Depression in the News 2006

Dawn simulator curbs wintertime blues by Reuters Health January 3, 2007. Quoting: "For people who suffer from winter depression triggered largely by reduced sunlight, a bedside device that simulates the rising of the sun may provide relief, a study shows. 'Negative air ionization,' also delivered at the bedside, seems to be effective as well."

Getting a Grip on the Winter Blues by Jane E. Brody New York Times December 5, 2006. Quoting: "... despite the ratcheting up of festivities for the holidays, fully one person in five in the United States ratchets down. The cause is a now well-known but still infrequently treated disorder, winter blues or SAD, for seasonal affective disorder. There are several remedies to help those affected by SAD ...".

Troubled Children Off to College Alone, Shadowed by Mental Illness December 8, 2006 New York Times by Lynette Clemetson. Quoting: "The transition from high school to college, from adolescence to legal adulthood, can be tricky for any teenager, but for the increasing number of young people who arrive on campus with diagnoses of serious mental disorders — and for their parents — the passage can be particularly fraught. Standard struggles with class schedules, roommates, and sexual and social freedom are complicated by decisions about if or when to use campus counseling services, whether or not to take medication and whether to disclose an illness to friends or professors."

From the newspaper: "This is the fourth in a series of articles about the increasing number of children whose problems are diagnosed as serious mental disorders. The earlier articles examined one family’s experience, the uncertainty of diagnosis and the use of combinations of psychiatric drugs. Later articles look at the role of parents."

Our Great Depression by Andrew Solomon November 17, 2006. Quoting the beginning of the article:

Changing Minds: Area 25. 60 Minutes on CBS TV. Lesley Stahl reporting. October 2, 2006. 

A new experimental treatment on a part of the brain known as Area 25 may help those who suffer from treatment resistant depression. Stimulating Area 25 with electrical impulses has helped patients whose clinical depression did not respond to drugs or talk therapy.

• A video excerpt of the story is available from CBS News (opens in new window).
• CBS Cares on Depression profiles Mike Wallace

Battle Lines in Treating Depression by Barnaby J. Feder in the New York Times. September 10, 2006.

Research suggests that repeated electronic stimulation of the vagus nerve can help treat severe depression by altering chemical and electrical functions in areas of the brain linked to mood disorders. Cyberonics makes a $15,000 device that is wired to the neck’s left vagus nerve, a major pathway for nerve signals to the brain from the heart and torso. In addition, it costs another $10,000 or more to implant the device in a patient’s chest. 

The device is targeted at the most difficult corner of depression treatment, the four million or so people who suffer from “treatment resistant depression,” or T.R.D., a form so severe that patients fail to respond to drugs and traditional shock therapy. No other product has ever been designed for — and tested exclusively on — such a severely depressed population. F.D.A. approval to market the implanted device was granted in 2005.

A Legacy of the Storm: Depression and Suicide by Susan Saulny in the New York Times June 21, 2006. 

New Orleans is experiencing what appears to be a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, one that mental health experts say is of an intensity rarely seen in this country. It is contributing to a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago. The commander of the Police Department's Mobile Crisis Unit, spends much of each workday on this city's flood-ravaged streets trying to persuade people not to kill themselves.

Antidepressant May Raise Suicide Risk by Benedict Carey and Gardiner Harris in the New York Times. May 12, 2006.  

After analyzing previous clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline voluntarily notified doctors that Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults. Suicide attempts were found to be rare, but nonetheless, more common in those who took Paxil for depression vs. those who received placebos. Specifically, 11 out of 3,455 people taking Paxil reported an attempted suicide. Amongst the placebos, one person out of 1,978 attempted suicide. The previous studies involved over 15,000 people and there was only one actual suicide.

Most patients studied were 18 to 30 years old. This is the first apparent link between antidepressants and suicidal behavior in adults, previously only children were thought to be at risk. A psychiatrist at Columbia university warned that these previous trials were not designed to evaluate suicide risk.

After the Adoption, a New Child and the Blues by Laurie Tarkan in the New York Times. April 25, 2006.

Quoting: "Many adoptive parents feel delirious with happiness when bringing home their child. Yet for some, this joy can be short-lived and dissolve into what experts call post-adoption depression. For some, it is simply a low mood, for others a full-fledged plunge into despair. But most suffer secretly because of the shame and guilt of not being entirely happy over something they had chosen and, in many cases, worked so hard to get. ... Like postpartum depression, post-adoption depression can be difficult for women to acknowledge even to themselves, and even more difficult to admit to friends and family members." Alternate Link

A Depression Switch?  in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. April 2, 2006 by David Dobbs. 
By implanting electrodes in the brains of patients, doctors seem to have successfully reversed some severe depressions — and provided a new way of thinking about mental illness.