Posts Tagged ‘bipolar’
Viral Infections Millions of Years Ago Promote Inheritance of Mental Illness
People understand that someone can be predisposed to mental illness by inheriting certain genes or gene variants, but new research is revealing that inherited mental illnesses are also promoted by alterations in our DNA that were caused by viral infection of our ancestors over a million years ago. Remarkably, the changes do not modify parts…
Read MoreShock Therapy: New Understanding and Old Ignorance
WASHINGTON, DC–Speaking at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC on November 14, 2017, Dr. Wendy Marie Ingram, Psychiatric Epidemiologist at the Geisinger Medical Institute in Pennsylvania, presented new research on the effects of anesthesia on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or shock therapy). The results help answer long-standing questions about the controversial treatment, but social…
Read MoreCreativity Madness and Drugs
Writers are crazy and rock musicians want to be–neuroscientists meet and explain why San Diego–Would we have Poe’s Raven today if the tormented author had taken lithium to suppress his bipolar illness? Not likely, considering the high frequency of psychiatric illnesses among writers and artists concludes psychiatrist Kay Jamison of Johns Hopkins Medical School speaking…
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