Here’s a roundup of news in the areas of mental health and marriage that struck me this month.
1. Adolescent Mental Health When Father Leaves
Researchers following kids who were about 12 when their fathers left the family found that these children, five years later found that at first the children suffered from depression and anxiety. By nine months later, the depression lifted but not the stress. Interestingly, the teens also worried about their mothers even though they were still living with them. There were various theories floated as to why these particular feelings were taking hold of the children at these points in time. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/304176.php
2. How Loss of Sleep Disturbs Our Ability to Regulate Our Emotions.
If you have noticed yourself over-reacting when you haven’t had enough sleep, it’s not just “your emotions”; there’s a biochemical reason for that and researchers have pinned it down. The study had people take tests first after a good night’s sleep and second, after deprivation. The fascinating finding was that sleep deprivation caused people to perceive emotionally neutral images in a negative way. In another test, subjects were distracted by both neutral and negative images when they lost a night’s sleep but people with a good night’s sleep were only distracted by negative images.
The lead researcher stated that poor sleep: “can lead to biased cognitive processing and poor judgment as well as anxiety.” http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/303921.php
3. How to Improve Mental Health in 2016
The author gathered information from a number of studies and found the following surprising suggestions:
a. The Mediterranean Diet improves a sense of well-being and improves cognitive function. In addition, five fruits and vegetables a day led to better well-being. (Now I didn’t read the original study but I’m wondering if maybe the sample of people just felt good because they were eating healthy rather than that the foods actually made a neurological difference.)
b. Outdoor activities such as walking or gardening were just as effective in fighting depression as antidepressants. (Much as I don’t care for medication, I’d still be interested to know how the researchers controlled for the fact that the subjects were “thinking” they were taking care of themselves as opposed to the neurobiological results of the activity.)
c. Australian researchers found that people getting less than 5 hours of sleep a night were at high risk for mental illness.
d. Yoga, mindfulness, and smiling (even when you’re not happy) were shown to reduce stress. How about that one!
e. Do volunteer work or take up a hobby to give yourself a sense of meaning and develop a fuller sense of your own identity
f. Have others support you and give you feedback to stick to your goals for the new year — but don’t ask yourself to take unreasonably large steps.
All this from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/286428.php?page=2
4. Sometimes Supportive, Sometimes Unsupportive Couples Are Not As Healthy
The New York Times reported a series of studies on whether being married is better than it’s opposite. Not so simple! For couples in supportive marriages, it definitely is, but for couples where the spouse can be supportive in one instance and not in another, that ambivalence leads to poor health. In one of the studies, that showed itself in poor blood pressure readings; in another, in poorer heart health. That makes a case for counseling because we all know that divorce is also highly stressful.