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New York, NY (AHN) - More Americans are seeing their psychotherapists with financial stress as the most common emotional issue brought out. Experts attributed the growing epidemic of anger, anxiety and emotional stress to the worsening economic climate gripping the U.S.As a result, according to the October American Psychological Association survey, 83 percent of U.S. women and 78 percent of men were going through increasing stress over job security, housing problems and the shrinkage of their retirement funds. For women, money issues had emerged as their top concern, eclipsing personal health worries. Within six months, worries about the economy among...

(IsraelNN.com) A series of research studies – known as the JPSYCH program - at Bowling Green State University in Ohio reveals that traditional religious beliefs and practices are protective against anxiety and depression among Jews. Spearheaded by David H. Rosmarin and Kenneth Pargament in Bowling Green’s psychology department, the studies are amongst the first to examine the impact of Judaism on psychological health. "Most research in this area has been conducted with Christians," says Rosmarin, and some has been conducted with Muslims and Hindus as well, "but now we have strong evidence to suggest that religiousness is correlated with lower...

For most of the year, it is the duty of the press to scour the known universe looking for ways to ruin your day. The more fear, guilt or angst a news story induces, the better. But with August upon us, perhaps you’re in the mood for a break, so I’ve rounded up a list of 10 things not to worry about on your vacation.1. Killer hot dogs2. Your car’s planet-destroying A/C3. Forbidden fruits from afar4. Carcinogenic cellphones5. Evil plastic bags6. Toxic plastic bottles7. Deadly sharks8. The Arctic’s missing ice9. The universe’s missing mass10. Unmarked wormholes

THE SOCIETY of Nuclear Medicine has been touting a new study that suggests we're one step closer to solving the riddle of social anxiety disorder. Researchers believe the origins of the disorder are biological. This sounds like a breakthrough worth celebrating. "Social anxiety disorder affects approximately 15 million American adults," the press release declares, and is "the third most common mental disorder in the United States, after depression and alcohol dependence." But what are its symptoms? A "fear of being evaluated by others, with the expectation that such an assessment will be negative and embarrassing." Once you start calling fear...

Housework helps combat anxiety and depression 19 April 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. FEELING down? You might be able to dust away your distress. Just 20 minutes a week with the vacuum cleaner or mop is enough to help banish those blues, and sport works even better. That's the message from Mark Hamer and his colleagues at University College London, who wanted to find out what benefits arise from different types of physical activity. They examined data from questionnaires filled in by almost 20,000 Scottish people as part of the Scottish Health Surveys, carried out every few years. Some...

Reading diet articles could be unhealthy By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Jan 2, 12:42 AM ET Magazine headlines entice teenage girls with promises: "Get the body you want" and "Hit your dream weight now!" But a new study suggests reading articles about diet and weight loss could have unhealthy consequences later. Teenage girls who frequently read magazine articles about dieting were more likely five years later to practice extreme weight-loss measures such as vomiting than girls who never read such articles, the University of Minnesota study found. It didn't seem to matter whether the girls were overweight...

Taste test could be used to pinpoint chemical causes of depression. Feeling anxious? Your mood may actually change how your dinner tastes, making the bitter and salty flavours recede, according to new research. This link between the chemical balance in your brain and your sense of taste could one day help doctors to treat depression. There are currently no on-the-spot tests for deciding which medication will work best in individual patients with this condition. Researchers hope that a test based on flavour detection could help doctors to get more prescriptions right first time. It has long been known that people...

Motel Bookings, Condom Sales Surge Post Nuke Test As tends to be the case in disasters and crises, sales of condoms and reservations at motels surged in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test on Oct. 9. One online hotel reservations site reports that everything is completely booked up through the end of the month in what it calls an “exceptional” flood of guests. If there is apathy about security among Koreans, there is also a silent terror seeking release in sex. On Oct. 9-15, the average daily sales of condoms across all Family Mart convenience stores was 1,930, a...

The life of African-American middle-school students can be pretty stressful. From the moment they step into the classroom, some must contend with not only coursework but also the anxiety that performing badly might confirm negative stereotypes. That fear can itself lead to poor performance, researchers have known for a while; now they've come up with a simple antidote: getting students to reflect on their sense of self-worth by writing a personal essay about what they value. Geoffrey Cohen, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues tested the strategy among 243 seventh graders at a northeastern U.S....

One in three people in the UK regularly suffers paranoid or suspicious fears, clinical psychologists have found. A team at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London interviewed 1,200 people about whether they had thoughts about others doing them harm. They found levels of paranoia were much higher than previously suspected - and almost as high as those for depression and anxiety. The researchers say paranoia can cause real distress. The study found that: * Over 40% of people regularly worry that negative comments are being made about them * 27% think that people deliberately try to irritate them...

