For how we live.
Rejoyn, the first prescription digital therapeutic cleared for major depression, beat a sham app on a backup analysis. Its pre-specified primary endpoint fell just short of significance.
In two randomised trials, a grief-specific psychotherapy roughly doubled response rates against strong comparators. Citalopram alone did not beat placebo — but it did help the depression that often travels with grief.
A 40-person Harvard trial aimed accelerated magnetic stimulation using each patient's own connectivity scan. Depression scores fell further than with standard scalp measurement, though the trial was small.
Task-sharing therapy to lay community workers is the backbone of WHO's plan for closing the treatment gap. A synthesis of 28 studies asks what the model costs the workers themselves.
In the RESPOND randomised trial, guided self-help and remote problem-solving delivered by non-professionals cut anxiety and depression scores well below usual care at follow-up.
The best single randomised trial found morning light beat a sham device over eight weeks, but the effect is most reliable when light is added to an antidepressant rather than used alone.
The evidence that recessions and job loss kill is stronger than it looks. Three landmark studies quantify the mortality signal — and where it stops being causal.
Pooled trials put the herb roughly on a par with standard antidepressants for mild-to-moderate depression, with fewer dropouts for side effects. The catches are dangerous drug interactions and wildly variable products.
Two of the largest datasets — 6.5 million UK bank customers and a Swedish national registry — tie heavier gambling to financial and health decline, and gambling disorder to a fifteenfold suicide death rate.
In a 619-patient NEJM trial of treatment-resistant depression after 60, augmenting an antidepressant with aripiprazole improved well-being more than switching to bupropion. The margin was modest.
Older meta-analyses linked lithium to fewer suicides. A randomised trial in 519 US veterans, stopped early for futility, found no such benefit when it was added to usual care.
The largest network meta-analysis of brain stimulation found several forms of TMS roughly triple the odds of responding, but they sit below ECT and rest on mostly small, uncertain trials.
In the trial that pitted them against each other, aerobic exercise matched sertraline on remission. But both sat only a little above a strikingly strong placebo, which is the part the headlines skip.
A US trial found ketamine at least as good as electroconvulsive therapy; a Swedish trial found ECT clearly better. The gap lies in whom they treated and how they scored success.
In the largest head-to-head trial, a simpler therapy delivered by junior staff matched full CBT — mean difference 0.1 PHQ-9 points. A Cochrane review finds no difference between the two.
Restrictive English schools cut phone use during the school day but not overall — and teenagers' wellbeing was no better than at schools that allow phones. What tracks with worse mental health is heavy, problematic use.
The largest meta-analysis puts the incidence attributable to the drug at about 15% — one in six or seven. Critics who reanalysed part of it put it above 50%. The gap is about what counts as evidence.
Randomised trials show lower self-reported stress and anxiety, but the certainty is low, the studies are small and wildly inconsistent, and a separate evidence strand flags liver and thyroid risks.
In the largest trial, combining fluoxetine with talking therapy helped most, and both worked better than placebo. A later network analysis found only fluoxetine, alone or with therapy, clearly beat placebo.
Registry and responder cohorts document persistent PTSD and depression, a symptom peak more than a decade after the attacks, and a burden that compounds with chronic physical illness.
A five-year panel study found sales of mental-disorder medicines rose 144% in a cyclone's landfall year and 173% the next in coastal districts, with no measurable effect further inland.
Resistance training in adults averaging 75 with vascular cognitive impairment, and aerobic exercise in adolescents. Both beat their control, and both controls were active rather than nothing.
An arthritis antibody and a diabetes drug were given to depressed patients in 2026 trials. Both were designed to probe a mechanism rather than prove a treatment, and reading them as results would be a mistake.
Two 2026 trials point the same direction: the hardware in depression treatment is mature, and the remaining gains are in precision and in what the treatment costs the patient's memory.
Among 383 dialysis patients, 83.6% screened for moderate-to-extreme anxiety and 58% for PTSD; a separate study of 250 displaced adolescents found trauma exposure tracking closely with post-traumatic symptoms.
A Cochrane review of 79 trials and 24,308 patients found the primary-care model helps with depression and anxiety, modestly in the short and medium term and not at all in the very long term.
In 415,000 New Jersey births, infants of mothers who screened positive for depression died before age one at more than three times the rate, an association steady across race, income and preterm birth.
Two popular stories — alcohol as a cause of low mood, and drinking as self-medication for it — both get less support from recent genetic and within-person data than the confident telling suggests.
13% of women met criteria for insomnia disorder six weeks after delivery, and only two had been evaluated. In a separate cohort, restless legs in pregnancy tripled the risk of perinatal depression.
A survey of seven countries found the youth mental health app market dominated by paid journaling and meditation apps. The AI-powered ones show early promise on symptoms — and none had checked for harm.
Two large re-analyses of the same public datasets found the association is real, negative and very small. A third review found the association is not even consistent between the Global North and South.
A landmark cohort found strained spousal caregivers had a 63% higher death rate over four years. Decades of trials show interventions help — more for a carer's knowledge and mood than for the underlying burden.
A Lancet review triangulates the evidence linking adiposity to multisystem disease and finds robust trial support in a short list — while an expert panel argues the drugs must be lifelong.
In 1,238 people from two community cohorts, apnea severity showed no link to depressive symptoms. Sleep fragmentation did, and that association disappeared once insomnia symptoms entered the model.
Across 34 trials, mindfulness apps produced small effects on stress, anxiety and depression, and none on general distress. A 2026 review confirms they can help without a facilitator — at low certainty.
The ODDESSI trial ran in 30 clusters across five NHS trusts in England. Time to relapse was unchanged; inpatient admission, re-referral and service-user ratings all moved in Open Dialogue's favour.
