Various factors influence mental health

'Huge difference'

The authors described the finding as "remarkable".

Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, they said improving diets could be a cost-effective way of reducing crime in the community and also reducing the prison population.

Mr Gesch said: "The supplements just provided the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids found in a good diet which the inmates should get anyway. Yet the improvement was huge."

He added: "This approach needs to be re-tested but looks to be cheap, highly effective and humane."

He said that given that nutrients were the building blocks of the brain and its associated structures, it was highly likely that a good diet would have a direct impact on behaviour.

The study was organised by Natural Justice, a research charity set up in 1991 to investigate the social and physical causes of crime.

Its chairman Bishop Hugh Montefiore of Birmingham, said: "The study is of great importance not only to those who work inside prisons but also more widely in the community."

He added: "There are many causes of anti-social behaviour. But our project has shown that an important factor is the lack of proper nutrition.

"The reduction of disciplinary offences by 25% among those who took the supplements cannot be shrugged off as insignificant."

Strong evidence

Sir David Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons, urged officials to consider the findings.

"It must make sense for the prison service to explore every avenue that might enable every prisoner to live a useful and law abiding life.

"If healthy eating is part of a healthy lifestyle, and a healthy lifestyle is a crime-free lifestyle, I hope that they will look seriously at exploiting the evidence presented to them."

Ron Blackburn, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, said: "Efforts to reduce offending usually require major resources.

"This research programme promises to have an impact on antisocial behaviour with minimal intervention and deserves full support."

You can read the original at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_2063000/2063117.stm if it's still there.

6 Hours of Sleep May Be Inadequate

Modest Sleep Deprivation Linked to Inflammation, Lowered Performance

By  Paula Moyer

June 25, 2002 -- Eight hours of sleep is a luxury; six is enough to get you through, right? Wrong.

According to experts, getting just six hours of sleep a night is associated with increased daytime sleepiness, decreased performance, and a change in blood factors that promote the potentially dangerous process of inflammation.

Inflammation of this sort can lead to a variety of problems such as heart disease and hardening of the arteries, or atherosclerosis.

"We found that ... six ... hours of sleep is not optimal [when compared with eight]," Alexandros N. Vgontzas, MD, tells WebMD. "Two hours of sleep deprivation per night for one week is associated with increased sleepiness, decreased performance, and activation of the inflammatory system." Vgontzas, a professor of psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, is the author of a study on the effects of sleep deprivation presented at a recent medical meeting.

Most studies of the effects of sleep deprivation evaluate either total or severe sleep deprivation, allowing for less than five hours of sleep per night. Vgontzas asserts that there are few studies on the effects of modest sleep restriction, allowing for six hours of sleep, a pattern more closely resembling contemporary life.

This latest study evaluated the effects of eight hours of sleep vs. six hours of sleep on performance and blood factors associated with inflammation in 25 healthy volunteers.

The volunteers were observed in a sleep laboratory for 12 consecutive nights. The subjects were allowed to sleep for eight hours each night for the first four nights, and they were awakened at 6:30 a.m. Then, the volunteers underwent one week of sleep restriction, when they were awakened two hours earlier, at 4:30 a.m.

After just one week of sleep restriction, the volunteers had a significant increase of daytime sleepiness. Their levels of inflammatory factors jumped when they got only six hours of sleep, and they suffered from decreased vigilance and decreased ability to perform tasks that require coordination and thought.

The findings suggest that modest sleep deprivation may be associated with public safety concerns, such as traffic accidents, the investigators report. They also expressed concern that moderately sleep-deprived people may be at increased risk of major health hazards such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.

"This is an excellent study," Marc R. Blackman, MD, tells WebMD. Blackman is the chief of the laboratory of clinical investigation at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and was not involved in the study.

It would be interesting to see if these changes reversed when patients were returned to normal sleep patterns, he says.

© 2002 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.

You might still find the original at http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/1685.53303 but don't count on it.

