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Here's an interesting thought.  Happiness spreads, but depression doesn't. According to a new study, having friends who suffer from depression doesn’t affect the mental health of others. Research led by the University of Warwick found that just the fact of having friends can help teenagers recover from depression or even avoid becoming depressed in the first instance, newswise.com reports. The findings are the result of a study of the way teenagers in a group of US high schools influenced each others’ moods. The academics used a mathematical model to establish if depression spreads from friend to friend. “Depression is a major public health concern worldwide," says professor Frances Griffiths, head of social science and systems in health at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. "But the good news is we’ve found that a healthy mood among friends is linked with a significantly reduced risk of developing and increased chance of recovering from ...

Probably this is the last thing you would think about if you were planning to end your life , but did you know that the way we make decisions can affect whether life pushes us to this dire action? According to newswise.com, difficulty making choices is one of the factors that make certain people vulnerable to suicide.  Now, does that mean if you can’t decide between a Big Mac and a Whopper for lunch, you’re going to go out and get a gun? Obviously not.   But in light of the recent awful killing of two journalists in Virginia this week, was that murderer obsessed with choices he couldn't make sense of, or grapple with?  We'll never know.   I'm not looking for sympathy for him.  What he did was heinous and he deserved to rot in prison -- or die slowly, painfully -- if he hadn't killed himself.  It hardly matters, in the end.   But researchers have found that high-risk decision-making was prevalent among many parents of indiv...

Air pollution and suicide. Did you know there's a connection? According to a new study , a growing body of research links air pollution exposure to suicide, newswise.com reports.. Researchers found an increased risk of suicide associated with short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter among Salt Lake City residents who died by suicide between 2000 to 2010. In particular, men and Salt Lake City residents between 36 to 64 years of age experienced the highest risk of suicide following short-term air pollution exposure. “We are not exactly sure why risk of suicide was higher in these two groups but suspect that it might be because these two groups were either exposed to higher levels of air pollution or that other additional factors make these two groups more susceptible to the effects of air pollution,” says author Amanda Bakian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah. The odds of completing suicide were 20 per...

Seriously, experts now think there may be a gene in our bodies that might predispose us to killing ourselves. According to newswise.com, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a chemical alteration in a single human gene linked to stress reactions that, if confirmed in larger studies, could give doctors a simple blood test to reliably predict a person’s risk of attempting suicide. The discovery, described online in The American Journal of Psychiatry , suggests that changes in a gene involved in the function of the brain’s response to stress hormones plays a significant role in turning what might otherwise be an unremarkable reaction to the strain of everyday life into suicidal thoughts and behaviors, much like, I suppose the turning of a normal cell into a cancer cell. “Suicide is a major preventable public health problem, but we have been stymied in our prevention efforts because we have no consistent way to predict those who are at increased risk of killin...

Here's another reason to give up smoking.  It may make you want to commit suicide. Seriously, a new study has found that smoking may contribute to suicide risk. Cigarette smokers are more likely to commit suicide than people who don’t smoke, studies have shown.  In the past, this used to be attributed to the fact that many people with psychiatric illnesses, smoke, and they, of course, may be more prone to suicide.  But new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds that smoking itself may increase suicide risk and that policies to limit smoking reduce suicide rates.  The study reports that suicide rates declined up to 15 percent, relative to the national average, in states that implemented higher taxes on cigarettes and stricter policies to limit smoking in public places. “Our analysis showed that each dollar increase in cigarette taxes was associated with a 10 percent decrease in suicide risk,” said author Richard A. Grucz...

Sad but true.  Adults are at higher risk of suicide if one parent, or both, were alcoholics. A new study has found that " People who grew up with a parent who abused alcohol may be 85 percent more likely to attempt suicide than people whose parents did not abuse alcohol, according to research published by the American Psychological Association," reports newswise.com. Having divorced parents increased by 14 percent the risk that a person would try to take his or her own life when compared to people whose parents did not divorce, the study found. But having both -- parents who abuse alcohol and are divorced -- did not increase suicide attempts, according to the study.  One good thing! In the study, almost 14,000 participants reported they had suffered major depression at some point in their life and of those, 1,073 said they had attempted suicide. In the group that reported attempted suicide, 25 percent said they had parents who divorced and 46 percent said one or both p...

We have an assistant principal I adore but who says he is very affected by light and wears these really outlandish glasses at night that look like sunglasses but deaden the light so it's more soothing.  Now I'm thinking he may really be onto something. A new study has found that light affects our decisions.  "Th e next time you want to turn down the emotional intensity before making an important decision, you may want to dim the lights first," newswise.com reports. Researchers in Canada discovered that  human emotion, whether positive or negative, is felt more intensely under bright light. “Other evidence shows that on sunny days people are more optimistic about the stock market, report higher wellbeing and are more helpful while extended exposure to dark, gloomy days can result in seasonal affective disorder,” the Web site quotes A lison Jing Xu, assistant professor of management at  University of Toronto Scarborough   and the Rotman School of Managemen...

