November 5, 2009, 8:33 AM CT

Handedness May Effect Body Perception

There are areas in the brain devoted to our arms, legs, and various parts of our bodies. The way these areas are distributed throughout the brain are known as "body maps" and there are some significant differences in these maps between left- and right-handed people. For example, in left-handed people, there is an equal amount of brain area devoted to the left and right arms in both hemispheres. However, for right-handed people, there is more cortical area linked to right arm than the left.

Psychology experts Sally A. Linkenauger, Jonathan Z. Bakdash, and Dennis R. Proffitt of the University of Virginia, along with Jessica K. Witt from Purdue University, and Jeanine K. Stefanucci from The College of William and Mary wanted to see if this difference in body maps leads to differences in how we perceive the length of our arms. For this study, volunteers were brought to the lab and estimated their perceived arm length and how far they could reach with their arms. To estimate arm length, the volunteers would hold out each arm while a researcher standing in front of them would adjust a tape measure-the volunteers had to indicate when they thought the tape was the same length as their arm. To see how far volunteers could reach with each arm, they sat at a table with a plastic chip on it. The volunteers would instruct the experimenter to move the position of the chip to estimate how far they could reach......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 8:47 AM CT

Sleep disturbances improve after retirement

A study in the Nov.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that retirement is followed by a sharp decrease in the prevalence of sleep disturbances. Findings suggest that this general improvement in sleep is likely to result from the removal of work-related demands and stress rather than from actual health benefits of retirement.

Results show that the odds of having disturbed sleep in the seven years after retirement were 26 percent lower (adjusted odds ratio of 0.74) than in the seven years before retiring. Sleep disturbance prevalence rates among 14,714 participants fell from 24.2 percent in the last year before retirement to 17.8 percent in the first year after retiring. The greatest reduction in sleep disturbances was reported by participants with depression or mental fatigue previous to retirement. The postretirement improvement in sleep also was more pronounced in men, management-level workers, employees who reported high psychological job demands, and people who occasionally or consistently worked night shifts.

Main author Jussi Vahtera, professor in the department of public health at the University of Turku in Finland, noted that the participants enjoyed employment benefits rarely seen today, including guaranteed job stability, a statutory retirement age between 55 and 60 years, and a company-paid pension that was 80 percent of their salary......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 29, 2009, 11:16 PM CT

Seeing is relieving

An f1000 assessment examines how pain relief improves greatly when the sufferer can actually see the area where the pain is occurring.

In an Anglo-Italian study, thirty healthy subjects were invited to look at either their own hand, the experimenter's hand, or an object, while their hand was subjected to laser-induced pain.

The results, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, showed that, when the sufferer could see their own hand, they felt less pain than if they were looking at the experimenter's hand or a neutral object. Longo and his colleagues found there were subjective (self-report) and objective (brain potential) measures of the person's pain sensation.

Scientists also found the result was the same whether the subjects were looking at their actual hand or a mirror image; the latter using a technique previously used to reduce phantom limb pain in amputees.

Importantly, this is the first time such an experiment has been done on subjects who did not suffer from pre-existing body image issues.

Faculty of 1000 reviewer Alumit Ishai, of the University of Zurich, was very impressed. "These novel findings suggest that viewing the body modulates the subjective perception of pain," she said. "Eventhough the mechanism that mediates this analgesic effect is unclear the potential therapeutic implications for patients with chronic pain are huge"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 29, 2009, 10:04 PM CT

Pregnant women using psychiatric medications

The odds triple for premature child delivery pregnant women with a history of depression who used psychiatric medication, as per a newly released study.

Scientists at the University of Washington, University of Michigan and Michigan State University observed that a combination of medicine use and depression either before or during pregnancy was strongly associated with delivery before 35 weeks' gestation.

Amelia Gavin, main author and UW assistant professor of social work, said the findings highlight the need for carefully planned studies that can clarify associations between depression, psychiatric medications and preterm delivery.

"Women with depression face difficult decisions regarding the benefits and risks of using psychotropic medications in pregnancy," Gavin said. "Therefore, a focus on disentangling medicine effects and depression effects on mother and offspring health should be a major clinical priority".

"Medication use appears to be an indicator of depressive symptom severity, which is a direct or indirect contributing factor to pre-term delivery," added Kristine Siefert, co-author and a Michigan professor of social work.

Most physicians initiated preterm deliveries after the women suffered complications, such as pre-eclampsia, poor fetal growth or acute hemorrhage......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 29, 2009, 7:19 AM CT

People with depression have more physical symptoms

New research shows people who feel depressed tend to recall having more physical symptoms than they actually experienced. The study indicates that depression -- not neuroticism -- is the cause of such over-reporting.

Psychology expert Jerry Suls, professor and collegiate fellow in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, attributes the findings to depressed individuals recalling experiences differently, tending to ruminate over and exaggerate the bad.

Published electronically this month in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, the study was conducted by researchers in the UI Department of Psychology, the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the Iowa City VA Medical Center, and the UI College of Nursing.

The 109 study participants, all female, completed baseline surveys to assess their levels of neuroticism and depression. Each day for three weeks, they reported whether they felt 15 common physical symptoms including aches and pains, gastrointestinal and upper-respiratory issues. On the 22nd day, they were asked to remember how often they had experienced each physical symptom in the preceding three weeks. People who scored higher in depression were more likely to overstate the frequency of their past symptoms......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 28, 2009, 6:25 AM CT

Crushing cigarettes in a virtual reality environment

Smokers who crushed computer-simulated cigarettes as part of a psychosocial therapy program in a virtual reality environment had significantly reduced nicotine dependence and higher rates of tobacco abstinence than smokers participating in the same program who grasped a computer-simulated ball, as per a research studydescribed in the current issue of CyberPsychology and Behavior, a peer-evaluated journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/cpb.

Benoit Girard, MD, Vincent Turcotte, and Bruno Girard, MBA, from the GRAP Occupational Psychology Clinic (Quebec, Canada), and Stphane Bouchard, PhD, from the University of Quebec in Gatineau, randomly assigned 91 smokers enrolled in a 12-week anti-smoking support program to one of two therapy groups. In a computer-generated virtual reality environment, one group simulated crushing virtual cigarettes, while the other group grasped virtual balls during 4 weekly sessions. The authors document the results in the article "Crushing Virtual Cigarettes Reduces Tobacco Addiction and Treatment Discontinuation".

The findings demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in nicotine addiction among the smokers in the cigarette-crushing group versus those in the ball-grasping group. Also, at week 12 of the program, the smoking abstinence rate was significantly higher for the cigarette-crushing group (15%) in comparison to the ball-grasping group (2%)......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 27, 2009, 9:49 AM CT

Married with children the key to happiness?

Having children improves married peoples' life satisfaction and the more they have, the happier they are. For unmarried individuals, raising children has little or no positive effect on their happiness. These findings (1) by Dr. Luis Angeles from the University of Glasgow in the UK have just been published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies.

Prior research suggests that increasing numbers of children do not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives. Rather bleakly, this has been attributed to the fact that raising children involves a lot of hard work for only a few occasional rewards.

Dr. Angeles believes that this explanation is too simplistic. When asked about the most important things in their lives, most people place their children near or even at the top of their list. Contrary to prior work, Dr. Angeles' analysis of the relationship between having children and life satisfaction takes into account the role of individual characteristics, including marital status, gender, age, income and education.

For married individuals of all ages and married women in particular, children increase life satisfaction and life satisfaction goes up with the number of children in the household. Negative experiences in raising children are reported by people who are separated, living as a couple, or single, having never been married. Children take their toll on their parents' satisfaction with social life, and amount and use of leisure time......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 26, 2009, 7:46 AM CT

Mutation dramatically increasing schizophrenia risk

An international team of scientists led by geneticist Jonathan Sebat, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), has identified a mutation on human chromosome 16 that substantially increases risk for schizophrenia.

The mutation in question is what researchers call a copy number variant (CNV). CNVs are areas of the genome where the number of copies of genes differs between individuals. The CNV is located in a region referred to by researchers as 16p11.2. By studying the genomes of 4,551 patients and 6,391 healthy individuals, Sebat's team has shown that having one extra copy of this region is linked to schizophrenia. The study appears online today ahead of print in the journal Nature Genetics

The mutation identified in this study is a potent risk factor. "In the general population this duplication is quite rare, occurring in roughly one in 5,000 persons", says Sebat, "but for people that carry the extra copy, the risk of developing schizophrenia is increased by more than eight-fold". This finding is the latest in a series of studies that have pinpointed rare CNVs that confer substantial risk of schizophrenia. Others include deletions on chromosomes 1, 15 and 22.



Schizophrenia and autism: two sides of the same coin?

"This is not the first time that the 16p11.2 region has caught our eye," says Sebat. It was previously spotted in a 2007 study with Professor Michael Wigler at CSHL -- a deletion of the identical region was identified in a girl with autism. Studies by several other groups have shown that losing one copy of 16p11.2 confers high risk of autism and other developmental disorders in children......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 21, 2009, 11:32 PM CT

Psychological trauma in HIV patients

The feeling of stigmatization that people living with HIV often experience doesn't only exact a psychological toll new UCLA research suggests it can also lead to quantifiably negative health outcomes.

As per a research findings reported in the recent issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, scientists from the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA observed that a large number of HIV-positive individuals who reported feeling stigmatized also reported poor access to care or suboptimal adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART).

In fact, individuals who experienced high levels of internalized stigma were four times as likely as those who didn't to report poor access to medical care; they were three times as likely to report suboptimal adherence to HIV medications.

These findings were due, at least in part, to the poor mental health found among a number of of the participants. Scientists observed that HIV stigma was one of the strongest predictors of poor access to medical care and that both HIV stigma and poor mental health predicted suboptimal adherence to medication. Adherence to HIV medications is already known to lead to better health outcomes, including survival, among people living with HIV......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 10:21 PM CT

Who believe in equality are more likely to buy on impulse

A newly released study from Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business finds that Americans who believe in equality are more-impulsive shoppers. And it has implications for how to market products differently in countries where shoppers are more likely to buy on impulse.

The study, "Power-Distance Belief and Impulsive Buying," was authored by Rice management professor Vikas Mittal and recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Marketing Research.

Power-distance belief (PDB) is the degree of power disparity the people of a culture expect and accept. It is measured on a scale of zero to 100, and the higher the PDB, the more a person accepts disparity and expects power inequality. Americans have a low PDB score relative to people in countries like China and India. The study observed that people who have a high PDB score tend to exhibit more self-control and are less impulsive when shopping.

"In our studies, people with low PDB scores spent one-and-a-half times the amount spent by high-PDB individuals when buying daily items like snacks and drinks," Mittal said.

This effect was even more pronounced for "vice goods" -- tempting products like chocolate and candy -- than for "virtue goods" like yogurt and granola bars. The scientists hypothesized that people with low PDB scores -- who also should have lower self-control -- would show even stronger impulsive buying for vice goods because of their desire for immediate gratification. Indeed, the scientists found low-PDB people spent twice as much on vice goods as high PDB people spent......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 19, 2009, 7:08 AM CT

Making depression treatments better

New research clarifies how neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine, are regulated a finding that may help fine-tune therapies for depression.

Current drugs for depression target the regulatory process for neurotransmitters, and while effective in some cases, do not appear to work in other cases.

Recent findings suggest that synucleins, a family of small proteins in the brain, are key players in the management of neurotransmitters -- specifically, alpha- and gamma-synuclein. Additionally, scientists have found elevated levels of gamma-synuclein in the brains of both depressed animals and humans.

In a study presented at the 39th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center scientists observed increased depressive-like behavior in mice where gamma-synuclein acts alone to regulate neurotransmitters, confirming earlier studies by this group.

