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Healthy people are also emotionally effected by what we see and the images we remember. Velikova explains, "if we visually remember an image from an unpleasant interaction with our boss, this can cause an increased level of anxiety about our work and demotivation." There is great interest in ways to combat such everyday negative emotional responses through imagery training. But she warns, "this is a challenging task and requires a flexible approach. Each day we face different problems and a therapist teaches us how to identify topics and strategies for imagery exercises." To find out if we can train ourselves to use imagery techniques and optimize our emotional state, Velikova and co-workers turned to 30 healthy volunteers. During a two-day workshop the volunteers learnt a series of imagery techniques. They learnt how to cope with negative emotions from past events through imagery transformation, how to use positive imagery for future events or goals, and techni...

The study, involving hundreds of people, found benefits for mental health of being able to see birds, shrubs and trees around the home, whether people lived in urban or more leafy suburban neighbourhoods. The study, which surveyed mental health in over 270 people from different ages, incomes and ethnicities, also found that those who spent less time out of doors than usual in the previous week were more likely to report they were anxious or depressed. After conducting extensive surveys of the number of birds in the morning and afternoon in Milton Keynes, Bedford and Luton, the study found that lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress were associated with the number of birds people could see in the afternoon. The academics studied afternoon bird numbers -- which tend to be lower than birds generally seen in the morning -- because are more in keeping with the number of birds that people are likely to see in their neighbourhood on a daily basis. In the study, common types o...

In the study, published Feb. 28, 2017 in the  Journal of Clinical Psychiatry , Emil Coccaro, MD, and colleagues analyzed data from more than 9,200 subjects in the National Comorbidity Survey, a national survey of mental health in the United States. They found that as the severity of aggressive behavior increased, so did levels of daily and weekly substance use. The findings suggest that a history of frequent, aggressive behavior is a risk factor for later substance abuse, and effective treatment of aggression could delay or even prevent substance abuse in young people. IED affects as many as 16 million Americans, more than bipolar disorder and schizophrenia combined. It is often first diagnosed in adolescents, some of whom are as young as 11, years before substance abuse problems usually develop. IED runs in families and is thought to have a significant genetic component, although Coccaro said people tend to treat it as a social-behavioral issue instead of as a true neurobiolog...

The research team, led by Renee Goodwin, PhD, in the Department of Epidemiology, analyzed data from the National Household Survey on Drug Use, an annual cross-sectional study of approximately 497, 000 Americans, ages 12 and over. The prevalence of past 12-month depression was examined annually among current (past 12-month), former (not past 12-month), and lifetime non-smokers from 2005 to 2013. The researchers further analyzed the data by age, gender, and household income. "The prevalence of depression prevalence increased and remains higher among current smokers overall, but the rate of the increase among former and never smokers was even more prominent," noted Dr. Goodwin. Striking temporal changes emerged by age, gender and income. Specifically, depression increased significantly, from 16 percent to 22 percent, among current smokers aged 12 to17, and the prevalence was consistently more than twice as high as that of never smokers. The increase in depression also rose f...