For how we live.
Mental health, psychedelics, loneliness, and neuroscience.
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.
In the Ket-BD trial, four IV ketamine infusions over two weeks lowered depression scores more than an active placebo, with no manic switches observed in 63 analysed patients.
A network meta-analysis of 163 trials found EPA, vitamin D and a St John's wort extract beat placebo by margins so large the researchers treat them as a warning about the evidence, not a green light.
In a 40-person crossover trial, 10 mg and 20 mg of edible THC degraded lane-keeping while whole-blood THC peaked at 1.6 and 3.4 ng/mL — near or under the thresholds police enforce.
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.
In 4,868 clozapine users followed to 2023, excess neutropenia risk concentrated in the first 18 weeks and converged with other antipsychotics by around two years.
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.
A 1.5-million-person records study reports lower mortality with GLP-1 drugs than with SGLT2 inhibitors, and the largest absolute gains in people with serious mental illness. The design cannot prove it.
In 276 adults tested at 60, the differences in GrimAge and DunedinPACE were small, their intervals crossed zero, and most of what was there disappeared once smoking was accounted for.
The MTA trial randomised 579 children and found medication management clearly superior short-term. Its own long-term follow-up found the treatment groups no longer differed by 6 to 8 years.
A ten-person phase 1 study measured whether oral rapamycin reaches the central nervous system in early Alzheimer's. It did not — and several disease biomarkers rose over eight weeks.
WHO's ICD-11 lists burn-out, yet places it among reasons people contact health services, not among illnesses. It is defined strictly as a workplace phenomenon, which shapes who should be assessing it and how.
The Global Burden of Disease estimates for anxiety disorders separate two things that public debate keeps merging: how many people have it, and how likely a given person is to. Diagnosis is a third question again.
In 62 adults scanned under psilocybin during rest, meditation, music, and film, brain networks reorganized differently by setting — and more reorganization tracked with more positive experiences.
Using causal-inference methods on 1,269 people, researchers linked two bacterial genera to depression independent of body weight and medication — the first such evidence in humans, not proof of mechanism.
A 422-family cohort with a pre-ban baseline is the closest thing to a controlled test the world has. Researchers are also warning the law will make studying adolescents harder — including studying this.
A randomised trial tracked infants' cortisol and attachment; a five-year follow-up tracked mental health. Graduated extinction improved sleep with no sign of long-term damage — or lasting benefit.
The TAME trial randomised 276 adults with diagnosed anxiety disorders to mindfulness-based stress reduction or escitalopram. The difference on the primary measure was 0.07 points, inside the noninferiority margin.
Autopsy studies show educated brains carry the same disease but express it as dementia later. That is the concept's strength — and the reason it resists being turned into a to-do list.
The agency compressed review of three psychedelic therapies from a year to weeks. A first approval decision is plausible by early 2027.
Observational studies tie fitness to slower cognitive decline. When researchers randomise older adults to exercise, the cognitive payoff shrinks — in a Cochrane review of healthy people, to nothing.
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.
The link between puzzles and a sharper old age is real in the data and largely the wrong way round: the earliest changes of dementia quietly reduce the very activities that later look protective.
The best long-term trial found trained skills can last a decade. Whether they transfer to daily life, or hold off dementia, is where the evidence — and the FTC — parted ways with the marketing.
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.
Pain medicine added a third mechanistic category in 2017 and has been arguing about it since. There is no test for it, the criteria work by exclusion, and the experts who wrote them say that is a problem.
A standing commission estimates that eliminating 14 risk factors could prevent or delay 45% of dementia across a whole population. What that number means for one person is a different and much weaker claim.
A registry study spanning 4.9 million people separates where the most deaths occur from where the inequality is largest. Heart disease and lung disease give different answers.
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.
Four separate trial emulations, each with a different comparator, all pointed the same direction. The strongest effect appeared among people being treated for alcohol use disorder.
A review lays out the evidence chain: animal studies showing reduced drug-seeking, one small human trial, and record-based analyses linking GLP-1 prescriptions to 40% fewer opioid overdoses.
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.
The KADS extension followed 130 patients who had already been through a ketamine trial. Response fell from 30% at treatment's end to 17% a month later.
The meta-analysis behind ketamine's widening off-label use for suicidal crisis quantifies what 1,166 patients across two decades of trials actually showed — and where the evidence runs out.
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 quasi-experimental analysis of 23 hospitals finds about 95 additional self-harm and suicide-related emergency visits a month after the law changed, alongside fewer psychiatric admissions.
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 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.
In 273,466 people with substance-related hospital admissions, psychosis was far more common after hallucinogen admissions, until adjustment for preexisting conditions erased the link.
Anxiety, quality of life and PTSD symptoms all improved after a single dose in this 15-person trial. Once researchers accounted for depression improvement, those effects mostly disappeared.
