mental illness

Mental Illness, Love and Telomeres

Telomere length predicts lifespan.   Now, a new study has shown an association between childhood trauma, shortened telomere length and mental illness such as bipolar mood disorder and schizophrenia. Hmmm…  What’s that telling us? DNA Transcription Cell division is essential to life and telomeres are part of that process.  Telomeres form protective caps on the end…

image depicting depression. A woman with braids is crying.

Turns Out That Depression Isn’t Strongly Genetic After All. Really? Astonishing!

A powerful piece of medical dogma is the notion that depression has genetic roots.  This is the idea that if your mother suffered from depression, then the chances are that you will too. A closedly associated notion is the “chemical imbalance” in the brain idea. This is the claim that depressed patients do not have…

An image of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum. They may play a role in mood disorders via herpes infection.

Do herpes and inflammation make you cranky?

Does Herpes Virus Cause Mood Disorders? Research published in Frontiers in Microbiology shows remarkable links between herpes virus infection and mood disorders.  Dr Bhupesh Prusty and his team conducted post-mortem brain biopsies. They investigated bipolar mood disorder (BMD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. They also included a control group of patients with no history…

A photograph of the Nazi sympathizer Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger's syndrome is named.

Was Asperger a bad guy? Did he have Asperger’s?

Startling new evidence shows that Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger’s syndrome is named, was a Nazi sympathiser. He referred mentally handicapped children to a clinic where many were eventually killed as part of the Nazi’s programme of racial purity.  The evidence is presented in a paper published in April 2018 in the journal Molecular Autism…