Word: nimh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...report released Tuesday by the National Institute of Mental Health concludes that not only is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder real, it's treatable - but only if you take your medicine. Coming down largely on the "nature" side of nature vs. nurture, the NIMH says that ADHD is most effectively combated through a combination of therapy and medication, but that the medication is the more important portion of the equation...
...cover nearly any child who's ever nodded off in class or can't stand waiting in lines - is merely a social byproduct of modernity: Children raised on cable television and video games have short attention spans. But by siding with medicine as the treatment of choice, the NIMH says that there's a clear biological component that can be chemically modified. That's not to say that every time a kid acts up we should drug him. "This is not just handing out Ritalin or Adderol," says TIME science writer Christine Gorman. "The medication needs to be monitored...
...scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health, for example, were stymied when they attempted to undertake a groundbreaking study of the connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult disorders such as self-injury. "We don't do that kind of research," the researchers say they were told by NIMH officials, as funding for the project dried up. Strong doesn't advocate a particular therapeutic approach--though, like Levenkron, she prefers coddling to the tougher tactics of Conterio and Lader...
...chemicals have been implicated in so many mental disorders. And it is not surprising that serotonin appears to be especially important--the first among equals, in a sense. The nerve cells that specialize in serotonin production originate in the raphe nuclei, in a region right atop the spine that nimh's Hyman calls "the deep basement of the brain." From there, these neurons extend vinelike projections called axons up through the brain and down into the spinal column. The axons form a sort of neurological interstate-highway network, over which serotonin supplies are sent to all parts of the nervous...
...come up with a whole new pharmacopoeia of compounds to deal with mental disorders. "Today the psychiatrists who treat patients are working hand in hand with the 'wet-brain guys'--the pharmacologists, chemists and molecular biologists," says Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland. While the effects of earlier psychiatric drugs were discovered largely by trial and error, the latest compounds are aimed at exact targets in the brain. "When you wanted to develop a new drug, you used to copy an old one that worked, add a little twist...