That's Fit

The college years are fun, but they certainly can be stressful. Some kids are away from home for the first time, others are struggling to support themselves. Students are trying to juggle class loads, part-time jobs, and an often a very busy social scene.

Though most college students can handle the stress that they feel, in a recent survey, 1 in 5 undergraduates reported feeling stressed out all the time. Chronic stress can lead to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, poor school performance, and health problems. Alarmingly, one in ten students reported thinking about suicide.

Students reported that the things that caused them stress included:

• school work
• grades
• finances
• relationships/dating
• family problems
• extracurricular activities

The good news is that more than half of the students surveyed reported feeling hopeful and that they had a good support system. Half said they would turn to professional help if they needed it and 15% have already done so. Even so, it's clear that even though college students are out of the nest, they still need plenty of support.

For my brother's 30th birthday party, we held a special costume party. Guests were asked to dress how they thought they might look 30 years down the road. I dressed up as a "cat lady." I lived alone at the time in a tiny upstairs apartment with two cats, and had taken in my grandparent's cat as well, while they vacationed in Florida. The costume didn't seem to be too far off the mark, all those cats in that little space. My friends and family nodded knowingly.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the cat population in my apartment decreased after that winter. But though my costume was meant to be funny, animal hording is a rare but serious condition. You hear about it every now and then on the news -- a person discovered with an alarming number of animals in their home, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. Often, these people are arrested for neglect ,and the animals that are not adoptable euthanized.

MSNBC has an interesting article on why animal hording happens. It often stems, they say, from an abusive or traumatic childhood where animals become the only stable force for a child. In some cases, care-giving becomes compulsive. The condition isn't an isolated diagnosis, but often stems from a combination of attachment disorders, addictive behavior, and personality disorders. It's a sad situation for all involved -- human and animals alike -- but with treatment, people who horde animals can learn to control their behavior.

Prozac is one of the most widely-prescribed medications in North America. So what would you say if someone told you it was no more effective than a sugar pill? You'd be pretty shocked, right?

But that's just what some recent studies have concluded, according to this article. The findings, which have been called 'fantastically important', showed that many of the most widely-used antidepressants did no more good for mentally ill patients than a placebo. According to Research Professor Irving Kirsch, "Given these data, there seems little evidence to support the prescription of anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide benefit." Read the rest of the findings here.

What do you think? Do you believe these findings?

If you've experienced sleeplessness, whether it's a result of your own choice or external circumstances, you know just how frustrating it can be. I know from experience -- my brother just reminded me the other day of a family vacation in which I had to share a room with my mother, who snores very loudly. Being perhaps the lightest sleeper in the world, I averaged about 2 hours of sleep a night , and after the better part of a week, I desperately begged him to switch rooms with me, promising that is he didn't, he was going to have to pick me up from a loony bin, where I would be recovering from a nervous breakdown. Dramatic? Yes, but I was very serious. No sleep does that to a person.

Researchers out of the UK have been studying the effect of sleep deprivation on the brain, with some interesting results. According to findings, activity in the brains of sleep deprived people show a dramatic increase when presented with upsetting or sad images. Moreover, the study links sleep deprivation and mental illness -- yikes! To read more of the findings, click here.

So remember to get your sleep however you can. For me, it means never sharing a room with my mother. Ever.

While some countries are considering legalizing marijuana, other countries like Britain are considering making punishments associated with it more serious because of recent findings that the incidences of mental illness and behavioural problems caused by the drug are rising dramatically. That's according to this eye-opening article from The Daily Mail.

In fact, the number of cases of mental illness from cannabis have increased by 1,000 percent since 1996 in some parts of Britain. And 75% of medical treatment of kids under 18 from drug misuse in the UK is due to Cannabis.

What do you think -- is Cannabis safe if used properly, or should it be treated as harshly as other 'hard' drugs.

It seems odd to many of us that mental illness could be as damaging (or more so) than physical illness, but researchers this past week said just that.

The research presented concluded with the opinion that depression is actually more damaging than heart angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes.

Those chronic physical ailments are nothing to sneeze at, and when depression is said to be worse than any of them, you know something serious is afoot here.

Does depression affect the everyday functioning of those it afflicts, just as much as chronic physical ailments? Of course it does, and in some ways (or many), it's much worse.

Sometimes it seems like video games rival crack in terms of their addictive properties. Or if not crack, certainly smoking or alcohol. I know come people who will trade social interaction, even work, to stay home a play video games. So if sex and gambling and shopping are legitimate addictions, is excessive video gaming considered one too?

Experts say no -- it's not a true addiction. Extreme video game addiction only affects about 10% of the population, so it's not actually considered a mental illness -- yet. But whether or not video gaming is accepted by health officials as a serious problem, I think it already is one, as it is linked to a lack of physical activity in children and, in turn, to childhood obesity. Parents need to step in and limit the time their kids can spend sitting in the house, glued to the TV or computer. And in the case of adults who are seriously addicted to video games? You might just need to perform an intervention.

Now, I wonder if they've done any studies on Facebook addiction ... ?