Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
40 papers
The WHO Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) has 18 questions about recent ADHD symptoms, and a shorter six-question screener was tested against blind clinical diagnoses in 154 people from the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Each ASRS item was linked to the clinical rating, but agreement varied a lot across…
This umbrella review pooled evidence from 97 systematic reviews (1,039 randomized trials, 128,119 participants) to examine whether physical activity affects symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adults. Overall, physical activity produced medium-sized reductions in symptoms (median effect size for depression = -0.43, for anxiety = -0.42; distress effect…
This review says adult ADHD affects about 2.5% of adults and often occurs with other mental health problems. Adults with ADHD commonly have trouble with attention, memory, planning, self-control, and emotions. The condition is often missed or undertreated, is linked with big personal and social problems, and the evidence on…
Folic acid is a stable, synthetic form of the vitamin folate. Taking folic acid around the time of conception lowers the chance of neural tube birth defects (NTDs). Many countries have added folic acid to flour and other foods. These fortification programs have been linked with large drops in NTDs,…
This CDC analysis used the 2019–2021 National Health Interview Survey to estimate how common chronic pain is among U.S. adults. In 2021, about 20.9% of adults (51.6 million people) reported pain on most days or every day for the past three months. About 6.9% (17.1 million people) had high-impact chronic…
Ketamine, an anaesthetic, can reduce chronic pain, especially pain with nerve damage. Low doses give strong pain relief, probably by blocking NMDA receptors. Short infusions tend to help only while the drug is given, but three studies found that longer infusions (4–14 days) produced pain relief lasting up to 3…
The authors combined results from 42 studies of people in prison to estimate how common ADHD is in those groups. Using formal diagnostic interviews, the overall ADHD rate was about 25.5%. Reported rates were higher when studies used screening tools or when adults recalled childhood ADHD. The review found much…
This chapter explains three ways people think about health. It says the best view — the "complete state" — includes both the lack of disease and the presence of positive mental capacities and functioning. The author reviews studies that support using this complete-state view for mental health and suggests that…
This 2021 review looked at research on the biology of burnout, which it defines as exhaustion from long or excessive workplace stress. The authors found evidence that burnout is linked with ongoing activation of the nervous system, problems in the body’s fast stress response (the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axis), and changes in…
In healthy adults from the general population, we found a significant and robust association between depression and anemia. Further studies are needed to assess the longitudinal relationship between both conditions and determine the mechanisms underlying this association.
This paper reviewed studies that tested how and when physical activity (PA) relates to mental health. The authors searched four databases up to July 2024 and kept 247 studies. They found strong evidence that 12 specific factors help explain the PA–mental health link (for example, mood, self-esteem, and social support).…
This observational study measured blood ferritin (a marker of iron stores) and depressive symptoms in 312 men and 216 women working in two Japanese municipal offices. In men, lower ferritin levels were linked to higher odds of depressive symptoms, with a significant trend across ferritin quartiles. No clear link was…
