Articles about 'Department of Psychiatry'

Around 70% of young people who report self-harming or suicidal thoughts are within the normal or non-clinical range of mental distress.  

Six affiliates of the University of Cambridge are among 50 world-leading UK researchers who have been elected to the prestigious Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Is the lockdown leading us to drink more alcohol or spend more time gambling online or watching pornography? Researchers today launch a survey aimed at tracking how our habits have changed in response to our forced isolation.

It’s been decades since Professor Paul Fletcher last donned scrubs, but he now finds himself helping treat psychiatric patients, sometimes in full protective gear, and learning that the best strategy is to “shut up and listen” to his colleagues.

New brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Bumetanide – a prescription drug for oedema (the build-up of fluid in the body) – improves some of the symptoms in young children with autism spectrum disorders and has no significant side effects, confirms a new study from researchers in China and the UK. Published today in Translational Psychiatry, the study demonstrates for the first time that the drug improves the symptoms by decreasing the ratio of the GABA to glutamate in the brain. GABA and glutamate are both neurotransmitters – chemical messengers that help nerve cells in the brain communicate.

Autistic mothers are more likely to report post-natal depression compared to non-autistic mothers, according to a new study of mothers of autistic children carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge. A better understanding of the experiences of autistic mothers during pregnancy and the post-natal period is critical to improving wellbeing. The results are published in Molecular Autism.

The famous, but bizarre, ‘rubber hand illusion’ could help people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder overcome their condition without the often unbearable stress of exposure therapy, suggests new research.

Anna Chaplin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry who studies the association between depression and cardiovascular health in young people. Here, she tells us about teaching herself to code, her department’s support of students, and putting your mental health first. 

An international team of researchers has identified key networks within the brain which they say interact to increase the risk that an individual will think about – or attempt – suicide. Writing in Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers say that their review of existing literature highlights how little research has been done into one of the world’s major killers, particularly among the most vulnerable groups.