The committee that decides what Israel's national insurance covers added new cancer and depression drugs to the 2026 list — and turned down an early Alzheimer's treatment because of what it would have cost.
Under-25s lost about 5 points on a 100-point wellbeing scale between 2019 and 2021. Adults 19 to 24 have clawed back two-thirds of that loss. Teenagers 15 to 18 have recovered barely a third.
Users were slightly less likely than non-users to attempt suicide in the two to four years after treatment. The FDA's 2005 boxed warning stands, and the analysis cannot explain the direction of the finding.
A network meta-analysis of 331 trials and 34,285 adults found no significant differences between the main psychotherapies, with one exception. In children and adolescents the picture is narrower.
A million-woman Danish cohort found a modest rise in antidepressant use among hormonal contraceptive users. A Cochrane review of weight found no evidence the pill causes weight gain.
A network meta-analysis of 101 trials and 11,910 patients found no significant difference between psychotherapy and medication for adult depression — and a consistent advantage for combining them.
A cross-sectional study of 96 war amputees, 53 caregivers and 95 community controls found sharply elevated disability and psychiatric symptoms, and argued for combined physical and mental-health rehabilitation.
A review of 110 studies found that 52% of trialled self-guided apps were publicly available — and that evidence quality had no bearing on which ones made it to an app store.
A systematic review found only 16 usable studies of how to implement routine symptom monitoring in adult mental health services. A 4,778-patient clinic dataset shows what it looks like when it does.
A meta-analysis of six studies found a moderate effect on sleep duration and a small one on depressive symptoms — with high heterogeneity on both.
Tirzepatide and semaglutide showed comparable psychiatric risk profiles against each other over two years. Against earlier GLP-1 drugs, semaglutide came out ahead on all three measures.
Stress peaked during the fasting month and fell afterwards, but depression and anxiety stayed flat. The consistent finding across every phase was that sleep quality tracked mental health.
A registered report fit identical models to 11 longitudinal studies covering 175,070 people. The subjective feeling carried the signal; the objective count of social contacts largely did not.
A burden-of-disease calculation built on EU noise-mapping data puts numbers on two outcomes that noise research has mostly ignored. The confidence intervals are as informative as the estimates.
A Danish registry study of 136,842 women found elevated antidepressant and anxiolytic prescribing in the decade preceding diagnosis, with psychiatric hospital contacts rising about five years before.
A systematic review screened 3,857 records and found three eligible studies, every one produced by a US commercial provider and every one at critical risk of bias.
The first large-scale policy evaluation of medically tailored meals covers 1,866 recipients across 11 health systems. It is quasi-experimental, not randomised — and that is the finding's main limit.
Pooled across 48 trials, chatbots cut depression, anxiety and stress by small amounts. But a review of purpose-built mental health chatbots found crisis-referral protocols underdeveloped and missed suicidal ideation.
A cross-sectional analysis of NICE evaluations found 78 supporting studies behind 30 technologies — and consistent holes in comparators, cost of delivery and adverse-event reporting.
The largest syntheses find apps beat doing nothing on depression and anxiety by about a third of a standard deviation — but the edge shrinks against real treatment, and one umbrella review found no convincing proof.
A secondary analysis of 8,376 adolescents built two models to predict who benefits from school-based mindfulness training. Both found a subgroup — and the difference in outcomes was trivial.
The barriers parents named most often were cost and the absence of any nearby service — not stigma, which the field has spent years treating as the main obstacle.
A meta-regression of 169 trials coded 34 therapeutic ingredients. The most common — psychoeducation, relaxation, mindfulness — were not the ones that best predicted getting better.
A survey-based analysis of the European Health Interview Survey puts a price on Europe's obesity-related hospital use, and finds the strongest single association is not with obesity at all.
Australian teenagers harmed by the Black Summer fires showed no elevated depression, anxiety, distress, insomnia or suicidality two years later. The result runs against a systematic review published months earlier.
Pooling 94 cohort studies, grip strength tracked with later dementia, depression and disability. The authors rate their own confidence in the numbers as limited to moderate.
A 1,151-person Hong Kong trial used trained lay counsellors, not clinicians, and no internet. The effect sizes are small, and the authors are explicit that they do not know whether it travels.
Seventy-three trials, and a familiar pattern: the benefit versus no treatment shrinks by a third when only the best-conducted studies are counted. The head-to-head comparisons rest on a few hundred people.
Among 16-to-24-year-olds in NHANES, those who slept longer on weekends had 41% lower odds of daily depressive symptoms. The survey measured both at the same moment, which limits what can be concluded.
A meta-analysis of eleven depression trials found an average effect below the threshold for clinical importance, with signs of bias favouring creatine. A separate review found no change in kidney filtration.
Intimate partner violence has declined by 0.2% a year over two decades. The report also produces the first national and regional estimates of sexual violence by someone other than a partner.
Pooling 151 studies and 58,534 participants across 30 drugs, researchers ranked antidepressants by physiological side effects rather than efficacy. Some drugs raised cholesterol while reducing body weight.
Age-standardised disability-adjusted life-years fell 12.6% since 2010, but the raw total rose 6.1% to 2.80 billion. Anxiety, depression and diabetes rose fastest even after adjusting for ageing.
Loneliness tracked with depression, perceived stress, psychotic-like experiences and suicidal ideation. A prevalence that high raises a question about what the measure is capturing.
The guidance is built on one negative instruction: do not stop abruptly in patients likely to be physically dependent. Hong Kong records show the sharpest prescribing rise in 18-to-25-year-olds.
Seventeen longitudinal studies of young carers, all from high-income countries. And 247 studies of women in prison, nearly all at high risk of bias in at least one domain.