I live in New York City, and for me, there’s nothing that compares to its culture, energy and convenience. I’m not alone in feeling this way — more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas.

But I also know that when it comes to mental health, the urban lifestyle may not be such a good thing. City dwellers tend to be more stressed and have higher levels of mood disorders and psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia than those living in rural or suburban areas. And now researchers say they have uncovered certain changes in brain activity that could potentially help explain why.

In an international study, researchers at University of Heidelberg and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University report in the journal Nature that people who live or were raised in cities show distinct differences in activity in certain brain regions than those who aren’t city dwellers.

Those who currently live in the city, for example, showed higher activation the amygdala, the brain region that regulates emotions such as anxiety and fear. The amygdala is most often called into action under situations of stress or threat, and the data suggest that city dwellers’ brains have a more sensitive, hair-trigger response to such situations, at least when compared with those living in the suburbs or more rural areas.

For the rest of the story, read Time Healthland

Nearly 1,000 mental health professionals and patients from 35 countries gathering in Pittsburgh this week could help shape how bipolar disorder will be diagnosed and treated in the next decade.

The Ninth International Conference on Bipolar Disorder, sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Medical School and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, grew out of concerns that the illness was “understudied, underfunded and underrecognized,” said conference organizer Dr. David J, Kupfer. The conference begins Thursday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, made headlines this spring when actress Catherine Zeta-Jones revealed she has the affliction, defined as a brain disorder that triggers unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to perform day-to-day tasks.

“This is a disorder that knows no socioeconomic or cultural boundaries. About 1 percent to 2 percent of the population has bipolar disorder everywhere you go,” Kupfer said.

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“Children and teens exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely to develop symptoms for a variety of mental health problems, including major depressive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and others, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

At this point, it should come as no surprise to anyone that exposure to tobacco smoke is unhealthy. Plenty of studies have linked secondhand smoke to respiratory problems, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, middle ear infections and other physical health problems. But the link between secondhand smoke and mental health has not been examined as closely.”

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“Women do not suffer mental health problems such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of having an abortion, researchers reported Wednesday.

The study, published by Danish scientists in the New England Journal of Medicine, adds to a growing body of scientific literature that has failed to find that abortion causes psychological problems, as some abortion opponents have asserted.”

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Is it really possible to diagnose such a grown-up affliction in such a young child? And is diagnosing clinical depression in a preschooler a good idea, or are children that young too immature, too changeable, too temperamental to be laden with such a momentous label? Preschool depression may be a legitimate ailment, one that could gain traction with parents in the way that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.) and oppositional defiant disorder (O.D.D.) — afflictions few people heard of 30 years ago — have entered the what-to-worry-about lexicon. But when the rate of development among children varies so widely and burgeoning personalities are still in flux, how can we know at what point a child crosses the line from altogether unremarkable to somewhat different to clinically disordered? Just how early can depression begin?

The answer, according to recent research, seems to be earlier than expected. Today a number of child psychiatrists and developmental psychologists say depression can surface in children as young as 2 or 3. “The idea is very threatening,” says Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, who gave Kiran his diagnosis and whose research on preschool depression has often met with resistance. “In my 20 years of research, it’s been slowly eroding,” Luby says of that resistance. “But some hard-core scientists still brush the idea off as mushy or psychobabble, and laypeople think the idea is ridiculous.”

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No one is criminally responsible for last month’s heat-related deaths of three Montgomery County residents with mental health issues, according to District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.

“This is a terrible tragedy but, from the criminal side, everyone met their legal obligations,” said Ferman on Tuesday, adding that her office’s findings in its month-long review have been passed on to the state Department of Public Welfare.

“I think the real question is from the social services side, from the mental health side, what sort of extra precautions will the system put in place in the future so that people like this do not succumb to this kind of death.”

The state Department of Public Welfare last month launched its own review of the deaths because all three men were clients of Montgomery County’s Department of Behavioral Health/Developmental Disabilities, which receives state funding. The county agency used some of that funding to ensure that the three men received mental health services from a nonprofit agency with which the county contracted.

