Women whose sexual desire diminishes during menopause are more likely to report disturbed sleep, depression symptoms, and night sweats, according to Group Health research in the June American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
To the best of the research team’s knowledge, this marks the first time that sleep disturbance has been independently associated with diminished sexual desire during or after menopause. With age, sexual desire may be diminished for both women and men, said Dr. Reed, whose clinical practice is at the Women’s Clinic at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
But gender differences may complicate matters. “For women, greater intimacy tends to open the door to more sexual desire,” she said. “That’s not always true for men.” However, changes that happen with menopause can disturb women’s sense of well-being . But experts recommend a variety of steps that women can take on their own to feel better through the transition.
Here are some of them:
Depression:
- Support ongoing regular physical exercise whatever works for you (be it yoga or karate)
to promote fitness, balance, social networking, and an energetic approach to life.
- Eat small, balanced meals, including snacks, at regular intervals. Avoid getting too hungry or overeating, because a full stomach can make you feel glum.
- Try new activities.
- Spend some time every day outside in the daylight.
Low libido:
- Address the changes that menopause and age–including changes in male sexual response–can bring to relationships.
- Be aware that both women and men may need more time for arousal.
- Try learning to massage each other.
- Talk to your doctor about solutions for vaginal dryness, e.g., lubricants and topical estrogen.
For more useful hints look here.
Categories: Depression,Libido,Menopause,Trouble Sleeping
Psychologists have taken the “media priming” effects of popular video console and PC-based games on the road, finding that virtual racing seems to lead to aggressive driving and a propensity for risk taking.
Extending prior findings on how aggressive virtual-shooter games increase aggression-related thoughts, feelings and behaviors, researchers found that of 198 men and women, those who play more virtual car-racing games were more likely to report that they drive aggressively and get in accidents. Less frequent virtual racing was associated with more cautious driving.
The studies make both theoretical and practical contributions. First, the results support social-cognitive explanations of media priming effects, in which people built up mental models – in this case, of aggressive thoughts and feelings – easily triggered by a learned stimulus. That inner aggression is then the starting point for aggressive behaviors.
The authors also showed that “positively framed” (the games are depicted as exciting and fun; they’re also very popular) risky media content activates thoughts and feelings of arousal and excitement that are linked to increased risk taking.
Given that children start playing these games on average at age 10 (based on previous research by co-author Jörg Kubitzki), the researchers are concerned that racing games may instill risk-taking attitudes that lead to unsafe driving when children grow up and get behind the wheel.
Categories: Aggression,Aggressive Driving,Virtual Games,Virtual Racing Games
In an age when cohabitation and divorce are common, single parents concerned about the developmental health of their children may want to choose new partners slowly and deliberately, new research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests.
But why that?
The more transitions children go through in their living situation, the more likely they are to act out. They also found that the effect of family upheaval on children varies by race.
Each breakup, divorce, remarriage or new cohabitation, there is a period of adjustment as parents, partners, and children establish their places in a new family setting. Studying a nationally representative sample of mothers and their children, the researchers found that children who go through frequent transitions are more likely to have behavioral problems than children raised in stable two-parent families and maybe even more than those in stable single-parent families.
Changes at home seem to have a stronger negative impact on white children than on black children, the researchers found. There is also Family instability does appear to have a causal role in determining whether white children exhibit more behavior problems.
Instability isn’t the whole story, but looking at change tells us more about what explains children’s behavioral development than what we would see by looking at a cross-section. Read more here.
Categories: health of children,Kids Of Single Parents,Single Parents
An 11-year study of the lives of nearly 500 MU students reveals the connectione between alcoholic parents and the neurosis of their children.
The study, “Family History of Alcoholism and the Stability of Personality in Young Adulthood,” by Kenneth Sher, a clinical psychology professor at MU, assessed the relationship between family history of alcoholism and personal stability.
Sher defines neuroticism as the tendency to experience negative emotions.Sher studied the normative psychological changes in subjects using the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
What the researchers found out is the sad truth telling us that much of what the scientists were seeing was likely a continuation of what had been set in place before the child was ever born.
