A new study provides insight into the molecular characteristics that make a brain susceptible to anxiety and depression and less likely to respond to treatment with antidepressant medication. The research, published by Cell Press in the journal Neuron, may lead to more effective strategies for treating depression. Although brain mechanisms associated with depression are not completely clear, recent research has implicated a combination of stressful life events and predisposing biological factors.

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A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that depressed patients are unable to sustain activity in brain areas related to positive emotion. The study challenges previous notions that individuals with depression show less brain activity in areas associated with positive emotion. Instead, the new data suggest similar initial levels of activity, but an inability to sustain them over time. The work was reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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According to researchers at Texas A&M International University, the strongest risk factors for violent behaviour were depression and having delinquent peers. Other factors included a parent’s psychological abuse of a partner, anti-social personality, negative relationships with adults and family conflict, they said. Overall, the researchers found, the factors that did increase the risk of violent behaviour had pretty small effects.

Major depressive disorder affects nearly 340 million people worldwide and as many as 20% of those patients are resistant to treatment. A team of psychiatrists at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center is studying two novel approaches, one utilizing a drug and one a procedure, to better help those affected by depression. In the first study, an investigational medicine is administered by intravenous infusion, which may be more powerful than many of the oral antidepressants currently available and works on a common neurotransmitter in the brain called glutamate, instead of on serotonin or noradrenalin.

A study conducted by Doctors at Britain’s University of Bristol on nearly one-thousand moms-to-be reveals that eating Omega-Three-rich seafood may help decrease symptoms of depression in pregnant women. As compared to women who ate three or more servings of seafood a week, those who didn’t eat any were 50% more likely to feel symptoms of depression.

According to a new study reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, psychosocial therapy combined with medication can effectively improve depression and recovery in stroke patients. The long-term study indicated that adding psychosocial therapy not only improved depression scores short term, it also sustained the improvements for long term.

People suffering from depression or anxiety are more prone to be obese and to smoke, according to a study published in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. The study, which compiled data from more than 200,000 adults, showed that those with current depression or a previous diagnosis of depression were 60% more likely to be obese and twice as likely to smoke as those who were not depressed. The research also found that people with an anxiety disorder were 30% more likely to be obese and twice as likely to smoke as those without anxiety.