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.
This study reviewed systematic reviews to measure death risks in major mental disorders. The authors screened 407 reviews and found 20 that reported mortality risks for 20 different disorders, covering over 1.7 million patients and more than a quarter of a million deaths. Every disorder showed higher all-cause death rates…
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness marked by big problems with emotion control, impulsive acts, and unstable self-image and relationships. Many people with BPD hurt themselves or try suicide (recurrent suicidal behaviour in about 69–80% and suicide rates up to 10%). Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) was developed to…
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 systematic review looked at human studies of cannabidiol (CBD) for anxiety up to June 2019. Eight studies were included (6 small randomized controlled trials, 1 case series, and 1 case report). The studies tested CBD for anxiety in healthy volunteers, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and PTSD-related anxiety.…
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent and serious neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity. Chronic and childhood stress is involved in ADHD development, and ADHD is highly comorbid with anxiety. Similarly, inflammatory diseases and a pro-inflammatory state have been associated with ADHD. However, while several works have…
This review explains that sleep problems are common in bipolar disorder and are tied to worse mood, more relapse, and more daily problems. The authors describe non-drug treatments for sleep, especially adapted cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and note some evidence and limits for these approaches.
The researchers surveyed 1,738 students about ADHD, cannabis use, and thinking skills. People with ADHD who had used cannabis said it gave them short-term benefits for many ADHD symptoms (for example, hyperactivity and impulsivity) and eased many medication side effects (for example, irritability and anxiety). The study also found that…
Researchers looked at sixty studies to see how biology, social life, and psychology mix together to affect substance use problems and mental health. They found that brain systems, genes, childhood experiences, parenting, personality, and existing mood or anxiety problems all interact. This makes addiction and related psychiatric symptoms complicated, especially…
This systematic review looked at studies up to November 2023 on cannabis use and mood disorders. The authors included 78 studies and found that cannabis use was generally linked with more depressive and manic symptoms, a higher chance of developing major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), and a…
Recent controlled studies find that THC often raises short-term feelings of anxiety in lab-tested adults, especially at higher doses. Results about CBD are mixed: many newer studies report no clear anxiety-reducing effects in healthy people, and findings in clinical groups are inconsistent. Studies differ in dose, how cannabis was given,…
This paper reviewed 12 factor-analysis studies of mania that together included 3,039 adult patients assessed by clinicians. The authors found that mania has several dimensions rather than a single core symptom. Hyperactivity, increased speech, and thought disorder tended to be the clearest core features. Mood symptoms (elevated or irritable mood)…
This paper reviewed studies since 2016 to identify cannabis-related factors linked with higher risk of psychosis. It found that personal and genetic vulnerability, earlier age of first use, more frequent use, higher-THC products, how cannabis is taken, and using other drugs all raise the odds of cannabis-related psychosis. Evidence that…
