Leadership May Offer Protection Against Stress

"Although it is generally assumed that leaders are more stressed than nonleaders, quite the opposite seems to be true, Jennifer Lerner, Ph.D., of Harvard University and her colleagues reported online September 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

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Dancing May Improve Teen Girls' Mental Health

"Dancing appears to improve the mental  and physical health of adolescent girls, Swedish researchers report online this month in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine."

November 2012 

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Depression in Women with Migraine Linked to Childhood Abuse

... "This study confirms adverse experiences, particularly childhood abuse, predispose women to health problems later in life, possibly by altering neurobiological systems," said study author Gretchen Tietjen, MD, with the University of Toledo-Health Science Campus and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "...

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Abuse Victims Have Long Term Bad Health

" .. New research shows that abuse victims feel the impact of violence long after it occurred. A recent study in the Journal of Women's Health found that older African-American women who were exposed to high levels of family violence at some point in their lifetimes -- whether by a partner or family member -- are at a greater risk of poor mental and physical health status.
"Not just ongoing violence, which everybody thinks about, but even when it's over, there's something about what happens that seems to have a lingering effect that we don't quite understand yet," said Dr. Anuradha Paranjape, co-author of the study and associate professor at Temple University School of Medicine.
It makes sense that abused women would report worse health, given that people in stressful situations have higher levels of stress hormones, which interfere with immune function, Crawford said.
Other studies show a clear connection between depression and abuse. Adult women who have been abused in a relationship in the past five years have rates of depression 2½ times greater than women who have never been abused, according to a different study of more than 3,000 women. They are also more likely to be socially isolated, said author Amy Bonomi, associate professor at The Ohio State University .. "

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