Η κατάθλιψη είναι πιο σοβαρή στους ηλικιωμένους από ό,τι στους νέους

Η σοβαρή κατάθλιψη, γνωστή και ως μείζων καταθλιπτική διαταραχή, είναι πιο έντονη στους ηλικιωμένους, σε σχέση με τους νεότερους ανθρώπους, σύμφωνα με μια νέα ολλανδική επιστημονική έρευνα.

Στα άτομα άνω των 70 ετών η κατάθλιψη έχει χειρότερη πρόγνωση σε σχέση με τα άτομα 18 έως 29 ετών.

Οι ηλικιωμένοι με κατάθλιψη είναι πιθανότερο να νιώθουν μοναξιά, να μην έχουν κοινωνική υποστήριξη, να έχουν άλλες χρόνιες ασθένειες, να παθαίνουν περισσότερα καταθλιπτικά επεισόδια και να χρησιμοποιούν πιο πολλά αντικαταθλιπτικά.

Οι ερευνητές, με επικεφαλής τη δρα Ροξάν Σάακς του Ιατρικού Κέντρου του Ελεύθερου Πανεπιστημίου (VU) του Άμστερνταμ, που έκαναν τη σχετική δημοσίευση στο περιοδικό ψυχιατρικής «The Lancet Psychiatry», μελέτησαν και συνέκριναν στοιχεία για 1.042 ανθρώπους ηλικίας 18 έως 88 ετών που έπασχαν από μείζονα καταθλιπτική διαταραχή.

Η μελέτη παρακολούθησε επί δύο έτη πώς εξελίχθηκε η κατάθλιψη στις διάφορες ηλικιακές ομάδες. Διαπιστώθηκε ότι η κατάθλιψη χειροτερεύει όσο περνάει ο χρόνος, με συνέπεια να είναι πιο επώδυνη για τους ηλικιωμένους.

Οι άνω των 70 ετών ασθενείς είχαν διπλάσια έως τριπλάσια πιθανότητα, σε σχέση με τους ασθενείς 18-29 ετών, να συνεχίσουν να έχουν διάγνωση σοβαρής κατάθλιψης και χρόνια συμπτώματα μετά την παρέλευση μιας διετίας.

Επίσης, χρειάζονται περισσότερο χρόνο εωσότου επιτευχθεί ύφεση των συμπτωμάτων τους, ενώ εμφανίζουν μικρότερη βελτίωση στη σοβαρότητα των συμπτωμάτων τους σε σχέση με τους νέους.

Σχεδόν ένας στους πέντε ενήλικες αναμένεται ότι θα έχει κάποιο επεισόδιο σοβαρής κατάθλιψης κάποια στιγμή στη ζωή του και η εξέλιξή του συνήθως είναι χειρότερη στους μεγαλύτερης ηλικίας ανθρώπους σε σχέση με τους νεότερους.

«Τα ευρήματά μας δείχνουν ότι υπάρχει μια αυξανόμενη ανάγκη για θεραπεία της μείζονος καταθλιπτικής διαταραχής με τρόπο προσαρμοσμένο στην ηλικία των ασθενών. Σήμερα οι γηραιότεροι συχνά αντιμετωπίζονται με παρόμοιο τρόπο με τους νεότερους ασθενείς. Όμως πιστεύουμε ότι οι ηλικιωμένοι μπορεί να έχουν ανάγκη από μια διαφορετική θεραπεία, επειδή η σοβαρή κατάθλιψη σε αυτή τη φάση της ζωής φαίνεται να είναι πολύ πιο επίμονη από ό,τι σε άλλες φάσεις», δήλωσε η δρ Σάακς.

Ένας παράγων που δυσκολεύει την αντιμετώπιση της κατάθλιψης στους ηλικιωμένους είναι η έκπτωση των γνωστικών λειτουργιών τους, που μειώνει την αποτελεσματικότητα των θεραπευτικών παρεμβάσεων.

ΠΗΓΗ:

http://www.kathimerini.gr/968299/article/ygeia/ygeia-epikairothta/h-kata8liyh-einai-pio-sovarh-stoys-hlikiwmenoys-apo-oti-stoys-neoys(accessed 15.6.18)

The Fascinating Sign Of A Healthy Relationship

How to predict if a relationship will end in marriage.



When looking back, couples destined to marry accurately remember the ups and downs of their relationship, research reveals.