I humbly ask that all the prayer warriors out there pray for me. I have had a sinus infection for over two months and it has taken it's toll on me both spiritually and emotionally. I now realize now (finally) that this attack is not physical in nature but spiritual and from the evil one. It has kept me from sleeping naturally and sapped all my energy and joy. I am in a very good church and G_d placed the people before me that I needed and who prayed hard over me and helped me today. Pray that G_d sheilds...

HAVING an abortion as a young woman raises the risk of developing mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, a new study shows. The findings come from the Christchurch Health and Development Study of 1265 children tracked since birth in the 1970s in New Zealand. Researchers found 41 per cent of the more than 500 women in the study had become pregnant by age 25 with 90 pregnancies terminated. At age 25, 42 per cent of those who had an abortion had experienced major depression at some stage during the previous four years - nearly double the rate of...

In the 60's to 1989 research into tryptophan grew rapidly, millions used it for depression. In 1989, a contaminated batch forced the FDA to pull tryptophan off the US market, never to return. This destroyed all research into this critical amino acid and cleared the way for pharmaceutical drugs and billions of profits for them. I am asking the question, why do so many drugs work on the tryptophan oxygenase (pyrrolase) pathway? We have antidepressants (all classes). Related articles; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7126996 And here; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1826617 Then we have alcohol; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10721064&query_hl=9 Then we have asprin; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7082905&query_hl=15 Nicotine, morphine, phenobarbitone http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=989&query_hl=17 then we have...

A chemical found in cannabis can act like an antidepressant, researchers have found. A team from Canada's University of Sasketchewan suggest the compound causes nerve cells to regenerate. The Journal of Clinical Investigation study showed rats given a cannabinoid were less anxious and less depressed. But UK experts warned other conflicting research had linked cannabis, and other cannabinoids, to an increased risk of depression and anxiety. They suggested this could be because different cannabinoids acting at different levels have contradictory effects. Cannabinoids have been shown to relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and pain relief in humans. They are naturally...

A scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina has found that magnetic resonance imaging machines also can serve as lie detectors. The study found MRI machines, which are used to take images of the brain, are more than 90 percent accurate at detecting deception, said Dr. Mark George, a distinguished professor of psychiatry, radiology and neurosciences. That compares with polygraphs that range from 80 percent to "no better than chance" at finding the truth, George said. His results are to be published this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry. Software expected to be on the market next year could...

When Capt. John Trylch of the 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment made it safely back from Iraq, he expected things would be different, that he would be different. “I kept waiting — where’s the change? Where’s the change?” he said. “But you find yourself falling into the same routines. I was surprised by that.” Trylch is among the more than 80 percent of U.S. soldiers who, new studies are finding, served in battle in Iraq and came back home apparently unchanged, without a psychological problem, despite the stress and tragedy of war. But he’s well aware of the other...

Tales of a nation under attack, which recur when public anxiety rises, multiply at theaters and on TV. Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" is acutely attuned to the zeitgeist of post-9/11 America. In this adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, Earth is still the most desirable piece of real estate in the Milky Way, the envy of the galactic neighborhood. But this retelling of the alien-invasion story, set in modern-day New Jersey rather than Wells' Edwardian London, tacitly acknowledges American fears of an attack on US cities. A principal aspect of the film is the way a nation unites...

Over the last three decades, the abortion debate has been characterized as the clashing of rights: the human rights of the unborn on the one hand and the reproductive rights of women on the other. This decades-long rhetorical deadlock has left a good number of Americans—the great majority of whom understand that an individual human life is taken in each abortion— personally opposed, yet unwilling to "impose their beliefs" on anyone else. The popularity of this so-called pro-choice position is due, in large measure, to the success abortion advocates have had in convincing Americans that abortion is a necessary precondition...

WASHINGTON, D.C., FEB. 27, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Less time with Mom and Dad has contributed to more problems for more kids over the last few decades. So says Mary Eberstadt, a part-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and author of "Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes" (Penguin). Eberstadt shared with ZENIT how this separation of children and their parents is producing unforeseen negative consequences. Q: If children are better off materially than ever before, why are they beset by so many troubles such as psychiatric problems, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases?...

Among famous inventors, Leo H. Sternbach may not immediately leap to mind. But this May in Akron, Ohio, Dr. Sternbach, who is 96, will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He holds more than 240 patents, but perhaps his most famous invention, in collaboration with colleagues, is a chemical compound called diazepam, better known by its brand name, Valium. One of the earliest benzodiazepines, Valium was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1963 as a treatment for anxiety, and it would become not only the country's best-selling drug, but an American cultural icon. Referred to...