Mental Health Archive

Ask anyone who’s ever tried to make a healthy change — after a while, the motivation to keep at it just stops. Indeed, it can be incredibly hard to break old habits, or make new ones. But research has revealed that there are actually two different types of rewards in the brain — and that focusing on the less commonly pursued of the two can help you make lasting changes.

Last year, the Alzheimer’s Association predicted that rates of dementia would continue to rise. However, a report recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that rates of dementia have actually dropped steadily over the past three decades. Whether the drop in rates applies to everyone, and whether it will continue, remain to be seen. But the evidence also confirms that there’s quite a lot you can do to lower your dementia risk.

New findings link cardiovascular fitness to better thinking skills and memory in older people.

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Exercise that speeds up your heart rate and breathing keeps your heart and blood better cardiovascular fitness to a sharper brain is providing new clues about this heart-mind connection.

"It's not just about delivering more oxygen to the brain, although that's part of it," says Dr. John Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Having a fit, healthy cardiovascular system also protects against vascular dementia, which happens when blood vessels feeding the brain are blocked or narrowed, leading to memory problems and other cognitive trouble.

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A heart attack or unstable angina (sudden chest pain that happens at rest) usually requires a hospital stay. After such events—which doctors call acute coronary syndromes—about one in five people ends up back in the hospital with heart disease or dies in the following year. But there's a bright side: new research suggests that survivors with an optimistic attitude are less likely to be readmitted to the hospital with heart problems.

The study, published in the January 2016 Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, included 164 people, mostly men, who were hospitalized for acute coronary syndromes. Two weeks after the event, they filled out questionnaires designed to measure their sense of optimism and gratitude.

Ask the doctors

Q: I went for my usual check-up, and in addition to taking my blood pressure, the medical assistant handed me a form to fill out with nine questions related to my mental health. I've never had this happen before. Is this new?

A: Yes, it is new for most people. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has just released an important depression screening recommendation. The USPSTF recommends regular depression screening for all adults, which is a modification from advice originally given in 2009, in which screening was recommended only for clinics or doctors who had adequate support systems to provide mental health care for those who were identified with depression. Since that time, multiple studies have found that mental health care from primary care clinicians works very well, and probably just as well as specialist care from psychiatrists. That isn't to say we don't need care from psychiatrists, but rather that not everyone needs a psychiatrist, especially those with mild to moderate depression.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recently updated their guidelines on depression screening to include pregnant and postpartum women, which will be a great help to the many new moms who experience mood changes that go beyond the “baby blues.” The updated guidelines offer other benefits, too, that help improve everyone’s access to mental health care — especially those who can’t currently afford it.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently updated their guidelines on screening for depression. This time around, they recommended widespread screening through primary care practices, plus gave special attention to women who are pregnant or recently gave birth. These matter-of-fact, achievable guidelines and goals have the potential to reap enormous health benefits.