Anxiety News

Discover How Ultraprocessed Foods Can Affect Your Mental Health!

Eating packaged foods like cereal and frozen meals has been associated with anxiety, depression and cognitive decline. Scientists are still piecing together why.

Discover How Ultraprocessed Foods Can Affect Your Mental Health! Read More »

Meta-Analysis Shows Effective Psychological Treatment for Perinatal Depression

Background
Depression during pregnancy and after the birth of a child is highly prevalent and an important public health problem. Psychological interventions are the first-line treatment and, although a considerable number of randomized trials have been conducted, no recent comprehensive meta-analysis has evaluated treatment effects.

Methods
We used an existing database of randomized controlled trials of psychotherapies for adult depression and included studies aimed at perinatal depression. Random effects models were used in all analyses. We examined the effects of the interventions in the short and long term, and also examined secondary outcomes.

Results
Forty-three studies with 49 comparisons and 6270 participants between an intervention and control group were included. The overall effect size was g = 0.67 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.45~0.89; numbers needed-to-be-treated = 4.39] with high heterogeneity (I2 = 80%; 95% CI 75~85). This effect size remained largely unchanged and significant in a series of sensitivity analyses, although some publication bias was found. The effects remained significant at 6–12 months follow-up. Significant effects were also found for social support, anxiety, functional limitations, parental stress and marital stress, although the number of studies for each outcome was low. All results should be considered with caution because of the high levels of heterogeneity in most analyses.

Conclusions
Psychological interventions are probably effective in the treatment of perinatal depression, with effects that last at least up to 6–12 months and probably also have effects on social support, anxiety, functional impairment, parental stress, and marital stress.

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Sleep spindles are more than just a strange phenomenon that happens during sleep. They play an essential role in soothing PTSD anxiety and enhancing memory retention.

Brief bursts of brain activity during sleep known as sleep spindles could potentially help regulate anxiety in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Researchers believe that the study’s findings may be useful for people with anxiety disorders and are looking at non-invasive ways to harness the benefits of this sleep stage to relieve symptoms. The study also suggests that sleep hygiene, electrical brain stimulation, or prescription sleep medications could promote the sleep spindles associated with non-rapid eye movement 2 (NREM2) sleep and potentially benefit patients with stress and anxiety disorders.

Sleep spindles are more than just a strange phenomenon that happens during sleep. They play an essential role in soothing PTSD anxiety and enhancing memory retention. Read More »