Hot MedFax

How far away an object seems to you may also tell how close you are to the people you love. Huh? A new study says that the brain region that helps people tell whether an object is near or far may also guide how emotionally close they feel to others and how they rank them socially, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as reported at newswise.com. The study focused on evidence for the existence of a “social map” in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that remembers locations in physical space and the order in which events occur. While previous studies had suggested that the hippocampus records a 3-dimensional representation of our surroundings when a key set of nerve cells fires, how the hippocampus contributes to social behavior had not been previously described. “By quantifying the response patterns of people making decisions based on social interactions, we found that the hippocampus tracks relationships, intimacy and hierarchy with...

A chilling new statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Almost 20 percent of children in this country have some form of  mental illness . According to a story in today's Washington Post, between 7 and 12 million children experience a "mental disorder" every year.  That's one in five kids. And the rate is increasing, Tony Pugh reports.  Now, of course, we're not talking about all psychopaths, but children with disorders who find it hard to learn, behave and cope with their emotions.  The CDC puts that at  13 to 20% of all youths under 18. Even scarier, only 21% get treatment.  Would therapy have helped Adam Lanza?  No one will ever know.   And it's not because parents don't take their kids for help, it's that the help isn't there.  Pugh notes that a  shortage of sub-specialty pediatricians and child and adolescent psychiatrists contributes to the problem. Worse yet, fewer medical students are choo...

It's those with mental illness. According to Nicholas Bakalar, " people with mental illness may be at sharply increased risk of dying by homicide, a new study has found." Bakalar reported that, "after controlling for age, education level, income and other factors, they found that   people with mental illness were almost five times as likely to be a victim of murder as a person without a psychiatric diagnosis ." Substance abusers, for obvious reasons, were among those most likely to be victims of homicide -- 9 times the risk of the average population. Those with personality disorders were next, at triple the risk of the general population, while depressed people had 2 1/2 times the risk, and those with anxiety or schizophrenia had about twice the risk, Bakalar noted. It's been talked and talked about how our mental health system needs shoring up, if not rebuilding. But what's one of the first programs to be slashed when the budget-cutters come out? ...

It's been a week but none of the horror and heartbreak is over.  Despite many reports that the killer of 20 children in Newtown may have had Asperger's, a form of autism, this illness is not known to spawn violence in its sufferers.  Those in the autism movement fear the syndrome may have been mischaracterized. http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/12/aspergers-syndrome-violence-not-something-we-expect-expert-says