Family History May Decide How Depression Reshapes a Child's Attention to Faces
A team at Binghamton University tracked 242 children and their mothers for two years, using eye tracking to measure which faces — neutral, happy, sad, or angry — held each child's attention. Among children whose mothers had experienced major depression, the children's own rising symptoms were linked to attention increasingly drawn to sad faces; for children without that family background, rising symptoms were instead tied to paying less attention to happy faces, which the researchers describe as an erosion of a protective factor. Led by Kelly Gair and institute director Brandon Gibb, and published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, the study is the first to trace how attention patterns and depressive symptoms predict each other over time in children.
Source: ScienceDaily (Binghamton University study in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science)
Mindfulness-Based Therapy Shows Promise for People Still Depressed After Standard Talking Therapies
The RESPOND trial, run across 20 NHS sites, enrolled more than 200 patients whose depression had persisted after NHS talking therapies, offering half of them eight weekly group sessions of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy over video while the rest continued usual care. Six months later, the mindfulness group showed larger improvements in depression symptoms, with an effect comparable to antidepressant medication and a delivery cost below £100 per person. Led by Professor Thorsten Barnhofer of the University of Surrey, sponsored by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust with NIHR funding, and published in Lancet Psychiatry, the findings offer a potential new pathway for a group that accounts for roughly half of depression cases in NHS Talking Therapies.
Source: Devon Partnership NHS Trust (study in Lancet Psychiatry)
A Blood Molecule Could One Day Predict Who Benefits From an SSRI
Researchers led by Circular Genomics scientists and Madhukar H. Trivedi of UT Southwestern measured blood levels of CDR1as, a brain-derived circular RNA, in patients starting the SSRI sertraline across two clinical trials. Patients who had not responded after eight weeks tended to have higher starting levels of the molecule, while those who improved began with lower levels; the signal did not predict placebo response or response to bupropion, but it held for other SSRIs including fluoxetine, citalopram, and escitalopram. Published in Molecular Psychiatry, the early-stage work points toward reducing the trial-and-error process that fewer than half of first-time antidepressant users currently escape.
Source: PsyPost (study in Molecular Psychiatry)
A team at Binghamton University tracked 242 children and their mothers for two years, using eye tracking to measure which faces — neutral, happy, sad, or angry — held each child's attention. Among children whose mothers had experienced major depression, the children's own rising symptoms were linked to attention increasingly drawn to sad faces; for children without that family background, rising symptoms were instead tied to paying less attention to happy faces, which the researchers describe as an erosion of a protective factor. Led by Kelly Gair and institute director Brandon Gibb, and published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, the study is the first to trace how attention patterns and depressive symptoms predict each other over time in children.
Source: ScienceDaily (Binghamton University study in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science)
Mindfulness-Based Therapy Shows Promise for People Still Depressed After Standard Talking Therapies
The RESPOND trial, run across 20 NHS sites, enrolled more than 200 patients whose depression had persisted after NHS talking therapies, offering half of them eight weekly group sessions of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy over video while the rest continued usual care. Six months later, the mindfulness group showed larger improvements in depression symptoms, with an effect comparable to antidepressant medication and a delivery cost below £100 per person. Led by Professor Thorsten Barnhofer of the University of Surrey, sponsored by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust with NIHR funding, and published in Lancet Psychiatry, the findings offer a potential new pathway for a group that accounts for roughly half of depression cases in NHS Talking Therapies.
Source: Devon Partnership NHS Trust (study in Lancet Psychiatry)
A Blood Molecule Could One Day Predict Who Benefits From an SSRI
Researchers led by Circular Genomics scientists and Madhukar H. Trivedi of UT Southwestern measured blood levels of CDR1as, a brain-derived circular RNA, in patients starting the SSRI sertraline across two clinical trials. Patients who had not responded after eight weeks tended to have higher starting levels of the molecule, while those who improved began with lower levels; the signal did not predict placebo response or response to bupropion, but it held for other SSRIs including fluoxetine, citalopram, and escitalopram. Published in Molecular Psychiatry, the early-stage work points toward reducing the trial-and-error process that fewer than half of first-time antidepressant users currently escape.
Source: PsyPost (study in Molecular Psychiatry)