The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) 1-800-273-TALK (8255), a network of crisis call centers located throughout the nation, has answered its two millionth call since its launch on January 1, 2005. Sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Lifeline currently responds to an average of more than 1,800 calls a day or 54,000 calls per month...

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is making up to $7.0 million in funding for up to four years for a Training and Technical Assistance Center for Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration (TTA-PBHCI) grant...

A strain of mutant mice groom compulsively til they seriously injure themselves. The condition is considered a good animal model for OCD, and it’s similar to the human disorder trichotillomania, where people pull out their own hair. Now researchers have successfully treated this pathological behavior in the mice--with a bone marrow transplant. The work, led by Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi, was published in the journal Cell . [ http://bit.ly/a4znGN ] [More]



Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation - Obsessive–compulsive disorder - Mouse - Mario Capecchi - Animal model

A series of imaging studies are revealing that the brain works differently in youth with bipolar disorder (BD) than in chronically irritable children who are often diagnosed with pediatric BD.

NIH Workshop on Nonverbal School-Aged Children with Autism Meeting Summary

The search for new drugs that can reverse the course of Alzheimer's has frustrated pharmaceutical companies, with several failures reported in recent years. Research advances have arrived, not in the form of new drugs but, rather, in technologies that track the underlying biology of the disease before the first symptoms appear. [More]



Research - Alzheimer's disease - Alzheimer - Health - Neurological Disorders

Girls at high risk for depression but without current or past clinically significant symptoms showed abnormal brain function related to anticipating and receiving either a reward or loss, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

In his magical-realist masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude , Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez takes the reader to the mythical jungle village of Macondo, where, in one oft-recounted scene, residents suffer from a disease that causes them to lose all memory. The malady erases “the name and notion of things and finally the identity of people.” The symptoms persist until a traveling gypsy turns up with a drink “of a gentle color” that returns them to health.

In a 21st-century parallel to the townspeople of Macondo, a few hundred residents from Medellín, Colombia, and nearby coffee-growing areas may get a chance to assist in the search for something akin to a real-life version of the gypsy’s concoction. Medellín and its environs are home to the world’s largest contingent of individuals with a hereditary form of Alzheimer’s disease. Members of 25 extended families, with 5,000 members, develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, usually before the age of 50, if they harbor an aberrant version of a particular gene.

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Alzheimer - Macondo - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Health - Conditions and Diseases

Researchers in Germany have used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique called continuous arterial spin labeling (CASL) to map cerebral blood flow patterns in schizophrenic patients quickly and without using radiation or contrast agents. Their findings appear in the online edition and July printed issue of the journal Radiology...

Living with a mental illness can be a tough experience for adults, but with the increasing numbers of youth diagnosed and taking medications for mood disorders, it can become a time of isolation, according to a study from Case Western Reserve University Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences...