Anxiety stinks.

Turns out that there really is a "smell of fear." At least, according to scientists in Europe....

Humans can smell fear, detecting molecules in sweat odour which indicate another person is afraid, according to German psychologists on Tuesday...

The team showed that when a person smells 'fear' molecules from somebody else's skin, this stimulates regions of the brain responsible for empathy and interpreting other people's emotions.

Pause said humans know someone else is afraid without knowing how they know.

The 10-year-long study used swabs of 'cold sweat' taken from the armpits of 50 students while they were sitting examinations and were scared of failure.

The odour was wafted into the noses of 28 people connected to brain scanners, only half of whom said they could even smell sweat, yet their brains responded.

And according to scientists in the United States....

Chen and graduate student Wen Zhou collected “fearful sweat” samples from male volunteers. The volunteers kept gauze pads in their armpits while they were shown films that dealt with topics known to inspire fear.

Later, female volunteers were exposed to chemicals from the "fearful sweat” when they were fitted with a piece of gauze under their nostrils. They then viewed images of faces that morphed from happy to ambiguous to fearful. They were asked to indicate whether the face was happy or fearful by pressing buttons on a computer.

Exposure to the smell of fear biased women toward interpreting facial expressions as more fearful, but only when the expressions were ambiguous...

And according to another group of U.S. scientists....

The study by Stony Brook University in New York found people who are scared give off "pheromones" - hormones - that subconsciously trigger parts of the brain associated with fear.

They concluded that fear could be "contagious", but said it was too early to say whether the brain triggers actually resulted in people being scared.

The researchers taped absorbent pads to the armpits of 40 volunteers about to do their first ever sky-dive.

They collected the sweat produced as the volunteers plummeted to earth and then asked a second group of volunteers to breath the fear-soaked samples alongside some fear-free sweat.

The second group's brain activity was monitored, using a scanner, as they smelled the samples and they displayed more activity in the brain's fear centres when they were exposed to the skydivers sweat.

Of course, humans being what we are, already folks are dreaming up military uses for the research....

American military researchers are working to uncover and harness the most terrifying chemical imaginable: that most primal odor, the scent of fear.

Pheromones are chemicals released by animals as signals to their own kind: for sex, for territorial marking, and more. They’re often detected in the olfactory membranes. But there’s more to pheromones than attraction. Many animals have an alarm pheromone which is used to signal danger; aphids, for example, use it to cause their fellow lice to flee.

Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people’s smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat."

I'm picturing fear bombs bursting over enemy troops and enemy cities, infecting all exposed with panic. I'm picturing panic as a weapon. I'm wondering about definitions of torture.

Financial crash got you anxious? You're not alone.

A recent NYT article discusses anxiety in the face of financial peril. Anecdotally:

Anne Hubbard has not lost her job, house or savings, and she and her husband have always been conservative with money.

But a few months ago, Ms. Hubbard, a graphic designer in Cambridge, Mass., began having panic attacks over the economy, struggling to breathe and seeing vivid visions of "losing everything," she said.

She "could not stop reading every single economic report," was so "sick to my stomach I lost 12 pounds" and "was unable to function," said Ms. Hubbard, 52, who began, for the first time, taking psychiatric medication and getting therapy.

In Miami, Victoria Villalba, 44, routinely slept eight hours a night until stories of desperate clients flooding the employment service she runs began jolting her awake at 2 a.m. No longer sleepy, she first began to respond to e-mail, but that caused sleeping colleagues' BlackBerrys to wake them, so now she studies business books and meticulously organizes her closets...

...Elizabeth Dewey-Vogt, 25, a paralegal whose bills and shrinking overtime made her move in with her parents in Alexandria, Va., said she began "constantly worrying about finances," and having panic attacks, "rapid heart beat, choking sensation, chills or sweating, numbness and tingling in my fingers," and feeling "almost removed from my body."

Ms. Dewey-Vogt said that she now took anxiety medication, and that a therapist advised her to pull over or "concentrate on the license plate ahead" if she began panicking while driving and to grip on the handles of her chair when panicking at work.

And statistically:

In an American Psychological Association poll in September, 80 percent reported the economy's causing significant stress, up from 66 percent last April. The National Sleep Foundation said 27 percent of people surveyed last fall had sleeplessness because of economic anxiety.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline calls jumped to 50,158 in January 2009 from 39,465 a month in January 2008, and economic stress more frequently "played a central role," said Richard McKeon, the group's federal project officer...

