Responding to the IPPR report, Older people and wellbeing, which shows a decline in mental health and emotional wellbeing in the over 65s, Lizzie McLennan, Senior Policy Officer at Help the Aged, says:

“Mental health in older people has for too long been a secondary concern, acting as the ‘poor relation’ to other physical health problems or mental health problems in younger people.

“Quality of life, dignity and personal well-being must always be the focus of the care and support someone receives. Social care needs to focus on outcomes - people may receive care which meets their physical needs, but their emotional and mental wellbeing are too often overlooked completely.

“In some care homes there is little understanding of dementia or depression, meaning that both conditions go unrecognised and untreated, even though it could improve quality of life and wellbeing. Being depressed is often wrongly assumed to be a normal part of growing older.

“Given the strong link between emotional wellbeing and loneliness, it’s incredibly important that local communities have services for older people that go beyond social care. Older people, like people of all ages, need to be able to take part in activities and meet new people.”

Notes:

Help the Aged is the charity fighting to free disadvantaged older people in the UK and overseas from poverty, isolation, neglect and ageism. It campaigns to raise public awareness of the issues affecting older people and to bring about policy change. The Charity delivers a range of services: information and advice, home support and community living, including international development work. These are supported by its paid-for services and fundraising activities - which aim to increase funding in the future to respond to the growing unmet needs of disadvantaged older people. Help the Aged also funds vital research into the health issues and experiences of older people to improve the quality of later life.

Help the Aged urgently needs donations and support to help it in the increasingly challenging fight to free disadvantaged older people from poverty, isolation and neglect. Visit href=”http://www.helptheaged.org.uk” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.helptheaged.org.uk or call 0207 239 1982.

Change a life overseas by sponsoring a grandparent today. Visit href=”http://www.sponsoragrandparent.org.uk” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.sponsoragrandparent.org.uk to find out more.

Help the Aged is a registered charity, number 272786. Registered company number 1263446, a company limited by guarantee and registered in England. Registered office: 207 - 221 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9UZ.
VAT Number: 564 55 9800

Source:
Help the Aged
href=”http://www.helptheaged.org.uk” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.helptheaged.org.uk

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CHICAGO (AP) - The first follow-up of a landmark study of
hormone use after menopause shows heart problems linked with the
pills seem to fade after women stop taking them, while surprising
new cancer risks appear.
(PhotoDisc )

That heart trouble associated with hormones may not be permanent
is good news for millions of women who quit taking them after the
government study was halted six years ago because of heart risks
and breast cancer.

But the new risks for other cancers, particularly lung tumors,
in women who’d taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years
puzzled the researchers and outside experts.

Those risks “were completely unanticipated,” said Dr. Gerardo
Heiss of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, lead
author of the follow-up analysis.

The analysis focused on participants’ health in the first two to
three years after the study’s end. During that time, those who’d
taken hormones but stopped were 24 percent more likely to develop
any kind of cancer than women who’d taken dummy pills during the
study.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty about the cause of the
increased cancer risk,” said analysis co-author Dr. JoAnn Manson,
chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s
Hospital.

The cancers included breast tumors, which also occurred more
frequently in hormone users during the study.

The researchers noted that the increased risks for all cancers
amounted to only three extra cases per year for every 1,000 women
on hormone pills, compared with nonusers.

Still, Heiss said the results suggest that former hormone users
need to be vigilant about getting cancer screening including
mammograms.

“Vigilance is justified,” he said. “No alarm, but
vigilance.”

The initial study of 16,608 postmenopausal women was designed to
examine pros and cons of taking pills long thought to benefit
women’s health. It was halted in 2002 when more breast cancers,
heart attacks and related problems were found in hormone users
versus nonusers.

The family of Chris Benoit has been searching for answers since late June, when the professional wrestler killed his wife, 7-year-old son and then himself.

At the crime scene, police found anabolic steroids prompting many to suspect that “roid rage” had accounted for Benoit’s behavior, which his family found out of character for the 40-year-old.