Aren't migraines bad enough?  Now a new study has found that those who have to deal with this head-splitting headache may be more prone to depression, too. According to newswise.com, "Prevalence of depression among those with migraine is approximately twice as high as for those without the disease (men: 8.4% vs. 3.4%; women 12.4% vs. 5.7%)."  The research was done at the University of Toronto. One in every seven women, compared to one in every 16 men, reporting that they had migraines. And if you're young, female and single, the odds are even worse. "Women with migraines who were younger than 30 had six times the odds of depression in comparison to sufferers who were aged 65 and over," newswise.com quotes lead author, Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. Unmarried individuals and migraine sufferers who had difficulties with daily activities also had high odd...

It was one of the first things I worried about when my son started middle school. Skinny and shy and quiet at the time, and a bit of a computer nerd, I feared he would be bullied. To my delight (and surprise), he became a different kid in middle school – out-going, happy, and “chatty,” as one teacher put it.  Even what some would call popular.  Popular?  My kid? He was one of the first sixth graders to have a girlfriend (but young love, being what it is, she broke up with him over the summer). Maybe I’ve been lucky because I have a boy and from what I’ve seen and heard, bullying seems to be hugely rampant among girls (although we did have the heartbreaking story of Bart Palosz the second day of school). Two 12-year-olds have been arrested for tormenting a girl who ended her life in Miami recently, and in Stamford , one has been arrested for bullying another girl into talking about committing suicide. Twelve-year-olds? What is this? Are kids...

I just don’t get it.  How can you miss that a kid’s suicidal? But then I think of all the things that I don’t – or can’t – see as a parent, even when it’s staring me in the eye. Of course, my heart breaks for the parents and sister of Bartlomiej “Bart” Palosz.  But it breaks even more for Bart. Bullying is said to be a factor in this tragic death.  I think of the darkness this poor young man must have lived in, the shadow limiting his life.  Maybe he put on a brave front.  Maybe, like my son, he pretended all was well when it wasn’t. Didn’t anybody see this boy’s pain? I didn’t know Bart but I feel his death in my heart, maybe because my own son is only three years younger, and I so wish I could have been his friend. I want time to go backwards, for someone to have reached out to Bart in a class or at lunch, to have shown him he was loved and wanted and worth something. I, too, have struggled with depression and though I’ve never co...

The DNA and RNA in your genes can reveal your chances of getting breast cancer, your child's father, and now, scientists have found it can even tell the likelihood that someone's thinking of committing suicide . According to medicalnewstoday.com, r esearchers have discovered a series of RNA biomarkers in blood that could be used to develop a test to predict the risk of a person committing suicide. Let's be clear, though.  The participants in the study all had bipolar disease, but it's still something that might be applied to anyone, at some point.  And they were all male. Blood was taken from patients at three-month intervals and results of the analysis revealed significant gene differences between the patients who experienced high states of suicidal thinking and the people with low states of suicidal feeling. "There are people who will not reveal they are having suicidal thoughts when you ask them, who then commit it and there's nothing you can do abou...

First, it was obesity .  Now it's bullying .  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has just announced that bullying is a public health problem.  I guess it still counts if it happens in your family , too. Sadly, the CDC has proposed this because of its link to suicide, according to Howard Mandel. Mandel writes that the suggestion has been made that "educators and health care professionals should consider broadening their focus beyond just providing services for those who are already involved in bullying or suicide-related behaviors, but also towards developing strategies to prevent bullying and suicidal behavior from happening in the first place." Makes sense to me.  I remember when I was in school back in the '60s and '70s, bullying went on and no one pretty much talked about it.  Kids being shaken down for their lunch money.  Being ridiculed because their teeth stuck out, or wore glasses (me).  I even had a friend with cerebral palsy who had a...

I remember worrying every minute my son was in preschool and out of my sight.  It got a little better in kindergarden, after the first terrifying time he went on the bus (don't ask about the time he missed the bus, when it came and he wasn't on it).  In first and second grades, the worrying grew a little less.  I began to trust the teachers and that he would survive.  Then middle school came and even though I knew he could take care of himself now, I still worried But the worst is yet to come, according to Charles Blow of The New York Times. Charles Blow, who I adore, wrote an op-ed today about the dangers ahead -- and right in front of us -- for our teenagers . He writes that, in a hypothetical class of 100 high school seniors: 71 will have experienced physical assault 28 will have been "victimized" sexually (and 10, raped)  32 have experienced "child maltreatment" 27 were in a physical fight, and 16 carried a weapon in the l...

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...