Mental Health

One In Five Americans Admits to Drinking and Driving

Twenty percent of Americans 16 and older say that, in the past year, they have gotten behind the wheel within two hours of drinking alcohol. And about two thirds of them said they have done so in the previous month — suggesting that people who drink and drive do so regularly.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety …

Why Do So Many Alzheimer’s Drugs Fail in Clinical Trials?

Semagacestat, tramiprosate, tarenflurbil, latrepirdine: These names may not mean a lot to you, but all four of them were high-profile would-be Alzheimer’s drugs that — in the last two to three years — have failed the last phase of clinical trials. They made it through the safety stages okay. They just didn’t work well enough; they …

Sad Mothers Give Birth to Smaller Babies, Study Finds

Women who suffer from depression or anxiety may be more likely to have underweight babies — even when those babies are born at full term, after a normal-length pregnancy — a new study shows. This study adds to a body of research that gives conflicting evidence about the role of mental health in pregnancy.

Understanding the Frightened Mind

When you’re scared, do you find yourself frozen stiff or trying to escape?

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and GlaxoSmithKline say they’ve uncovered the neural switch that regulates between an active or …

Our Basic Needs: Food, Shelter and… Telling Bed-time Stories?

You may remember Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. The popular pyramid (first published in 1943 and still a regular fixture in classrooms and corporate teambuilding exercises) puts forth a basic argument about humans psychology: that we satisfy our needs in a well-defined order. First come the basic bodily needs, things like …

Is Child Abuse On the Decline?

The number of maltreated children in the U.S. has fallen steadily in the last two decades, according to a report this week from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

Overall, physical-abuse cases per capita fell 3% between and 2007 and 2008 (the most recent year for which stats are available). …

Can Video Games Be Addictive?

A federal judge in Hawaii is allowing a man to sue the computer-game manufacturer NCsoft for negligence — with allegations that the plaintiff grew addicted to an online game and that it consumed his life for years, Wired.com reports.

In court documents, plaintiff Craig Smallwood claims he played the game Lineage II for over 20,000 …

Attention-deficit diagnosis depends on kids’ birthdays, study shows

Kids who are young for their grade level are unusually likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — a worrying sign that, for many kids, plain old immaturity has been misdiagnosed as a clinical disorder.

In two separate studies — both appearing in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Health

Was the JetBlue slide incident caused by head injury?

Many explanations have been offered for JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater’s meltdown and dramatic emergency slide exit on Monday—from “air rage” to suggestions of a relapse into alcoholism. But none of the media coverage has noted what could be the most obvious and chilling reason for his bizarre behavior: at the beginning of …

Menstrual pain can re-shape the brain

It’s a common gag that women don’t think quite the same they get their period. But according to neuroscientists in Taiwan, in some women menstruation may change the very structure of the brain.

In an MRI study of 32 women who suffer menstrual cramps and 32 similar women without pain — with members of the two groups matched on age and …

Stress may delay pregnancy, study finds

Women with mental stress may have more trouble conceiving than their unstressed peers, a new study shows. Among 274 English women, all trying to get pregnant, those with the highest levels of alpha-amylase — a salivary biomarker for stress — had an estimated 12% reduction in their chance of getting pregnant each menstrual cycle, …

  1. 1
  2. ...
  3. 87
  4. 88
  5. 89
  6. ...
  7. 106