ARCHIVED - Research About - Mental Health

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The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada's agency for health research. CIHR's mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to catalyze its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health-care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 13,000 health researchers and trainees across Canada. Through CIHR, the Government of Canada invested approximately $70.0 million in 2008-09 in mental health related research.

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The Facts

• One in three Canadians will be affected by a disease, disorder or injury of the brain or nervous system at some point in their life.*
• The 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey found that almost 4% of workers aged 25 to 64 had experienced depression in the previous year.**
• Of the almost 83% of youth who said they had consumed alcohol over the past year, just under 37% reported doing so at least once a week, and more than 33% reported consuming five or more drinks per typical drinking occasion.***
• Men and women shared the same 10 leading causes of death in 2004 – although not in the same order. For both, the top three were cancer, heart disease and stroke. Differences between sexes were observed in the ranking of unintentional injuries and suicide. Unintentional injuries were the fourth leading cause of death among men, but seventh among women. Suicide was the seventh for men, but 10th for women.****
• About 16% of women in Canada will experience major depression in the course of their lives. For men the prevalence is 11%.*****

Sources:
* NeuroScience Canada, Brain Facts.
** Statistics Canada, The Daily, Jan. 12, 2007, Study: Depression and work impairment.
*** Substance Use by Canadian Youth – A National Survey of Canadians' Use of Alcohol and Other Drugs – Canadian Addiction Survey.
**** Statistics Canada, Leading Causes of Death 2000-2004.
***** Health Canada, It's Your Health, Mental Health – Depression.

Finding Solutions

Stress can cause the brain to misread its signals

Under acute stress, neurons in the hypothalamus – the part of the brain that controls things like body temperature, hunger, moods and sex drive – can misinterpret chemical signals from the body, University of Calgary researchers have found. Brain cells receive different chemical signals instructing them to switch on or off. A protein known as KCC2 manages this process. Working with rats, researchers found that stress affects KCC2's activities, so that "off" signals become "on" signals. This could explain why people under stress react emotionally rather than rationally. Findings from the CIHR-supported study, led by Dr. Jaideep Bains, were published online in March in Nature Neuroscience.

Negative moods cause world view to shrink

Depressed people literally see the world differently, a CIHR-funded study has found. A University of Toronto team lead by Dr. Adam Anderson used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how the visual cortex works when people are in good, bad, and indifferent moods. Participants who were first exposed to happier images could process more information when shown composite images. Those who had been shown sad images took more of a "tunnel vision" approach and missed background details in the composite pictures. The findings of the study, published in June in the Journal of Neuroscience, will help develop strategies to deal with depression.

Queen's researchers advance process for identifying FASD

CIHR funding enabled a Queen's University team, led by Dr. James Reynolds, to conduct tests in nine centres across two provinces to improve the process for identifying children at risk for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The funding allowed researchers to establish a mobile lab and travel to Ontario and Alberta communities to conduct eye-movement tests. Currently, there are few objective tools to accurately measure brain function in young children. This new test significantly improves the protocols for identifying kids at risk for FASD – something that, without confirmation of maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, can be a challenge. The findings from the study, which also involved researchers at the University of Alberta and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, were published online in March in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Getting by with a little help from our friends?

According to a recent study, women rank social support as one of the most important influences on their mood. The study, led by CIHR-funded Dr. Sarah Romans of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, surveyed more than 500 Toronto women aged 18 to 40 about their moods and factors such as physical health, stress, social support and menstrual cycle that are thought to influence mood. More women reported a positive overall mood than negative mood. The women listed social support as the greatest influence on positive mood, while stress held the largest sway over negative mood. Less than 5% cited their menstrual cycle phase as an influence.

Helping women when life's greatest joy leads to emotional turmoil

As part of a research project to measure and understand women's depression during and after pregnancy, Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine and Dr. Angela Bowen from the University of Saskatchewan simultaneously created a special mental health services program to provide help to women participating in the study. With regional health partners, they created the Maternal Mental Health Program (MMHP). Over the course of two years, 170 pregnant and postpartum women were cared for through the MMHP. The new program also proved a valuable tool in helping share information and raise awareness of antenatal and postpartum depression.

For More Information

CIHR's Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) has identified five strategic priorities: increasing the capacity of the Canadian health research community through innovative, transdisciplinary training programs; fostering excellence in transdisciplinary research; promoting effective knowledge translation of innovative research findings and improving best practices; pursuing and sustaining creative partnerships; and, fostering CIHR-INMHA's presence and the impact of Canadian scientists on the international stage To learn more about these priorities and other CIHR-INMHA activities, please visit the Institute's website.

For more information, go to ARCHIVED - Your Health Research Dollars at Work.