THURSDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) -- In small theater spaces across the United States, people fighting psychiatric illness are learning that acting can be a powerful form of therapy, while the shows they put on help educate audiences through deeply personal accounts of mental health issues.

"Theater arts can really give patients a very valuable additional opportunity to piece their lives back together," said David A. Faigin, department of psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. He believes the approach works by "focusing on the same things that standard interventions focus on: community reintegration and social reintegration."

Faigin, along with Bowling Green professor of clinical psychology Catherine Stein, co-authored a review of theater as mental health therapy in a recent issue of of Psychiatric Services.

More and more, mental health professionals are viewing the arts -- visual arts, dance, writing -- as key tools in patients' recovery, and theater is no exception.

Faigin has tracked the efficacy of the technique through the Stars of Light group, a community theater linked to the Janet Wattles Center, a mental health agency serving adults in the Rockford, Ill. area.

Stars of Light has had a 15-year partnership with the Wattles Center, putting on productions using amateur actors diagnosed with a wide range of mental health problems. Faigin described the effort as "an exciting exemplar of a grass-roots, community-based theater setting devoted to involving and helping people with psychiatric disabilities."

He estimates there are about 20 similar groups scattered across the country in places like Chicago, Memphis and Connecticut. In these programs, artistic directors work with mental health staff to help bring structure to an environment where patients are free to generate the artistic content necessary to stage theatrical productions. That means everything from script development (often involving autobiographical content) to final performances at churches and community centers.

These kinds of theaters are not large, typically involving between six and 12 volunteer actors. Sometimes they are closely connected and managed by a psychiatric facility, and sometimes they are entirely independent.

The idea of meshing therapy with the dramatic arts isn't new. As Faigin pointed out, psychotherapy has long employed role-playing techniques to help patients tackle past traumas, depression or personality disorders, and to foster awareness and self-esteem.

"Research has shown that chronic mental illness is so incredibly disruptive of so many aspects on one's life -- family dynamics, relationships, employment -- that there's sort of a broken self there in terms of meaning and purpose," Faigin noted. But for many patients, performance "sparks a real process of identity development by being forced to get up on stage and be themselves -- quite literally -- [and] by sharing their own personal stories in recovery."

At the same time, acting by its very nature can also give the patient "a break from everyday life, by being somebody else for a half-hour," Faigin said.

"They have a creative voice and express themselves as someone who has something to say," he explained. "It's a very in-your-face opportunity that forces the patients to 'own it,' because they're accountable when they're up on stage in a live performance in ways that they are not in the privacy of their home."

Other experts agreed that theater can play a role in mental health care.

"Mostly my experience has been with patients who have found it very useful to enroll in acting courses," said Marvin Aronson, a private practitioner in individual, group, and couples therapy, as well as former director of the group therapy department at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York City. "It's not putting on a play or a long-term consuming involvement, but the principle is probably not so different. The setting gives them a license to learn how people spontaneously express feelings, and be exposed to people who are not inhibited."

People who often benefit most from the approach are those who have had past experiences that have taught them to shut down their emotional responses, he added.

"Acting gives them an excuse, in essence, to learn how to express themselves," Aronson said.

Robin F. Goodman, a clinical psychologist, art therapist and past president of the American Art Therapy Association, agreed.

"Lots of times there are experiences that have happened to you that are housed in non-verbal ways, and the arts are a way to access some of this stuff in terms of a feeling, an emotion, a movement, a song," she noted. "The experience of theater can be a terrific way to get out some of these things."

And it's not only the acting that's important. Mounting any kind of theatrical production involves a long timeline and teamwork from start to finish.

"That's a good challenge for patients, to have them accept a level of responsibility to and from themselves and their peers," Faigin said. "They get support and they give it. So at an emotional level there's a sense of feeling safe in a group, and part of a group, and feeling that people understand them."

Audiences can benefit, too, often getting an inside look into the world of those with mental illness. By letting people with bipolar disorder and other conditions step out of the shadows, the plays help overturn the stigma long attached to such ills.

"When these patients publicly share their own stories and their own voices they inevitably raise awareness about mental health issues, so it also offers a very important public health benefit," Faigin explained.

