Archive for category Study Researchers
Depression Strongest Driver of Suicidal Thoughts in Soldiers, Vets
Posted by psychieblogger in Canadian Forces, Depression, PTSD, Research, Self Harm, Study Participants, Study Researchers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Traumatic Stress Disorder, Treatment For Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Vets on August 11, 2012
Current and former soldiers who seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should be screened closely for major depression since the disorder is the single strongest driver of suicidal thinking, say authors of a new Canadian study.
Researchers evaluated 250 active duty Canadian Forces, RCMP members and veterans. The study comes at a time when record numbers of suicides are being reported among American troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, and the number of suicides reported among Canadian forces last year reached its highest point since 1995.
In veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, about half also have symptoms of major depressive disorder during their lifetime, said the researchers.
But “the task of predicting which people may be at an increased risk of completing suicide is a complex and challenging care issue,” they said.
The study included 193 Canadian Forces vets, 55 active troops and two RCMP members referred to the Parkwood Hospital Operational Stress Injury Clinic in London, Ontario.
Soldiers and vets were screened for PTSD, major depression, anxiety disorders and alcohol abuse. The depression questionnaire also included questions about suicidal thinking.
Study participants served an average of 15 years and had been deployed an average of three times. About one-fourth had been deployed to Afghanistan at least once. Ninety-two per cent were men.
Most met the criteria for “probable” PTSD, and almost three-fourths screened positive for probable major depression.
Overall, about one-fourth — 23 percent — said that they had experienced thoughts of self-harm, or that they would be better off dead, for several days over the prior two weeks.
Another 17 percent said they had those thoughts more than half of the days in the past two weeks; six percent reported feeling this way almost every day for the previous two weeks.
As found in other studies, the researchers showed that PTSD is linked to suicidal thoughts. But “what became the biggest predictor was, specifically, depression severity,” said Dr. Don Richardson, a consultant psychiatrist at the Operational Stress Injury Clinic and an adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry at Western University in London.
“It really stresses the importance that when you’re assessing someone for PTSD it’s also critical that you assess specifically for major depression,” Richardson said. “From our limited study, it was depression severity that was the most significant predictor of having suicidal ideation.”
The concern is that soldiers seeking treatment for military-related trauma might not receive aggressive therapy for depression. Instead, the focus might be more focused on PTSD and exposure therapy.
“There’s potentially a lot of people out there who are suffering who might not be aware that there are effective treatments, and that there are clinics available across Canada that specialize in military trauma,” said Richardson.
Social Networking for Jobs May Add to Income Inequality
Posted by psychieblogger in Research, Social Connections, Social Networking, Social Networks, Study Researchers, Technology, Work and Career on July 25, 2012
Social networking for vocational prospecting appears to be more effective in the United States than in Germany.
In a new study, researchers from North Carolina State University discover that while informal networks help both European and American job-seekers, networks in America help job-seekers find higher paying positions.
But one downside is that the practice may lead to economic inequality.
“It is interesting to note that the open market system in the United States, with minimal labor regulations, actually sees people benefiting more from patronage — despite the expectation that open markets would value merit over social connections,” said doctoral student Richard Benton, who co-authored the research.
In the study, researchers examined survey data from the U.S. and Germany to compare the extent to which people find new jobs through “informal recruitment.”
Informal recruitment or networking occurs when a person who is not looking for a new job is approached with a job opportunity through social connections.
The study shows that, on average, informal recruitment is significantly more common in Germany, where approximately 40 percent of jobs are filled through informal recruitment — as opposed to approximately 27 percent of jobs in the United States.
However, the jobs people find through informal recruitment in the U.S. are much more likely to be high-wage managerial positions. Specifically, the odds that a job will be filled via networking increase by two percent for every dollar of hourly wage that the job pays.
For example, the odds that jobs paying $40 per hour ($80,000 per year) will be filled through informal recruitment are about 66 percent better than the odds that a minimum-wage job ($7.25 per hour) will be filled through informal recruitment.
By comparison, the researchers found that wages in Germany did not appear to be linked to how workers found their jobs.
“Ultimately, this suggests that U.S. economic institutions offer greater rewards to sponsorship and nepotism than what we see elsewhere, which could help to explain why inequality is so extreme here,” said Dr. Steve McDonald, an associate professor of sociology at NC State and lead author of the paper.
The study can be found online in the journal Social Forces.
Source: North Carolina State University
Memory Connections Change from Childhood to Adulthood
Posted by psychieblogger in Children and Teens, Psychology, Research, Structure And Function Of The Brain, Study Researchers, Technology, Wayne State University, Work and Career, Young Adulthood on July 25, 2012
In a new area of study, researchers explore how brain mechanisms for memory retrieval differ between adults and children.
Neuroscientists from Wayne State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered that while the memory systems are the same in many ways, the aging process appears to impart important differences in how we learn and respond to education.
Noa Ofen, Ph.D., an assistant professor in WSU’s Institute of Gerontology and Department of Pediatrics, says that cognitive ability, including the ability to learn and remember new information, dramatically changes between childhood and adulthood.
This ability parallels with dramatic changes that occur in the structure and function of the brain during these periods.
In the study, Ofen and her collaborative team tested the development of neural foundations of memory from childhood to young adulthood.
Researchers did this by exposing participants to pictures of scenes and then showing them the same scenes mixed with new ones. They then and asked them to judge whether each picture was presented earlier.
Participants made retrieval judgments while researchers collected images of their brains with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Using this method, the researchers were able to see how the brain remembers. “Our results suggest that cortical regions related to attentional or strategic control show the greatest developmental changes for memory retrieval,” said Ofen.
This finding suggests that older participants use the cortical regions of the brain to retrieve past memories more so than younger participants.
“We were interested to see whether there are changes in the connectivity of regions in the brain that support memory retrieval,” Ofen added.
“We found changes in connectivity of memory-related regions. In particular, the developmental change in connectivity between regions was profound even without a developmental change in the recruitment of those regions, suggesting that functional brain connectivity is an important aspect of developmental changes in the brain.”
Researchers say this study is unique as it is the first time that the development of connectivity within memory systems in the brain has been tested.
Findings suggest the brain continues to rearrange connections to achieve adult-like performance during development.
Future studies by Ofen and her research team will focus on modeling brain network connectivity, and applying these methods to study abnormal brain development.
The team’s findings are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Source: Wayne State University