Depression affects half of the 6 million Americans who struggle with debilitating heart failure.  Now, research shows that two leading modes of treatment — antidepressants and an approach called behavioral activation psychotherapy — work equally well to ease depression among these patients. Behavioral activation psychotherapy works by promoting involvement in activities that the patient enjoys, explained the team at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “The most important finding here is that patients experiencing depression have a choice in terms of their treatment between therapy or medications,” study lead author Dr. Waguih Ishak said in a hospital news release.  “Patients who prefer not to be on medication can do behavioral activation therapy with similar results,” said Ishak. He’s vice chair of education and research in the hospital’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. In their research, Ishak’s group tracked the mental health of more than 400 heart failure patients over the course of a year. Half of them received antidepressants to help ease their depression, while the other half engaged in behavioral activation psychotherapy. The result: Each treatment approach helped about equally, with patients in either group benefiting from an average 50% reduction in depression symptoms. Antidepressants are effective, Ishak’s group said, but some patients prefer a non-pharmaceutical approach, and behavioral activation psychotherapy may be for them. In the treatment, a therapist helps the patient draw up…  read on >  read on >

People coming off antidepressants often struggle with emotional and social turmoil, especially if they quit their meds cold turkey, a new study reports. Challenges reported by patients quitting antidepressants included feeling overwhelmed by their emotions, finding social situations less enjoyable, and feeling detached and less empathetic towards others. “Some symptoms were so severe, family and friends of the person coming off medication encouraged them to go back on it,” said lead researcher Raqeeb Mahmood, a doctoral student in psychology with the University of Bath. For the study, researchers conducted interviews with 20 people who had attempted within the past year to withdraw from SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants like Prozac. Stopping antidepressant therapy is known to trigger physical symptoms like restlessness, fatigue and excessive sweating. But this study, published recently in the journal Health Expectations, supports the notion that patients will also experience emotional symptoms. “From these interviews, it became clear that the lived experience of withdrawal significantly impacts individuals’ well-being,” Mahmood said in a university news release. “The participants emphasized that withdrawal is not just about physical side effects, but it also affected their emotional, cognitive and social functioning.” Some patients found the first days or weeks of withdrawal most challenging, while other struggled several months after they started coming off antidepressants. More than half of the participants said that withdrawal negatively affected…  read on >  read on >

College freshmen who are more outgoing and agreeable — and less moody — are more likely to feel a sense of belonging at their new school, new research has found. Those personality traits could result in better academic performance and better mental health during college, the study authors concluded. However, two other important personality traits — conscientiousness and openness to new experiences — played no role in how well students felt they fit in at college. “Students who were more agreeable and more extroverted tended to have higher belonging in college, especially in big schools, and students who were more neurotic [that is, nervous and/or handle stress poorly] tended to have lower belonging in college,” concluded the research team, led by Alexandria Stubblebine, an independent researcher in Ocala, Fla. “Additionally, and contrary to what many people might think, openness to new ideas and conscientiousness were unrelated to students’ feelings of belonging,” the researchers added. For the study, Stubblebine’s team analyzed survey data from more than 4,700 freshman college students at 12 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The surveys analyzed a collection of widely studied personality traits collectively called the “Big Five” — extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Students also were asked questions aimed at assessing how well they were fitting in at school. Responses showed that students with higher levels…  read on >  read on >

An American’s income and ethnicity could play a role in how clean the air is that they breathe, a new study finds. Air pollution emissions have fallen more in wealthier areas, and less in areas with larger Hispanic or American Indian populations. Overall, U.S. air pollution emissions have decreased substantially, but the magnitude of the change varies based on demographics, the researchers found. “Policies specifically targeting reductions in overburdened populations could support more just reductions in air pollution and reduce disparities in air pollution exposure,” said lead researcher Yanelli Nunez, an environmental health scientist with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “This is an important lesson gained from 53 years of Clean Air Act implementation, which is particularly relevant as we develop policies to transition to renewable energy sources, which will have a collateral impact on air quality and, as a result, on public health,” Nunez added in a university news release. For the study, Nunez’ team analyzed emissions data from the Global Burden of Disease Major Air Pollution Sources inventory, a collaborative academic project involving three different universities. On average, U.S. air pollution emissions declined substantially from 1970 to 2010 from all sources, except for ammonia emissions from agriculture fertilizer and organic carbon particle emissions from indoor heating of the residential sector, researchers said. Despite this overall downward trend,…  read on >  read on >

Stressed-out teens are likely to have more heart health risk factors in adulthood, a new study says. Teens with elevated stress levels tended to have high blood pressure, obesity and other heart risk factors as they aged, compared to those teens with less stress, researchers found. “Our findings suggest that perceived stress patterns over time have a far-reaching effect on various cardiometabolic measures, including fat distribution, vascular health and obesity,” said researcher Fangqi Guo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “This could highlight the importance of stress management as early as in adolescence as a health protective behavior,” Guo added in a university news release. For this study, researchers analyzed data from 276 participants in the Southern California Children’s Health Study, an ongoing research project that included follow-up health assessments at average ages 13 and 24 for participants. The participants’ stress levels were measured using a perceived stress scale, and they were placed in one of four categories – consistently high stress, decreasing stress over time, increasing stress over time or consistently low stress. Researcher found that teens who had higher levels of stress into adulthood were more likely to have higher total body fat, more fat around the belly and a higher overall risk of obesity as adults, researchers found. They also tended to have worse…  read on >  read on >