People get more depressed after the age of 65, says an English study using data on older Australians.

It’s the first to show depressive symptoms continue to increase throughout old age, says lead researcher Dr Helena Chui from the University of Bradford.

“We are in a period of unprecedented success in terms of people living longer than ever and in greater numbers and we should be celebrating this but it seems that we are finding it hard to cope,” she said.

Both men and women reported increasingly more depressive symptoms as they aged, with women initially having more than men.

“However, men showed a faster rate of increase in symptoms so that the difference in the genders was reversed at around the age of 80,” the researchers said.

Levels of physical impairment, the onset of medical conditions and the approach of death all played a part in having the symptoms.

“It seems that we need to look carefully at the provision of adequate services to match these needs, particularly in the area of mental health support and pain management,” Dr Chui said.

“Social policies and ageing-friendly support structures, such as the provision of public transport and access to health care services are needed to target the ‘oldest-old’ adults as a whole.”

This article first appeared on ‘9 News’ on 16 November 2015. ]]> http://www.newsinmind.com/general-news/depression-increases-with-age-study/feed 0 http://www.newsinmind.com/general-news/government-urged-to-continue-supporting-mental-health-program http://www.newsinmind.com/general-news/government-urged-to-continue-supporting-mental-health-program#respond Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:55:32 +0000 http://www.newsinmind.com/?p=7605 There are calls for the Federal Government to continue funding a program that is making a massive difference for people with severe and persistent mental illness.

Hunter Partners in Recovery aims to better support people with mental illness by getting multiple services to work in a more collaborative and integrated way.

The service is hosting a forum today, called ‘Working Together for Change’, in a bid to identify and address gaps in the system.

Hunter Primary Care CEO Kevin Sweeney said the service has already helped more than 550 people.

“It’s very important that we retain a consistent strategy and approach for these people,” he said.

“Clearly they need a comprehensive suite of services to be able to assist them to recover, to function well in society.

“So it’s important that the funding continues in whatever form.”

The forum’s keynote speakers are Frank Quinlan from Mental Health Australia, and Leanne Wells from Consumer Health Forum Australia.

Doctor Sweeney said support services are already working together, but more can be done.

“It’s a question of bringing them together and looking at the particular issues of this client group,” he said.

This article first appeared on ‘ABC’ on 28 October 2015.

The study appears in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, and finds gender differences when long-married partners are asked about their marital relationship.

“The men don’t really want to talk about it or spend too much time thinking about it,” said Carr. “Men often don’t want to express vulnerable emotions, while women are much more comfortable expressing sadness or worry.”

The finding supports Carr’s belief that men and women have very different emotional reactions to the strain and support they experience in marriage. While talking about issues and offering support makes the wives — who traditionally feel responsible for sustaining the emotional climate of a marriage — feel good, this only frustrated the husbands surveyed.

“For women, getting a lot of support from their spouse is a positive experience,” said Carr. “Older men, however, may feel frustrated receiving lots of support from their wife, especially if it makes them feel helpless or less competent.”

In the study, 722 couples, married an average of 39 years, were asked how their marital experience and the reactions of their spouse affected them.

They responded to whether they could open up to their spouse if they needed to talk about their worries, whether their spouse appreciates them, understands the way they feel about things, argues with them, makes them feel tense, and gets on their nerves.

“Men who provide high levels of support to their wives may feel this frustration if they believe that they would rather be focusing their energies on another activity,” Carr said.

It may also have something to do with the age of the couples, with one spouse in the study having to be at least 60. Men of this generation may feel less competent if they need too much support from their wives, Carr said.

This article first appeared on ‘Psych Central’ on 27 October 2015.

The University of Michigan study found that there’s only one interaction that offers more rewarding feelings than Snapchat: face-to-face communication stole the show, once again.

Published online in Information, Communication & Society, the study seems to be one of the first known published findings on the matter of daily mood in relation to Snapchat. For those who have live under a rock for the past four years, Snapchat is the mobile app that made “ephemeral social media” popular.

In other words, there are some platforms that promote sharing content for a limited period of time (e.g., 10 or 20 seconds). For a lot of people, Snapchat only equals to that “sexting app,” as the description could surely hint to that.

But according to lead author Joseph Bayer, researcher at U-M, the study revealed that Snapchat seems to be the preferred social media for instant and spontaneous communication with close friends, one that often leads to goofy and enjoyable times.

