03/08/05  Eat Fish, Be Happy

• Feeling depressed? Ask not what your parents did or didn’t do when you were a child. Ask yourself what you had for dinner last night, and the night before, and the night before that. For half a dozen years now, the evidence has been growing that omega-3 fatty acids, the kind found in fatty fish like salmon, sardines and tuna, can help prevent and treat depression.

06/03/03 - Brain Scanning and OCD

• The sophisticated science of brain scanning may be on the brink of revolutionizing the intuitive art of psychiatry, one of the few domains left in medicine in which a doctor’s educated guess is still the most common way to figure out what’s wrong. Sure, brain scanning is still too young a science to be used for routine diagnosis of the most common psychiatric ills. But it is already proving invaluable in understanding the underlying abnormalities in a wide range of psychiatric disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, anxiety and depression.

05/06/03 - "Cutting" - Understanding Self-Mutilation…

• Years ago, Boston University psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk tried a simple experiment to understand one of the most disturbing, and bizarre, of all psychiatric disorders: self-mutilation, or more simply, cutting. He asked his cutters, mostly young women, to come see him when they felt the urge to scratch, slash or burn themselves. When they came, he asked them to put their hands in ice water. They were able to keep their arms buried in ice much longer than normal people, he found, because they didn’t feel the pain.

04/22/03 - Meditation and the Brain ....?

• For decades, open-minded Westerners - patients and doctors alike - have been touting the medical benefits of meditation, an ancient Eastern practice that comes in hundreds if not thousands of different flavors but consists basically of quieting the mind through moment-to-moment nonjudgmental awareness.

12/04/01- A New Understanding of Depression 

• At McLean Hospital in Belmont, brain researchers have hit upon what could become a totally new way to treat depression – blocking a brain chemical called dynorphin, the “evil cousin” of  endorphin, which triggers the “runner’s high.”

06/05/01 - Rushing Off Antidepressants Can Bring On More Distress

• At first, Zoloft seemed like “manna from heaven,” says this 53-year old woman, a teacher who lives in Watertown, but withdrawal can be hell. It was the summer of 1999 and, for reasons she still doesn't fully understand, she had slipped into a "terrible slump." Her doctor suggested Zoloft, America's second most popular antidepressant, after Prozac. And for a while, it was great, says the woman, who does not want her name used.

04/25/00 - Treatments for manic depression are improving

• Michael Penney, 53, of Holliston used to have, as he puts it, "a charmed life." Marriage. A son. A master's degree in marine economics and law, and good jobs, including an eight-year stint at the state office of Coastal Zone Management. But his charmed life came to an end five years ago when he worked for an employer who humiliated him in meetings. One day, Penney erupted in a rage that stunned him as much as his colleagues. He was hustled away when he couldn't stop sobbing.

01/10/00.1 - Special report: St. John's Wort: Less than meets the eye

• We thought it would be easy. After all, we had just two seemingly simple questions: Does St. John's wort, the popular herbal adtidepressant on which Americans spend $250 million a year, work - at least on rat brain cells in a test tube? And do the product labels accurately reflect what's inside the tablets? The path toward answers proved tortuous indeed.

01/10/00.2 - Go the medical route if herb doesn't relieve depression

• So, you're depressed. Given that the Globe's analysis showed that, at least in lab tests, there is considerable variation among St. John's wort brands, should you take it at all?

01/10/00.3 - How the Globe did its testing

• Here's how we tested some of the leading brands of St. John's wort, the popular herbal antidepressant. We went to a CVS store in Cambridge, Mass., and bought the following products: CVS' house brand; Natrol; NatureMade; Nature's Resource; Quanterra; and YourLife. In addition, we obtained a bottle of Herbalife, which is sold privately through distributors.

01/10/00.4 - FDA loosens reins

• The US Food and Drug Administration once had the power to force manufacturers of over-the-counter dietary supplements, including herbal remedies, to prove those products were safe, if the agency felt such a pre-market review was warranted.

12/20/99 - Out of darkness, when sun is in short supply, artificial light may lift seasonal depression

• My favorite time of the year is coming - and it's not Christmas. It's the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and in Boston at least, it will arrive on Wednesday at 2:44 a.m. That's the moment when the sun, at least as seen from the earth, appears to halt in its annual southward trajectory and begins to make its way northward again.

11/29/99 - Trendy pill should be taken with a grain of salt

• She's a young woman from the South Shore, finally able both to work and to study for an advanced degree. But for years, she's been plagued by severe depression that stems, she says, from physical abuse she suffered as a child, and from sexual abuse when she was 17.

03/15/99 - Anxiety over antidepressants

• Modern anti-depressants, for which Americans spent more than $5.6 billion last year, have been a huge boon, partly because they have few disastrous side effects, even in overdose. With older, ``tricyclic'' anti-depressants like Elavil, for instance, ``a 10-day supply could kill you,'' says Dr. Michael Jenike, associate chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. The newer drugs, called SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are rarely fatal.

09/04/98 - Fish oil seen seen cutting risk in mental  illness

• Fish oils that are already believed to reduce the risk of heart disease may help combat a number of serious psychiatric illnesses as well, researchers said yesterday. At an international conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, scientists said that though the data are preliminary, a growing body of evidence suggests that higher consumption of essential fatty acids in the oils, notably one called omega-3, appears linked to a lower risk of depression and better treatment of manic-depression and schizophrenia

06/08/98 - New depression therapy intriguing

• For years, severely depressed people have had one last resort if antidepressant drugs and talking therapy failed: ECT or electro convulsive therapy -- better known as ``shock'' therapy. In ECT, electrodes placed on the scalp send electrical pulses to the brain, which, to be effective, must be strong enough to trigger a seizure. To prevent pain and injury from convulsions during the therapy, the patient is given general anesthesia.

02/23/98 - Is there a ``hidden epidemic'' of male depression? sad or bad

• Alan Schlingenbaum, a 43-year-old computer consultant in Wellesley, was a regular guy. Which is to say, he got his work done and acted ``the way a male acts on the world,'' he says. What he ``wasn't so good at'' was intimacy -- with his wife, his friends and himself.

04/28/97 - Herb found to aid mild depression

• Karin Taylor, 58, a tax accountant in Toronto, was stumped. She had a good marriage, two ``wonderful kids,'' and a job she loved. ``I had no reason whatsoever to feel depressed,'' she says. ``Yet there it was.''