Crucial parts of brains of children with attention deficit disorder develop more slowly than other youngsters' brains, a phenomenon that earlier brain-imaging research missed, a new study says.

Developing more slowly in ADHD youngsters — the lag can be as much as three years — are brain regions that suppress inappropriate actions and thoughts, focus attention, remember things from moment to moment, work for reward and control movement. That was the finding of researchers, led by Dr. Philip Shaw of the National Institute of Mental Health, who reported the most detailed study yet on this problem in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, albeit delayed, in children with ADHD should be reassuring to families and could help to explain why many youth eventually seem to grow out of the disorder," Shaw said in a statement.

So you know you have depression, or you're pretty sure you do, but you're putting off doing anything about it. Procrastinating is a fairly common state of affairs for people with depression. I once put off renewing the registration for my car (before I was diagnosed with depression) and of course it expired, as they do. I ended up getting a huge ticket, about one week's pay, because I was unlucky enough to be in front of a state cop in stop-and-go traffic. It seems really stupid now that I didn't get it done, but I do remember the complete lack of motivation that came with my depression.

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One in 10 suicides in New York City involve visitors to the Big Apple, a phenomenon known as "suicide tourism," according to research presented yesterday at the American Public Health Association meeting in Washington, DC.

"These data suggest that there are individuals who travel to a distant location and take their lives," often in well-known tourist hotspots, Dr. David Vlahov of The New York Academy of Medicine noted in a statement.

Vlahov and colleagues sifted through files at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City for all suicide deaths in New York City between 1990 and 2004.

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The risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is elevated in infants with parents who have been hospitalized for psychiatric illness or substance-abuse disorders, according to a new study.

Dr. Roger T. Webb, at the University of Manchester in England, and associates obtained information on single infant births, infant mortality, and adult psychiatric hospitalizations from national registries in Denmark. The researchers identified all cases of SIDS that occurred between 1973 and 1998.

In SIDS, which occurs without warning, apparently healthy infants seem to just stop breathing. The cause is unknown and most cases occur between the ages of 2 and 4 months.