Featured series 
Tag: Psychiatry Department
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Health
Playing on our instincts
Assistant clinical professor of psychology Deirdre Barrett says that many of today’s ills come from intentional overstimulation of natural human impulses, giving people hard-to-resist appetites for everything from fighting to sex to unhealthy foods.
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Health
Teen suicide and antidepressants
With the recent FDA warning about the use of antidepressants with children and adolescents, doctors and patients are more cautious about treating youth with antidepressants. Parents and doctors are challenged to make a balanced assessment of risk and benefits. Dr. Nancy Rappaport, Dr. Jefferson B. Prince, and Dr. Jeff Q. Bostic of the psychiatry department…
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Health
Size of brain structure could signal vulnerability to anxiety disorders
Individuals respond with physical and emotional distress to situations that recall traumatic memories. Such responses usually diminish gradually, as those situations are repeated without unpleasant occurrences; this is called “extinction memory.” But some people continue to respond fearfully and develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies in animals have suggested that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)…
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Campus & Community
Kudzu cuts alcohol consumption
Scott Lukas, professor of psychiatry at McLean, a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, says these results inspired his team to test on humans. The study was conducted on 14 men and women, average age 24 years, in a “laboratory” apartment where each person was allowed to drink as many as six beers. After…
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Health
Study finds women hesitant to take tamoxifen as preventive measure
“Our study underscores the need [for medical professionals] to address psychological factors that may influence decision- making, in order to help women feel confident and satisfied with their treatment choice,” says the study’s lead author, Sharon Bober, PhD, staff psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and clinical instructor…
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Health
Study says therapy better than pills in treating sleep-onset insomnia
The findings show non-drug techniques yield better short- and long-term results than the most widely prescribed sleeping pill, zolpidem, commonly known as Ambien. “Sleeping pills are the most frequent treatment for insomnia, yet CBT techniques clearly were more successful in helping the majority of study participants to become normal sleepers,” said study leader Gregg Jacobs.…
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Health
Stages of memory described in study
“To initiate a memory is almost like creating a word processing file on a computer,” explains researcher Matthew Walker, instructor of psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. “Once the file has been created, if you don’t hit the ‘save’ button before shutting off the computer it will be lost. Our…
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Health
Hypnosis helps healing
“Hypnosis has been used in Western medicine for more than 150 years to treat everything from anxiety to pain, from easing the nausea of cancer chemotherapy to enhancing sports performance,” says researcher Carol Ginandes of Harvard Medical School. A list of applications she provides includes treatment of phobias, panic, low self-esteem, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, stress,…
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in psychiatry and a research associate in McLean Hospital’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Laboratory and Brain Imaging Center, and his colleagues investigated. They found that repeated sexual…
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Health
Researchers identify genes that trigger depression
A substance known as CREB controls gene expression in the brain. It also appears to be active in mood disorders. A group of Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have developed methods that allowed them to selectively activate or deactivate CREB in the brains of rats. They found that activation of CREB in…
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Health
Researchers learn to control dreams
For years, scientists have been stymied in their quest to understand dreams because they are unique events that cannot be replicated.
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Health
Study points to more targeted use of Ritalin
An area known as the putamen, located deep in the center of the brain, helps to control movement and attention. Harvard researchers believe that the putamen is involved in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The finding also suggests that Ritalin may not be effective in treating ADHD. When researchers examined hyperactive, inattentive boys with a new type…