Bayer’s team enrolled in the study 154 college students who had and used smartphones. The researchers used a method called “experience sampling” – one that measures the way people feel, think, and behave on a day-to-day basis – as to have an understanding on what made the participants feel well.

In order to do that, researchers would text them the same survey at random times six times a day. The phase of gathering data went on for two weeks, in which the participants were asked to answer the same five questions:

How negative or positive do you feel right now? How did your most recent interaction occur? How pleasant or unpleasant was your most recent interaction? Within that interaction, how supportive or unsupportive was that person to you? How close are you to that person?

Researchers discovered that no other social media interaction was associated with such high levels of positive emotions as Snapchat – and Facebook scored significantly lower than others. One of the reasons behind this statistic is that Snapchat involved reduced “self-presentational” concerns, meaning that users did not have to worry if they looked conceited or ugly in their Stories.

Facebook is better known for sharing “perfect” moments – such as newborns, engagements and graduations – while Snapchat offers users a separate environment where the small moments are equally appreciated.

This article first appeared on ‘Mirror Daily’ on 21 October 2015.

German researchers analysed data from 20,000 people from three nations in the most comprehensive and largest study to date on the issue.

They found that birth order had no effect on five key personality traits: extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and imagination.

However, the paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supported earlier findings that the first child in a family was likely to be more intelligent.

Co-author Julia Rohrer, from the University of Leipzig, said the link between birth order and personality was first mooted in the early 1900s by psychiatrist and philosopher Alfred Adler — the second of six children.

He claimed firstborns were privileged, but also burdened by feelings of excessive responsibility and a fear of dethronement and were more likely to score high on neuroticism.

However, the idea became firmly entrenched in the modern era when United States academic, Professor Frank Sullaway, developed the Family Niche Theory of birth-order effects in 1996.

Based on Darwin’s theories of evolution, he argued that siblings adapted to certain roles within the family to reduce competition and enhanced the family unit’s “fitness”.

According to Professor Sulloway’s theory, because firstborns were physically superior to their siblings at a young age, they were more likely to show dominant behaviour and become less agreeable.

Laterborns, searching for other ways to assert themselves, tended to rely on social support and become more sociable and thus more extroverted.

Personality theory deeply entrenched

Ms Rohrer said this theory had become deeply entrenched in the public psyche.

“Whether you have younger or older siblings appears to be of such great importance as a child, that the assumption that this has a lasting impact on personality just seems ‘natural’,” Ms Rohrer said.

“I think there are some biases at work that help firm those beliefs. For example, parents might infer their firstborn is emotionally unstable and very anxious because their infant cries a lot and is easily scared.

“The second-born child might actually cry just as much, but now the parents already know that this is just the way that children are, and stop attributing this behaviour to the child’s character.”

To test Professor Sullaway’s theory, Ms Rohrer’s team used data from three large national studies in Great Britain, the US and Germany.

The team undertook a range of analysis and looked for effects that were evident within families and also more generally expressed across all families.

“We tried our best, but we simply couldn’t find the majority of the expected effects in our data sets,” she said.

Their finding that birth order had no lasting impact on later personality traits was consistent across all three national studies, across the different measures of personality and across the participants’ whole of life span, she said.

The study could be the final nail in the coffin of Professor Sullaway’s theory.

Ms Rohrer said there was now a large body of work that had been unable to detect the birth-order effects as predicted by the Family Niche Theory.

“Rationally, we might want to abandon its main ideas or maybe modify its content in a way that it is more in line with empirical findings,” she said.

Firstborn IQ effects ‘rather humble’

Ms Rohrer said the study did confirm IQ is impacted by birth order and said it was likely this was due to social effects rather than biological.

“One theory is that later children ‘dilute’ the resources of the parents, including attention,” she said.

While the firstborn gets full parental attention for at least some time, laterborns would have to “share” from the beginning.

Another possible contributing factor was that a firstborn could “tutor” their younger siblings, explaining to them how the world worked.

“Teaching other people has high cognitive demands,” Ms Rohrer said.

“The children need to recall their own knowledge, structure it and think of a good way to explain it to youngsters, which could be a boost to intelligence for some firstborns.”

However, she said the IQ effects were “rather humble” and not deterministic.

“The effect does not imply that every firstborn is slightly more intelligent than his or her younger siblings. It means that if you assess the intelligence of a large number of sibships, you will find more sibships in which the firstborn is smarter than sibships in which the laterborn is smarter,” she said.