His family now believes that new test results on Benoit’s brain explain his vicious actions.

The tests, conducted by Julian Bailes of the Sports Legacy Institute, show that Benoit’s brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.

Bailes and his research team say that this damage was the result of a lifetime of chronic concussions and head trauma suffered while Benoit was in the wrestling ring.

Benoit’s father, Michael Benoit, is speaking out in order to warn other athletes, both professional and student.

Dementia Caused by Multiple Concussions, Doctor Says

After hearing the news that his son had murdered his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and wife Nancy and then killed himself, Michael Benoit struggled to understand how it could have happened.

Michael says Benoit was a “kind and gentle” man who volunteered with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and visited U.S. troops overseas in Iraq.

“First we needed an understanding. The person that did this is not the man we know and love,” Michael said today on “Good Morning America.”

After the suicide and murders, Michael was contacted by a former wrestler, who suggested he investigate whether years of trauma to Benoit’s brain could have contributed to his actions.

“I was grasping for anything,” Michael told ABC News’ Bob Woodruff. “The world was very black. I mean, we didn’t even know how to deal with this.”

So Michael turned over part of his son’s brain to Bailes, the head of neurosurgery at West Virginia University and former Pittsburgh Steelers team physician.

Bailes and his research team had also analyzed the brains of former NFL players such as Andre Waters and Terry Long, who both committed suicide. Bailes and his colleagues theorize that repeated concussions can lead to dementia, which can contribute to severe behavioral problems.

“There is a constant theme in the failure of their personal lives, their business lives, depression and then ultimately suicide,” Bailes said.

If a quick glance could help you determine which foods on grocery shelves are best for your health, would it influence your purchases?

One New England grocery store chain tested it out with a ratings system for its products, and found its recommendations for shoppers had made a difference.

For the last year, shoppers at Hannaford grocery stores have had gold stars to guide them toward healthier products. The chain ranked more than 25,000 items, giving one star to an item with ingredients considered good and three for those with the healthiest content. Foods with little nutritional value received no stars.

The chain is now evaluating the program, and a company spokesman told ABC’s Lisa Stark the rankings have had an impact on what they’ve sold this past year.

“When given a choice between a product with stars and one without stars, customers consistently choose the one with stars,” said Hannaford spokesman Caren Epstein.

They found sales of healthier breakfast cereals rose 5 percent, while lean ground beef sales jumped 7 percent and fattier ground beef sales dropped 5 percent.

“When I’m deciding about a product, if it has stars, I’m more likely to get it,” said shopper Sarah Morel.

“It’s a very convenient way to make sure I’m making the healthiest choices for me and my family,” said another shopper.

But the strategy may not be embraced by all supermarkets. While grocery stores are increasingly interested in helping consumers make smarter choices, when ABC News asked several major chains if they were willing to go as far as Hannaford with its ratings, they declined to comment.

A food retailing expert said stores are caught between two sometimes conflicting goals as they conduct their business.

“One is doing the right thing for people’s health, and the second is doing the right thing for sales,” said Jim Hertel of Willard Bishop Consulting. “And that really puts them in somewhat of a difficult position.”

Hannaford is gearing up to rank even more products, as the chain is confident that consumers have an appetite for its gold standard.

CNS Response, Inc.
(OTC Bulletin Board: CNSO) reported the results of a study presented
at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) 161st Annual Meeting by Dr.
James Greenblatt, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Walden Behavioral Care
Inpatient Psychiatry and Eating Disorder Programs. The poster presentation,
titled “Referenced-EEG Guided Medication Predictions in Treatment
Refractory Eating Disorder Patients,” provided a preliminary analysis of a
patient-controlled case series studying the use of Referenced-EEG (rEEG(R))
to facilitate the medication selection for patients with eating disorders
and comorbid depression.

The study of eight female patients, conducted over up to a four-year
period, demonstrated that rEEG successfully guided physician selection of
each patient’s medications in the series, leading to a dramatic relief of
depression and eating disorder symptoms. Successful rEEG-guided predictions
involved medications in the anticonvulsant, antidepressant and stimulant
classes, often in combination.