And while a New York Times/CBS News poll found fewer people saying the economy had worsened, most did not think it was improving. People overwhelmingly thought the recession would last another year or more, and 70 percent were concerned that a household member would be jobless.

Of course, shame is an essential part of what the newly anxious are experiencing:

"I'm embarrassed," [Villalba] said. "Normal people aren't doing this."

...Ms. Hubbard, knowing "financially we were fine," said she believed "I shouldn't feel like this, I'm lucky." She cried visiting her primary doctor, who recommended therapy and medication, hard to accept, she said, because her Depression-era parents believed "you pull yourself up."

"I felt like a neurotic middle-class, middle-aged woman too weak to deal with life on my own," she said. "I should be stronger, it was simply money, and why do I have to take pills to not worry about money."

Guess what, lady? Maybe you are neurotic and unable to deal with life on your own. If so, so what? It's a big club you're joining.

Judd Apatow describes a panic attack.

Is PTSD real? A psychiatric steel cage match.

Apparently the validity of the PTSD diagnosis is an open question in the psychiatric community. Those who think it's not a legitimate diagnosis say things like this:

Subjective symptoms and financial benefit suggest that secondary gain plays a role in PTSD diagnoses. One of us (PB) in 2000 reviewed the medical records of 90 patients with a primary PTSD diagnosis treated in a VA outpatient clinic. Records showed a uniformity and consistency in key words and subjective reports. Such a repetitive quality might reflect precise diagnostic criteria and reliability among diagnosticians; it could also reflect expectancies and elicitation of key descriptions by examiners. This tendency was noted in reports of En­glish “shell shock” victims and Rus­sian “contusion” casualties during WWI, regarded as predecessors of PTSD.11 These earlier diagnoses had a different symptom constellation also characterized by uniformity. The victims shook, stuttered, limped, and showed sensory-motor signs (such as deafness, muteness, and blindness). They did not report the anger, numbing, or flashback symptoms said to characterize PTSD today. Leaders and activists in VA centers told PB that veterans were counseled (coached) on how to present to the psychiatrists determining disability benefits.

Those who think it is a legitimate diagnosis respond by saying things like this:

...there is every reason to believe that scientific advances will yield PTSD biomarkers that differentiate this condition from others, particularly, those with overlapping symptoms. Progress in this area has already been made, and the yield from the rapid develop­ment of methodologies for unbiased genome-wide genotyping, gene expression, and molecular approaches are only beginning to be realized.9-11 Soon it will be more difficult for those who have never seen PTSD clinically to dismiss the “validity” of the PTSD diagnosis.

What is it that really bothers people? Could it be the high price tag of caring for persons disabled with PTSD? Could it be resentment that some persons fake symptoms for secondary gain?

“Malingerophobia” is a strong fear for doctors, but being able to fake an illness does not invalidate it as a diagnostic entity.13 Could it be that if we continue to assert that trauma exposure really can result in a mental health syndrome, our society will need to shoulder some of the responsibility for primary prevention and start making the world safer from violence, accidents, and disasters that threaten our citizens?

My opinion? As long as the PTSD diagnosis is helping people in crisis feel better, I don't care whether it's technically legitimate or not. Lucha libre!

Want to break the cycle of anxiety? Hop on your bike.

Just came across an recent article from a small-town paper about a local resident who's using cycling as a tool to fight anxiety disorders. And I quote:

STRATHMORE resident Justin Sacr can't drive a car for fear he has knocked down someone every time he hits a bump.

The 33-year-old has lived with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder since age 14 and, because of the phobia, his bicycle has become a 'lifeline'.

"I cycle to work every day. It has been a blessing in disguise because exercise helps me a lot," he said.

"It releases chemicals in your brain, like antidepressants, but in a natural way. It helps with your thoughts. You might look normal on the outside, but on the inside you're going through hell."

From experience: This guy's spot on. Cycling can have a hugely positive impact on your quality of life if you deal with anxiety. It's an especially good way to battle the shrinking-of-your-world of agoraphobia. The lightheaded feeling and elevated heart rate? That's what's supposed to happen when you exercise. Just push yourself to go a bit farther out of your comfort zone each time out. You'll feel better about yourself, more able. Guaranteed.

Anxiety in professional sports.

It's the bottom of the ninth of a tie game, the bases are loaded, and the count is full. Picture the pitcher, alone atop his mound, preparing to succeed or fail in the most transparent way possible. Or else picture the whistle blowing and the point guard approaching the free throw line in the waning seconds of a seesaw playoff game. Or picture the golfer who needs a birdie putt to win the match, crouching to study the slope of the green, then meticulously removing twigs from the line he's chosen.

