Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
When improved antidepressants hit the market in the 1980s, heavy drinking among people with depression dropped 22 percent, suggesting people who knowingly use drugs and alcohol to relieve mental and physical pain will switch to safer, better treatment options when they can get them, a new Johns Hopkins University study found.
December 17, 2018 Tags: alcohol abuse, antidepressants, depression, drug dependency, Michael Darden, NBER, Nicholas Papageorge, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors
| Category: Business and Economics, Public Health, Social Sciences
Johns Hopkins computers scientists, who have already used Twitter posts to track flu cases, say their techniques also show promise as a tool to gather important information about some common mental illnesses. By reviewing tweets from users who publicly mentioned their diagnosis and by looking for language cues linked to certain disorders, the researchers say, they’ve been able to quickly and inexpensively collect new data on post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder.
December 9, 2014 Tags: computational linguistics, depression, language and speech processing, mental health, mental illness, PTSD, Twitter
| Category: Engineering, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health, Technology
For most of history, humans rose with the sun and slept when it set. Enter Thomas Edison, and with a flick of a switch, night became day, enabling us to work, play and post cat and kid photos on Facebook into the wee hours. However, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins biologist Samer Hattar, this typical 21st- century scenario comes at a serious cost: When people routinely burn the midnight oil, they risk suffering depression and learning issues, and not only because of lack of sleep. The culprit could also be exposure to bright light at night from lamps, computers and even iPads.
November 14, 2012 Tags: Advance Online Publication, AOP, cortisol, depression, exposure to light at night, ipRGCs, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, limbic system, Nature, Prozac, Samer Hattar, Seasonal Affective Disorder, The Johns Hopkins University
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Public Health, University-Related