Mental Health News

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It seems that stress and depression may lead to mental health issues such as mild cognitive impairment and even progress into Alzheimer’s Disease.  This could be very important news for those looking into the treatment of Alzheimer’s since a correlation between the two problems seems to have been found. 

U.S. researchers announced this finding after 12 years of studying the medical records of 1,256 older people who started out with no mental health problems.  After the 12 years about 482 people in the study developed mild cognitive impairments.  All the participants were interviewed for the study and rated based on how prone they were to stress and types of depression.  Those participants whom admitted to being prone to anxiousness or stress were 40 times more likely to develop said mild cognitive impairment.  If that isn’t a call for more yoga in your life I’m not sure what is.

Mild cognitive impairment is a mental health issue classified as a kind of memory loss that’s considered to be the transitional stage between normal aging and dementia.  Alzheimer’s is a degenerative brain disease signified by forgetfulness and inability to concentrate, that starts gradually and slowly worsens over time.  Eventually Alzheimer’s reaches a point where most memories are gone, and the patient is completely unable to care for him or herself.  Cognitive impairment causes people to have trouble remembering some things.  However it’s not considered to be a significant mental health issue.  About 10 to 15% of those with mild cognitive impairment later develop Alzheimer’s.

What is probably most disturbing about these findings is that Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago stated that the participants in the study were showing many of the changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.  Because of this US study, chronic stress has been found to be related to the first clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s.