Frontier mental health research: psychedelics & drug studies

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.

4 papers

Telling Stories: The Health Benefits of Narrative

James W. Pennebaker
Literature and medicine Summary & key facts 2000 410 citations

Pennebaker reviews more than ten years of research on how telling or writing stories about traumatic or difficult experiences relates to health. He highlights studies done by him and other teams around the world. The essay focuses mainly on reported physical health benefits of writing about these experiences and summarizes…

Art Therapy and Mental Health Mental Health via Writing Pain Management and Placebo Effect

Mindful walking in psychologically distressed individuals: a randomized controlled trial

Michael Teut, E. J. Roesner, Miriam Ortiz, Frauke Reese, Sylvia Binting, Stephanie Roll, et al.
PubMed Summary & key facts 2013 50 citations

This randomized trial put 74 adults with moderate-to-high perceived stress into either an 8-session mindful walking program over 4 weeks or a waiting-list control. After 4 weeks, the mindful walking group had a much larger drop in perceived stress scores than the control group. The study also reported better quality-of-life…

Art Therapy and Mental Health Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

The effects of body scan meditation: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Ruochen Gan, Liuyi Zhang, Shulin Chen

The authors reviewed 14 randomized trials to see if doing only body scan meditation helps people. A pooled analysis found a small improvement in mindfulness compared with passive control (Hedge's g = 0.268, 95% CI 0.032 to 0.504, p < .05). However, the studies were low quality, results varied a…

Art Therapy and Mental Health COVID-19 and Mental Health Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions

Differential effects of a brief body scan session on pain and anxiety levels

Geneviève Bouchard, Janelle Gallant

This study tested a single 14‑minute body scan on 355 undergraduate and graduate students. Participants filled in questionnaires before and after the exercise to measure current anxiety and pain and to classify people as having low or high everyday symptoms. The results showed the body scan reduced anxiety and pain…

Art Therapy and Mental Health Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
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