news 2020

COVID-19 and lockdown measures drove some individuals more than others to use alcohol to cope with stress, a new study has revealed. While overall alcohol consumption appeared to fall, a study published in  BMJ Open  found that more than one in three adults (36%) increased their consumption during the first lockdown.

New HU study on the influence of "fake news" on the brain Neurocognitive studies by researchers at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) show that headlines with emotional content influence our judgments about other people even when we consider the media source to be untrustworthy. Rumours, half-truths and misinformation can be consumed and shared non-stop online and have an enormous reach.

Facial expressions of emotion transcend geography and culture, new study shows. (Image by Alan Cowen) Whether at a birthday party in Brazil, a funeral in Kenya or protests in Hong Kong, humans all use variations of the same facial expressions in similar social contexts, such as smiles, frowns, grimaces and scowls, a new UC Berkeley study shows.

The research being carried out by Dr. Nina Engelhardt fills a gap in our understanding of tolerance as well as in (cognitive) literature, and her project has led to her being included in the Baden-Württemberg Foundation's Elite Program for postdocs. In public discourse, the word "tolerance" is often defined as respect, acceptance and recognition of other cultures.

During the corona crisis, neurotic people experience more negative emotions in their everyday lives, are more unstable emotionally and worry more about their health. These are the results of a study carried out by psychologists from the Universities of Münster and Bielefeld. The study has been published in the "Journal of Research in Personality'.

People's levels of anxiety and depression were at their highest (worst) in the early stages of the March lockdown but improved fairly rapidly following the introduction of restrictions, according to new findings by UCL researchers. The study, published today in Lancet Psychiatry and funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, analysed data from over 36,000 adults who had provided responses on their mental health as part of the UCL COVID -19 Social Study on a weekly basis between 23 March and 9 August 2020.

The first lockdown led to a significant increase in symptoms of depression among children, highlighting the unintended consequences of school closures, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge. Our study is one of the first to follow the same children over time during lockdown and suggests that symptoms of depression among children got much worse during this period Giacomo Bignardi In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK Government implemented a national "lockdown" involving school closures and social distancing.

Stanford engineers investigated how people's moods might affect their trust of autonomous products, such as smart speakers. They uncovered a complicated relationship. While a certain level of trust is needed for autonomous cars and smart technologies to reach their full potential, these technologies are not infallible - hence why we're supposed to keep our hands on the wheel of self-driving cars and follow traffic laws, even if they contradict our map app instructions.

Stress increases the risk of physical and emotional problems, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, anxiety disorders, depression and burnout. Millions of people are on anxiety-reducing medication to diminish stress, but they can have nasty side-effects or even be addictive. Fortunately, there are alternatives, such as music therapy.

Early adulthood, a transitional life stage marked by major changes in social roles and responsibilities, can bring with it an increase of mental health problems. A team of McGill University researchers has found that young adults who perceived higher levels of social support reported fewer mental health problems.

Characterising our emotions is the subject of much debate, as is the identification of their neural substrates. A team from the University of Geneva has been examining the brain components of emotions, confirming that they are the brain's synchronised response to events. Emotions are complex phenomena that influence our minds, bodies and behaviour.

The Duchess of Cambridge has unveiled the findings of the biggest ever UK study on the early years, involving researchers at UCL and the Anna Freud Centre. The study marks a milestone moment for her work on the importance of early childhood in shaping the rest of our lives and broader societal outcomes.

There are encouraging signs that people in treatment for drug addiction can manage their medication when they are entrusted with a substantial quantity of opiate substitutes and told to take it in small daily doses, finds a new 'early insight' report from researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Bath.

The number of young people with anxiety doubled from 13% to 24%, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown 1, according to new research from the University of Bristol. The study, using Bristol's Children of the 90s questionnaire data, showed that young people (27-29 years) reported higher levels of anxiety during the early phases of the pandemic in the first national lockdown and this was higher than their parents.

16% of teenagers report high levels of psychological distress at age 17, finds a new study led by UCL researchers based on data collected in 2018-19. The findings also show 24% of young people report self-harming and 7% report self-harming with suicidal intent by age 17. The research, which is being published in a  briefing paper  by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) at the UCL Social Research Institute provides evidence of widespread mental health difficulties among the UK's Generation Z before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

More than half of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals who misuse alcohol or tobacco also have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder, compared to one-third of heterosexuals, a new University of Michigan study finds. "The degree of disparities in alcohol, tobacco and other psychiatric disorders by sexual identity was very surprising,” said Rebecca Evans-Polce, assistant research scientist at the U-M School of Nursing and first author of the study.

Resilience is the ability to adjust readily to traumatic events and to reorganise one's life positively. Greater flexibility, adaptation to difficulties and control of one's emotions become even more relevant in times of crisis, such as that triggered by the coronavirus to avoid depression, anxiety and stress.

A brain chemical called noradrenaline is responsible for our responses to uncertain situations - helping us to learn quickly and adapt our behaviour, a new study has found. We found that a brain chemical called noradrenaline plays a role in our inability to predict the future when the state of the world is volatile.

IStock.com/solitude72 "We laid out a framework for understanding why witnessing kindness motivates being kind," said UCLA's Daniel Fessler. Today is World Kindness Day, and despite the current state of political tension, kindness is pretty easy to perpetuate, a UCLA study reveals. "Each of us is kind to someone, and therefore have the potential to be kind to everyone, even those with whom we differ politically,' said Daniel Fessler, director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, housed in the UCLA College division of social sciences.

Wales faces a "wave? of mental health problems in the wake of COVID-19, with younger adults, women and people from deprived areas suffering the most, new research has suggested. That is the warning in a study, led by Cardiff University's Professor Robert Snowden and Swansea University's Professor Nicola Gray, which has examined the pandemic's impact on the mental wellbeing of the Welsh population.