The newspaper Tuesday could not reach DPW press secretary Michael Race to learn the status of DPW’s review.

Two of the men – Jerry “Dutch” Snavely, 62, and John Malkasian, 53, both of Norristown – were found dead on July 9 in Snavely’s apartment.

The temperature of the apartment at the time the pair was found was between 105 and 110 degrees, according to county Coroner Dr. Walter I. Hofman. There were no air conditioners in the apartment, no working fan and the windows were shut, the coroner said.

The third victim, 56-year-old John Snyder, was found dead in his Pennsburg apartment on July 12. Again, said the coroner, the windows were shut tight and there was no air conditioner or fans in the apartment where the temperature exceeded 95 degrees.

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More than half of babies in poverty are being raised by mothers who show symptoms of mild to severe depression, potentially creating problems in parenting and in child development, according to a new study.

In what was described as the first detailed portrait of its kind, researchers reported that one in nine infants in poverty had a mother with severe depression and that such mothers typically breastfed their children for shorter periods than other mothers who were poor.

“A mom who is too sad to get up in the morning won’t be able to take care of all of her child’s practical needs,” said researcher Olivia Golden, who co-authored the paper with two colleagues at the District-based Urban Institute. “If she is not able to take joy in her child, talk baby talk, play with the child – those are features of parenting that brain development research has told us contribute to babies’ and toddlers’ successful development.”

The study said that even severe depression goes largely untreated among low-income mothers of infants, with just 30 percent speaking to a professional about a mental health problem during the year before the survey was conducted.

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Since 1971, CONTACT Pittsburgh has provided 24-hour hot lines staffed by volunteers offering help to people calling anonymously about suicide, hate crimes, anxieties and other mental health issues.

But because of changes over how mental health crises are handled, shrinking foundation support and the growing difficulty of recruiting volunteers, the nonprofit organization may have to close.

The agency sent letters to its network of volunteers last week.

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[Christa] Best is one of nearly 18,000 people statewide who are waiting for community-based mental retardation services. Of those waiting for services, 3,160 are considered to have emergency needs, meaning they could have to move to a state institution if they cannot gain access to community-based services.

Gov. Ed Rendell proposed an increase to the community mental retardation waiver program that would help the state Department of Public Welfare add 150 people, including 100 special-education high school graduates, to the program.

The program provides services such as home or vehicle accessibility adaptations, therapy, nursing, educational support and transportation to about 24,500 people, according to the department.

Lawmakers and advocates for those with disabilities expressed disappointment at a recent budget hearing that the increase was not large enough to accommodate even more people. The mental retardation waiver program is primarily federally funded but received about $623 million in state money this year.

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The symptoms of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder seem to describe half the people in New York City: restlessness, impatience, impulsivity, procrastination, chronic lateness, and difficulty getting organized, focusing and finishing tasks.

How do you know you have ADHD, which experts compare to having a mind like a pinball, with thoughts flitting in multiple directions. Maybe you’re just overcaffeinated and overworked? And if you do have it, will there be a stigma? Should you try medication? Will it work?

Parents of children with suspected ADHD face a myriad of similar questions. But the concerns can be just as troubling for adults, whose ADHD often goes unrecognized.

An estimated 8% of U.S. children have ADHD, which is also known as ADD, for attention-deficit disorder, and some 50% of them outgrow it, according to government data. About 4.4% of U.S. adults—some 10 million people—also have ADHD and less than one-quarter of them are aware of it.

That’s because while ADHD always starts in childhood, according to official diagnostic criteria, many adults with the disorder went unnoticed when they were young. And it’s only been since the 1980s that therapists even recognized the disorder could persist in adults.

Even now, getting an accurate diagnosis is tricky. Some experts think that too many adults—and children—are being put on medications for ADHD, often by doctors with little experience with the disorder. Others think that many more people could benefit from ADHD drugs and behavioral therapy.

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