Dr. Greenblatt commented, “Despite the small sample size of this study,
the results support the promise of rEEG as an effective tool for
determining medication programs for treatment refractory patients with
eating disorders and depression. The decrease in depressive symptoms, as
well as significant improvement in eating disorders symptoms and weight,
for the eight patients in the trial was striking, considering that, prior
to the study, each had required either partial hospitalization or inpatient
care, as determined by managed behavioral health care reviewers. However,
following rEEG medication recommendations, hospitalization days for the
patients decreased dramatically. Anorexia nervosa is a potentially fatal
illness with significant mortality if early interventions are not
successful. Improved pharmacology, as these cases demonstrate, could
decrease the high morbidity and mortality in patients with disordered
eating.”

Primary outcome measures of the study included the 21-item Hamilton
Rating for Depression Scale (HDRS) and the Clinical Global Improvement
Scale (CGI) and the Clinical Global Severity Scale (SGS). Some of the
criteria used to assess improvement in the CGI included: body
dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, compulsive exercising, binging and
purging.

Improvements in both HDRS and CGI scores were evident at 8-weeks,
6-months, and 2 years (for 4 patients). The medications selected from rEEG
correlations involved combinations from many different classes of
medications. Stimulant medications in four Eating Disorder patients did not
result in appetite suppression or weight loss. These results are consistent
with recent findings that ADHD can predict eating disorder pathology in
adolescent girls.

Greenblatt continued, “Specific patient progress during the study
demonstrated the ability of rEEG to have a real impact on the lives of
those with severe mental conditions. One anorexia nervosa patient had
previously received five different medication regimes, none of which
provided any improvement. The patient had been hospitalized on five
separate occasions during the two years prior to rEEG testing. Based on the
rEEG report, we medicated the patient with a combination of Oxcarbazepine
and Duloxetine. This treatment combination is outside of the traditional
medications we would have considered. In fact, there are no medications
that have shown consistent success in treatment of anorexia nervosa. For
the 24 months following, the patient did not require further
hospitalization, and at the end of the 24 months was rated as ‘Normal.’

“The two Bulimia Nervosa patients in the study had seven
hospitalizations between them, but neither required further hospital care
after being treated by the rEEG guided medications personalized to their
own brain function. We would never have known or even considered these
medications without the guidance of this rEEG analysis and associated
reports.”

Len Brandt, Chairman and CEO of CNS Response, noted, “I congratulate
Dr. Greenblatt on his accomplishments in this study in which he documented
the benefits of personalized medication selection based on analysis of
brain physiology. It is not only the dramatic improvement demonstrated in
this study that makes it a compelling analysis, but also that he had
carefully documented treatment history on these patients for two years
prior to rEEG analysis. Generally, researchers lack accurate treatment
histories for patients recruited to a study, and comparisons of previous
treatments to a new treatment approach cannot be made. The best alternative
is to compare two patient groups that are randomly assigned different
treatment regimes, ignoring comparisons to historical response to
treatment. Results are typically measured over a fairly short period of
eight to twelve weeks, but rating improvements are challenging as unique
patient history and symptom manifestation data is unavailable.

“In this study, however, Dr Greenblatt carefully recorded treatment
histories for 24 months prior to the rEEG analysis. He then measured
patients’ responses to the rEEG-guided medications and associated therapies
for 6 to 24 months post initial dosing, demonstrating not just treatment
response, but also that the response was durable. The long term record of
pre-rEEG treatment history compared to post-rEEG treatment makes this a
notable study.

“Though a small group of patients were involved in this study,
considering the quality of the study - the established treatment history
prior to rEEG analysis, the durability of treatment response demonstrated
over the 6 to 24 months following the rEEG-guided medication selection, the
severity of illness present in these patients with both eating disorders
and depression, and the consistent degree of benefit realized by these
patients - we are encouraged that such treatment-resistant patients, their
families and their physicians can hope for a truly personalized medicine
approach. We are proud to recognize Dr. Greenblatt’s disciplined commitment
to this effort and look forward to his report on an additional group of
patients that have not yet reached the six months response mark.”