"These findings show the importance of, and clarify a functional role for, gamma synuclein in depression and may provide new therapeutic targets in therapy of this disease," says Adam Oaks, a student researcher in the Laboratory of Molecular Neurochemistry at GUMC. "Understanding how current therapies work with the synucleins is important because the drugs don't work for all patients, and some are linked to side effects including an increased risk of suicide"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:19 AM CT

Candy bar or healthy snack?

If you think choosing between a candy bar and healthy snack is totally a matter of free will, think again. A newly released study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that the choices we make to indulge ourselves or exercise self-control depend on how the choices are presented.

Author Juliano Laran (University of Miami) tested subjects to determine how certain words and concepts affected consumers' decisions for self-control or indulgence. He observed that consumer choices were affected by the actions most recently suggested to them by certain key words.

The tests involved a word-scramble containing words that suggested either indulgence ("weight") or self-control ("delicious"). "Participants who unscrambled sentences linked to self-control were more likely to choose a healthy snack (a granola bar) to be consumed right now, but an indulgent snack (a chocolate bar) to be consumed in the future," writes Laran. Participants who unscrambled sentences linked to indulgence were more likely to choose an indulgent snack to be consumed right now but a healthy snack to be consumed in the future".

A second study examined the same phenomenon, but it involved information linked to saving versus spending money. Again, when information about saving money was active (participants had been exposed to words linked to saving money), participants said that they imagined themselves trying to save money while shopping in the present, but spending a lot of money while shopping in the future. When words about spending money were suggested, the study showed the opposite result......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:17 AM CT

Self-esteem in overweight and underweight women

Overweight women's self-esteem plummets when they view photographs of models of any size, as per a newly released study in Journal of Consumer Research And underweight women's esteem increases, regardless of models' size.

Authors Dirk Smeesters (Erasmus University, the Netherlands), Thomas Mussweiler (University of Cologne, Gera number of), and Naomi Mandel (Arizona State University) researched the ways individuals with different body mass indexes (BMIs) felt when they were exposed to thin or heavy media models.

"Our research confirms earlier research that observed that normal body mass index (BMI) females' self-esteem can shift upwards or downwards depending on the model they are exposed to," the authors write. "Normal BMI females (with BMIs between 18.5 and 25) have higher levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately thin models (because they feel similar to these models) and extremely heavy models (because they feel dissimilar to these models). However, they have lower levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately heavy models (because they feel similar) and extremely thin models (because they feel dissimilar)".

This research provides important new insights into how media exposure affects the self-esteem of overweight and underweight women. "Underweight women's self-esteem always increases, regardless of the model they look at," the authors explain. "Conversely, overweight women's self-esteem always decreases, regardless of the model they look at." Perhaps surprisingly, overweight and underweight women showed comparable levels of self-esteem when they weren't looking at models......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:16 AM CT

Transcendental meditation reduces stress

Women with breast cancer reduced stress and improved their mental health and emotional well being through the Transcendental Meditation technique, as per a newly released study reported in the current issue of the peer-evaluated Integrative Cancer Therapies (Vol. 8, No. 3: September 2009).

"A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of Transcendental Meditation on Quality of Life in Older Breast Cancer Patients" was a collaboration between the Center for Healthy Aging at Saint Joseph Hospital; the Institute for Health Services, Research and Policy Studies at Northwestern University; the Department of Psychology at Indiana State University; and the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management.

"It is wonderful that physicians now have a range of interventions to use, including Transcendental Meditation, to benefit their patients with cancer," said Rhoda Pomerantz, M.D., co-author of study and chief of gerontology, Saint Joseph Hospital. "I believe this approach should be appreciated and utilized more widely".

One hundred thirty women with breast cancer, 55 years and older, participated in the two-year study at Saint Joseph Hospital. The women were randomly assigned to either the Transcendental Meditation technique or to a usual care control group. Patients were administered quality of life measures, including the Functional Evaluation of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B), every six months for two years. The average intervention period was 18 months......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 7:44 AM CT

How do people choose a name for their child?

