Your Psychology Psychology articles and news

A newly designed tool is helping researchers shed light on the quality of life (QoL) of children with lupus around the world, according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) annual meeting, held Nov. 7-11, in Atlanta. “Lupus is a significant disease with a major impact on QoL of children around the world…

Children who have hypertension are much more likely to have learning disabilities than children with normal blood pressure, according to a new University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) study published this week in the journal, Pediatrics. In fact, when variables such as socio-economic levels are evened out, children with hypertension were four times more likely to have cognitive problems…

How well a person performs in a coalition is partly hereditary, according to a recent study. Researchers found that how successfully an individual operates in a group is as much down to having the right genetic make-up as it is to having common cultural ties with fellow group members…

In a remarkable and unprecedented collaboration NEWMEDS (Novel Methods leading to NeW MEdications in Depression and Schizophrenia) have pooled resources to bring together data of 23,401 anonymized patients from 67 trials on 11 compounds in over 25 countries to form the single largest database of clinical trial data ever amassed in psychiatric research…

President George W. Bush has sparked a “national conversation” about the psychological impact of miscarriage by discussing a miscarriage his mother experienced when he was in his teens, the New York Times reports (Carey, New York Times, 11/9)…

Working to change the behaviour of family members may be an effective treatment for people with schizophrenia, according to a new Cochrane systematic review. The researchers reviewed the most up-to-date evidence on the subject and found that patients whose families received the interventions were less likely to relapse…

Saying goodbye to summer can be difficult for everybody. In some people the onset of winter triggers Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a mood disorder in which sufferers experience symptoms of depression. Happily, a special kind of gerbil exhibits remarkably similar reactions to SAD treatments as humans, opening a promising new channel for study and treatment of the common complaint…

Young children who don’t like school are more likely to be involved in underage drinking and sexual activity. A study reported in BioMed Central’s open access journal Substance Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy, has found that pupils’ general wellbeing and specific satisfaction with school were both associated with the incidence of risky behaviors…

In 1999, researchers identified mutations in a gene called MECP2 as the culprit in a devastating neurological disorder called Rett syndrome. In new research the same scientists demonstrate that the loss of the protein MeCP2 in a special group of inhibitory nerve cells in the brain reproduces nearly all Rett syndrome features.

Both the bully and the victim’s individual characteristics, rather than the wider social environment, explain why bullying occurs, according to Swedish teenagers. The new study also shows that 42 percent of teenagers blamed the victim for the bullying.