Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Anxiety”
In a groundbreaking move, the United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has issued a Surgeon General Advisory declaring loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection a public health crisis in the United States. This alarming announcement highlights the pervasive nature of loneliness in American society and its detrimental impact on our mental, physical, and societal well-being. The Magnitude of the …
Multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease, targets myelin sheath. This protective layer covers nerve fibers. Its damage can result in several symptoms; these include vision problems, fatigue, weakness, and numbness. Multiple Sclerosis is a disorder of the brain and spinal cord that significantly influences mental health. Most folks with MS, around 70%, struggle with depression at some point. Anxiety is …
A recent study published in the journal Nature Mental Health by researchers at the University of Cambridge revealed that attending in-person mindfulness courses has a lasting positive impact on mental health, even up to six months after completing the program. The study analyzed data from 13 randomized controlled trials, encompassing 2,371 participants. The researchers discovered that individuals who participated in …
A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of York discovered that getting high-quality sleep can enhance one’s resilience to depression and anxiety. Published in the journal Cortex, the study revealed that individuals who reported having good sleep were less prone to developing symptoms of depression or anxiety during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a study …
How does a panic attack relate to how we are breathing and the level of carbon dioxide and oxygen in our blood, and what is the fundamental flaw in brain programming that makes some of us so vulnerable to panic attacks? I was debriefing with a young woman who took too much of a new medication and ended up in …
Biofeedback is a stress management technique that uses devices that give you information about your body’s physiologic response to stress. The idea is to provide you with information that would ordinarily be outside of your conscious awareness, such as your body temperature, blood pressure, or heart rate. Generally, there are three stages of biofeedback: Developing increased awareness of the body …
New research on depression biology and treatment highlights the rapid increase in knowledge in this area in the last decade. In this post we will summarize some of these research findings briefly. This brief tour will take us to a newly discovered protein that may be a vital link between stress and depression. A genome wide search for changes associated …
“How effective is TMS for anxiety?” The young woman with a remarkable history of serious adverse effects from multiple trials of psychiatric medications for anxiety recently asked me this question. This post summarizes the results of a thoughtful literature search using the UCSF medical library, data from the Medical Affairs departments for two of the TMS manufacturers, and clinical experience …
We often tell our patients that the treatment of anxiety is primarily through psychotherapy, in contrast to the treatment of mood disorders which is often based on medications or brain stimulation. In fact, it is one of the more frustrating aspects of psychiatry that there has been so little progress in terms of the biological treatments of anxiety and fear …
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT, pronounced as the word, not A-C-T) is a comprehensive, empirically driven model developed by Steve Hayes, PhD and colleagues with nearly 200 randomized controlled trials (methodologically sound studies) supporting its efficacy for numerous problems and concerns. I recently attended the Anxiety and Depression Association of America conference in Philadelphia, where I offered a two-hour …
