One of the challenges with treating psychiatric disorders is finding a way to study them outside of the human brain. When there is no fundamental understanding of how a disease works, it becomes that much harder to find comparable symptoms in an animal or cell. And when you’re working with diseases such as depression that have symptoms that are hard to objectively quantify, there’s an extra layer of complexity.

A new report released recently by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that almost 8 percent of Americans over age 12 have moderate to severe depression. The report, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics, found depression is most prevalent among middle-age women aged 40 to 59 years old. In every age group, women were found to have the higher rate of depression than men. Teenage boys aged 12 to 17 and men over age 60 had the lowest rates of depression.

Findings in a Vanderbilt-led study could pave the way for a cure to drug addiction. The number-one reason people admit to using marijuana is to cope with anxiety and depression, Vanderbilt researchers said.  That's why they're taking the fight against addiction to the root of the problem inside the brain.

The Autism Treatment Network on Physical Health (AIR-P) recently awarded one of three research grants to Kevin Sanders, M.D., assistant professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and medical director of the Treatment & Research Institute on Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD) and the Fragile X Treatment Research Program.

Findings in a Vanderbilt-led study could pave the way for a cure to drug addiction. The number-one reason people admit to using marijuana is to cope with anxiety and depression, Vanderbilt researchers said.  That's why they're taking the fight against addiction to the root of the problem inside the brain.