Decaffeinated coffee seems to improve brain energy metabolism in association with type 2 diabetes, according to researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Glucose utilization in the brain is reduced in individuals with type 2 diabetes and may result in other neurocognitive problems, including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

For the study, researchers tested whether dietary supplementation with a standardized decaffeinated coffee preparation prior to diabetes onset might affect glucose utilization and insulin resistance in mice with diet-induced type 2 diabetes.

For five months, the mice received the supplement. The research team discovered that after the coffee supplementation, the brain was able to more effectively metabolize glucose and use it for cellular energy in the brain.

“Impaired energy metabolism in the brain is known to be tightly correlated with cognitive decline during aging and in subjects at high risk for developing neurodegenerative disorders,” said Giulio Maria Pasinetti, MD, PhD.

“This is the first evidence showing the potential benefits of decaffeinated coffee preparations for both preventing and treating cognitive decline caused by type 2 diabetes, aging, and/or neurodegenerative disorders.”

Drinking coffee is not recommended for everyone due to the fact that it is has been associated with cardiovascular health risks such as elevated blood cholesterol and blood pressure, both of which lead to a higher risk for heart disease, stroke, and premature death. These effects have primarily been attributed to the high caffeine content of coffee. However, the results of this study show that some of the non-caffeine components in coffee provide health benefits in mice.

Pasinetti hopes to further explore the preventive role decaffeinated coffee may have as a dietary supplement in humans.

“In light of recent evidence suggesting that cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related neurodegenerative disorders may be traced back to neuropathological conditions initiated several decades before disease onset, developing preventive treatments for such disorders is critical,” he said.

The research is published online in Nutritional Neuroscience.

Source:  Mount Sinai Medical Center

Possibly Related Posts:

• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins
• True Marriage Commitment Requires Willingness to Sacrifice

An abnormality that makes it more difficult to exercise self-control has been identified in the brains of drug addicts, as well as their siblings who have no history of addiction.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge scanned the brains of 50 pairs of brothers and sisters. One in each pair was dependent on cocaine while the other did not abuse drugs or alcohol. Their brains were then compared with those of 50 unrelated healthy volunteers who had no personal or family history of drug addiction.

The researchers found that siblings shared the same abnormality in the parts of the brain associated with how we control behavior, known as the fronto-striatal systems. This kind of abnormality is typically seen in people who struggle with drug addiction, researchers note.

“It has long been known that not everyone who takes drugs becomes addicted, and that people at risk of drug dependence typically have deficits in self-control,” said Dr. Karen Ersche, of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (BCNI) at the University of Cambridge.

“Our findings now shed light on why the risk of becoming addicted to drugs is increased in people with a family history of drug or alcohol dependence.

“Parts of their brains’ underlying self-control abilities work less efficiently. The use of addictive drugs, such as cocaine, further exacerbates this problem, paving the way for addiction to develop from occasional use.”

She noted it’s “intriguing” that siblings who don’t abuse drugs show similar brain abnormalities.

“While we still have more work to do to fully address the reasons why some family members show a greater resilience against addiction, our results will provide the scientific basis for the development of more effective preventative and therapeutic strategies for people at risk of addiction,” she said.

The next step will be to explore how the siblings who don’t take drugs manage to overcome their brain abnormalities in their daily lives, according to researchers. A better understanding of what may protect them from drug abuse may provide clues for developing more effective therapies for those trying to beat addiction, researchers conclude.

Source: University of Cambridge

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins
• True Marriage Commitment Requires Willingness to Sacrifice

Multiple exposures to anesthesia at a young age are associated with higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic.

Children exposed to two or more anesthetics before age 3 had more than double the incidence of ADHD than children who had no exposure, says David Warner, M.D., a Mayo Clinic pediatric anesthesiologist and investigator on the observational study.

The researchers’ interest was piqued when studies began to suggest anesthesia used in surgery causes changes in the brains of young animals, Warner says.

“We were skeptical that the findings in animals would correlate with kids, but it appears that it does,” he notes.

The new study examined results of an existing epidemiological study that looked at the educational records of children born between 1976 and 1982 in Rochester, Minn., and determined those who developed some form of learning disability or ADHD.

Among 341 cases of ADHD in those younger than 19, researchers traced medical records in the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a decades-long database of all patient care in Olmsted County, Minn., looking for exposure to anesthesia and surgery before age 3.

What they found is that children who had no exposure to anesthesia and surgery had ADHD at a rate of 7.3 percent. The rate after a single exposure to anesthesia and surgery was approximately the same.

