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If premenstrual syndrome is a little annoying, then premenstrual dysphoric disorder is true hell on earth. PMDD affects 2 to 5 percent of reproductive-age women with symptoms that mimic depression and anxiety, like debilitating sadness, hopelessness, and irritability in addition to physical issues like bloating and fatigue. But, frustratingly, women with PMDD have the same hormone levels of women with the more common PMS even though they react differently. Researchers at the National...

For the last five years, Amber and David Lapp have been hard at work interviewing working-class Millennials in a small town in southern Ohio. For the Lapps, who are both research fellows at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, the goal was to learn about how these Millennials form relationships and families , as well as how those family arrangements work out. Though the project was not overtly political in its nature, in the wake of the 2016 election, the Lapps wondered what some...

People working on behalf of people and animals can experience a range of physical and psychological symptoms. These include emotional numbing, social withdrawal, insomnia, nightmares, anger and irritability, inflexibility, and cynicism, among other indicators of compassion fatigue – also called vicarious trauma. Caring for the Caregiver There are many ways to prevent compassion fatigue, and here are a few: 1) Good Self-Care 2) Nature 3) Social Support 4) Healthy Escapes and Hobbies 5)...

Call for Papers In anticipation of high interest in presenting at this year’s conference, the Field Center is extending the deadline for submissions until January 15, 2017 . 7th biennial One Child, Many Hands: A Multidisciplinary Conference on Child Welfare June 7 – 9, 2017 University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia The University of Pennsylvania's Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice & Research has issued a Call for Papers for its biennial multidisciplinary child welfare...

The two most under-diagnosed and under-treated mental illnesses among the elderly population are depression and anxiety. There are particular signs and symptoms of these disorders that are important to monitor, according to Dr. Jennifer Stelter, PsyD and Director of Operations of Clinical Programs for The Alden Network. If your loved one is no longer engaging in the day-to-day activities that they used to enjoy, you should probably be concerned about possible depression. Other symptoms...

Every year in the U.S., more than 30,000 people die from things related to guns. That puts guns ahead of HIV, Parkinson's disease, malnutrition, hypertension, intestinal infection, peptic ulcer, anemia, viral hepatitis, biliary tract disease, atherosclerosis and fires. Yet, the funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers evaluated the leading causes...

Which cities have the greenest streets? MIT’s Senseable City Lab is pushing toward an answer to this question with a new project called Treepedia . A map website that catalogues the density of the tree canopy in 10 global cities, Treepedia uses information from Google Street View to create what it calls the Green View Index—a rating that quantifies how green a street view looks according to the number of trees it contains. Rating a huge number of street corners for the relative greenery of...

Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder. But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty. A new study from the Population Reference Bureau by Beth Jarosz and Mark Mather tracks the dramatic growth in inequality and poverty...

When it comes to our health, drawing in more social support — particularly from close family and friends — may be a more effective strategy than increasing interaction or visits with physicians or other healthcare workers, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Most health care interventions are designed for the individual patient, but there’s a growing body of research that shows how health care organizations can use social engagement strategy to enhance...

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies recently published a report with stunning statistics on housing and aging. By 2035, one in three U.S. households, versus today’s one in five, will be headed by someone 65 or older. This will also mean an American population with one in five people over 65—almost 80 million people—up from one in seven today. That’s an increase of more than 30 million people over the next 20 years. Many of these Baby Boomers, the report notes, intend to “age in...

Researchers have found promising results for treating depression with a video game interface that targets underlying cognitive issues associated with depression rather than just managing the symptoms. "We found that moderately depressed people do better with apps like this because they address or treat correlates of depression," said Patricia Areán, a UW Medicine researcher in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The first study enrolled older adults diagnosed with late-life depression into a...

When reporting on poverty, the media fall into familiar traps and pundits make prescriptions that disregard the facts. So, in the fifth and final installment of our series, " Busted: America's Poverty Myths ," we present a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Poverty in America Edition. It'll equip you with the tools to spot shoddy reporting and the knowledge to identify coverage with insight. With help from Jack Frech , former Athens County welfare director; Kathryn Edin , co-author of $2.00...