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Schizophrenia is a very disabling psychiatric illness affecting about 2 to 3 million Americans. Contrary to popular perception, it has nothing to do with a "split personality." Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder involving "positive" and "negative" symptoms. Positive symptoms include hallucinations (hearing voices or seeing visions that aren't real), delusions (fixed false beliefs), and disorganized thinking or speech. A recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry by Paul Grant, Aaron Beck, and their colleagues found that a modified version of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a specific type of talk therapy, can produce clinically significant improvement in patients with schizophrenia. Importantly, significant improvement was seen in certain negative symptoms-apathy/avolition (lack of drive)-as well as in positive symptoms. These results are impressive, especially considering that the participants had been ill for an average of 18 years and suffered from severe symptoms. In this study, study participants were divided into two groups. One group received CBT in addition to "standard treatment," which included treatment with antipsychotic medications. The other group received standard treatment alone. CBT has been shown to be effective in a variety of psychiatric illnesses. It uses pragmatic techniques to help a person correct inaccurate or dysfunctional thoughts and emotions by promoting critical comparison of those thoughts with observable facts. For example, if a person believes that he/she is "doing absolutely nothing," one CBT technique would be to encourage the person to keep a detailed diary of daily activities. The therapist would later review this diary with the patient and facts would be compared to perceptions. Homework assignments would include strategies to increase productive activities. In the study mentioned above, the researchers focused CBT "on identifying and promoting concrete goals for improving quality of life and

This article discusses the linguistics of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia diagnoses are typically made on one or more of the following 3 symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech. Traditionally, none of these symptoms are associated with language, but the article suggests linguistic dimensions to each. Another aspect of schizophrenia manifests as Formal Thought Disorder, which is clearly linked to language and speech production. The article goes on to provide a language profile for schizophrenia and discuss the linguistics of psychosis. As someone who has OCD, I've noticed many instances where an obsession or compulsion has strong linguistic elements. I found it interesting that this linguistic influence can be found in schizophrenia and it strongly suggests that what we believe about language's effects on cognition are true!

"...people who speak more than one language don't exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer's disease until they have twice as much brain damage as unilingual people. It's the first physical evidence that bilingualism delays the onset of the disease. ... Despite the fact that both groups performed equivalently on all measures of cognitive performance, the scans of the bilingual patients showed twice as much atrophy in areas of the brain known to be affected by Alzheimer's."

In a study, it is predicted that bilinguals have enhanced brain networks because they had a delayed onset of Alzheimer's by five years compared to monolinguals of similar educational backgrounds. Through CT scans, it was discovered that bilinguals physically had twice as much atrophy of the brain as monolinguals at the time symptoms started. This means that bilinguals showed no symptoms of Alzheimer's even though their brains physically looked like they did.

An interview with Ellen Bialystok, a cognitive neuroscientist, about the advantages of being bilingual.

A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science.

"In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer's patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer's symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn't mean that the bilinguals didn't have Alzheimer's. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer." No other website I have found has so comprehensively covered the various benefits of being bilingual. This is a concise interview that displays that bilingual people are not only better at multitasking but can also delay the onset of Alzheimer's by up to 5 years.

This article discusses the results of many studies on how social networking affects mental health. Over the past 10 years, online social networking has caused profound changes in the way people communicate and interact. Several studies have indicated that the prolonged use of social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, may be related to signs and symptoms of depression. Some authors have also indicated that certain SNS activities might be associated with low self-esteem, especially in children and adolescents. This review focuses on the recent findings regarding the suggested connection between SNS and mental health issues such as depressive symptoms, changes in self-esteem, and Internet addiction.

Born between 1995 and 2012, teens are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet. There is compelling evidence that the devices we've placed in young people's hands are having profound effects on their lives-and making them seriously unhappy.. Some interesting (and disturbing) findings: 1. A 2017 survey of more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone. 2. While teens are physically safer than they've ever been, they're also more isolated and more subject to psychological harm. Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. In addition, the number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently. It's not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. 3. Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. 4. Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today's teens. Boys' depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls' increased by 50 percent-more than twice as much. The rise in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. While boys tend to bully one another physically, girls are more likely to do so by undermining a victim's social status or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls a platform to ostracize and exclude other girls 24/7. 5. Sleep deprivation: nearly all teens sleep with their phones in close proximity, and the devices are interfering with sleep: Many teens now sleep less than seven hours most nights. Sleep experts say that teens should get about nine hours of sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a night is signific

This is a Hopkins Medicine page that shares information on ADHD specifically in children. It gives the basic definition of ADHD as well as some of the basic information on the learning disorder. It gives common causes, types of ADHD, who is affected, symptoms, diagnosis, etc.