Happy couples have no reason to try and hide any problems from themselves to make it feel like they are moving forwards.


On the other hand, people with poor relationships have distorted memories that bear little relation to the truth.

Misremembering the past may be a way of papering over the cracks in a failing relationship.

Professor Brian G. Ogolsky, the study’s first author, explained:


“People like to feel that they’re making progress as a couple.

If they’re not — if, in fact, the relationship is in trouble — they may have distorted recollections that help them feel like they’re moving forward because they need a psychological justification to stay in the relationship.”

The results come from a nine-month study involving 232 heterosexual couples who had dated for around two years.


All rated their chances of eventually getting married every month, for 8 months.


Three groups of couples emerged: those whose relationships were getting worse, those who were staying the same and those who were improving.

Professor Ogolsky said that those whose relationships were improving had remarkably accurate memories:


“Couples who had deepened their commitment remembered their relationship history almost perfectly.

The graphs for this group were really interesting because the plot of the end-of-study recollection could be placed right on top of the one we had graphed from the monthly check-ins.”

Those who had maintained their relationships without really moving forward, fooled themselves a little to get the feeling of progress, said Professor Ogolsky:



“They had given themselves some room to grow and remembered the recent past as better than they had reported it being.

If they saw maintenance as stagnation, that’s a way of addressing that cognitive gap.

It helps them feel that their relationship is developing in some way — that they’re making progress.”

Lastly, those whose relationships were on-off, or just off, were mostly in denial, Professor Ogolsky said:


“If we looked at their history as they reported it to us over the nine-month period, we could see that their chances of marriage were plummeting.

Yet their recollection was that things had been going okay.

Of course, they hadn’t seen the graph so they didn’t know their trajectory looks this dire, but it’s fair to say they were in denial about the state of their relationship.”

SOURCE:

https://www.spring.org.uk/2018/06/sign-healthy-relationship.php(accessed 12.6.18)

“Growth mindset” theory doesn’t translate directly from kids to adults – telling an adult they are a “hard worker” can backfire

The way parents and teachers praise children is known to influence not only their future performance, but how they feel about the malleability of intelligence. If a child has done well, focusing positive comments on their efforts, actions and strategies (saying, for example, “good job” or “you must have tried really hard”) is preferable to saying “you’re so smart”, in part because process-centred praise is thought to encourage kids to interpret setbacks as opportunities to grow, rather than as threats to their self-concept. In contrast, a kid who’s led to believe she succeeds because she’s “intelligent” may not attempt a difficult challenge, in case she fails.

Now – and somewhat remarkably, given all the praise and growth mindset research conducted on children – a new study, led by Rachael Reavis at Earlham College, Indiana, US, published the Journal of Genetic Psychology, claims to be the first to test the effects of different types of praise on how adults feel after failure.



The researchers recruited 156 adults via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website. After completing a set of six easy visual pattern problems, which they were given up to two minutes to solve, they were all informed: “You did better than the majority of adults!” But then the feedback varied.

About a third were told that, based on the pattern of their results, they had been classified as “in the high intelligence group” (person-focused ability feedback); about a third were told they had been classified as “the kind of person who works hard” (person-focused effort feedback – they were a “hard worker”) and about a third were told they had been classified as “working hard on these questions” (process-focused effort feedback – they had worked hard).

All participants were then given a set of 12 difficult problems (which timed out after 3.5 minutes), and no matter how well they did, all were told that their performance was “worse than most adults”. The researchers were interested in how the earlier feedback would affect the participants’ performance and enjoyment on the tasks, and especially how they would interpret their apparent failure at the final set of difficult problems.

Based partly on previous findings involving children, the researchers expected that being told you’re a “hard worker” would be the most beneficial kind of praise or feedback, as it implies that the person typically puts in a lot of effort. (And while this form of praise is person-centred, it focuses on behaviour, rather than on intrinsic ability.)

In fact, the type of feedback participants received after the easy task did not affect their performance on the difficult problems, relative to their performance on the first. Meanwhile, it was the “hard worker” group who said they enjoyed the difficult set of problems the least (the other two groups did not differ from each other on this); they also believed they had been less successful on the tasks than those in the other groups.

