushy was in on a $2.7 billion fraud. Under tough cross-examination, Scrushy lawyer Jim Parkman showed a mostly blue-collar jury that former chief financial officer Mike Martin was worth millions, even after paying $2.4 million in penalties from the fraud. He also got Martin to admit to taking Lexapro, described by manufacturer ...