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Good news for expectant mothers.  According to a new study from the Université de Montréal and Ste. Justine Hospital published in the May edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry, expectant mothers can safely use prescribed antidepressants during their first trimester based upon a study on 2,329 new mothers. 

The research team used data from the Quebec Pregnancy Registry, established by their group at least 30 days before pregnancy. Also included in the registry were women who delivered liveborn and stillborn children, while birth defects were considered anything from facial malformations to heart anomalies.

Dr. Anick Bérard and her team found that antidepressants have no effect on foetal development where they found no difference between mother who used antidepressan and those that did.

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Eating disorder and childhood anxiety may have a link for Anorexic women as suggested by a study on 637 women with anorexia where 39 percent reported symptoms of childhood overanxious disorder.
By far now, its knows that  anxiety disorders, like social phobia and obsessive compulsive disorder, are far more common among people with anorexia than in the general population. Often, these anxiety disorders appear before the eating disorder does.
Well, according International Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers looked at whether a history of childhood “overanxious disorder” was related to the severity of women’s anorexia.
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In general, the researchers found, women with a history of childhood anxiety exhibited “more extreme personality traits” and attitudes — like perfectionism and obsessive tendencies related to food — than women without a history of early anxiety disorders.

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If you believe that Smoking is Good for Both Anxiety And Depression get real.  According to a new joint study held by Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), University of Bergen and King’s College in London with 60,000 participants, 5.9% have both Anxiety and Depression, known as HADS.

Figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that 30 percent of inhabitants in the western world smoke daily. Earlier studies have found that people with mental health problems are twice as likely to smoke as the rest of the population. Injuries to physical health after smoking are well documented. It is also known that smoking is linked to other psychological problems. Anxiety and depression are the most common complaints and are often both present in people who smoke.
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According to Mykletun, author of  Smoking in relation to anxiety and depression: Evidence from a large population survey: The HUNT study, explains that the study shows the strongest correlation with smoking when the subject is both anxious and depressed, next strongest with anxiety without depression and with a marginal correlation between smoking and depression without anxiety. There was no reduction in anxiety and depression over time after smoking was given up.

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Well, it might turn out that plump babies are happy babies indeed as said by popular wisdeom, according to the December 2007 issue of Biological Psychiatry. A landmark public health study has found that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life.

The survey tracked more than 4,600 people born in Great Britain in 1946 for symptoms of anxiety and depression over a 40-year period which also represent an important chapter that conditions in the womb do indeed have an effect on our future development aka the “nature versus nurture” debate.

The theory : Blood flow to the uterus is restricted when a mother is stressed and the fetus gets fewer nutrients, which tends to lead to lower birth weight. In addition, stress hormones are passing through the placenta to the fetus and may affect the fetus’s neurodevelopment and stress response.

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This really sounds bad. 40,000 local kids suffer from anxiety disorder and in the city of Metro Vancouver alone.

More seriously, 80% of the children suffer in silence and may carry the anxiety disorder condition into adult where treatment may be more difficult.

The reason behind the silence?  An anxiety disorder “used to be thought of as a sign of weakness,”Robichaud continued, “but it’s actually a sign of strength to go about your daily routine. It takes a lot of work to be anxious. It’s physically exhausting.”

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Here is a simple receipe to mitigate anxiety, via courtesy of Hilton Head Island.  It consists of hot oil and salt, your typical cooking items.

Maybe pouring a vat of warm oil onto your forehead or floating in 10 inches of water mixed with 1,000 pounds of salt don’t intuitively seem like ways to unwind. But on the island, shirodhara massage and floatation therapy are two offbeat treatments now being offered to those feeling frayed by the regular rhythm of life.

Via Islandpacket