Is normal aging associated with increased cognitive decline? Not so much (if you look at the question systematically), according to a recent study.
Rather than losses of fluid intelligence, increasing age is correlated with declines in vision and processing speed, both of which can be corrected.
This information comes from a recent study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham published in the Journal of Aging and Health.
Adding the name of the last author of this study to the original search term (Karlene Ball “fluid intelligence”), we find an earlier study by the same team. It describes a randomized trial of cognitive training aimed at improving memory and boosting visual processing speed.
This seemed to put the brakes on or even reverse cognitive decline among elderly people without dementia.
RESULT: Effects of Cognitive Training Interventions With Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial
JAMA
The goal, of course, is to optimize independence among the aging and delay the need for costly home care or nursing home stays.
Practical Articles/News
Turn to an article in this category for a quick discussion of fluid intelligence (as opposed to crystallized intelligence) and their relationship to cognitive decline in aging.
RESULT: Is It Depression or Is It Dementia?
Psychiatric Times
IN THE JOURNALS
What have other doctors been finding on SearchMedica?
Search term: assisted suicide
A new database of records about Hitler’s mentally ill victims invokes fascinating ethical questions for today.
RESULT: To protect or to publish: confidentiality and the fate of the mentally ill victims of Nazi euthanasia
Journal of Medical Ethics
Search term: adolescent depression
Which teens are tested and treated for depression? The question has implications for their individual futures, and for ours as a society.
RESULT: Perceived barriers to treatment for adolescent depression
Medical Care
RESULT: Adolescent depression: Diagnosis, treatment, and educational attainment
Health Economics
NOTEWORTHY SEARCH of the week
Lessons to improve your success on SearchMedica, drawn from a genuine search
A search on the term psychiatric malpractice doesn’t reach its target. The first result is an article about changes in medical publishing, not about malpractice per se.
But there’s a simple way to find the desired results.
RESULT: The Couch in Crisis! Join the Fray
Psychiatric Times
TIP: As you can see from the blurb beneath the article title, the search engine scanned for “psychiatric” and “malpractice” separately:
. . . 2007 and 2008. Among the psychiatric journals advertising is down by . . . its “most popular” psychiatric journal status among readers . . . guidelines for protecting yourself from malpractice; online symposia with which . . .
We can see that many people have begun to use quotation marks around phrases within their search terms. As you may already know, this is the way to search for a specific phrase.
The search term “psychiatric malpractice” turns up the following, among other useful results:
RESULT: Three-session psychiatric malpractice curriculum for senior psychiatry residents
Academic Psychiatry (PubMed)
