For many people, physical conditions can contribute to problems with their mental health—problems that are often ignored and untreated. But your emotional health and physical health affect each other. Here’s what you should know.

Lithium has been established for more than 50 years as one of the most effective treatments for bipolar mood disorder.

A physician's personality can affect practice behavior in inquiries about patient mood symptoms and the diagnosis of depression, according to a study led by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers.

Brain scans taken at different times of year suggest that the actions of the serotonin transporter—involved in regulating the mood-altering neurotransmitter serotonin—vary by season, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Voluntary physical activity does not appear to cause a reduction in anxiety and depression, but exercise and mood may be associated through a common genetic factor, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A new study provides critical insight into the disabling depression experienced by many women during early motherhood. The research, published by Cell Press in the July 31 issue of the journal Neuron, reveals new details about the pathogenesis of postpartum depression and provides a mouse model that may lead to development of new treatments for mood disorders associated with pregnancy.

Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have isolated biomarkers in the blood that identify mood disorders, a breakthrough that may change the way bipolar illness is diagnosed and treated. The report will be published in the February 26 advance online edition of the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

There are to date no objective clinical laboratory blood tests for mood disorders. The current reliance on patient self-report of symptom severity and on the clinicians’ impression is a rate limiting step in effective treatment and new drug development.

Diabetes is known to impair the cognitive health of people, but now scientists have identified one potential mechanism underlying these learning and memory problems. A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) study in diabetic rodents finds that increased levels of a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland disrupt the healthy functioning of the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for learning and short-term memory.

According to a study that appears in the current issue of SCAN (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience), researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discuss how men and women differ in their neural responses to psychological stress.

Early puberty in girls has been found to negatively affect these teenagers’ health in areas such as mood disorders, substance abuse, adolescent pregnancy, and cancers of the reproductive system.

Subjecting mice to repeated emotional stress, the kind we experience in everyday life, may contribute to the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. While aging is still the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, a number of studies have pointed to stress as a contributing factor.