Family may protect immigrants' mental health: study

news.yahoo.com — LONDON (Reuters) – Immigrants to Britain are more likely to suffer serious mental health problems than the native population, but strong family and community ties may help to protect them, researchers said on Monday. Previous studies have shown a higher risk of psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder among immigrants facing discrimination and alienation, but the new findings pointed to surprising variations among different ethnic communities. Social factors rather than genetics may explain the differences, said Jeremy Coid, a researcher at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London who led the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry . "Maybe instead of thinking about risk we need to think about what is protective," Coid said in a telephone interview. "There may be some kind of protection from living in a close community." Coid and his colleagues studied 484 immigrants aged 18 to 64 living in three inner-city neighborhoods of East London, an area that has historically been a first stop for new arrivals. All developed a mental disorder between 1996 and 2000. read more...

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The Bipolar Puzzle

nytimes.com — When Claire, a pixie-faced 6-year-old in a school uniform, heard her older brother, James, enter the family’s Manhattan apartment, she shut her bedroom door and began barricading it so swiftly and methodically that at first I didn’t understand what she was doing. She slid a basket of toys in front of the closed door, then added a wagon and a stroller laden with dolls. She hugged a small stuffed Pegasus to her chest. “Pega always protects me,” she said softly. “Pega, guard the door.”James, then 10, had been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder two years earlier. He was attending a therapeutic day school in another borough and riding more than an hour each way on a school bus, so he came home after Claire. Until James’s arrival that April afternoon, Claire was showing me sketches she had drawn of her Uglydolls and chatting about the Web site JibJab, where she likes to watch goofy videos. At the sound of James’s footsteps outside her bedroom door, she flattened herself behind the barricade. There was a sharp knock. After a few seconds, James’s angry, wounded voice barked, “Forget it,” and the steps retreated. read more...

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Bipolar Teens at Greater Risk of Substance Abuse

nlm.nih.gov — THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Teens with bipolar disorder are at greater risk of smoking and substance abuse, says a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) study that supports previous research. "This work confirms that bipolar disorder in adolescents is a huge risk factor for smoking and substance abuse, as big a risk factor as juvenile delinquency," study leader Dr. Timothy Wilens, director of substance abuse services in MGH Pediatric Psychopharmacology, said in a prepared statement. "It indicates both that young people with BPD (bipolar disorder) need to carefully be screened for smoking and for substance use and abuse and that adolescents known to abuse drugs and alcohol -- especially those who binge use -- should also be assessed for BPD," said Wilens, who is also an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. read more...

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