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 tumor 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.

About half the people living in New Orleans and about one-quarter of those living in other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina showed signs of a mood or anxiety disorder five to seven months after the disaster, according to a new study.

Researchers surveyed 1,043 residents in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

They found that that 31.2 percent of respondents had an anxiety-mood disorder, including 49.1 percent of those in New Orleans metropolitan area and 26.4 percent of those in the other areas. In addition, 16.3 percent of respondents had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including 30.3 percent of New Orleans residents and 12.5 percent of people living in the other areas.

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Childbirth and the psychiatric disorders anorexia and depression can affect a woman's sex life, but in different ways, a small study suggests.

Research has shown that women with mental health conditions, including major depression and eating disorders, tend to report more problems with their sex life than other women do. The same has been found in studies of new mothers.

But the nature of this sexual dysfunction has not been clear.

In the new study, researchers found that women with either anorexia or depression typically had sex more frequently than new mothers did. They were, however, more likely to report having "problems" during sex, according to findings published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Young children of depressed mothers are at heightened risk for behavioral problems and injury, new research shows.

A team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center looked at 1992-1994 data on more than 1,100 mother/child pairs taking part in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth.

During the study period, 94 of the children (all under age 6) suffered injuries serious enough to require medical attention. Two-thirds of the injuries occurred at home.

Children of mothers who had persistently high scores on measures of depression symptoms were more than twice as likely to be injured as children of mothers with low scores of depression symptoms.