How do people choose a name for their child? Scientists have long noted that the overall popularity of a name exerts a strong influence on people's preferencesmore popular names, such as Robert or Susan, are more frequent and, by their sheer ubiquity, drive more parents to adopt a similar choice. However, new research by psychology experts at New York University and Indiana University, Bloomington suggests that the change in popularity of a name over time increasingly influences naming decisions in the United States. Like momentum traders in the stock market, parents today appear to favor names that have recently risen in popularity relative to names that are on the decline.

The research, which is relevant to understanding how people's everyday decisions are influenced by aggregate cultural processes, was conducted by Todd Gureckis, an assistant professor of psychology at NYU, and Robert Goldstone, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University. It appears in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science (Wiley-Blackwell).

"Our results give support to the idea that individual naming choices are in a large part determined by the social environment that expecting parents experience," the authors wrote. "Like the stock market, cycles of boom and bust appear arise out of the interactions of a large set of agents who are continually influencing one another"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 12, 2009, 7:10 AM CT

Using imagination to reduce abdominal pain

Children with functional abdominal pain who used audio recordings of guided imagery at home in addition to standard medical therapy were almost three times as likely to improve their pain problem, in comparison to children who received standard therapy alone.

And those benefits were maintained six months after therapy ended, a newly released study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center scientists has found.

The study is reported in the November 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics The main author is Miranda van Tilburg, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the UNC School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders.

"What is particularly exciting about our study is that children can clearly reduce their abdominal pain a lot on their own with guidance from audio recordings, and they get much better results that way than from medical care alone," said van Tilburg. "Such self-administered therapy is, of course, very inexpensive and can be used in addition to other therapys, which potentially opens the door for easily enhancing therapy outcomes for a lot of children suffering from frequent stomach aches".

The study focused on functional abdominal pain, defined according tosistent pain with no identifiable underlying disease that interferes with activities. It is very common, affecting up to 20 percent of children. Previous studies have observed that behavioral treatment and guided imagery (a therapy method similar to self-hypnosis) are effective, when combined with regular medical care, to reduce pain and improve quality of life. But for a number of children behavioral treatment is not available because it is costly, takes a lot of time and requires a highly trained therapist......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 8:50 PM CT

While adolescents may reason as well as adults

A 16-year-old might be quite capable of making an informed decision about whether to end a pregnancy a decision likely to be made after due consideration and consultation with an adult but this same adolescent may not possess the maturity to be held to adult levels of responsibility if she commits a violent crime, as per new research into adolescent psychological development.

"Adolescents likely possess the necessary intellectual skills to make informed choices about terminating a pregnancy but may lack the social and emotional maturity to control impulses, resist peer pressure and fully appreciate the riskiness of dangerous decisions," said Laurence Steinberg, PhD, a professor of developmental psychology at Temple University and main author of the study. "This immaturity mitigates their criminal responsibility".

The findings are reported in the recent issue of American Psychology expert, published by the American Psychological Association.

Steinberg and his co-authors address this seeming contradiction in a study showing that cognitive and emotional abilities mature at different rates. They recruited 935 10- to 30- year-olds to examine age differences in a variety of cognitive and psychosocial capacities.

The participants took different tests measuring psychosocial maturity and cognitive ability to examine age patterns in numerous factors that affect judgment and decision-making. The maturity measures included tests of impulse control, sensation-seeking, resistance to peer influence, future orientation and risk perception. The cognitive battery included measures of basic intellectual abilities......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 7:58 PM CT

Autism Speaks' genetic resource exchange

Autism Speaks' Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) and the Autism Tissue Program (ATP) continue to play an integral role in continuing genetic research and new findings in the complex autism inheritance and causation puzzle. As per a research findings reported in the October 7, edition of the journal Nature, an extensive research team of more than 75 research institutions identified semaphoring 5A, a gene implicated in the growth of neurons to form proper contacts and connections with other neurons. Prior studies have reported lower levels of this protein in blood samples from individuals with autism as in comparison to controls. In this study, the scientists were also able to extend that observation to the brain tissue of individuals with autism vs. control brains.

