Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration may broaden that state's Medicaid-reform pilot program to include 19 more counties to save more than $58 million by requiring Medicaid beneficiaries enroll in managed-care plans, Health News Florida reports. "Such an expansion could affect 375,000 people and save $58.7 million during the upcoming fiscal year...

Researchers at UQ's Queensland Brain Institute have uncovered how antidepressants stimulate the brain to improve a person's mood. They have discovered the class of drugs that increase levels of a neurotransmitter known as 'norepinephrine' triggers neurogenesis - the growth of new neurons - in a brain region called the hippocampus...

To succeed in school, children must master the “three R’s”--reading, writing and arithmetic--but not all students readily grasp these basic skills. Among English-speaking children, an estimated 2 to 15 percent have trouble reading or spelling, problems broadly classified as dyslexia. From 1 to 7 percent struggle to do math, a disability known as dyscalculia. Statistics vary; dyslexia appears to be more common, for example, among English speakers than among speakers of highly phonetic languages, such as German or Italian. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that at least one child in most elementary school classes in the U.S. suffers from dyslexia or dyscalculia.

These learning disabilities defy easy explanation. Neither is the result of faulty eyesight or hearing, both of which can also delay language acquisition but are easily corrected using glasses or hearing aids. Instead children with dyslexia and dyscalculia have working sensory organs, apparently normal sensory and motor development and, sometimes, above-average intelligence.

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Many parents wonder how to handle a child who has been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety or depression - or even one who is struggling with day-to-day stress. In her new book, Mental Health, Naturally: The Family Guide to HolisticCare for a Healthy Mind and Body (American Academy of Pediatrics, March 2010), pediatrician and holistic medicine expert Kathi J...

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has launched a new health education program to promote sound "mind and body" health practices among individuals who live with serious mental illness. The "Hearts and Minds" initiative takes aim at risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and obesity for major illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes...

People with a tendency to experience positive emotions, such as being happy, enthusiastic and content, are also less likely to to develop heart disease than those who tend not to experience it, suggests a new American study: however the researchers said the findings should be confirmed via clinical trials before making any clinical recommendations...

A new evidence review suggests that giving employees more flexibility over their work schedules is likely to boost their health as judged by measures like blood pressure and stress. But interventions that are motivated or dictated by the needs of the employer, such as cutting hours, either have no effect on employee health or make it worse...

Imagine you are almost dozing in a lounge chair outside, with a magazine on your lap. Suddenly, a fly lands on your arm. You grab the magazine and swat at the insect. What was going on in your brain after the fly landed? And what was going on just before? Many neuroscientists have long assumed that much of the neural activity inside your head when at rest matches your subdued, somnolent mood. In this view, the activity in the resting brain represents nothing more than random noise, akin to the snowy pattern on the television screen when a station is not broadcasting. Then, when the fly alights on your forearm, the brain focuses on the conscious task of squashing the bug. But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all.

It turns out that when your mind is at rest--when you are daydreaming quietly in a chair, say, asleep in a bed or anesthetized for surgery--dispersed brain areas are chattering away to one another. And the energy consumed by this ever active messaging, known as the brain’s default mode, is about 20 times that used by the  brain when it responds consciously to a pesky fly or another outside stimulus. Indeed, most things we do consciously, be it sitting down to eat dinner or making a speech, mark a departure from the baseline activity of the brain default mode.

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“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” --Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

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There is evidence to suggest that flexible working might be beneficial for employees' health if they are allowed to have input into their own working patterns, a review by Cochrane Researchers suggests. The study may throw some light on potential health benefits associated with current trends towards more flexible working in the UK and Europe...