Pharmalot is a blog we turned to when we wanted to keep up-to-date on the latest pharmaceutical news or scandal. Written for the past 2 years by Ed Silverman, he’s decided to move on to take a job over at Elsevier and may very well start blogging for them on the same topics (either at the In Vivo blog or some other company blog).

While we’ll miss Pharmalot as it exists today, we hope to see Ed Silverman continue on in the tradition he started more than 2 years ago, breaking interesting stories about the pharmaceutical industry. We can’t imagine the blogosphere being the same without him.

Read the full article: Pharmalot, R.I.P.; Long Live, Ed Silverman

The New York Times ran a chilling article the other day about abusive relationships among youths, which are far more prevalent than I realized. According to a 2007 Center of Disease Control and Prevention survey of 15,000 teens cited in the Times article, 10 percent of respondents reported physical abuse “like being hit or slapped by a romantic partner. Nearly 8 percent of teenagers in the survey said they were forced to have sexual intercourse.”

Statistics such as these, and in extreme cases murders in which a jealous ex is implicated, have spurred several states to adopt legislation requiring schools to present dating abuse prevention programs to students.

The Times article blames unmoderated technology for worsening the problem:

Experts say the abuse appears to be increasing as more harassment, name-calling and ridicule takes place among teenagers on the Internet and by cellphone.

“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who began doing research on abuse in teenage dating relationships nearly a decade ago.

Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.

Young men and women who are just entering the dating world might also mistake their significant other’s controlling behavior for love and commitment; Dr. Miller points out later in the article that “few adolescents understand what a healthy relationship looks …

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This entry may be triggering or difficult to read for some people.

Self-injury behavior is something that is more common than many people realize (in one study by researchers at Brown University of high school students, 46 percent had injured themselves in the past year on multiple occasions), it is often misunderstood. Not just by the lay public, but also by the mental health professionals who ostensibly should know what self-injury it is and how best to treat it.

Self-injury is used by people as over-drinking is used by others — to drown out emotional pain with something else. In the case of self-injury, that something else is physical pain. It focuses your attention and takes your mind off of your emotional pain, if only for a little while.

Cutting is the most common form of self-injury — making skin-deep cuts on one’s arms, wrists, or less noticeable areas on one’s body. The cuts are not meant to cause permanent damage or harm, nor are they meant as a suicidal gesture. The cuts are the means to an end themselves — they provide a source of immediate but non-serious physical pain (as long as they are allowed to heal cleanly). Other forms of self-injury include burning, or keeping old wounds open or inviting infection in them to keep them painful.

The people with the most severe self-injury behavior often can think of little else as they go through their day — it becomes something more than just a way to deal with emotional pain, it becomes its own obsession, as it did with Becki, a person who self-injured and is profiled in an article that appeared online in Newsweek last week:

Becki describes it as an obsessive battle,

…

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We’ve officially entered the hard months, the “dark ages” as the midshipmen at the Naval Academy say: the time of the year when the sun disappears and the pale complexions of your friends remind you that you had better take your vitamins or else you’ll have a cold to go with your pasty look.

I dread winter each year because many of my depression busters require sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. What does a girl who kayaks and bikes for sanity do in the winter? Lots of things. Here are a few of them:

1. Watch the sugar.

I think our body gets the cue just before Thanksgiving that it will be hibernating for a few months, so it needs to ingest everything edible in sight. And I’m convinced the snow somehow communicates to the human brain the need to consume every kind of chocolate available in the house.

Depressives and addicts need to be especially careful with sweets because the addiction to sugar and white-flour products is very real and physiological, affecting the same biochemical systems in your body as other drugs like heroin. According to Kathleen DesMaisons, author of “Potatoes Not Prozac”: Your relationship to sweet things is operating on a cellular level. It is more powerful than you have realized….What you eat can have a huge effect on how you feel.”

2. Stock up on Omega-3’s.

During the winter I’m religious about stocking in my medicine cabinet a Noah’s Ark supply of Omega-3 capsules because leading physicians at Harvard Medical School confirmed the positive effects of this natural, anti-inflammatory molecule on emotional health. I treat my brain like royalty–hoping that it will be kind to me in return–so I fork over about $30 a …

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Ah, what’s the new year without another look at “Internet addiction disorder,” especially since it’s being considered for inclusion into the DSM-V? Yours truly is quoted in this one, so at least it brings some balance to the topic. And I do note the tendency for researchers and policy makers working on the DSM-V to want to seem to err on the side of including more disorders according to what little information we have on the upcoming book (the DSM-V is being assembled in secret, so it’s pretty hard to tell what the heck they are doing over there).