Switzerland allows limited psilocybin use for treatment-resistant depression. A review of 19 patients found meaningful improvement, but remission in barely a fifth to a quarter.
A review pooling 23 studies found risk concentrated among people with bipolar I disorder, family history, or unsupervised use. About 4% later transitioned to bipolar disorder.
A single-author analysis of Global Burden of Disease estimates finds the region's neurodevelopmental picture split in two — and argues the flat autism curve reflects diagnostic capacity, not risk.
By the study's end, 70% had scores low enough to be considered near-resolution. There was no placebo arm — every participant knew what they'd received.
EPISODE randomized 144 people with treatment-resistant depression across four arms. High-dose psilocybin missed its main outcome, even as secondary measures showed symptom benefit.
No medication has proven effective for cocaine use disorder. A single psilocybin dose, paired with therapy, produced more abstinent days and a longer time to relapse than an active placebo.
In 35 patients with recurrent major depression, psilocybin beat an active placebo through day 42. On self-reported measures the effect lingered further, but the trial's primary endpoint showed no difference at 365 days.
TSND-201 improved PTSD severity, disability, and depression scores over placebo in 65 participants — delivered as an oral dose with monitoring but no formal psychotherapy alongside it.
Twenty-four healthy volunteers received all three drugs in a crossover trial. At 30 mg, 2C-B matched MDMA's intensity and produced psilocybin-like states, without psilocybin's anxiety.
The first federal survey to ask about psilocybin specifically finds 2.8% past-year use, concentrated among young, white, college-educated men. People with recent depression had 37% higher odds.
The open-label pilot tested a specific worry in psychedelic research — that borderline personality disorder blunts response to psilocybin for depression. In this small sample, it didn't.
A survey of 243 people reporting persistent difficulty after a psychedelic trip found that how they responded in the moment, avoiding versus accepting, predicted whether trauma symptoms followed.
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.
Most psychedelic depression trials require patients to come off antidepressants first. This one deliberately didn't — and found intranasal 5-MeO-DMT tolerable and encouraging in patients who stayed on their SSRI.
The same drug sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro reduced cocaine-evoked dopamine release and blocked drug-associated place preference in rodents. It's animal data, not a human addiction treatment.
Up to eight sessions of psilocybin, layered onto a small randomized comparison against an active placebo, produced a 73% response rate by the end of treatment. The trial was designed to test safety first.
Six months out, 40.5% of smokers given one high dose of psilocybin plus therapy stayed abstinent, versus 10% on the nicotine patch plus the same therapy. The trial ran 82 people.
Compared with a diabetes drug from another class, GLP-1 agonists were followed by fewer new diagnoses of alcohol, opioid, nicotine and other substance use disorders.
A pooled analysis of five trials in treatment-resistant depression found sex differences in response. The largest ones appeared in both arms, which points at something other than the drug.
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.
In the RECOVER extension, about a fifth of participants were in remission at 24 months and some who had not responded at 12 months did later. The second year had no control group.
In 85 people with mild cognitive impairment, transient beta-band events recorded at rest differed years before diagnosis. The sample is small and the finding has not been replicated.
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.
A population study covering all 15 million residents of Ontario found the rate of new ADHD medication prescriptions accelerated sharply after 2019 — and shifted decisively toward adults.
Bristol Myers Squibb found 'irregularities' in how a small number of ADEPT-2 sites executed the study, excluded their patients, and is enrolling more. Alzheimer's-related psychosis still has no approved treatment.
Semaglutide moved Alzheimer's biomarkers without moving the clinic. A separate liraglutide trial missed its primary endpoint on brain metabolism. Together they close a decade-old hypothesis — or at least narrow it.
A national registry analysis found the highest burden among 20-to-29-year-olds and a notable rise among girls aged 10 to 19, with rates concentrated in the Sierra region.
A meta-regression across 28 countries put pooled prevalence near 4-5% and standardised mortality ratios between 1.8 and 4.7, in a condition the Global Burden of Disease study does not count.
A within-individual analysis of 505,474 people in Finland and Sweden found lower psychiatric hospitalisation on clozapine in every disorder studied except borderline personality disorder, with no excess mortality signal.
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.
Pooling 31 studies of 556 patients, cortical 5-HT2A binding was lower in unmedicated depression than in controls. The post-mortem studies mostly found nothing, and the tracers used shape the result.
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.
Across 2.48 million survey responses in 159 countries, the share of people with no one to turn to rose 13.4% between 2009 and 2024 — all of it after 2019.
An Australian cohort of 3,044 children found no protective factor held across all ages and outcomes. School safety mattered at age 6-7; belonging mattered at 12-13.
In 270 patients whose voices persisted despite antipsychotics, the therapy beat matched clinical contact on hallucination severity by 2.26 points — significant, with a Cohen's d of 0.27.
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.