In recent years, the party drug and anesthetic ketamine has been embraced as a rapidly-acting, if still off-label, medication for some cases of depression and suicidal ideation that don’t respond to other treatments. But there’s still much we don’t understand about how it actually works so quickly to treat the…
I tend to have very vivid dreams. I recently dreamed that I hit a home run at Wrigley Field as a member of my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, for example. But I also dreamed the clown from It came to haunt me at the top of every hour as I roamed a crowded casino.
Being a millennial is no picnic. But a new study published this Friday in JAMA Open suggests it’s especially hard for expectant moms. It found that pregnant women today are more likely to feel depressed than their mothers were during their pregnancies a generation ago.
As smartphones and other highly portable devices have become omnipresent, some researchers and many parents have begun to worry about the mental health risks of excessive screen time on kids and teens. New research presented this week doesn’t debunk a link between technology and depression, but it could sharpen the…
Medical doctors are more likely to die from suicide than members of any other profession in the US, suggests new research presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. And worse than that, few interventions seem to have helped make these suicides less common.
Depression is a tricky beast. Symptoms vary widely from person to person, as does the response to treatment. But there’s no question that genetic makeup plays an important role, and understanding the genetic architecture of depression could help us better understand how to treat it.
It might take just one puff of cannabis to quickly if temporarily dull depression, depending on the strain, suggests a new study published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders. But smoking weed for too long might also make you sadder over time, the researchers found.
Reddit’s gotten plenty of deserved criticism over the years for hosting some of the most toxic communities on the internet. But a new study published this month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research suggests that at least some subreddits are helping people dealing with depression and other mental health issues…
Ketamine, a drug that’s been retooled as a “breakthrough” in depression treatment, is one step closer to becoming mainstream medicine, thanks to the results of a Phase II clinical trial published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry. But some experts are wary of creating a new drug-abuse crisis by…
Anyone who’s taken the psychedelic drug LSD (formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide), or had the joy of listening to their favorite relative talk about it during Thanksgiving, knows it can be a utterly bonkers experience. A small new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience seems to offer some insight into…
There may not be a single depression gene, but there’s no question that our genetic makeup is an important factor in whether or not we get depressed. And our sex, it turns out, can be a factor in how those genes are expressed. In men and women diagnosed with major depressive disorder, the same genes show the opposite…
Today’s kids are better behaved than ever. They’re having less sex (and more safely when they do), committing less crime, and doing fewer drugs. But research has also started to show they might be unhappier than previous generations of youths. A new study published today in Emotion adds more support to a leading…
Depression is an equal opportunity malady. It affects people from all walks of life, be they rich or poor, young or old, or black or white. But it’s apparent there are some groups who are more vulnerable to depression than others, such as those living in poverty or who regularly face discrimination. A recent study,…
When it comes to preventing suicide, true breakthroughs are hard to come by. The overall rate of suicide in the U.S. has increased since the turn of the millennium, reaching a 30-year-high in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And although there are many drugs and therapy approaches…
Recent scientific progress has allowed us to begin decoding the significance of many different patterns of activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to understand patterns associated with disorders such as depression, in hopes of correcting it. Other research has zeroed in on how language and speech is signaled in…
How did a Massachusetts woman end up with two electrodes implanted into her brain? Why is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developing a controversial, cutting-edge brain chip technology that could one day treat everything from major depressive disorder to hand cramps? How did we get to deep brain…
Are you jaded? Filled with ennui? A so-called millennial who keeps being told to stop asking for handouts? Then oh boy, do I have a fun game for you—let’s figure out what kind of apathy you have!
The active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, is remarkably effective at reducing feelings of anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental anguish in cancer patients, according to a pair of new studies.
Sunday marks the end of Daylight Savings Time. What does this mean? It means things are about to get really, really dark.
To address the burgeoning “loneliness epidemic” and the demands of an aging population, some think that we should deploy robotic caregivers. A new ad titled “B.E.N. (Biologically Engineered Nursing),” however, suggests that this is a dreadful idea.
