By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News EditorReviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 7, 2011

A provocative new study finds that limiting television exposure in our children is not enough to stop its influence.

According to Harvard Medical School researchers, indirect media exposure — such as having friends who watch a lot of TV — might be even more damaging to a teenager’s body image.

Researchers examined the link between media consumption and eating disorders among adolescent girls in Fiji.

What they found was surprising. the study’s subjects did not even need to have a television at home to see raised risk levels of eating disorder symptoms.

In fact, by far the biggest factor for eating disorders was how many of a subject’s friends and schoolmates had access to TV. By contrast, researchers found that direct forms of exposure, like personal or parental viewing, did not have an independent impact, when factors like urban location, body shape and other influences were taken into account.

It appeared that changing attitudes within a group that had been exposed to television were a more powerful factor than actually watching the programs themselves. in fact, higher peer media exposure was linked to a 60 percent increase in a girl’s odds of having a high level of eating disorder symptoms, independently of her own viewing.

Lead author Anne Becker, M.D., Ph.D., vice chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said this was the first study to attempt to quantify the role of social networks in spreading the negative consequences of media consumption on eating disorders.

“our findings suggest that social network exposure is not just a minor influence on eating pathology here, but rather, is the exposure of concern,” she said.

“If you are a parent and you are concerned about limiting cultural exposure, it simply isn’t going to be enough to switch off the TV. If you are going to think about interventions, it would have to be at a community or peer-based level.”

Becker hopes the paper will encourage debate about responsible programming and the regulation of media content to prevent children from secondhand exposure.

“up until now, it has been very difficult to get people who produce media as entertainment to come to the table and think about how they might ensure that their products are not harmful to children,” she said.

This is Becker’s second study of media’s impact in Fiji, an ideal location for broadcast media research because of the recent arrival of television, in the 1990s, and the significant regional variations in exposure to TV, the Internet and print media. some remote areas in the recent study still did not have electricity, cell phone reception, television or the Internet when the data were collected in 2007.

Her first study found a rise in eating disorder symptoms among adolescent girls following the introduction of broadcast television to the island nation in 1995.

What makes Fiji a particularly interesting case is that traditional culture prizes a robust body shape, in sharp contrast to the image presented by Western television shows such as “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Seinfeld” and “Melrose place,” which were quite popular in Fiji when television debuted there in the 1990s.

Girls would see actresses as role models, Becker said, and began noting how a slender body shape was often accompanied by success in those shows. This perception appears to have been one of the factors leading to a rise in eating pathology among the Fijian teenagers.

But until now, it was not known how much of this effect came from an individual’s social network.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, has studied the spread of health problems through social networks.

“it shouldn’t be that surprising to us, even though it is intriguing, that the indirect effects of media are greater,” Christakis said.

“most people aren’t paying attention to the media, but they are paying attention to what their friends say about what’s in the media. It’s a kind of filtration process that takes place by virtue of our social networks.”

Becker said that although the study focused on Fijian schoolgirls, remote from the US, it warrants concern and further investigation of the health impact on other populations.

Source: Harvard Medical School

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News EditorReviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on December 10, 2010

Fetal development is influenced by a wealth of factors, including maternal depression. University of Michigan researchers have found that more severe depression in mothers during pregnancy was linked to higher levels of stress hormones in their children at birth and other neurological and behavioral differences.

“The two possibilities are that they are either more sensitive to stress and respond more vigorously to it, or that they are less able to shut down their stress response,” says the study’s lead investigator, Delia M. Vazquez, M.D.

The analysis, which appears online ahead of print publication in Infant Behavior and Development, examined links between maternal depression and the development of an infants’ neuroendocrine system, which controls the body’s stress response and impacts moods and emotions.

At two weeks old, researchers found that the children of depressed mothers had decreased muscle tone compared to those born to mothers who weren’t depressed, yet they adjusted more quickly to stimuli like a bell, rattle or light – a sign of neurological maturity.

