HealthDay (11/15, Preidt) reports, “People are more likely to be able to identify symptoms of depression in women than men,” according to a study published Nov. 14 in the journal PLoS One. The study “also found that skepticism about psychiatry and anti-scientific attitudes influenced people’s views about depression.” Foreign sources covering the story are the Daily Telegraph (UK) (11/15, Adams) and the Daily Mail (UK) (11/15).

Related Links:

— “Study Reveals Gender Gap in Spotting Depression,”Robert Preidt, HealthDay, November 14, 2012.

The New York Times (11/14, F2, Carrns, Subscription Publication) reports, “About a quarter of American adults suffer from some type of mental health problem each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and six percent suffer severe ailments, like…major depression.” For that reason, “taking periodic stock of your emotional well-being can help identify warning signs of common ailments like depression or anxiety. Such illnesses are highly treatable, especially when they are identified in their early stages, before they get so severe that they precipitate some sort of personal — and perhaps financial — crisis.” The Times quotes psychiatrist Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, editor in chief of Psychiatric News, published by the American Psychiatric Association, who said that having a “mental health checkup” is “just as important as having a physical checkup.”

Related Links:

— “A Regular Checkup Is Good for the Mind as Well as the Body, “Ann Carrns, The New York Times, November 13, 2012.

The Los Angeles Times (11/14, Morin) reports, “Soccer players who repeatedly strike the ball with their heads may be causing measurable damage to their brains, even if they never suffer a concussion, according to a” research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “By examining brain scans of a dozen professional soccer players from Germany, researchers found a pattern of damage that strongly resembled that of patients with mild traumatic brain injury [TBI].”

HealthDay (11/14, Gordon) reports that the study’s senior author “noted that the researchers don’t know what caused the changes in the white matter of the soccer players, only that there were changes. ‘It could be from heading the ball, or due to impact of hitting other players or from sudden acceleration,’ she said.”

MedPage Today (11/14, Neale) reports, “As an alternate explanation,” the study authors “noted that ‘soccer players showed increased axial diffusivity in the absence of increased radial diffusivity limited to the corpus callosum, possibly resulting from specialized training or neuroinflammation.'”

Related Links:

— “Soccer players may injure brains when ‘heading’ ball, study says,”Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2012.

Psychiatric News (11/8), a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, reports that a study published online Nov. 6 in the Archives of General Psychiatry “identifies factors that can signal” suicide risk in young people with bipolar disorder (BD). After tracking “413 youths (average age, 12.6) with a diagnosis of” BD for about five years, researchers found that “the strongest indicators of a later suicide attempt were severity of depression at intake and a family history of depression.” But, “after intake, more time with threshold depression, the presence of substance use disorder or mixed mood symptoms, and more time receiving outpatient psychosocial services, all indicated greater risk as well.”

Related Links:

— “Study Identifies Suicide Risk in Youth With Bipolar Disorder,Psychiatric News Alert , November 7, 2012.

Medscape (11/8, Helwick) reports, “Children and adolescents may be ‘overlabeled’ as being suicidal by school authorities,” according to research presented Oct. 20 at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2012 National Conference and Exhibition. After examining 581 records, “investigators at the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in New York City came to this conclusion after they found that fewer than one half of children referred by schools to the emergency department (ED) for suicidal behavior received psychiatric treatment.”