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.

6 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

The Enneagram: A systematic review of the literature and directions for future research

Joshua N. Hook, Todd W. Hall, Don E. Davis, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Mackenzie Conner
Journal of Clinical Psychology Summary & key facts 2020 51 citations

The authors reviewed 104 independent samples of research on the Enneagram. They found mixed evidence about whether Enneagram measures are reliable and valid. Some studies fit parts of Enneagram theory and linked Enneagram subscales to Big Five personality traits, and some people reported the Enneagram helped with personal or spiritual…

Ego Development and Educational Practices Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function Pain Management and Placebo Effect

Facilitating Adaptive Emotion Processing and Somatic Reappraisal via Sustained Mindful Interoceptive Attention

Price, Cynthia J., Weng, Helen Y.
www.frontiersin.org Summary & key facts 2021 28 citations

The paper proposes a clinical framework that helps people notice and work with body sensations tied to emotions. It calls this mindful interoceptive awareness and says focusing on inner body signals in a sustained, nonjudgmental way can make those sensations clearer and allow a process the authors call somatic reappraisal.…

Pain Management and Placebo Effect Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

oVRcome – Self-guided virtual reality for specific phobias: A randomised controlled trial

Cameron Lacey, Chris Frampton, Ben Beaglehole

Self-guided use of the oVRcome app was effective at reducing severity of specific phobia symptoms in a sample of people with a self-reported fear of flying, heights, spiders, dogs or needles.Trial registry clinicaltrials.gov NCT04909177.

Mind wandering and attention Pain Management and Placebo Effect Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts

The Functional Role of Large-scale Brain Network Coordination in Placebo-induced Anxiolysis

Benjamin Meyer, Kenneth S.L. Yuen, Victor Saase, Raffaël Kalisch
PubMed Summary & key facts 2019 21 citations

This fMRI study tested how expecting an anxiety-reducing treatment (a placebo) changed large-scale brain networks. Under placebo, the brain's salience network became less active, especially to threat cues. The rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) showed stronger ongoing connections with the salience network, and this stronger connectivity was linked with lower…

Mental Health and Psychiatry Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function Pain Management and Placebo Effect

Feeling Lightheaded: The Role of Cerebral Blood Flow

Johan Bresseleers, Ilse Van Diest, Steven De Peuter, Peter Verhamme, Omer Van den Bergh
Psychosomatic Medicine Summary & key facts 2010 20 citations

Researchers tested 33 healthy people to see how lightheadedness and brain blood flow are linked. During hyperventilation that lowered CO2, people's reports of lightheadedness matched drops in cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFv). After a few such episodes, a smell that had been paired with hyperventilation later triggered more lightheadedness and…

Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control Pain Management and Placebo Effect Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
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