Number of Americans using antidepressants doubles

Antidepressant use has shot up dramatically over the last decade or so, including among children, while visits to psychiatrists have continued to fall, according to a new study. As of 2005, the most recent year for which data was available, about 27 million people, or 10 percent of Americans, were taking antidepressants. That’s twice the number who were taking such drugs in 1996, according to the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, which looked at about 50,000 children and adults. Full Story : FierceHealth…..

Adult Depression and TV

A new research finds that the number of hours we spend in front of TV determines how depressed we are as adults. The study was based on a study of 4 000 teenagers. The symptoms of depression, young people have developed in their 20s was directly related with the number of hours of exposure to television and other electronic media in their teens. The same association was found for exposure to other electronic media, the researchers noted. Isn’t it what they call reaping what you sow?

Depressed US teens,over 2 million.

A survey conducted among youths aged 12 to 17 about mood and depression revealed that more than 2 million US teenagers have suffered a serious bout of depression in the past year. 8.5 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 described having had a major depressive episode in the previous year. Nearly half of the teenagers who had major depression said it severely impaired their ability to function in at least one of the areas on the disability scale. Depression, or a depressed mood, refer to a state of melancholia, unhappiness or sadness, or to a relatively minor downturn in mood that may last only a few hours or days.

Machoism And Alcohol

When it comes to a stressful situation, women and men act differently. Women have greater rates of depression and anxiety disorders while men have greater rates of alcohol-use disorders.

According to a new study, men tend to consume alcohol when they are stressed or upset. Women feel sad or anxious, which lead to depression and anxiety, and they also tend to think over and over again about their negative emotional state. But men are more likely to distract themselves from negative emotions, and try not to think about these emotions. This can lead to alcohol related disorders.

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Bullying linked to depression, anxiety in adults

In a study of 210 college students, University of Florida researchers discovered a link between what psychologists call relational victimization in adolescence and depression and anxiety in early adulthood. There is no gender difference in the link between this type of bullying and depression. Rather than threatening a child with physical violence, usually bullies target a child’s social status and relationships by shunning them, excluding them from social activities or spreading rumors. Currently, there are few prevention or intervention programs that focus specifically on relational victimization, in part because it’s tougher to pinpoint and stop.

Depression : Older women are more susceptible

A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers says that older woman are more susceptible to depression than older men. The team also found that women live longer with depression than men. About 37 percent of the participants said that they were depressed at some point in their life.