Tense people may miss the subtle warning signs of danger Image: Roc Canals Photography/Getty Images Worrywarts, beware: all that fretting may be for naught. Anxiety has long been interpreted as a symptom of hyperawareness and sensitivity to danger, but a study published last December in Biological Psychology turns that logic on its head.

"Teenagers are more susceptible to developing disorders like addiction and depression ... "The brain region traditionally associated with reward and motivation, called the nucleus accumbens, was activated similarly in adults and adolescents," said Moghaddam. "But the unique sensitivity of adolescent DS to reward anticipation indicates that, in this age group, reward can tap directly into a brain region that is critical for learning and habit formation." ... not only is reward expectancy processed differently in an adolescent brain, but also it can affect brain regions directly responsible for decision-making and action selection. ... "Adolescence is a time when the symptoms of most mental illnesses-such as schizophrenia and bipolar and eating disorders-are first manifested, so we believe that this is a critical period for preventing these illnesses," Moghaddam said."

"[In] A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley ... Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer's who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease. ... While previous research has suggested that engaging in mentally stimulating activities - such as reading, writing and playing games - may help stave off Alzheimer's later in life, this new study identifies the biological target at play. ... Notably, the researchers did not find a strong connection between amyloid deposition and levels of current cognitive activity alone. "What our data suggests is that a whole lifetime of engaging in these activities has a bigger effect than being cognitively active just in older age," said Landau. The researchers are careful to point out that the study does not negate the benefits of kicking up brain activity in later years."

"School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus ... For the current study, the researchers conducted brain scans on 92 of the children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were studied as preschoolers. The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing. ... Although 95 percent of the parents whose nurturing skills were evaluated during the earlier study were biological mothers, the researchers say that the effects of nurturing on the brain are likely to be the same for any primary caregiver - whether they are fathers, grandparents or adoptive parents."

Lin, of National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan and Peper, of San Francisco State University, examined the psychophysiological effects of texting. Results indicated that all subjects showed significant increases in respiration rate, heart rate, SC, and shoulder and thumb SEMG as compared to baseline measures. Eighty-three percent of the participants reported hand and neck pain during texting, held their breath, and experienced arousal when receiving text messages. Subjectively, most subjects were unaware of their physiological changes. The study suggests that frequent triggering of these physiological patterns (freezing for stability and shallow breathing) may increase muscle discomfort symptoms. Thus, participants should be trained to inhibit these responses to prevent illness and discomfort.

The largest study so far to ask whether speaking two languages might delay the onset of dementia symptoms in bilingual patients as compared to monolingual patients has reported a robust result. Bilingual patients suffer dementia onset an average of 4.5 years later than those who speak only a single language.

Studies have traced a range of impressive benefits to writing down the things for which we're grateful-benefits including better sleep, fewer symptoms of illness, and more happiness among adults and kids alike. Robert Emmons, a UC Davis professor who studies the science of gratitude, offers the following research-based tips to enhance journaling effectiveness: 1. Don't just go through the motions. Research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and others suggests that journaling is more effective if you first make the conscious decision to become happier and more grateful. "Motivation to become happier plays a role in the efficacy of journaling," says Emmons. 2. Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular thing for which you're grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things. 3. Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful. 4. Try subtraction, not just addition. One effective way of stimulating gratitude is to reflect on what your life would be like without certain blessings, rather than just tallying up all those good things. 5. Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude. 6. Don't overdo it. Writing occasionally (once or twice per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling.

Writing down what you're grateful for greatly impacts your social, physical, and physiological health but to some the impacts are unclear. This article page has a link that has created their very own technological gratitude journal that deepens and practices efficient journaling. Included in this article are 6 tips: 1) Have passion behind jotting down your gratitude. It put more motivation and thought in your writings. 2) Be specific with what you're grateful for. 3) Lean towards focusing your gratitude on people rather than things. (You learn to become less materialistic.) 4) Consider mentioning what it would be like with out the blessings. 5) Record events that were surprising & out of the ordinary. 6) Occasional writing over daily writing because it's easy for us to get numb to the good side of life. Writing our thoughts down rather than thinking about them or saying them, deepens our emotional connection and makes us more self aware.

This study shows that bilingualism can delay the onset of symptoms of dementia by about 4-5 years compared with monolinguals. They still get the disease, but they're able to cope longer than monolinguals once they get it.

This was an interesting article I used for my Smorgasboard project. I wanted to study how dementia affects our ability to speak and understand language. This article covered different types of aphasia, or loss of language that occur when one has either Alzheimer's or other types of dementia.

This is a CDC document with facts on ADHD, the signs of ADHD, types of ADHD, etc. Overall this site gives a basic run down of ADHD.

There are many different types of dyslexia that people can have either it is from reading, speaking, spelling or comprehending. This article talks about how certain types of dyslexia is shown and how people get it in the first place.