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.
10 papers
This 2006 meta-analysis combined past studies on social support and burnout. Overall, social support showed similar links to the three burnout parts: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (feeling detached or cynical), and reduced personal accomplishment (feeling less effective at work). But the source of support mattered: support from work was more strongly…
This review pooled studies from 2007–2018 to measure how strongly burnout is related to depression and to anxiety. The authors found a moderate positive link with depression (r = 0.52) and a moderate link with anxiety (r = 0.46). They also report that measurement choice and study quality changed the…
This meta-analysis combined 43 studies (total N = 9,838; 663 effect sizes) to examine links between different kinds of perfectionism and burnout. It found that perfectionistic strivings were either slightly linked to lower burnout or not linked, while perfectionistic concerns were linked to higher burnout. When the two types were…
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 systematic review looked at clinical studies that paired psychedelics with a structured psychotherapy. It found that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy can give promising results across many clinical conditions when given to carefully screened people in controlled settings, but some patients relapse or do not respond. The review highlights that individual and…
This study looked at 152 moderate cannabis users (21–70 years old) to see what they expect cannabis will do for sleep and what their reported sleep was like. Users were more likely to expect cannabis to help sleep, but the study found few clear links between cannabis use and better…
Researchers followed people who used psychedelics in real life and signed up online. They asked them about their personality and how connected they felt to others before the experience, two weeks after, and four weeks after. On average, people reported feeling less emotional instability, becoming more friendly and cooperative, and…
This study of 413 adults (254 women, 155 men; ages 18–81, mean 33.8) looked at how self-compassion relates to post‑traumatic symptoms (PTS) and post‑traumatic growth (PTG). Women reported more PTS and less self‑compassion than men, while PTG did not differ by gender. Higher PTS was linked both to higher PTG…
This study followed 1,926 young adults (age 20–23) in Southern California from 2020 to 2021 to see how cannabis use related to later sleep problems. The researchers found that frequent cannabis use (≥20 days/month) was linked with worse sleep for people without anxiety or depression, but linked with slightly better…
This study used network analysis to examine many parts of social life—friend and spouse ties, contact frequency, social engagement, support and strain, and relationship quality—in 502 South Korean adults aged 40–69 (mean 54.4; 49.4% male). Loneliness was most strongly connected to friend network size and the quality of friendships and…