“So as a thirdborn, you could very well be more intelligent than your older siblings, and birth order is only one of multiple factors that can contribute to differences in intelligence amongst siblings.”

This article first appeared on ‘ABC‘ on 20 October 2015.

Over 35 per cent had experienced some form of mental health issue and more than 80 per cent knew a close friend or relative with similar experiences. Nearly three in ten said they had been discriminated against or knew someone who had, for mental health problems. And while most said they would be happy to talk about their mental health problems at church, seven in ten said their churches offered no resources to deal with it.

Previous research by ComRes showed that mental health issues account for nearly 25 per cent of the disease quota in Britain yet attracts just 11 per cent of NHS spending.

A recent BBC story stated that universities are facing a 10 per cent rise in demand for counselling services from students, with recorded mental health cases having risen from 8,000 to 18,000 between 2008 and 2012.

The online research was conducted via Christian Research’s panel of around 17,000 practising Christians across the UK, with 1,275 responding between 5 and 7 October.

“This is a clear sign that churches need to provide a more supportive space for their congregations to explore these issues,” said Maddy Fry, the researcher behind the study.

Earlier this year the UK’s largest Christian disability charity, Livability, joined forces with Premier Mind and Soul to create new resource to help churches better understand people with mental health needs in their congregations.

Christian Today reported that Katharine Welby-Roberts, an associate at Livability and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s daughter, who has spoken publicly regarding her struggles with depression, said: “As anti-stigma campaigns, such as Time to Change, begin to see societal attitudes towards mental health change, the Church has begun to recognise the need to better support people with mental health needs in their congregations.” She said that churches wanted to support people with mental health problems, but did not know how. “This can often lead to isolation or people leaving the Church because they feel misunderstood or not catered for. I believe the Church is a key untapped local resource which can support people with mental health needs.”

This article first appeared on ‘Christian Today’ on 15 October 2015.

Last year in the Northern Territory, 86% of those in prison and 96% of those in juvenile detention were Indigenous. In Western Australia, Indigenous people account for only 3% of the population, but 40% of prisoners.

It is unacceptable to ignore the intellectual capacity of a person facing the court and it’s vital to ensure that youth put behind bars have been properly assessed before sentencing. This is particularly important for Australians affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). These occur throughout society and in high levels in some Indigenous communities.

The capacity to screen for prenatal alcohol exposure – as well as to diagnose FASD – must urgently be increased. This echoes recent calls by Perth Children’s Court magistrate Catherine Crawford for clinicians to assess children and youth before sentencing, so the court understands their cognitive limitations.

Cognitive limitations

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are a group of preventable conditions resulting from exposure to alcohol in the womb. Alcohol readily crosses the mother’s placenta, entering the circulation of the developing fetus with devastating effects.

Significantly, it can disrupt brain development and that of other organs, causing lifelong problems. These include developmental delay, intellectual and memory impairment, as well as a range of behavioural, emotional and mental health disorders.

People with FASD can suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), communication disorders, poor impulse control, disobedience and hostility issues, and learning difficulties.

They often struggle to distinguish right from wrong and fail to learn from mistakes. Few with FASD will live and work independently. Many have mental health and substance misuse problems.

It is no surprise that many also come in contact with the law. An adolescent living with a FASD in Canada or the United States, for instance, is estimated to have a 19 times higher risk of incarceration than someone without a FASD.

Despite this, the condition remains poorly recognised and few obtain a diagnosis prior to offending. Offenders with FASD are often poor witnesses and fail to understand why they have been detained. Unable to negotiate the justice system, they are adversely influenced by others and often enter a cycle of re-offending.

FASD and the justice system

Rosie Fulton, a 21-year-old Aboriginal woman with FASD and significant intellectual impairment, was arrested last year after stealing and crashing a car. Declared unfit to stand trial, Rosie was sent to Western Australia’s Kalgoorlie Prison for lack of alternative accommodation.

She stayed in jail for 21 months with no trial or conviction. Only after her story broke, mounting pressure on the health ministers of Western Australia and the Northern Territory led to Rosie being transferred to supervised community accommodation close to her family in Alice Springs.

In Australia, we don’t know how many people deemed “unfit to plead” are in prison and how many have cognitive impairment, as we lack recent data regarding rates of FASD in prisons. US studies suggest up to 60% of young people with FASD will at some time enter the juvenile justice system.