Athletes face pressure every time they step on the field, or the court, or wherever it is that they play their game. Those who can't deal with pressure don't make it very far, no matter how gifted they are physically. But it turns out that even world-class athletes are not immune from the effects of stress. They may make a whole lot more money than the rest of us, but they can have panic attacks, too:

Three professional baseball players have landed on the disabled list this season for a problem they can't ice, bandage or have surgically repaired: anxiety.

Acknowledging debilitating psychological issues represents a significant shift for a sport that historically has emphasized "gutting it out" rather than admitting to injury. The problem may be as old as the pastime, but acceptance of mental-health issues in Major League Baseball has only emerged in the last few years.

Baseball's anxious include Detroit pitcher Dontrelle Willis, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Khalil Greene and Cincinnati first baseman Joey Votto, who all spent weeks on the disabled list spring for mental-health issues. Mr. Willis, who returned to the lineup in May, was placed on disabled status again in mid-June for anxiety...

Professional athletes in other sports have acknowledged debilitating anxiety, though often the disclosures have come after retirement. National Football League running back Ricky Williams suffered severe social anxiety. Another onetime NFL star, Herschel Walker, disclosed in a 2008 book that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder.

Boxer Mike Tyson has said he experiences chronic depression, as has National Basketball Association player Vin Baker. Olympic road-cycling champion Tyler Hamilton revealed he suffered from clinical depression shortly before being banned from the sport this spring for eight years, effectively ending his career.

Sadly, the average fan can be pretty unsympathetic. Consider the comments to this USA Today article about anxiety in baseball. A sample:

I think the anxiety and stress is warranted for how much these athletes make. MAN UP OR LEAVE SO SOMEBODY ELSE WHO CAN HANDLE IT CAN HAVE A SHOT!
Keep seeing your therapist it's not like you can't afford to have one on the plane with you.

I'd like to help these poor bewildered souls. Send me 50% of the $ you get for playing a kid's game and I'm sure that will take some of the pressure off. It must be hell making in one year what most mortals can't make in a lifetime and in such a critically important position in society-- they can cure cancer or do brain surgery--right?

This is all a joke, right? A Candid Camera type stunt to see how many of us gullible fans you can catch and say "Gotcha"! That is the only explanation I can see for tryiing to claim grown men being paid millions of dollars to play a kids' game have "anxiety attacks". Hmm.....I think I'll buy that Porsche over there...no, no wait, I want the Jaguar.....no no....oh darn.....I just can't make up my mind!! I AM UNDER SO MUCH STRESS TRYING TO DECIDE HOW TO SPEND MY MILLIONS!!

Guess we still have a long way to go before the average Joe "gets it" when it comes to anxiety disorders.

Video games good for mental health?

I've already discussed the use of Tetris as a social anxiety treatment. Turns out that that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to research into using video games as tools to study and treat mental disorders.

One example: A popular video game being used as a depression assessment tool. Which game, you ask? Well...

The game in question is Duke Nukem, a hugely popular virtual reality adventure in which the eponymous Duke -- a muscular, crop-haired, womanizing macho-man in the Arnold Schwarzenegger mold -- defends the earth, and in particular its female inhabitants, against an unpleasant array of aliens, mutants and other physically malformed aggressors.

But "[it] is the navigational, as opposed to martial elements of the game that have attracted the interest of the NIMH team." Here's how it works:

A number of studies into depression have indicated that the condition could be linked to shrinkage or dysfunction of the hippocampus, the part of the brain concerned with memory and spatial awareness.

By using a virtual town based on scenes from Duke Nukem, and asking volunteers to navigate their way to various landmarks around that town in a set period of time -- albeit minus the weaponry and aliens -- the NIMH team, led by Neda Gould, have been able to assess spatial awareness and memory.

Those volunteers suffering from depression showed a distinct impairment of such mental functions, providing Gould and her team with a yardstick against which to measure the severity of their depression (the most chronically depressed volunteers posted the worst results in the trial).

"Neuropsychological testing has long established the presence of memory deficits in patients with unipolar depression, and, more recently, in those suffering from bipolar depression," writes Gould in an article on her findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"Traditionally tasks assessing spatial memory require individuals to remember the position of items in an array.

"Because of their multi-faceted nature, navigational tasks based on virtual reality may provide a more consistent, sensitive measure of spatial ability and are more likely to require hippocampal involvement, thereby increasing their sensitivity to the impact of depression on this cognitive domain."

View the research paper here