But for children who had two or more exposures to anesthesia and surgery, the rate of ADHD was 17.9 percent — even after researchers adjusted for other factors, including gestational age, sex, birth weight, and other health conditions.

The results of the study, however, do not mean that anesthesia causes attention deficit disorder, Warner says.

“This is an observational study,” he says. “A wide range of other factors might be responsible for the higher frequency of ADHD in children with multiple exposures. The findings certainly do suggest that further investigation into this area is warranted, and investigators at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere are actively pursuing these studies.”

Source: Mayo Clinic

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins
• True Marriage Commitment Requires Willingness to Sacrifice

A characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is the alteration of a protein that resides in the brain. The protein, called tau, is present in normal brains and is believed to be responsible for the health of nerve cells.

In the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s, tau proteins combine into twisted structures known as “neurofibrillary tangles.” The presence of tangles defines the condition as Alzheimer’s.

However, although the tangles confirm Alzheimer’s, their precise role in Alzheimer’s pathology has long been a point of contention among researchers.

New research on the intermediary steps between a single tau protein unit and a neurofibrillary tangle confirms the significance of tau to Alzheimer’s. Scientists now believe the conglomeration of two, three, four, or more tau proteins — known as “oligomers” — are the most toxic entities in Alzheimer’s.

“What we discovered is that there are smaller structures that form before the neurofibrillary tangles, and they are much more toxic than the big structures,” said Rakez Kayed, University of Texas Medical Branch.

“And we established that they were toxic in real human brains, which is important to developing an effective therapy.”

According to Kayed, a key antibody enabled the research team to produce a detailed portrait of tau oligomer behavior in human brain tissue. The anitbody made it possible for researchers to use a variety of analytical tools to compare samples of Alzheimer’s brains with samples of age-matched healthy brains.

“One thing that’s remarkable about this research is that before we developed this antibody, people couldn’t even see tau oligomers in the brain,” Kayed said.

“With the antibody — called T22 — we were able to thoroughly characterize them, and also study them in human brain cells.”

Among the researchers’ most striking findings: in some of the Alzheimer’s brains they examined, tau oligomer levels were as much as four times higher as those found in age-matched control brains.

Other experiments revealed specific biochemical behavior and structures taken on by oligomers, and demonstrated their presence outside neurons — in particular, on the walls of blood vessels.

Investigators believe the discovery will foster renewed studies on Alzheimer’s. “We think this is going to make a big impact scientifically, because it opens up a lot of new areas to study,” Kayed said. “It also relates to our main focus, developing a cure for Alzheimer’s. And I find that very, very exciting.”

Source: University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins
• True Marriage Commitment Requires Willingness to Sacrifice

A long-term study of identical twins reveals that an individual’s DNA may change over the course of a lifetime.

Researchers discovered cases where large or small DNA segments change direction, are duplicated, or become completely lost. The changes were mainly discovered in older twins.

This finding may help to explain why the immune system is often impaired in older age.

Uppsala University researchers explain that during a person’s life, continuous alterations in the cells’ DNA occur. The alterations can be changes to the individual building blocks of the DNA but more common are rearrangements where large DNA segments change place or direction, or are duplicated or completely lost.

In the current study, scientists examined normal blood cells from identical (monozygotic) twins in different age groups and looked for large or smaller DNA rearrangements.

The results showed that large rearrangements were only present in the group older than 60 years.

The most common rearrangement was that a DNA region, for instance a part of a chromosome, had been lost in some of the blood cells. Certain, almost identical, rearrangements were found in several individuals and some of these could be associated with a known blood disease in which the bone marrow’s capacity to produce new blood cells is disturbed.

Rearrangements were also found in the younger age group. The changes were smaller and less complex but the researchers could also in this case show that the number of rearrangements correlated with age.

Investigators were surprised to find that as many as 3.5 percent of healthy individuals older than 60 years carry such large genetic alterations.

The discovery sets the stage for a better understanding of disease development in older age.

Scientists believe that this type of acquired genetic variation might be much more common, says Jan Dumanski, professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology and one of the authors of the paper.

A key to the potential association between DNA changes and alterations to our immune system is the understanding that although we possess a variety of blood cell types, only white blood cells contain DNA.

This distinction is important as researchers believe an increased number of WBC cells with DNA alterations can damage or alter the immune system.

Specifically, the genetic alterations lead to an increased growth of the cells that have acquired them; these cells will increase in number in relation to other white blood cells.

The consequence might be a reduced diversity among the white blood cells and thereby an impaired immune system.