“It’s difficult to say to what extent these differences are good or bad, or what impact they might have over a longer time frame,” says the study’s lead author, Sheila Marcus, M.D., clinical director of U-M’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section.

“We’re just beginning to look at these differences as part of a whole collection of data points that could be risk markers. These in turn would identify women who need attention during pregnancy or mother/infant pairs who might benefit from postpartum programs known to support healthy infant development through mom/baby relationships.”

The longer-term question for researchers is the degree to which the hormonal environment in the uterus may act as a catalyst for processes that alter infant gene expression, neuroendocrine development and brain circuitry – potentially setting the stage for increased risk for later behavioral and psychological disorders.

While cautioning against alarm, the researchers recommended that mothers experiencing symptoms of depression during pregnancy talk to a therapist.

They also noted that interventions aimed at mother-child bonding after birth can act as countermeasures, stimulating children’s neurological development and lowering the possible effects of stress hormone production early in life.

Postpartum depression is one of the most common complications of pregnancy and up to 1 in 5 women may experience symptoms of depression during pregnancy.

Along with tracking the mothers’ depressive symptoms throughout gestation, U-M researchers took samples of umbilical cord blood right after birth. They found elevated levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) in babies born to mothers with depression. ACTH tells the adrenal gland to produce the stress hormone cortisol.

Cortisol levels, however, were similar in children of mothers with varying levels of depression, likely an indication of the high level of stress associated with the birth itself, the researchers note.

Source: University of Michigan

By Jessica Ward Jones, MD, MPH Associate News EditorReviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 24, 2010

“Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”  For schizophrenia?  perhaps.  New research suggests that aspirin may be of benefit in reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a serious psychological disorder characterized by impairments in thinking that can lead to delusions, difficulty in determining reality, and hallucinations.  Sufferers are at high risk for substance abuse and suicide.  up to 2.2 million Americans suffer from the disease. 

There is no single known cause for schizophrenia, but chemical and structural abnormalities of the brain as well as genetics appear to play a role.  Treatments include antipsychotics and psychosocial therapy.

Prior research noted an improvement of symptoms in schizophrenia when patients were taking anti-inflammatories such as celexicob, a cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor.  these results suggest that inflammation may play a role in causing some of the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Dr. Laan Grobbee and his team of researchers in the Netherlands evaluated whether using a medication to treat inflammation might improve the symptoms of schizophrenia.  They used aspirin as an anti-inflammatory because cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Grobbee conducted a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study with 80 patients who had had schizophrenia for fewer than five years.  Patients were randomly assigned to either 1000mg of aspirin or placebo, and treated for three months.

Patients who required antipsychotic medications (70 percent) continued to be treated with olanzapine, clozapine, or risperidone.  All patients were given a proton-pump inhibitor as a precaution to protect them from any possible stomach irritation due to the aspirin.

The Posititive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was used to measure the change in symptoms at the beginning of the treatment and after three months.

After three months, the patients treated with aspirin showed a significant reduction in the PANSS (4.86 points) compared to the patients treated with placebo (1.57 points). 

Cognitive function was also assessed, and there did not appear to be any negative effects from the aspirin.

These results suggest that there may indeed be an inflammatory component of schizophrenia that could perhaps be responsive to anti-inflammatory agents such as aspirin.  Grobbee noted an even greater improvement in patients with altered immune function.

The authors suggest that aspirin may also theoretically work in treatment of schizophrenia through other mechanisms such as the N-methyl d-aspartate receptor, another active area of research.

Given recent research showing schizophrenics at increased risk for cardiovascular disease and other high-risk metabolic conditions such as defects in insulin function, aspirin may be of benefit in more than one way.

It is unclear if aspirin therapy would be effective in someone suffering from the disease for many years.  perhaps after a long period of untreated inflammation, aspirin would be of little effect.

Future research in this area could include larger trials to determine how many patients might be responsive to therapy, studies to determine what other (if any) anti-inflammatory agents might be of benefit, and research to determine whether therapy might be helpful in patients with a long term diagnosis.

Source: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry