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tVNS Alters Effort and Reward Decisions in Severe Depression

Photoreal illustration of an ear-clip vagus nerve stimulation electrode, with neural pathway motifs representing reward-effort circuits.

An ear-clip that modulates mood by stimulating the vagus nerve has obvious appeal — but the evidence base for non-invasive tVNS in depression has been mixed for a decade. A 2026 cross-over RCT by Forbes et al. sharpens what specifically tVNS does well.1 Research Highlights Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a non-invasive ear-electrode version …

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Iceland Psychiatric Data: 21% Diagnosed, 34% on Psychotropics (2026)

MHD featured image for Iceland Psychiatric Health: 21% Diagnosed, 34% on Psychotropics.

Iceland is a registry-rich country with a small enough population that genuinely nationwide health data is feasible — not the survey-based approximations that anchor most psychiatric epidemiology elsewhere. A 2026 PLOS One study used the Iceland Screens, Treats, or Prevents Multiple Myeloma (iStopMM) cohort — 80,759 adults aged 40+, representing 54% of all eligible Icelanders …

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Schizophrenia Dementia Risk: Diabetes, Head Injury, Substance Use

Photoreal illustration of an aging brain with cardiovascular and lifestyle risk imagery, conveying preventable dementia drivers in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia have substantially elevated dementia risk compared to the general population — roughly 2-3 times the age-adjusted rate — but the specific drivers within the schizophrenia population have been less well characterized. A 2026 case-control study by Ho et al. used population-based data to identify which factors specifically elevate dementia risk among schizophrenia …

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Intellectual Disability in Korean Children and Psychiatric Disorders (ADHD 42%, Depression 19%)

Photoreal illustration of a child interacting with cognitive and developmental motifs, representing intellectual disability and psychiatric comorbidity.

Children with intellectual disability are 3–4x more likely to have a comorbid psychiatric disorder than peers without ID. A 2026 nationwide Korean study by Joo and colleagues tracks how those rates changed across a decade.1 Research Highlights Korean children and adolescents (ages 2–18) with intellectual disability had ADHD comorbidity rise from 30.2% in 2012 to …

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Machine Learning Predicts Clozapine Initiation in Schizophrenia

Photoreal illustration of an electronic health record dashboard with clinical text and a model output highlighted, representing ML prediction in psychiatry.

Clozapine is the only medication with proven efficacy for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, yet most eligible patients wait years before starting it. A 2026 paper by Perfalk and colleagues trains a machine-learning model on routine electronic health record data to flag candidates earlier.1 Research Highlights Clozapine is the only evidence-based treatment for treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS), but the …

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Lurasidone Improves Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia More Than Negative

MHD featured image for Lurasidone PANSS Domains: Positive Symptoms Lead, Negative Lag.

Lurasidone is approved for schizophrenia and bipolar depression on the strength of acute trials that mostly reported a single number: the change in PANSS total score. A 2026 post-hoc analysis of the JEWEL Phase 3 trial pulls that number apart, looking separately at five symptom domains and at all 30 individual items of the PANSS …

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