Loose Screws Mental Health News

According to an article in USA Today, researchers have found that siblings who argue could have negative effects on their mental health.

Researchers report that conflicts about personal space and property, such as borrowing items without asking and hanging around when older siblings have friends over, are associated with increased anxiety and lower self-esteem in teens a year later. And fights over issues of fairness and equality, such as whose turn it is to do chores, are associated with later depression in teens.

I’d like to tell these siblings to get over it, but I don’t have any siblings of my own to relate my experience to.


PBS’s Frontline reports that most soldiers who commit suicide have never seen combat or even been deployed. According to the Defense Department, the Army has the sharpest rate of suicides of all the military branches. About 53 percent of military personnel who took their lives in 2011 had no history of deployment to active combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Even more troubling is that 85 percent of those who committed suicide may have been deployed but not involved in direct combat. Even though the military has invested $50 million to study mental health and suicide, a stigma of getting help still remains. It seems as though military personnel would rather take their own lives than seek help.


An antidepressant called GLYX-13, currently under study, appears to work within hours and last for up to a week. The lead researcher reports little to no side effects on the drug, which is injected intravenously. The drug is in phase 2, which means that its effectiveness and safety are still being tested. I have my doubts about an intravenous drug. If doctors are not currently testing patients’ serotonin levels, how would they be able to prescribe an intravenous antidepressant?


Depression has passed asthma as the top disability among North American (U.S. and Canadian) teens.

Asthma had been the largest contributor to YLDs (years lived with disabilities) for youths in that age range in the US and Canada in 1990, but the study published in The Lancet on Thursday led by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, Seattle showed that in this group depression surpassed asthma to claim the number one spot in 2010.

Back in the 1990s, depression was not widely regarded or evaluated among teens. It was still “suck it up” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” My depression was viewed as laziness or “senioritis” among my teachers. I had no sympathy and very little leeway. Now, mental health is being taken more seriously for teens, and I think that’s a good thing.


See you if you can keep an elder person in mind during this holiday season. Senior depression is always on the rise during the holiday season due to problems with health, loneliness, or finances.

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