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.
30 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…
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…
Researchers followed 3,779 Canadian adolescents (mean age 12.8 years, 49% girls) for five years and found that when a teen’s screen time went up in a given year, their ADHD symptoms tended to increase that same year. Impulsivity was the strongest link between screen time and ADHD symptoms. Only social…
Many people have mood or anxiety problems during pregnancy and in the year after birth. About a quarter of people develop a perinatal mood or anxiety disorder, and these can include postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and, rarely, psychosis. These conditions are often not diagnosed, but studies and clinical guidance…
