UBC Mental Health Awareness Club

Do you find that you tend to eat more when you’re stressed? People who do are classified as an emotional eaters – that is, you eat in order to satisfy your mood, and not your hunger. Why is this so? Well, when you are stressed out, the hormone Cortisol is released, which is associated which our sympathetic system’s “Fight-or-Flight response.” This response is activated when we are faced with a stressor, such as that exam you have tomorrow that you feel nowhere near ready for; this activation is quite energy-depleting, which is why we feel much more hungry when we are under stress.

But there are ways to overcome our tendency for emotional or stress eating. Engaging in healthier activities that you enjoy – going for a walk, having a nice long bath, drinking a soothing cup of tea, watching an episode of your favourite TV show (the list goes on and on) – have shown to give you the same satisfaction that eating more food would. In other words, if you feel like you are beginning to crack while under a ton of pressure, do something that you usually love to do in your spare time. It is a much healthier alternative than scarfing down a whole bag of chips (or Krabby Patties!) for a quick-fix to an important problem that all university students face. Perhaps if we all followed this, the Freshman 15 wouldn’t be such a threat.

Sources:

http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/111609p38.shtml

http://www.helpguide.org/life/emotional_eating_stress_cravings.htm

There has been a long-standing question of whether or not bipolar disorders are underdiagnosed or overdiagnosed. Some researchers suggest bipolar disorders are overdiagnosed due to the “bipolar spectrum” problem of including a variety of symptoms and cases under the classification of bipolar disorders (Mazza et al., 2013). However, a recent study has suggested bipolar disorders are underdiagnosed in those experiencing depressive episodes (Bschor et al., 2012); this may be an important area of research to consider in further studies of bipolar disorder prevalence.

Perhaps a problem in this type of research is the nature of the disorders themselves. A person experiencing symptoms of depression may also occasionally experience periods of uncharacteristic euphoria (though perhaps not appearing abnormal for the experiencer, and certainly not unwelcome), which may be mistaken as a sign that the battle with depression is close to an end. Especially if such a person is not receiving treatment, one might question the likelihood that bipolar-like symptoms would be considered in the first place. After all, getting a break from those dark caves of life is nothing short of fantastic, and seldom do people complain to their doctors about feeling too amazing.

The debate of overdiagnosis/underdiagnosis will surely continue as the struggle to find better methods of identifying and treating bipolar disorders remains a contested issue in the literature. While such debates continue, further education about bipolar disorders is certainly called for, as there are many misconceptions surrounding it. For more education on assessing bipolar disorders, the following link can provide some insight to some of the ways clinicians and researchers look at bipolar disorders: http://www.crestbd.ca/assessment-scales/

References

Bschor, T., Angst, J., Azorin, J. M., Bowden, C. L., Perugi, G., Vieta, E., . . . Krüger, S. (2012). Are bipolar disorders underdiagnosed in patients with depressive episodes? Results of the multicenter BRIDGE screening study in Germany. Journal of Affective Disorders, 142(1-3), 45-52. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22954812

Mazza, M., Di Nicola, M., Janiri, L., & Bria, P. (2013). To be or not to be a bipolar disorder patient: Problems with diagnosis. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 201(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182901de0

A study from the University of York in Britain suggests that acupuncture may be as effective at treating depression as counselling.

Out of the 755 people recruited for the study, 302 were randomly assigned to receive weekly acupuncture sessions, 302 to receive weekly counselling sessions, and the remaining 151 received usual care only. On a depression scale of 0 to 27, on average, participants had a score of 16 at the outset (considered moderately severe depression). After 3 months, the acupuncture participants had an average score of 9, the counselling participants had a score of 11, while the usual care group had a score of 13.

As a higher depression score indicates more severe depression, these results suggest that participants who received acupuncture or counselling saw larger improvements in 3 months than those with neither treatment, with the benefits persisting for 3 months after the treatments ceased.

However, as the majority of participants were still taking antidepressants during the study, researchers cautioned that counselling and acupuncture should not be used as a replacement for medication. Nonetheless, the study sheds light on the different alternative options available to people for treating depression.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/an-alternative-acupuncture-as-good-as-counselling-for-depression-study-finds/article14541329/

Psychological scientists at the University of California have found a strong link between daily-life stresses to long-term mental health.

The main questions they were trying to investigate was whether or not emotional experiences accumulate to cause overall detrimental effects, or if they make us stronger and prepare us for future distress.

Using surveys, the researchers examined the relationship between daily negative emotions and mental health outcomes ten years later.

They found that negative emotions predicted psychological distress, with symptoms such as feeling worthless, hopeless, nervous and/or restless, and diagnosis of an emotional disorder, including anxiety or depression.

This paper’s strength lies in its large sample of participants with diverse backgrounds and ages, consisting of 711 subjects, both men and women, ranged 25 – 74.

According to the researchers, these results indicate that mental health outcomes are not solely affected by major life events, but also depend on minor emotional experiences such as daily stress.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130402150159.htm

Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found distinct differences in brain functioning between children at risk of developing schizophrenia and those who are not. In this study, fMRI was performed on 42 subjects aged 9 to 18, half of which had relatives with schizophrenia and half of which did not. Individuals with a first degree family member with schizophrenia have an 8-fold to 12-fold increase in risk of developing schizophrenia. The participants played a game where they had to identify a specific image out of a lineup of images thought to be emotionally captivating, such as cute or scary animals, while scanning for changes in brain activity.

It was found that individuals with a family history of schizophrenia had hyperactivity in the circuitry involved in emotion and higher order decision making, suggesting that the task was stressing out these brain areas. Hyperactivation may eventually damage these specific areas until they become hypoactivated, thereby reducing their function.

The researchers believe that early interventions for preventing schizophrenia onset could be as simple as teaching individualized strategies of stress coping mechanisms, making at risk children and adolescents less vulnerable to schizophrenia and also other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130322174343.htm