Even after accounting for current crack use, a new study finds that women in drug court who are experiencing current major depression are more likely to use crack within four months than other women in drug court. The paper’s lead author argues that depression screening and treatment may be important components of drug court services for crack-using women. Women who are clinically depressed at the time they enter drug court have a substantially higher risk of using crack cocaine within four months, according to a new study. Because current but not past depression was associated with a higher risk of use, the study published in the...

Patients who use anti-depressants are much more likely to suffer relapses of major depression than those who use no medication at all, concludes a McMaster researcher.  In a paper that is likely to ignite new controversy in the hotly debated field of depression and medication, evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews concludes that patients who have used anti-depressant medications can be nearly twice as susceptible to future episodes of major depression. Andrews, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, is the lead author of a new paper in the journal Frontiers of Psychology. The meta-analysis...

Unlike alcohol problems and antisocial behavior, depression doesn't decline with age in addiction-prone women in their 30s and 40s

Young people who are genetically vulnerable to depression should be extra careful about using cannabis: smoking cannabis leads to an increased risk of developing depressive symptoms. This has emerged from research carried out by Roy Otten at the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University Nijmegen that is published in the online version of the scientific journal Addiction Biology. Two-thirds of the population have the gene variant that makes one sensitive to depression.   Many young people in the Netherlands use cannabis. Nearly 30% of 16-year-olds indicate that they have used cannabis on at least one occasion, and 12% that...