He said he's often seen theater help move patients to a better place, no matter what their diagnosis. "It gives them a real sense of purpose, a real creative spirit and a real creative voice. It can be a very powerful thing."

More information

There's more on alternative mental health therapies at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Mental Health Information Center.

THURSDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) -- Medical journals should include more clinical details in cancer research studies to help doctors better understand and utilize results, according to U.S. researchers.

They analyzed 262 articles published from 2005 to 2008 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, The New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the journals Cancer and Blood.

Only 11 percent of the articles offered all the information required by doctors in order to prescribe and monitor new cancer therapies, said the researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The dose of the drug was almost always reported in the articles, but only 43 percent reported what premedication was necessary, and only 42 percent provided details about adjusting dosages if the therapy proved toxic to patients.

The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The authors made several recommendations -- such as a change in the way journal editors edit and report on clinical trials -- that would lead to a major shift in the publication of clinical trials.

"This study came out of our clinical frustration," Dr. Thomas George Jr., a member of the UF Shands Cancer Center and director of UF's gastrointestinal oncology program in the college of medicine, said in a university news release. "We were trying to teach our students and fellows how to care for patients with cancer and prescribe therapeutics safely. We had a really hard time finding the information we needed to provide care for these patients in the original scientific articles."

"I think it just boils down to willpower on the part of the journal editors to agree that this is an important need," he added. "I think the scientific community -- the publishers, the editors and even the investigators who conduct the studies -- have been appropriately focused on justifying the scientific methods and merits of the study. We're just taking it to the next logical step, which is, how do we apply these results to the masses of patients who need to benefit from scientific progress?"

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about clinical trials.

THURSDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) -- Depressed people actually 'see' the world around them in shades of gray, at least subconsciously, a new study suggests.

German researchers used retina scans to monitor the response of the retina to varying black-and-white contrasts, and found that depressed people had dramatically lower retinal response to contrast than those without depression.

This lower response was evident in depressed patients regardless of whether or not they were taking antidepressants. The researchers also found that people with the most severe depression had the lowest levels of retinal response to contrast.

The University of Freiburg team said though more studies are needed, the findings suggest retina scans could eventually be used to diagnosis and measure the severity of depression, as well as assess the success of therapy. This method may also prove valuable in research.

The study appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The research "highlights the ways that depression alters one's experience of the world," journal editor Dr. John Krystal said in a journal news release. "The poet William Cowper said that 'variety's the very spice of life,' yet when people are depressed, they are less able to perceive contrasts in the visual world. This loss would seem to make the world a less pleasurable place."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about depression.

TUESDAY, July 20 (HealthDay News) -- Sure, that new gizmo you just bought looks simple enough, but a new study suggests that consumers frequently overestimate their ability to use a new product -- and then may quickly give up on mastering its use at all.

As reported online in the Journal of Consumer Research, a team at Brigham Young University and elsewhere had people perform a number of tasks that were new to them. Participants were first verbally taught how to do something, such as tracing a line with the aid of a mirror, typing on a strangely laid-out keyboard, or folding t-shirts in a novel manner.

Before actually performing the tasks the participants were asked to indicate how well they thought they would do. Following a short amount of actual practice, all were asked once again to predict their performance.

The authors found that while people's pre-performance opinions as to how adept they might be were overly optimistic, their post-performance opinions made a quick about-face. After trying the task, participants tended to become negative about both their long- and short-term prospects at mastering the task, with many being pessimistic that they would ever improve.

However, after a lengthier amount of practice -- equal to about 20 minutes of attempts -- opinions did start to trend back in a more positive vein, with participants feeling they could ultimately complete the task and becoming more accurate in predicting their skill levels.

"Much of parenting is about teaching children that persistence pays off -- that tasks which initially seem difficult become easier with practice," the team wrote. "The results of these studies suggest that, despite whatever lessons our parents might have sought to teach us, most of us have not fully learned the lesson."

The researchers, including George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, Darron Billeter, assistant professor of marketing business management at Brigham Young University, and Ajay Kalra, professor of marketing at Rice University, noted that prior research has suggested that consumers actually grow more attached to products the more they make use of them.

More information

People have different learning styles, according to experts at the University of South Dakota  .