Researchers have published the findings online in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Source: Uppsala University

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• True Marriage Commitment Requires Willingness to Sacrifice

The topic of marriage commitment strikes an interesting chord in America, where half of all first marriages fail and an even greater percentage of second and third marriages are unsuccessful.

In a new study, UCLA psychologists asked 172 married couples the question: What does being committed to your marriage really mean?

The findings, published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reflect current societal values and beliefs.

“When people say, ‘I’m committed to my relationship,’ they can mean two things,” said study co-author Benjamin Karney. “One thing they can mean is, ‘I really like this relationship and want it to continue.’ However, commitment is more than just that.”

Psychologists believe a deeper level of commitment is required to work through the inevitable problems and avoid divorce.

“It’s easy to be committed to your relationship when it’s going well,” said senior study author Thomas Bradbury, a psychology professor who co-directs the Relationship Institute.

“As a relationship changes, however, shouldn’t you say at some point something like, ‘I’m committed to this relationship, but it’s not going very well — I need to have some resolve, make some sacrifices and take the steps I need to take to keep this relationship moving forward.’”

Bradbury believes it takes more than merely liking the relationship – especially when times get tough. True commitment means that you are willing to take sacrifices to keep a relationship alive. The challenge is that the commitment to taking active steps to maintain the relationship means that you may not get your way in certain areas.

“This,” Bradbury said, “is the other kind of commitment: the difference between ‘I like this relationship and I’m committed to it’ and ‘I’m committed to doing what it takes to make this relationship work.’ When you and your partner are struggling a bit, are you going to do what’s difficult when you don’t want to? At 2 a.m., are you going to feed the baby?”

Researchers found that couples willing to make sacrifices within their relationships were more effective in solving their problems. “It’s a robust finding,” Bradbury said. “The second kind of commitment predicted lower divorce rates and slower rates of deterioration in the relationship.”

Of the 172 married couples in the study, 78.5 percent were still married after 11 years, and 21.5 percent were divorced. The couples in which both people were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the marriage were significantly more likely to have lasting and happy marriages.

In the study, the couples — all first-time newlyweds — were assessed on their level of commitment by asking if they agreed or disagreed with statements like “I want my marriage to stay strong no matter what rough times we may encounter,” “My marriage is more important to me than almost anything else in my life,” “Giving up something for my partner is frequently not worth the trouble” and “It makes me feel good to sacrifice for my partner.”

The psychologists also videotaped the couples’ interactions and measured how they behaved toward each other. Follow-up interviews were conducted every six months for the first four years and again later in their marriages.

During the interview the couples were asked about their relationship history, their feelings toward each other, the stress in their lives, their level of social support, and their childhood and family, among other subjects.

Researchers believe the findings show that being committed a marriage means that either partner will do whatever it takes to make the relationship successful. “In a long-term relationship, both parties cannot always get their way.”

When a couple has a dispute, they have many choices of how to respond, the psychologists said.

“One choice,” Karney said, “is if you dig your heels in, then I can dig my heels in too. I can say, ‘You’re wrong. Listen to me!’ But if this relationship is really important to me, I’m willing to say, ‘I will compromise.’ What is my goal? Is it to win this battle? Is it to preserve the relationship? The behaviors I might engage in to win this conflict are different from those that are best for the relationship. The people who think more about protecting the relationship over the long term are more likely to think this is not that big a problem.”

“When the stakes are high, our relationships are vulnerable,” Bradbury said. “When we’re under a great deal of stress or when there is a high-stakes decision on which you disagree, those are defining moments in a relationship. What our data indicate is that committing to the relationship rather than committing to your own agenda and your own immediate needs is a far better strategy. We’re not saying it’s easy.”

The researchers believe a postive outcome can be accomplished if broad guidelines are followed. And, not surprisingly, they begin with communication.

“Find ways to compromise, or at least have the conversation that allows you and your partner to see things eye to eye,” Bradbury said.

“Often, we don’t have the big conversations that we need in our relationship. The very act of communicating in difficult times can be as important as the outcome of the conversation. Everybody has the opportunity to engage in a conflict, or not, to say, ‘You’re wrong, I’m right.’ When people are in it for the long term, they are often willing to make sacrifices and view themselves as a team. They both are.”

The couples whose marriages lasted were better at this than the couples who divorced, Bradbury and Karney said.

“The people who ended their marriages would have said they were very committed to the marriage,” Bradbury said. “But they did not have the resolve to say, ‘Honey, we need to work on this; it’s going to be hard, but it’s important.’ The successful couples were able to shift their focus away from whether ‘I win’ or ‘you win’ to ‘Are we going to keep this relationship afloat?’ That is the ideal.”

