A new study examining the results of the STAR*D data has found that people who have “anxious depression” have a more difficult time in treatment than those without. A person with anxious depression experiences a major depressive episode and clinically meaningful levels of anxiety as well. The research examined 2,876 adults who were in treatment for depression in 41 different treatment centers across the U.S. In the first phase of treatment, patients received the antidepressant Celexa (citalopram) to treat their depression.

In the second phase of the study, 1,292 of the patients who didn’t feel significantly less depressed after taking Celexa for up to 14 weeks were then randomly assigned to try a different antidepressant, or to try Celexa combined with another antidepressant.

The close relatives of people with Parkinson's disease are at increased risk for depression and anxiety disorders, new research suggests.

The risk is particularly high in the brothers, sisters, parents and children of people who develop Parkinson's before age 75, said a team from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

The study included 1,000 immediate relatives of 162 Parkinson's patients and 850 immediate relatives of 147 people without Parkinson's. It's the first large population-based study to identify this kind of association.

"Studies by our group and others have shown that relatives of patients with Parkinson's disease have an increased risk of Parkinson's disease. Recently, we showed they also have increased risk of essential tremor and of cognitive impairment or dementia. However, the risk of psychiatric disorders was unknown," senior author Dr. Walter Rocca, a neurologist and epidemiologist, said in a prepared statement.

Women who stop being religiously active are three times more likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder than women who have always been religiously active, researchers report.

In contrast, the researchers found that men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression compared with men who had always been religiously active.

"One's lifetime pattern of religious service attendance can be related to psychiatric illness," study co-author Joanna Maselko said in a prepared statement. She is an assistant professor of public health at Temple University.

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Coming home to a loving spouse and a good marriage helps working women shake off the stress of the day, new research confirms.

Men, on the other hand, often drop their stress at the door when they come home, regardless of the state of their union, reported psychology researchers.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed 30 married, parenting couples, with each partner employed in full-time jobs.

Over a three-day period, each of the 60 spouses completed a single survey about their satisfaction with their marriage and twice-daily questionnaires about their day. The researchers also took saliva samples four times a day (early morning, late morning, afternoon and evening) to test for cortisol, a hormone released by the body under stress.

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