Categories: Alocohol,Eysenck Personality Questionnaire,Neurosis,Neurotic Behaviour
Psychological depression appears to contribute to worse medical outcomes for patients with heart failure, ranking it in importance with such risk factors as high cholesterol, hypertension, and even the ability of the heart to pump blood throughout the body.
After taking into account such factors as disease severity, the strength of the heart muscle contractions, the underlying cause for the heart failure, age and medication use, a team of Duke University Medical Center and University of North Carolina researchers found that symptoms of depression were common in this population.
More to it, they´ve also found that depressed patients were over 50 percent more likely to die or be hospitalized for their heart condition than patients who were not depressed.
Researchers still don’t understand why depressed heart patients have worse outcomes. Among possible factors, depressed patients are known to have overly active immune systems, a decrease in the ability of their blood platelets to clot properly and a decrease in their heart’s ability to react appropriately to the stresses of everyday life.
In an attempt to better understand the role of depression ,
read more here.
For many people boredom is a trivial feeling of not a big value. But it has darker side: Easily bored people are at higher risk for depression, anxiety, drug addiction, alcoholism, compulsive gambling, eating disorders, hostility, anger, poor social skills, bad grades and low work performance.
Part of the boredom puzzle may be individual differences in how much excitement and novelty we require. Men, for example, are generally more bored than women. They also exhibit more risk-taking behaviors, report enjoying more dangerous entertainment and are more likely to say that their environments are dull.
Highly bored individuals also tend to lack the ability to entertain themselves. As a result, they may turn to activities like doing drugs, says McWelling Todman at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
It is possible that the roots of boredom lie in a fundamental breakdown in our understanding of what it is we want to do. Bored people tend to score low on measures of self-awareness. So what to do with it? Read this.
Categories: Anger,Boredom,Compulsive Gambling,Depression,Eating Disorders
Watching television poses a greater risk to children’s health than was previously thought, a report claims.
Analysis of 35 scientific studies identified 15 negative effects that television can have on youngsters, ranging from short-sightedness and obesity to premature puberty and autism.
The report also notes that permanent eyesight damage has been strongly linked to watching television, and says viewing may be a bigger factor in causing obesity than diet or exercise. It also increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Read more here.
Categories: health of children,Kids And TV,TV And Health,Watching TV
So, hurray, Valentine´s here again, and we are all eagerly awaiting a partners kiss, chocolate, bouquet of flowers or – wait a second. Is this really going to happen? Is anyone going to bring any flowers?
“If you are more insecure when you are 1, you are more likely to experience more negative emotions in your relationship with your current partner when you are 21,” said University of Minnesota psychologist Jeffry Simpson.
People from Sigmund Freud on down have made arguments about the role of early relationships in later life. But Dr. Simpson and his colleagues have shown for the first time, an empirical connection between early behavioral patterns and romantic relationships years down the road.
Do not be shocked with the results of the study which breaks one of the popular American myths! The psychological research seems to show exactly the opposite is true to what you could have expected…
Forget child abuse: more and more Korean children abuse their own mothers, swearing at, hitting and kicking them.
Most are boys, from preschoolers to those in fifth and sixth grades in elementary school and junior high school students. Anything can set them off, from being ordered to stop playing computer games to being told to eat. The language they use is foul, including threats to kill their mother, and some spit and even beat their mothers black and blue.
Samsung Medical Center’s child psychology unit in Seoul saw 585 of 1,010 patients over the last two months for behavioral disorders and emotional disturbance. The major reason for admission was extreme defiance of their mothers and behavioral problems.
Why do these children turn on their mothers? Experts say the phenomenon is uniquely Korean.Mothers are the victims but also the cause. What is common to children who use violence against their mothers is excessive intervention by the mother in the life of their children.
“Children who beat their mother in most cases come from families where the relationship between mother and father is closed,” psychiatrist Park Jin-saeng said. “When the father is the sole breadwinner and the mother is completely in charge of taking care of and educating the child, the mother often tends to control her child’s everyday affairs, starting from study to friends and even the color of socks he or she wears.”
Children Abusing Mothers, Agression Of Children, Violence And Children, Violence In Korea, Victims Of Violence, Children Abusin Mothers
Categories: Uncategorized
Women whose sexual desire diminishes during menopause are more likely to report disturbed sleep, depression symptoms, and night sweats, according to Group Health research in the June American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