Rejection massively reduces IQ; increases aggression

Click on the above icon for the original story presented here

Rejection massively reduces IQ

13:45 15 March 02

Emma Young, Blackpool

Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research. "It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive." Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others. In the second, people taking a personality test were given false feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded by friends and family. Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent. "These are very big effects - the biggest I've got in 25 years of research," says Baumeister. "This tells us a lot about human nature. People really seem designed to get along with others, and when you're excluded, this has significant effects." Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person's self-control. "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively." Baumeister presented his results at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK.

13:45 15 March 02

Original may still be at http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99992051

Noise

From the National Geographic in the July 2002 issue, comes this article, "Health Sounds Dangerous":

New research shows that loud noise doesn't only interfere with students' ability to hear the teacher. it also may contribute to a state of "learned helplessness," in which young children feel powerless over their environment and give up trying, putting them at greater risk for academic failure.

Tests conducted in schools near noisy airport flight paths show children performing worse on problem-solving tests than children in quieter areas.

In another study, abilities rose after noise-abatement procedures were followed.

High ceilings and hard blackboards reverberate lout voices, bells, fire alarms, and even the lower decibel "white noise" of heating and cooling systems.

Experts suggest installation of buffers such as carpet and acoustic tiles to help absorb loud noises--and increase learning.

Vocabulary

Often overlooked is the role that building vocabulary has in building a healthy mind:  As a person builds a vocabulary of words derived from Latin and Greek origins which renders precise meaning, the synapses of the brain are developed and the cortex of the brain becomes stimulated to make the person much 'brighter' and making it more easily possible to reroute some of the functions of the cerebellum.

Vocabulary is the tool set of language. It is measured by the level of precision acquired for its use. A high vocabulary generally consists mainly of words from Greek and Latin roots. A high vocabulary person uses words with precision—the right word at the right time.

Vocabulary is useful in other ways.

Vocabulary enables us to think and aids in both work and social endeavors.

With one exception, that of a salesman, the higher the vocabulary of the career or profession, the higher the earnings—the pay.

The highest vocabulary professions are:

	Managers
	Attorneys
	Doctors

Teachers generally have a lower vocabulary than managers, attorneys, and doctors. In fact, they are ranked about number 10 after other professions.

Artists generally rank at the lowest vocabulary levels and with a few notable exceptions are paid accordingly.

In a study of prisoners who tested high for inductive reasoning but low in vocabulary, it was found that there was a high correlation between the low vocabulary and aggressive behavior exhibited through assault and battery: It seems that the high inductive reasoning left the person being right, but having no other way to express it, the person resorted to physical violence to literally "stuff it down someone else's throat"; raising vocabulary levels reduces the incidence of violence by making it possible for the person with high inductive reason to express his thoughts more clearly without resorting to such tactics.

Only about 3,500 words separate the high vocabulary person from the low vocabulary person.

English vocabulary stops abruptly in the scale of difficulty. Generally speaking, people who rank in, say, the fifty-second percentile, seldom know words beyond that percentile and would not be expected to have more that a smattering of words unknown to 80% to 99% of the population.

The rate of learning is greatest just at the boundary of our vocabulary level: The technique is to learn words in sequence, not at random.

Vocabulary has a high impact as a factor in our lives.

Exercise

Exercise can do a lot of good in a short period of time.

The supply of oxygen to the brain, the toning of muscle, and the general well-being that exercise brings can be quite useful to those suffering with mental illness--not to mention everyone else.

From "Shadow Syndromes":

On the balance, the research shows that the majority of positive neurological alterations to the brain occur as the result of long-term, regular exercise. Nevertheless, some changes do occur from the first day a program is begun: neural levels of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine rise after a single workout. Mind depression and anxiety in particular can be very responsive to the effects of exercise. Exercise increases alpha-wave emissions in the right 9or "depressive") hemisphere; this is beneficial because and increase in alpha waves appears to correlate with an overall decrease in activity in that area (since alpha waves are slower than the beta waves produced when we concentrate). In short, exercise appears to slow the right side of the brain to some degree, and to stimulate the left side. That is a good thing, because the left-dominant brain is generally a tougher, more adaptable, more stress-tolerant brain. Which is what most of us desire.