In a marriage, disagreement is inevitable, but conflict is optional — a choice we make, Bradbury and Karney said. When the psychologists give workshops for couples, they encourage them to discuss a source of disagreement. Finding such a topic is rarely, if ever, a problem.

The psychologists recommend against “bank-account relationships,” in which you keep score of how often you get your way and how often you compromise.

Source: UCLA

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins

As social networking explodes across the world, a new study suggests using Facebook may not be a great idea for those with low self-esteem.

The finding is remarkable; in theory, Facebook should be great for people with low self-esteem. The site allows unobtrusive sharing of information considered important for solidifying friendships and making new friends.

However, researchers discovered people with low self-esteem are apt to flood their friends with negative tidbits about their lives — making themselves less likable.

“We had this idea that Facebook could be a really fantastic place for people to strengthen their relationships,” says co-author Amanda Forest. Forest and her Waterloo University advisor, Joanne Wood, are studying how self-esteem affects the kinds of emotions people express.

In one study, Forest and Wood asked students how they feel about Facebook. People with low self-esteem were more likely to think that Facebook provided an opportunity to connect with other people, and to perceive it as a safe place that reduces the risk of awkward social situations.

Then, the investigators reviewed what students actually wrote on Facebook. To do this they asked the students for their last 10 status updates, sentences like, “[Name] is lucky to have such terrific friends and is looking forward to a great day tomorrow!” and “[Name] is upset b/c her phone got stolen :@.”

Researchers then rated each set of status updates for how positive or negative it was. For each set of statements, a coder — an undergraduate Facebook user — rated how much they liked the person who wrote them.

People with low self-esteem were more negative than people with high self-esteem — and the coders liked them less. The coders were strangers, but that’s realistic, Forest says. In earlier research, Wood and Forest found that nearly half of Facebook friends are actually strangers or acquaintances, not close friends.

When people with low self-esteem posted positive remarks, they received more responses from their real Facebook friends. People with high self-esteem, on the other hand, get more responses when they post negative items, perhaps because these are rarer for them.

As with many issues in life, even posting comments on Facebook gets complicated. Although people with low self-esteem may feel safe making personal disclosures on Facebook, the comments are not endorsed in a manner to improve self-perception.

“If you’re talking to somebody in person and you say something, you might get some indication that they don’t like it, that they’re sick of hearing your negativity,” Forest says.

But when people have a negative reaction to a post on Facebook, they seem to keep it to themselves. “On Facebook, you don’t see most of the reactions.”

The study is published in Psychological Science.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins

A blood test may help diagnose depression, according to a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital.

In a new study, the researchers report that a blood test analyzing the levels of nine biomarkers accurately identifies patients diagnosed with depression from control participants.

“Traditionally, diagnosis of major depression and other mental disorders has been made based on patients’ reported symptoms, but the accuracy of that process varies a great deal, often depending on the experience and resources of the clinician conducting the assessment,” said psychiatrist Dr. George Papakostas,  associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the report.

“Adding an objective biological test could improve diagnostic accuracy and may also help us track individual patients’ response to treatment.”

“It can be difficult to convince patients of the need for treatment based on the sort of questionnaire now used to rank their reported symptoms,” said John Bilello, Ph.D., co-author of the study and chief scientific officer of Ridge Diagnostics, which sponsored it.

“We expect that the biological basis of this test may provide patients with insight into their depression as a treatable disease rather than a source of self-doubt and stigma.”

The test developed by Ridge Diagnostics measures the levels of nine biomarkers associated with factors such as inflammation, the development and maintenance of neurons, and the interaction between brain structures involved with stress response and other key functions, the researchers explain.

Those measurements are combined using a formula to produce a figure called the MDDScore — a number from 1 to 100 indicating the likelihood that the person has major depressive disorder.

The initial phase of the study included 36 adults who had been diagnosed with major depression at Massachusetts General Hospital, Vanderbilt University or Cambridge Health Alliance, along with 43 control participants from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

MDDScores for 33 of the 36 patients indicated the presence of depression, while only eight of the 43 controls had a positive test result. The average score for the patients was 85, while the average for controls was 33.

A second phase of the study included an additional 34 patients from MGH and Vanderbilt, 31 of whom had a positive MDDScore result.

Combining both groups indicated that the test could accurately diagnose major depression with a sensitivity of about 90 percent and a specificity of 80 percent, according to the researchers. These statistics are lower than existing diagnostic, non-invasive, paper-based tests that are used today to diagnose depression.