What I do know is that the concept of “Internet addiction disorder” remains so muddled and contradictory, it would be a tragedy if this “diagnosis” was legitimized by the DSM-V, while other tragedies — such as TV addiction disorder, book addiction disorder, and socializing addiction disorder — remained unacknowledged (and therefore, ostensibly, untreated).

Read the full article: Once You Click, Can You Quit?

In the largest study ever to look at correlations related to autism, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that birth order and a parent’s age are important factors.

Specifically, the researchers found that the risk of a firstborn child having an autism-related disorder triples after a mother turns 35 and a father turns 40.

The researchers also found a 20 percent increase in the risk of autism with each 10-year increase in the parents’ ages. They also found a couple’s fourth child has half the risk of the first, regardless of the parents’ ages.

The researchers don’t yet have much in the way of pinpointing specific causes that might explain these findings:

“Is this pure genetics? Or a toxic phenomenon?” said Darold Treffert, former president of the Wisconsin Medical Society, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac and an expert in savant syndrome. Treffert was not involved in the study.

“I think we’re bombarded with all sorts of stuff. And we know from experiences such as thalidomide that there are specific times during development of specific risks with specific chemicals. The problem is there is just so much out there.”

Like many things in this realm, the answer is likely a complex combination of factors relating both to genetics and environment. The firstborn statistic, while intriguing, is an anomaly likely explained by the fact that many parents who give birth to an autistic child simply stop having any additional children, as the researchers note.

One take-away from this study is that you put your future firstborn child at risk if you wait to have children until you’re older, as many people in society are doing (focusing first on their own careers or what-not). This study clearly shows a …

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This seems like a good Friday to take a look back, as people recover from their New Year’s celebrations (including us!) and as many of us look forward to what 2009 has in store for us (we’re wishing for an improved economy, for one!).

10 Years Ago on Psych Central

• Enjoying the Moment: It’s Harder Than It Seems
  I’ve always been fascinated by the passage of time, and how our perceptions make something that is unchanging seem dynamic and fluid. Sometimes in our life, we feel like time is flying by. Other times, it appears to crawl to a halt, with each second passing seeming like hours. A decade ago, I wrote about this phenomenon and how when we’re younger, we don’t much notice time. But as we age, it seems to take on a larger-than-life meaning.
  

5 Years Ago on Psych Central

• January 2004 Blog Entry
  A 14-country Internet survey conducted by the World Internet Project demonstrated that the average Internet user, far from being a geek, was actually, well, you and me — everyday people who watch less TV than the average person and who enjoy socializing with friends. The Internet is the biggest socialization tool in the late 20th century, so it’s no wonder it’s being used to connect us with one another.
  

1 Year Ago on Psych Central

• Cornell Cuts Suicide Rate in Half
  How did they do it? With the implementation of expensive electronic medical records? Nope, a simple change in policy that allowed greater communication amongst the mental health team at Cornell, and administrators, campus police, resident assistants, and other staff about students’ mental health concerns. We still haven’t found much evidence that other universities are following suit, despite the dramatic drop in suicides at

…

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In many ways, we’re sad to see 2008 go. We passed some great milestones during the year here at Psych Central, including topping 80,000 members in our collective communities and reaching more people through our website than in any previous year. We started our first two new blogs — Bipolar Beat and Celebrity Psychings — which have both already been great successes.

As much as I’m sad to see the year go, I’m excited for the possibilities that 2009 brings. We’ll be rolling out a few more new blogs in 2009, carefully finding insightful and interesting writers who understand how to really tackle mental health topics head-on in a positive manner. We’ll be integrating more of our services and working to make things simpler and easier to access. We’ll also be expanding the topics we cover, and providing more in-depth coverage of professional meetings that provide actionable research findings. And of course we’ll continue to do it all in our laid-back style, ensuring we don’t couch things in psychobabble or require you to have a doctorate degree in psychology to understand.

I’m also going to take this moment to renew my personal commitment to you, our readers, who have come to rely and depend upon Psych Central as the leading independent mental health network online today. We greatly value our independence, which brings us the freedom to tackle any topic we feel like, even if it may not always be a popular choice. It also allows us to roll out new services and features in a more timely manner.

As we enter our 14th year online, we remain committed to working toward breaking down the stigma and misinformation that constantly surround mental health concerns. …

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Sonja Lyubomirsky thinks so.

Or at least that seems to be her argument in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, where she suggests that people (What people? Most people? Her friends? She doesn’t say…) aren’t panicking due to the depression/recession that we’re in. That most people aren’t really that unhappy in these difficult economic times.

