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SSRIs + DOACs: No Excess Bleeding vs. Other Antidepressants

Stylized illustration of an SSRI capsule alongside a DOAC tablet against a vascular network background, representing the bleeding-interaction question in primary care.

SSRIs raise bleeding risk on their own. DOACs (direct oral anticoagulants — apixaban, rivaroxaban, dabigatran, edoxaban) raise it more. The intuitive worry is that combining them stacks the two effects. A new BJGP Open analysis from Chau and colleagues argues the stacking is smaller than most popular framings claim, and that the real safety question …

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Lithium in Pregnancy: Why Late Discontinuation Backfires

Photoreal illustration representing lithium prescribing decisions during pregnancy, with imagery of a pregnant figure and pharmaceutical motifs.

Lithium prescribing during pregnancy sits in a knot of competing risks. The teratogenicity data have been recalibrated dramatically since the 1970s, while the postpartum-relapse data have moved in the opposite direction. Most popular framing still treats lithium as a uniquely dangerous fetal exposure to be avoided when possible. The new Chauhan UK cohort shows what …

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Maternal Health and Autism Risk: Most Links Are Genetic, Not Prenatal

Stylized illustration of a multi-generation family tree branching into cousin pairs, representing the 3-generation registry design used to separate inherited from in-utero genetic effects on autism risk.

For two decades, headlines have linked autism to maternal obesity, depression, anxiety, gestational diabetes, infection, autoimmune disease, and antidepressant use. The studies behind those headlines are well-replicated registry associations. A new design from the Aarhus University iPSYCH group offers the most careful answer yet to what they mean for an individual pregnancy. Most “maternal X …

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Ketamine Addiction After One Therapeutic Dose: How Rare Is It?

Stylized illustration evoking the tension between ketamine's clinical promise for depression and its abuse liability, framed in muted rose and amber tones for the addiction topic.

Ketamine and its S-enantiomer esketamine (sold as Spravato) are now established treatments for treatment-resistant depression and acute suicidality. The standard safety pitch from sponsors and clinics: at single sub-anesthetic doses, in supervised settings, addiction risk is minimal. A new case report in BJPsych Open documents a patient for whom that pitch failed catastrophically — and …

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Schizophrenia and Aging: Advanced, Not Accelerated

Two parallel timelines representing chronological vs. biological age in schizophrenia: an early offset at first episode, then parallel trajectories afterward — illustrating advanced rather than accelerated aging.

“Schizophrenia ages you faster” is the headline that gets repeated whenever a new biomarker study lands. The 2026 Fernandez-Egea, Garcia-Rizo and Kirkpatrick review — covering 170 studies across mortality, brain imaging, telomeres, epigenetic clocks, and metabolic markers — pushes back on that framing.2 The aging signal is genuine. “Accelerated” is the part that overshoots for …

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GLP-1 Drugs for Parkinson’s: Lixisenatide Signal, Exenatide Miss

Stylized illustration representing GLP-1 receptor agonists being investigated as potential disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, affecting around 10 million people worldwide. The mental-health burden is heavy: depression affects 40-50% of patients9, anxiety 30-40%, sleep disorders most patients eventually, and dementia about a third of long-duration cases. Standard treatment with levodopa controls motor symptoms but doesn’t slow the underlying neurodegeneration. The clinical …

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Lupus Psychosis: 4.5% Prevalence and Antibody Predictors

Stylized illustration of autoantibodies and immune complexes crossing a disrupted blood-brain barrier, evoking the immune-mediated mechanism by which lupus produces psychosis.

Psychosis is one of 19 neuropsychiatric syndromes the American College of Rheumatology recognizes as attributable to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease that disproportionately affects young women.2 A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis from Parperis and colleagues in Lupus pooled 65 studies and 31,495 patients.1 The synthesis matters less for the headline 4.5% prevalence …

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