Determining the true utility of the test will require larger trials in clinical settings, Papakostas said, adding, “these results are already providing us with intriguing new hints on how powerfully factors such as inflammation — which we are learning has a major role in many serious medical issues — contribute to depression.”

Source: Massachusetts General Hospital

Blood test photo by shutterstock.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins

The good news is that most people in the developed world are living longer; the not-so-good news is that the brain often does not stay sharp in our older age.

Currently, experts do not fully understood why the brain’s cognitive functions such as memory and speech decline as we age. This despite the realization that cognitive decline can be detected before an individual reaches age 50.

Neuroscientists Andy Randall, Ph.D. and Jon Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Bristol have identified a novel cellular mechanism that causes changes to the activity of neurons — an action which may contribute to cognitive decline during normal healthy aging.

The brain largely uses electrical signals to encode and convey information. Modifications to this electrical activity are likely to cause age-dependent changes to cognitive abilities.

The researchers examined the brain’s electrical activity by making recordings of electrical signals in single cells of the hippocampus, a structure with a crucial role in cognitive function. By doing this, they were able to assess “neuronal excitability” – the ease with which a neuron can produce brief, but very large, electrical signals called action potentials.

An action potential occurs in practically all nerve cells and is essential for transmission of a signal or communication within all the circuits of the nervous system.

Action potentials are triggered near the neuron’s cell body and once produced, travel rapidly through the massively branching structure of the nerve cell, along the way activating the synapses the nerve cell makes with the numerous other nerve cells to which it is connected.

Researchers discovered the hippocampal neurons within an aged brain have trouble generating action potentials.

Furthermore, they demonstrated that this relative reluctance to produce action potential arises from changes to the activation properties of membrane proteins called sodium channels. The sodium channels influence the rapid initiation of the action potential by allowing a flow of sodium ions into neurons.

Randall, a professor in applied neurophysiology, said: “Much of our work is about understanding dysfunctional electrical signaling in the diseased brain, in particular Alzheimer’s disease.

“We began to question, however, why even the healthy brain can slow down once you reach my age. Previous investigations elsewhere have described age-related changes in processes that are triggered by action potentials, but our findings are significant because they show that generating the action potential in the first place is harder work in aged brain cells.

“Also by identifying sodium channels as the likely culprit for this reluctance to produce action potentials, our work even points to ways in which we might be able modify age-related changes to neuronal excitability, and by inference cognitive ability.”

The findings are published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

Source: University of Bristol

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins

Mentoring has been found to improve the health and well-being of young women who were victimized in their youth.

Canadian investigators determined female college students who have survived childhood abuse or domestic violence were significantly aided by a mentoring program.

Researchers from Concordia University have published their findings in the Journal of College Student Development.

“Studies have shown that childhood abuse unleashes a chain of negative emotions that can impact an individual’s future, producing feelings of shame, isolation, self-loathing and educational underachievement,” said first author Rosemary C. Reilly, Ph.D.

Reilly’s study builds on prior evidence which suggests that at least 20 per cent of all women are adult survivors of childhood abuse — that is, physical, psychological or sexual maltreatment during childhood.

According to experts, as many as half the women studying in educational programs in Canada are trying to learn while simultaneously dealing with the consequences of violence.

Researchers conducted detailed interview with 10 women who had experienced intense childhood abuse and were enrolled in an undergraduate program when interviewed.

All but one participant had been mentored at different stages in her life. Reilly and D’Amico found that the timing of women’s mentoring was contingent on the impact the abuse had on their sense of identity.

Investigators determined four major themes emerged from the mentorship: fantasy mentors, mentors as mirrors, mentors as nurturers and supporters, and mentors as embodiments of a particular profession.

Although the researchers caution that these themes should be viewed as atypical, they enrich the understanding of mentoring for women marginalized by violence and demonstrate the malleable nature of mentorship. The mentoring, in its various guises, clearly played a significant role in these women’s healing processes.

Study authors believe the findings should encourage universities to consider establishing a formalized mentoring program for survivors of trauma.

As an example, student services departments could support the education of this population by creating multiple opportunities for mentorship from different individuals, at various stages, as survivors’ needs evolve.

“For survivors of childhood abuse, relationship and connection are what really matters and what successful mentorship is all about,” said Reilly.

Source: Concordia University

Young woman helping photo by shutterstock.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Decaffeinated Coffee May Protect Against Cognitive Decline in Diabetes
• Sibling Brain Abnormalities May Hold Key to Addiction
• Multiple Exposures to Anesthesia May Increase Chance of ADHD
• Untangling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s
• Aging Insights from Identical Twins