The loss of a loved one is one of life’s most stressful events. But new research suggests that having a furry loved one still at home may help ease the pain. Investigators looked at 437 older adults, some of whom lost a spouse, either through divorce or death. They found that having a cat or dog at home was linked to an easing of loneliness and depression. Study leader Dawn Carr, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, said the research team was surprised by the results, which were particularly meaningful because loneliness and depression have been found to be risk factors for death and other health problems, just like smoking. Pets can provide support during stressful times — even petting a dog or cat can calm you, Carr noted. In the study, the researchers compared the mental health of people who stayed married to those who didn’t, over a four-year period. They also looked at whether owning a dog or cat had any effect on mental health. The study found that while all people who became widowed or divorced did have some decline in their mental health, having a pet seemed to make a difference. Patients without pets who experienced such a loss had an average of 2.6 symptoms of depression, but that fell to just 1.2 symptoms for those with pets.…  read on >

Narcissism is not a good look at any age, but new research suggests it fades as people enter their 40s. However, the degree of decline in narcissism varies between individuals and can be related to their career and relationships, the researchers added. Overall, the “findings should bring comfort to those who are concerned that young people are problematically narcissistic,” said study co-leader Brent Roberts, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois. “With time, it seems most people turn away from their earlier narcissistic tendencies.” Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by the belief that you’re smarter, better-looking, more successful and more deserving than others. The study included 237 participants whose levels of narcissism — specifically vanity, belief in their leadership skills and sense of entitlement — were assessed at age 18 when they were freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, and again at age 41. Most of the participants showed a decline in narcissism as they aged. Only 3% had an increase and a few had the same level of narcissism at ages 18 and 41, the findings showed. The researchers also found that each aspect of narcissism examined in the study had particular impacts on the participants’ lives. For example, those who had higher levels of vanity at age 18 were more likely to have unstable relationships and marriages, and more likely…  read on >

When a parent is depressed, their child’s asthma care may suffer. Now, research suggests that getting a child’s asthma under control may include assessing a parents’ mental health. Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern found that treating a parent’s depression could sometimes improve symptom control in asthmatic children. About 8% of American children have asthma. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing due to inflammation of the lungs and airways. “Moreover, asthma is a medical illness that is sensitive to a patient’s mood as well as medication adherence,” said Dr. E. Sherwood Brown, a professor of psychiatry. Stress and depression in children who have asthma can cause airway constriction and worsen symptoms. Then, this poor asthma control can exacerbate a child’s depression. High rates of depression among caregivers may also put stress on kids, worsening their depressive symptoms and asthma control, the researchers noted. To study the issue, the investigators followed caregivers with major depressive disorder and their children with persistent asthma for one year. They found that improvement in caregiver depression was associated with fewer asthma attacks and better asthma control for children. This improvement in asthma control occurred, in part, through reduction in the children’s depressive symptom severity. Health care providers may need to think more broadly when treating patients, Brown said in a university news release. “It might be useful to…  read on >  read on >

New research reveals that the brain is much more flexible than once thought and can change rapidly during treatment for major depression. People receiving inpatient treatment for major depression had increased brain connectivity after just six weeks, German researchers report. They compared brain connectivity — various brain regions acting together in generating thought, emotion and behavior — in 109 patients with serious depression to that in a control group of 55 volunteers without depression. MRI scans were used to identify which brain areas were communicating with others before and after treatment. “We found that treatment for depression changed the infrastructure of the brain, which goes against previous expectations. Treated patients showed a greater number of connections than they had shown before treatment,” said lead researcher Jonathan Repple, who was part of the University of Muenster team that did the study. He’s now a professor of predictive psychiatry at the University of Frankfurt. The research was presented recently at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, in Vienna and online. For the study, patients with depression were treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), psychological therapy or medication, or a combination of all therapies. The researchers then rescanned participants’ brains, counting the number of connections. They also retested for depression. The upshot: Patients who showed the most response to treatment had developed more new connections than those…  read on >  read on >

For women, the key to getting ahead at work could be getting more shut-eye. Quality sleep boosted women’s moods, which then made them more intent on work achievements, a new study found. Researchers from Washington State University and University of Minnesota-Duluth surveyed 135 U.S. workers (men and women) twice a day for over two weeks to study this issue, gaining 2,200 observations. The study asked the women and men at noon daily about the previous night’s sleep and their current mood. In the evenings, the investigators asked participants about their intentions to pursue more responsibility, status and influence at work. While men and women in the study had both good and bad quality of sleep over the two weeks, women had lowered intentions about their work status after a poor night’s sleep. Men’s work intentions weren’t impacted by sleep quality. “When women are getting a good night’s sleep and their mood is boosted, they are more likely to be oriented in their daily intentions toward achieving status and responsibility at work,” said study author Leah Sheppard, an associate professor in WSU’s Carson College of Business. “If their sleep is poor and reduces their positive mood, then we saw that they were less oriented toward those goals.” The reason for these gender differences may be men and women tend to differ in emotion regulation, as well…  read on >  read on >

A new analysis illustrates the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade: In numerous states, women now have no choice but to travel long distances to get an abortion. One-third of American women of reproductive age must now drive excessive distances, the researchers reported. Twice as many women must now travel more than an hour to get abortion care. And some are having to drive even longer distances to access an abortion. “We need to understand the diminished access to this essential health service in order to better understand what resources we need to invest to regain that access,” said senior study author Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “We were startled to see that populations of major metropolitan areas now have to travel several hours for care,” she added in a university news release. In the South, where numerous neighboring states have eliminated access to abortion services, travel times grew the most, the findings showed. Median travel times to access an abortion had been 15 minutes, roughly, in Texas and Louisiana before the Supreme Court ruling this summer. It is now more than six hours, with an average increase of eight hours in Texas, the investigators found. In states with total or six-week abortion bans, travel times increased…  read on >  read on >

Scientists have found one more way Flipper is a lot like people: The sharp rise in antibiotic resistance affecting humans is also happening to dolphins. The discovery stems from a 13-year study of bottlenose dolphins in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon. “We’ve been able to provide a large database of information in order to continue learning from these impressive animals,” said Gregory Bossart, senior vice president and chief veterinary officer at the Georgia Aquarium, one of four partners in the new study. The research, published Sept. 15 in the journal Aquatic Mammals, follows a report last week that bottlenose dolphins in the English Channel harbor “a toxic cocktail” of chemicals, including some that have been banned for decades. For the latest study, the researchers analyzed antibiotic resistance in 733 samples of bacteria collected between 2003 and 2015 from 171 bottlenose dolphins in the lagoon on Florida’s eastern coast. Some of the bacteria are also a threat to humans. In all, over 88% were resistant to at least one antibiotic, the researchers found. Resistance was highest to erythromycin (nearly 92%), followed by ampicillin (77%) and cephalothin (about 62%). Similar to trends in people, resistance to ciprofloxacin among E. coli samples more than doubled during the study. And rates of resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a cause of respiratory and urinary infections in people — were the highest…  read on >