Finally, when the participants indicated, on a scale of 0 to 10, to what extent they attributed their poor performance at the final task to lack of effort or to lack of intelligence (as well as to eight other factors that were included to obscure the true purpose of the study), there were no group differences for effort, but as expected, those in the “worked hard” group were significantly less likely to attribute their failure to their level of intelligence than those in the “high intelligence group”. However, against expectations, the “hard worker” group actually blamed their low intelligence just as much as the “high intelligence” participants.

As the researchers note, “Few of the results demonstrated with children were replicated.”

Why might this be?

It’s possible that adults believe that telling someone they’re a hard worker is something positive to say when you can’t plausibly say that they’re smart or gifted. When I think back to my own childhood, there were awards at school for “good work” and also for “hard work”, and, among the kids, a “good work” award was seen as being the bigger achievement. In contrast, at my children’s primary school, in the light of the findings on process-focused praise, rewards are focused entirely on effort. However, it’s also standard for a child who typically puts in a lot of effort to be called a “hard worker”.

For children today, this may perhaps still be beneficial. For adults, who grew up in a different time, “being told one is a ‘hard worker’ may elicit feelings of inadequacy, which undermine positive perceptions of the task,” the researchers write. “Future work should investigate how both children and adults interpret these types of praise.”

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/05/24/growth-mindset-theory-doesnt-translate-directly-from-kids-to-adults-telling-an-adult-they-are-a-hard-worker-can-backfire/(accessed 12.6.18)

Λανθασμένες αντιλήψεις γύρω από το Σεξ

Μερικές λανθασμένες αντιλήψεις γύρω από το σεξ μπορεί να είναι:

Το σεξ είναι επιτυχές μόνο αν οι σύντροφοι φτάνουν ταυτόχρονα σε οργασμό
Σε μια ερωτική σχέση το ένα άτομο γνωρίζει από ένστικτο τι αρέσει στο άλλο
Κάθε άνδρας οφείλει να ξέρει πώς να ευχαριστήσει μια γυναίκα
Είναι κακό να έχεις φαντασιώσεις κατά τη διάρκεια της ερωτικής διαδικασίας
Ο άνδρας πάντοτε θέλει και πάντοτε είναι έτοιμος για σεξ
Αν ο άνδρας αποκτήσει στύση, είναι βλαβερό γι’ αυτόν να μην φτάσει σε οργασμό
Ο αυνανισμός είναι βλαβερός και εμποδίζει την ανάπτυξη διαπροσωπικών σχέσεων
Αν ένας άνδρας χάσει τη στύση του, σημαίνει ότι δε βρίσκει ελκυστική τη σύντροφό του

ΠΗΓΗ:

http://www.sexologia.gr/medical-issues/sexthoughts(accessed 8.6.18)

These Personality Types Have The Happiest Marriages

Some personality types are reliably more happy after getting married.



Introverted women are more satisfied with life for longer after marriage, research finds.

However, men who are introverted gain the least in the long-term from being married, with extraverted men gaining the most from marriage.


Introverted men were actually less happy, on average, after getting married than men who had never married.

These personality trends are a fascinating kink in the orthodox view of marriage’s effect on happiness.

Normally, people feel happier for a period before and after getting married, but this fades away after a couple of years — they may even feel worse than before marriage.

But earlier studies didn’t take into account personality.


Along with the findings for extraversion, the study also discovered that conscientious women were more satisfied with life after marriage than those who were less conscientious.


Conscientious people are disciplined, dutiful and good at planning ahead.

The study’s authors write:


“Such a result might be explained by the tendency for conscientious individuals to place more value on relationship goals and therefore conscientious individuals may strive harder to ensure success.

This result is consistent with conscientious individuals being more satisfied with their relationships.”

Why this should not also be true for conscientious men is not clear, although it could be down to men and women having different relationship goals.

The results come from a German survey that followed 2,015 people over eight years.

In this time, 468 got married for the first time and stayed that way until the end of the study.

Tracking their happiness, the researchers found that it followed the usual trend.

People got happier as they were about to get married, but then this faded away in the year or two after the big day.


The drop in happiness was sharper for men, particularly for introverted men, the authors write:


“Whilst all men experience a pre-marital increase in their life satisfaction, men that are extraverted seem to experience longer-term benefits to their life satisfaction during marriage.

Introverted men, however, experience significant drops in their life satisfaction that result in them being approximately 0.20 SD [standard deviations] lower in life satisfaction than those who never marry.”

SOURCE:

https://www.spring.org.uk/2018/06/personality-marriage.php(accessed 8.6.18)