SATURDAY, Sept. 21, 2024 (Healthday News) — Workplace anxiety. Who hasn’t experienced it? However, if that anxiety is so strong that it hurts your performance or lingers for months, you might have a problem, one expert says. Dr. Asim Shah, executive vice chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor Colege of Medicine in Houston, explains what can trigger workplace anxiety, how to manage it and when to seek professional help. “The goal is not to suffer and not let your anxiety affect work performance. About 60% of people experience workplace anxiety. It is common, which means you can do something about it,” Shah said. Workplace anxiety can be caused by surly co-workers, a demanding supervisor, small, annoying tasks or overwhelming major projects. If you have workplace anxiety, you might notice signs like: Feeling overly anxious or nervous Experiencing excessive sweating or trembling Obsessing about a task Having a lack of interest in your work “The anxiety becomes so overwhelming that you are unable to focus and concentrate,” Shah noted in a Baylor news release. “These feelings can impair your daily work functions.” If that continues for more than six months, Shah said it might be time to seek professional help. “Some employers might offer an employee assistance program where you can go for help. You can also start talking to…  read on >  read on >

A cavalry of sorts can come to the rescue of combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says. Combat veterans who regularly care for horses experience an easing of their PTSD symptoms, as well as an overall improved mental outlook, researchers found. Focusing on a horse’s welfare can help a veteran shed the hypervigilance that often accompanies PTSD, explained researcher Andrea Quinn, assistant director of the Center for Psychological Services in the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. “When I think about what our veterans with PTSD struggle with, the results make sense,” Quinn said in a Rutgers news release. At some point, seven out of 100 veterans will develop PTSD, researchers said in background notes. Veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan have the highest rates of PTSD, with 29% experiencing it at some point, researchers noted. Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq have a 21% rate of PTSD. For the study, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers asked six combat veterans to participate in an eight-week horsemanship program. In 30-minute weekly sessions, veterans were instructed on basic horse safety and horse behavior, then asked to groom a horse and lead it around an arena. “In the study, the veterans had to perform tasks requiring them to be very much in the moment,” Quinn…  read on >  read on >

Doctors sometimes turn to antidepressants as a means of easing older people’s physical pain, but a new expert review finds there’s little evidence to support the practice. Antidepressants may even come with hazards for seniors who don’t need them, said researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia. “Harms of antidepressant use in older people are well documented,” said study senior author Dr. Christina Abdel Shaheed. Her team found that, compared to older folks using other methods to ease pain, those on antidepressants had higher risks for falling, dizziness and injury. “These medicines are being prescribed to remedy patients’ pain, despite the lack of evidence to adequately inform their use,” said Abdel Shaheed, an associate professor in the university’s School of Public Health and the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health. The findings were published recently in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. According to the researchers, over the past 40 years there have been only 15 trials worldwide that focused on the use of antidepressants for physical pain in people over the age of 65. Poring over the data from these studies, the Sydney team found little evidence to support the use of the drugs to ease pain in seniors. Standard international guidelines do support the use of antidepressants for chronic pain generally, but the data those guidelines are based on did not focus on patients…  read on >  read on >

Would-be dads don’t have to worry that taking the epilepsy drug valproate will result in children with birth defects, a new review concludes. Valproate, an anti-seizure drug, is known to cause birth defects and developmental disorders when taken by pregnant women. But the drug does not appear to have the same impact on the fetus when taken by men hoping to become fathers, researchers report. “Our systematic review shows that evidence for any risk to the offspring resulting from paternal exposure to anti-seizure medications is scarce and inconsistent, with most studies showing no increased risk compared with unexposed controls,” wrote the research team led by co-senior author Piero Perucca, a professor of adult epilepsy with the University of Melbourne in Australia. “Therefore, the available evidence does not justify major concerns,” the team concluded. Experimental animal studies have linked anti-seizure drugs to male infertility, birth defects and developmental delays, sparking concerns that human males might run the same risks. In fact, one major government regulatory body — the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency — has gone so far as to prohibit valproate use for anyone under the age of 55 who might become a new parent. For the new review, researchers pooled data on 10 studies evaluating the effects on pregnancy of valproate taken by men. Although the data were limited, researchers found no…  read on >  read on >