Of course, I have to raise an eyebrow whenever a commentator makes a claim such as this which goes against conventional wisdom and is supported by zero evidence.

Instead, she cites research into our individual happiness, which says nothing about society’s collective happiness in tough economic times such as these:

Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same.

Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.

Which is true, individually. But really has little to do with providing any evidence that indeed we’re all still collectively “happy” when we’re losing our jobs, explaining to our children why Santa had to cut way back this year, and why we might lose our house (or have already been kicked out). Does the author honestly think the tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes are comforted by the fact that …

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In yet another news article on yet another of-questionable-value fMRI study, hard-hitting Discovery news came up with this doozy of a headline:

How Visiting Your Family Warps Your Brain

Really now? Warps your brain? Wow, I can’t wait to read how someone who visits their family actually finds significant, long-lasting structural changes in their brain.

Ahh, but then I’d be disappointed, because the “news” article only describes a study where subjects lay down on their backs, are inserted into a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, and shown various photos while researchers monitor the subject’s brain activity.

That’s a far cry from showing something is “warping” our brains.

These studies, while having some minimal informational value, are called analogue studies, because they aren’t actually measuring the real process that happens in everyday life. You can’t very well ask a subject to bring a dozen of his friends and family into the research lab and then measure an actual response. Instead, you have to display a photo to the person, while they’re strapped into an fMRI machine.

So what were the real findings behind the ridiculous headline?

The scientists found that relatives and self-lookalikes are processed through a self-referential part of the brain. Friends and strangers who look nothing like the viewer, on the other hand, light up entirely different areas of the brain, those linked to making important and risky decisions with respect to the self.

Ahh, so that’s it. Family lights up one side of our brain, and friends — who, interestingly enough, are found to be no different than strangers in our brain’s world — light up another side.

But, as the researchers note, this finding could also be explained by previous research that showed people perceive people as more friendly …

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I know what you’re thinking: another cheesy, goody-two-shoes article on how I can keep all those goals I’ve set going into 2009. If you abhor such articles (like 10 ways to declutter your bathroom), then keep on reading. I’m like you. Normal.

1. Bribe yourself.

A so-called parenting expert that I read last week claimed that bribing your kid to get him to do something was an example of irresponsible and ineffective parenting. I suspect that the same man sits in his quiet and tidy little office cranking out advice like that while either his wife or nanny is home doing the dirty work. Let’s face it. Bribing is one of the most effective tools to get anyone—your kid, your stubborn mother, your golden retriever, or yourself–to do something.

My running coach used this brilliant method to train me to run 18 miles. Before our run, he hid Jolly Ranchers along our route, every two miles, so he’d say to me when I wanted to stop, “In another half-mile, you get a treat! Come on, you can do it!” And like a rat spotting a half-eaten hotdog, I’d run to the candy. You want to make sure you stick to your resolution? Bribe yourself along the road there: at the one-fourth mark, one-half mark, and three-quarters mark.

2. Team up.

Think of the buddy system from Boy Scouts. Teaming up with someone means that you have to be accountable. You have to report to someone. Which brings down your percentage of cheating by 60 percent, or something like that. Especially if you’re a people-pleaser like me. You want to be good, and get an A, so make sure someone is passing …

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As we put the holidays behind us and dig out from underneath all of the wrapping paper (or snow! or both), many of us turn to the upcoming New Year’s celebration to engage in a ritual that any visiting alien might be puzzled by — New Year’s resolutions. Why do humans pick a single point in time each year to try and change certain things in their life — behaviors, attitudes, whatnot — make resolutions about them, and then proceed to fail at them within a month’s time?

The most popular New Year’s goals people set, according to Miller and Marlatt (1998) are:

• 37% - Starting to exercise
• 13% - Eating better
• 7% - Reducing the consumption of alcohol, caffeine and other drugs, or quitting smoking

According to the same survey, most people — 75 percent — who make a resolution fail on their first attempt and most people — 67 percent — make more than one resolution.

So, from a psychological perspective, it might be interesting to ask what exactly determines how many goals people set and how successful they are. Luckily for us, researchers Mukhopadhyay and Johar (2005) did just that and came to some interesting conclusions.

Their research found that people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited (e.g., “I can stop smoking, all I have to do is put my mind to it. I can also change my eating and be a better person, it just takes willpower.”) tend to set more resolutions.

People who believe that we all are born with a limited, set amount of self-control that one cannot change (e.g., “I can’t help myself from eating all this chocolate — I inherited the ‘chocolate gene’ from my mom!”) and who also have little …

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