Another study, conducted in a forensic mental health facility in Canada, showed 23% of resident youth had one type of FASD. This figure may be higher in vulnerable Australian populations, particularly in some remote regions where alcohol use in pregnancy is prevalent.

The economic impact of incarcerating people with FASD is huge. In Canada, the direct cost to the correctional system between 2011 and 2012 was CAD$17.5 million for youth and CAD$356.2 million for adults.

Screening for FASD

Diagnosing FASD is a challenge because as children get older, a firm history of prenatal alcohol exposure may be elusive. With age, the characteristic facial features (small eye openings, a thin upper lip and flat philtrum, the area between the upper lip and base of the nose) of fetal alcohol syndrome – a subset of FASD – diminish, and growth deficits correct.

Thorough assessment by a physician, a psychologist and, if necessary, allied health professionals, can identify impairments required for a FASD diagnosis, whether fetal alcohol syndrome or a neuro-developmental disorder associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. Such impairments can be in IQ, communication, memory, motor and executive function, and other areas.

In Canada, youth probation officers are using a tool for screening young offenders for FASD, and identifying the need for referral and assessment.

Another tool for health professionals with accompanying guidelines for assessing and diagnosing people with FASD is being developed in Australia. This will standardise the diagnostic approach.

Tools such as these are necessary to increase screening and diagnostic capacity in the justice and health systems. If a diagnosis is known, the associated behavioural and cognitive deficits can be taken into account when considering the reliability of evidence given by an offender, the supervision required in detention, and the sentence.

Appropriate care

There has been a call for better legal support for people with vulnerabilities in their journey through the criminal justice system. Consideration should be given to the defence of diminished responsibility in conditions such as FASD.

And alternative models of care need to be found to avoid imprisonment of those unable to plead. As identified in the case of Rosie Fulton, this poses a significant challenge, particularly in remote Australia where alternative accommodation is not readily available and would be costly to establish.

But prison is far more costly. In Canada, the justice system accounts for 40% of the total costs of FASD (including health and education). And Australia’s Senate inquiry on justice reinvestment heard that the estimated cost of detaining a juvenile offender in New South Wales in 2010–11 was much higher ($A652 per day) than the cost of supervision in the community ($A16.73 per day).

To end the cycle of re-offending, we urgently need evidence-based strategies to ensure offenders with FASD are recognised early and receive the care they deserve.

This article first appeared on ‘The Conversation’ on 13 October 2015.

The Government also said it would not force resource companies to acknowledge their workforce is vulnerable to suicide.

It was responding to a parliamentary committee report on the impact of FIFO work practices on mental health, prompted by nine publicised suicide cases that triggered the inquiry last year.

The committee found in June that FIFO operations could lead to a “heightened risk of mental health issues” but a lack of accurate, accessible data made it impossible to establish suicide levels among any specific working group.

In its response tabled in parliament, the Government supported 15 of the committee’s recommendations, noted 14 and partially supported one.

Mines Minister Bill Marmion said it supported recommendations around gathering more data on the mental health impacts of fly-in, fly-out work.

“One of the things that actually surprised me is the report didn’t come with any data at all,” Mr Marmion said.

“So you can’t compare the mining industry with any other industry.

“We recognise the cohort of people that work in the mining industry are a vulnerable cohort: male and in the age group that mainly they pick up.”

The Government’s response said it has funded the development of a case management system for the Office of the Coroner for 2016-17.

That would create a single, searchable database of suicides for specific occupations, including FIFO workers.

But it would not force mining groups to acknowledge “their workforce is vulnerable to suicide”, noting FIFO work was a potential suicide factor in conjunction with other life stressors such as mental illness and alcohol and drug use.

No mental health code of practice just for mining industry

The Government will invite the Mental Health Commission and the Mining Industry Advisory Committee to work on strengthening existing codes of practice instead of creating a new one for FIFO workers.

“We’re looking at it but we already have codes of practice, a general code of practice,” Mr Marmion said.

“We’ve just got to make sure the current codes are reviewed and, you know, it’s a doubling up.”

The committee recommended a code of practice for FIFO workers address rostering issues, “with the aim of encouraging even-time rosters, and rosters that support mental health and wellbeing such as two weeks on, one week off”.