Daniel Hoffman, MD, Chief Medical Officer for CNS Response, concluded,
“This is the second scientific poster to report on the benefit of
rEEG-guided personalized medicine for the eating disordered population. The
previous poster reported on results in a residential care setting where 61
of 81 (75%) had been successfully treated with rEEG guided medication
selection. I expect psychiatrists treating such challenging cases will
appreciate Dr. Greenblatt’s efforts concerning an even more severely
disabled patient group. This is a population for which there are
essentially no known medication treatments, other than fluoxetine for
bulimia, yet represents one of the most lethal groups we treat.”

About CNS Response

CNS Response is a life-sciences data company whose patented system
provides treatment guidance to psychiatrists and other physicians for
patients with behavioral (mental or addictive) disorders. This technology
allows CNS Response to create and provide simple reports (”rEEG(R)
Reports”) that specifically guide physicians to treatment strategies based
on the patient’s own physiology.

rEEG(R) utilizes traditional electroencephalography (EEG) in
conjunction with a normative database and a proprietary clinical
(symptomatic) database to identify the following: (1) medication classes
most likely to be needed; and (2) medications within these classes with the
most probable treatment potential for each patient. Reports are provided to
physicians in a relationship analogous to that of a reference laboratory.
Prospective, retrospective and field studies of treatment-resistant
patients have reported treatment success of 70% or greater in managed care,
outpatient psychiatric and residential substance abuse clinical settings.

In addition to providing analytical support to physicians, CNS Response
is also an aid to pharmaceutical developers, who can use rEEG to (1)
stratify study populations to improve the success of FDA clinical trials;
(2) provide insight on effective therapeutic dosing of investigational
drugs; (3) identify additional indications for psychiatric medications; (4)
provide insight into effective drug combinations; and (5) discover
opportunities for decision analytics and support. In addition to these
applications, CNS Response continues to investigate the use of rEEG
analysis for development of proprietary pharmaceutical opportunities.

Safe Harbor Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters
discussed are forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor
provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as
amended. These statements involve risks and uncertainties as set forth in
the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These
risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially
from any forward-looking statements made herein.

CNS Response, Inc.
href=”http://www.cnsresponse.com” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.cnsresponse.com

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WASHINGTON:
A new review challenges the effectiveness of white meat self-exams, claiming that
thither is no evidence that would turn out that it actually reduces breast cancer
deaths.

In fact, the
researchers have suggested that the practice may be doing more hurt than good,
since it led to almost twice as many biopsies that turned up no cancer in women
who performed the self-exams, compared to women world Health Organization did not do the
exams.

“At present, screening
by breast self-contemplation or physical examination (by a trained health worker)
cannot be recommended,” said Jan Peter Kosters, and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic
Cochrane Centre.

The authors
said that if women still want to cover with knocker self-exams they should
constantly “seek medical advice if they notice any change in their breasts that
might be breast crab,” said
Kosters.

“We suggest that the
want of supporting evidence…should be discussed with these women to enable
them to make an informed decision,” he added. In the reassessment of deuce large studies
of 388,535 women in Russia and China, the team found that women world Health Organization used
self-breast exams had 3,406 biopsies, compared with 1,856 biopsies in the group
that did not do the exams.

At
the same time, on that point was no significant departure in breast cancer deaths
between the two groups. Carolyn Runowicz, director of The Carole and Ray Neag
Comprehensive Cancer Centre at the University of Connecticut Health Centre,
encourages women to do the self-exams if they ar comfortable with them,
insistence that 50% to 60% of women detect their own breast masses.

“I think what we are seeing is
that women are familiar with their white meat through breast self-exam and when
there is a lump, they notice the difference,” she said. The new review appears
in the latest issue of the Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane
Collaboration.

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