"Taken as a whole, results from this study are consistent with reports from the past few years implicating gene/molecules involved with cell to cell contact and communication," explained Andy Shih, Ph.D., Autism Speaks vice president of scientific affairs. "If this finding holds and is further supported with additional research such as a functional study of the variant semaphorin 5A, this molecule could represent another biological target for pharmaceutical intervention in the future and possible therapy for some individuals with autism"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 7:06 AM CT

Many children are exposed to violence and abuse

A newly released study from the University of New Hampshire finds that U.S. children are routinely exposed to even more violence and abuse than has been previously recognized, with nearly half experiencing a physical assault in the study year.

"Children experience far more violence, abuse and crime than do adults," said David Finkelhor, director of the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center and the study director. "If life were this dangerous for ordinary grown-ups, we'd never tolerate it".

The research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The research results are presented in the journal Pediatrics and an Office of Justice Programs/OJJDP bulletin titled "Children's Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey".

UNH scientists asked a national sample of U.S. children and their caregivers about a far broader range of exposures than has been done in the past.

As per the research, three out of five children were exposed to violence, abuse or a criminal victimization in the last year, including 46 percent who had been physically assaulted, 10 percent who had been maltreated by a caregiver, 6 percent who had been sexually victimized, and 10 percent who had witnessed an assault within their family......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 8:02 AM CT

Body posture affects confidence

Sitting up straight in your chair isn't just good for your posture it also gives you more confidence in your own thoughts, as per a newly released study.

Scientists observed that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.

Conversely, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their own qualifications.

The results show how our body posture can affect not only what others think about us, but also how we think about ourselves, said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

"Most of us were taught that sitting up straight gives a good impression to other people," Petty said. "But it turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you're in".

Petty conducted the study with Pablo Briol, a former postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State now at the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid in Spain, and Benjamin Wagner, a current graduate student at Ohio State. The research appears in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology........ Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 7:41 AM CT

Violent upbringing begets domestic violence

A recent study from the latest issue of Personal Relationships shows that individuals who have experienced violence at an early age may have trouble adjusting to healthy, adult romantic relationships and are at a higher risk to experience marital difficulties. The research reveals that early exposure to a violent environment is likely to lead to domestic violence situations during the later part of life. Feelings of insecurity, abandonment anxiety, and intimacy issues are also likely to plague these romantic connections.

Additionally, the dynamics of the way couples react and communicate with each other is also correlation to the likelihood of domestic violence within a relationship. For example, men tend to use violence towards their partner as a means to exert a desire for personal space or avoidance of emotional issues in response to the "clingy" or intrusive behavior of his female partner.

This research highlights the importance of domestic violence prevention efforts starting at the childhood level, within family environments as well as school and community based settings. Moreover, prevention efforts allow the victim to relate long-harbored painful childhood violent experiences and rectify internal representations of self that cause long-term damage to valuable inter-personal relationships and families......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 1, 2009, 6:50 AM CT

Don't let him eat sweet everyday

Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, as per new research.

A study of almost 17,500 participants in the 1970 British Cohort Study observed that 10-year-olds who ate confectionary daily were significantly more likely to have been convicted for violence at age 34 years.

The study, reported in the recent issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, is the first to examine the long-term effects of childhood diet on adult violence.

Scientists from Cardiff University observed that 69 per cent of the participants who were violent at the age of 34 had eaten sweets and chocolate nearly every day during childhood, in comparison to 42% who were non-violent.

This link between confectionary consumption and violence remained after controlling for other factors.

The scientists put forward several explanations for the link. Lead researcher Dr Simon Moore said: "Our favoured explanation is that giving children sweets and chocolate regularly may stop them learning how to wait to obtain something they want. Not being able to defer gratification may push them towards more impulsive behaviour, which is strongly linked to delinquency."

The scientists concluded: "This association between confectionary consumption and violence needs further attention. Targeting resources at improving children's diet may improve health and reduce aggression"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source