The Government said “some anecdotal evidence supports this recommendation, while other anecdotal evidence indicates some workers prefer the financial benefits of longer rosters”.

It said existing codes of practice would be reviewed to ensure they addressed the impact of fatigue.

The Government said it would also do more work on recommendations around mental health training programs, “mental health literacy” for FIFO workers and their families, and policies to manage suicide or suicide attempts.

Unions condemn Government for ‘abandoning FIFO workers’

Chamber of Minerals and Energy (CME) acting chief executive Nicole Roocke welcomed the Government’s response.

“We consider the approach to refer the matters to things like the the Mining Industry Advisory Committee and the Mental Health Commission will see action happen on the specific recommendations,” Ms Roocke said.

The chamber also supported the move to review existing codes of practice.

“CME doesn’t support the development of an additional code of practice to specifically address these concerns and these issues,” Ms Roocke said.

“What we do support is looking at existing codes of practice, whether these be looking at [re]working ours, or looking at the other breadth of codes of practice that do exist.”

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and the Electrical Trades Union said they were most concerned about the refusal to establish a FIFO Code of Practice.

“It underpins the integrity of all the other recommendations, and without it, weakens the 14 recommendations that the Government has agreed to,” CFMEU State Secretary Mick Buchan said.

“The mental health and well being of workers should always come first and we will continue to campaign to improve this work practice for the benefit of FIFO workers and their families.”

This article first appeared on ‘ABC’ on 13 October 2015.

The suicide of another police officer on Monday, who is also understood to have suffered from mental illness yet was armed with a service revolver, is expected to intensify pressure on Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton to act.

Force command has been accused of being slow to react to the increasingly erratic behaviour of several officers, who were deemed fit to work and permitted to carry firearms.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the force had strict policies to the ability of members to carry personal firearms which take into account, health, wellbeing and welfare issues.

“Members are monitored very closely in relation to carrying a firearm. We are not complacent and continually review these policies to ensure they remain robust, and we look for opportunities to improve,” the spokeswoman said.

Senior Constable Tim Baker, 44, is understood to have suffered serious mental health issues for almost a decade before he killed Vlado Micetic during a routine intercept in Windsor in 2013. He was charged with one count of murder last week, after shooting Mr Micetic three times in the chest and claiming he acted in self-defence.

Mr Baker took extended leave on several occasions because of his illness, and was only allowed to resume work after approval from a Victoria Police psychiatrist.

But less than a year before the shooting, it is believed Mr Baker was involved in a serious altercation with another officer during Operational Safety Tactics and Training that should have set off alarms, according to colleagues of the accused man.

During firearms training, an instructor placed a hand on Mr Baker to assist with his stance. According to a source, Mr Baker responded: “take your hands off me or I’ll f…ing kill you”.

Two former colleagues have expressed serious concern that Mr Baker was subsequently issued with a gun and permitted to work alone.

“He should not have been operational and he definitely should not have been working by himself. It’s a failure of the department and Tim’s supervisors, they’re the ones who should also be held accountable for this tragedy,” said a former colleague.

Another officer, who worked briefly with Mr Baker, said his mental health issues were widely known and he had received professional help.

Police Association secretary Ron Iddles refused to discuss Mr Baker’s case, but said more than 200 officers had gone on sick leave over the past year because of depression and post-traumatic stress.

As Victoria Police force grapples with the issue of mental health and an entrenched history of “suffering in silence”, Mr Iddles urged more members to seek help when they were unable to cope with the demands of the job.

The state coroner is presently investigating at least four police suicides, including the death of an information technology specialist at the Victoria Police Centre in June, who did not carry a weapon as part of his daily duties, but was issued with a gun by the transit safety division.

The man shot himself at a Rosanna primary school, where his estranged partner is believed to have worked.

A senior police officer said the man should never have been given the weapon .

“The force hasn’t always been great at dealing with (the) mental health or stability of its people. Obviously the job’s stressful and people handle it different ways, and there’s definitely some coppers who shouldn’t have guns.”

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the force had appointed Deakin University to assist with a workplace analysis, while also undertaking an internal review of the welfare work and support it provides to officers.

“The Chief Commissioner has commissioned an external review to look at what more Victoria Police can do to best manage the issues surrounding mental health to ensure that going forward we deal with these issues in the best way possible,” the spokeswoman said.

This article first appeared on ‘The Age’ on 13 October 2015.