Forensics Talk

Fish Oil May Reduced Risk Of Psychotic Disorders In High Risk Individuals

Medical News Today

Article Date: 03 Feb 2010 - 7:00 PST

  " A new study suggests that people at very high risk of developing psychotic disorders appear less likely to to do so after taking fish oil for three months.

The study was conducted by Dr G Paul Amminger from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, and the Orygen Youth Health Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues, and is reported in the February issue of the JAMA/Archives journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

As Amminger and colleagues mentioned in their background information, although there is a lot of controversy surrounding the use of current antipsychotic medication to try and prevent psychotic disorders, there is evidence that early treatment in schizophrenia and other psychoses has been linked to better outcomes.

There was also some evidence that long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) could be be beneficial for schizophrenia and a range of other psychotic conditions, and noted that individuals with schizophrenia may have an underlying dysfunction in fatty acid metabolism.

So, given that omega-3 PUFAs are generally considered good for health and have no clinically relevant adverse side effects, they thought it would be worth investigating whether they might help prevent psychosis.

Their results showed that that individuals at very high risk of developing psychosis seemed less likely to develop psychotic disorders after taking a 12-week course of fish oil capsules that contained long-chain omega-3 PUFAs. . . " Read More

"Brain Activity Determines Risk Or Resilience In Manic Depression"

Medical News Today

Article Date: 24 Apr 2009 - 8:00 PDT

     "Psychiatrists in London are a step closer to personalising treatment and prevention for manic depressive illness - also known as bipolar disorder. Their research has shown why some people are more at risk and why others are more resilient to genetic and environmental factors underlying bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder occurs when the brain cannot regulate mood effectively leading to mood swing . . .
Speaking at a meeting of the Biochemical Society in London, Dr Sophia Frangou said, "We know a lot about what makes people vulnerable to bipolar disorder, but most people who are at risk remain well," she said. "We wanted to find out what keeps them well . . . "We found that genetic risk to bipolar disorder was associated with overactivity within brain regions that process emotion, . . . " Read More

"New Risk Factors For Teen Self Harm"

Medical News Today

Article Date: 19 May 2009 - 8:00 PDT

     "A lack of emotional intelligence leads to poor coping strategies and seriously increases the likelihood of self-harm in teenagers, claims a study published yesterday, in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology. . .
Dr Petrides said: "People who turn to self harm claim to do so to regulate their emotions, which indicates that they cannot manage their feelings in a healthy way. We wanted to better understand the underlying psychological issues that lead adolescents to harm themselves."

Of the 490 students who took part, 132 (27 per cent) reported having deliberately self harmed, either hitting or cutting themselves or taking an overdose of recreational drugs. 65 per cent of self harmers were found to have mild to severe symptoms of depression. . . " Read More

"Children Who Are Depressed, Anxious Or Aggressive In First Grade Risk Being Victimized Later On

Medical News

Article Date: 15 May 2009 - 3:00 PDT

     "Children entering first grade with signs of depression and anxiety or excessive aggression are at risk of being chronically victimized by their classmates by third grade. That's the finding of a new longitudinal study that appears in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Victoria, looked at more than 400 Canadian children beginning in the autumn of first grade. The children were asked about their experiences being bullied (such as being hit, pushed, and shoved, or being teased and excluded from play). Their teachers were asked to report on the children's symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as on their displays of physical aggression. The researchers returned at the end of first, second, and third grades, at which time they asked the children and their teachers to report on the same issues.

Most children (73 percent) showed few symptoms of depression and anxiety over the three years. But 7 percent of the children showed continuously high levels. The remaining 20 percent showed moderate symptoms at first, but these increased over time. Victimization by depressed and anxious children wasn't evident until third grade. . ." Read More

"Adolescents At Risk Of Developing Psychosis Benefit From Early And Network-Oriented Care

Medical News Today

Article Date: 15 May 2009 - 3:00 PDT

     "Family and network oriented, stress-reducing care improves level of overall functioning and mental health in adolescents at risk of developing psychosis, suggests a recent Finnish study.

Jorvi Early psychosis Recognition and Intervention (JERI) project at Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH), Jorvi Hospital, Finland, is a project with an early intervention team for adolescents at risk of developing first-episode psychosis. As developing psychosis has been suggested to be a result of a combination of acute life stressors and trait-like vulnerability to psychosis, the intervention is based on the idea of multiprofessional, need-adapted, community-, family- and network-oriented, stress-reducing, overall functioning supporting and low-threshold care. . ." Read More

Forensic Psychology Research: Suicide By Cop

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(Photo Credit: Volker Neumann)

The phenomenon of suicide by cop (SBC) is attracting an increasing amount of empirical interest within forensic psychology. As a case in point, police and forensic psychologist Kris Mohandie, Ph.D. has just had a paper published entitled "Suicide by Cop Among Officer-Involved Shooting Cases" in the latest edition of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

In defining SBC Dr Mohandie refers to the process by which "a suicidal individual engages in actual or apparently life threatening behavior in an effort to compel law enforcement to use deadly force against them". With this definition in mind, Dr Mohandie and his colleagues analyzed over 700 North American officer-involved shootings which involved reviewing police reports, witness statements, crime scene photographs, videotapes and news reports. Among the authors findings were that 36 percent of the shootings in the sample could be classified as SBC.

For a more detailed summary of the findings, Click Here To read Dr Mohandie's published research abstract. Read More