Sopranos shrink to speak at fundraiser for Butler Hospital

Guess who’s going to be talking about depression next month as the keynote speaker for Butler Hospital’s “Real Stories, Real Recoveries” luncheon at the Westin Hotel in Providence? Actress Lorraine Bracco, who played Tony’s shrink on The Sopranos. Bracco last year wrote a book called On The Couch in which she was open about her victory over depression and her willingness to seek treatment.

“When talented, successful people like Lorraine Bracco share their personal stories about their lives and their recovery from depression, it changes the way people think about mental illness and offers hope and inspiration to others,” said Patricia Ryan Recupero, president and CEO of Butler Hospital in Providence. Clinical depression is one of the most common mental illnesses, affecting more than 19 million Americans each year.

Tickets to the luncheon on April 24 from noon to 1:30 p.m. are $150, with proceeds benefiting the programs at Butler, 345 Blackstone Blvd., which is the flagship hospital in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Exercise reminders help the sedentary

Cell phones and PDAs can do more than ensure we stay in touch and keep appointments. A new study shows that middle-aged and older people who received daily reminders to exercise from PDAs put in more than twice as much moderate to vigorous exercise than those without the devices.

Such cues “bring the priority of exercise back to the top of the list,” says Abby King, lead author of the study and a professor of health research and policy, and medicine, at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “You could be trying to get a report out at work, and all of a sudden that priority slips, and this brings it back up.”

The pilot study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, gave PDAs to 19 fairly sedentary men and women who were taught to use the gadgets and encouraged to do at least 150 minutes of moderate or more vigorous exercise a week (most did brisk walking).

The 18-person control group received standard written material about the importance of exercise. At the end of eight weeks, the study group exercised an average of 310 minutes a week; the control group averaged 125 minutes.

A boost for women’s low libido?

Thanks to Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, men with erectile dysfunction can get on board the Food and Drug Administration-approved love train. But women who experience a different sexual problem — sagging libido — have been left at the station. That may be changing.

BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. is testing the safety and effectiveness of LibiGel, a testosterone gel for women designed to combat declines in sexual arousal associated with menopause. There are currently no drugs available in the U.S. specifically approved for pumping up lackluster libido in women.

The Lincolnshire, Ill.-based company is conducting two trials, comprising 1,000 women, to test the effectiveness of the gel, which is applied to the upper arm.

If the trials go well, the drug could be available by prescription by 2011.

— With Journal wire reports