A 2026 case report described valproate 800 mg/day improving agitation in residual-phase treatment-resistant schizophrenia but being followed by hypoglycemia and pancytopenia; after discontinuation, lithium 600 mg/day at 0.8 mEq/L was associated with BPRS improvement from 80 to 64.1 The calibrated read is mixed: valproate looked behaviorally useful in 1 patient, but the safety signal was …
A 2026 multi-university survey involving 650 Saudi medical students found that 30% met a threshold for clinically significant health anxiety, with higher adjusted odds among female students, rural students, private-university students, and students with psychiatric history.1 The result is not a diagnosis of “hypochondria”; it is a screening signal that illness-focused fear may be a …
A zebrafish experiment found that one 1-hour ayahuasca exposure reversed several effects of 14 days of unpredictable chronic stress: impaired sociability, anxiety-like behavior, stress-related hyperlocomotion, elevated cortisol, and reduced whole-brain BDNF.1 The result is mechanistic animal evidence, not a clinical trial of ayahuasca for human depression or anxiety. Research Highlights 14 days of chronic stress …
A 254-person FaceYourFears moderator analysis found that people with schizophrenia-spectrum paranoia and higher avolition or moderate-to-high delusion severity may improve more with virtual-reality CBT than with standard CBT for psychosis.1 The result is useful as a treatment-matching hypothesis, not as a rule that assigns patients to a headset. Research Highlights 254 participants were analyzed: 128 …
A 2026 qualitative study of 71 UK National Health Service workers argued that a shift into “war-mode” leadership during an atypical crisis could push moral stress, distress, conflict, and suffering toward moral injury.1 Moral-injury endpoint: moral injury was the severe endpoint, while unresolved lower-consequence moral phenomena may become the pathway to it. Research Highlights 71 …
A nationwide Finnish registry study found that 2 severe infection categories still predicted dementia after adjustment for 27 noninfectious comorbid diseases.1 Cystitis and bacterial infection of an unspecified site both had adjusted rate ratios of 1.19 after comorbidity adjustment, meaning the infection-dementia association did not disappear when prior hospital-treated illnesses were modeled. Research Highlights The …
A 2026 Nature Aging study involving 520 participants found that plasma protein-structure signatures classified healthy control, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease groups with 83.44% three-way accuracy.1 The result is a serious biomarker signal, but it is not a clinic-ready replacement for established Alzheimer’s testing. Research Highlights Classification was strong: The plasma structural-proteomics panel reached …