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"The link between air pollution and dementia remains controversial-even its proponents warn that more research is needed to confirm a causal connection and work out just how the particles might enter the brain and make mischief there. But a growing number of epidemiological studies from around the world, new findings from animal models and human brain imaging studies, and increasingly sophisticated techniques for modeling PM2.5 exposures have raised alarms. Indeed, in an 11-year epidemiological study to be published next week in Translational Psychiatry, University of Southern California (USC) researchers will report that living in places with PM2.5 exposures higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's standard of 12 μg/m3 nearly doubled dementia risk in older women. If the finding holds up in the general population, air pollution could account for roughly 21% of dementia cases worldwide,"

When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic - something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy. But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped...""

"The study used powerful statistical tools to test five hypotheses about the link between mental illness and poverty, including the ''downward drift" idea. The theory that stressful economic conditions bring on mental illness was the only one that really fit the data"