MentalHealthDaily

Complex PTSD Therapy Helped Affect Regulation Most

by GLOOM

A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials found no broad superiority for phase-based complex PTSD care across most outcomes. Affect dysregulation was the clearest exception, improving more when treatment was phase-based, multi-phase, and exposure-containing. Research Highlights Most therapy formats helped: across waitlist and treatment-as-usual comparisons, psychological interventions reduced PTSD symptoms (k = 9; …

Social Media Abstinence Failed to Improve Well-Being

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing a muted social media feed beside a calm offline space, emphasizing that abstinence did not reliably improve well-being.

A 2025 preregistered meta-analysis found that temporary social media abstinence did not significantly improve positive affect, negative affect, or life satisfaction across 10 adult experiments involving 4,674 participants.1 The result does not prove that every break is useless, but it challenges the generic “digital detox” claim that simply logging off reliably improves mood. Research Highlights …

Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Perfectionism: r = 0.32 Meta-Analysis

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for body dysmorphic disorder and perfectionism meta-analysis.

A 2026 meta-analysis of 34 studies involving 13,107 participants found that body dysmorphic disorder symptoms and perfectionism were moderately correlated: r = .32, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.36, p < .001. The result supports perfectionism as a useful clinical clue in body dysmorphic disorder, but the estimate dropped to r = .09 after depression adjustment …

Teen Substance Use in South Africa: 30-Study Meta-Analysis

by GLOOM

A 2026 PRISMA-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis in Drug and Alcohol Review consolidated 30 publications covering 202 prevalence estimates from 120,041 South African adolescents: pooled lifetime prevalence was 35.09% for alcohol use, 25.47% for tobacco use, and 10.47% for cannabis use.1 Research Highlights 30 publications, 202 estimates: pooled data covered 120,041 South African adolescents. Alcohol …

IV Clomipramine Shows No Clear Edge in Depression or OCD

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of an IV infusion bag and capsule with brain imagery, conveying parenteral vs oral antidepressant pharmacokinetics.

Parenteral clomipramine has a strong clinical myth around it: bypass the gut, raise parent-drug exposure quickly, and maybe accelerate rescue in severe depression or OCD. A 2026 systematic review found the route advantage was not clearly proven: in depression, 5 RCTs without high risk of bias did not show clear IV or IM superiority over …

Anxious Depression fMRI Meta-Analysis Finds Left Temporal Activation

by GLOOM

Editorial brain-map card for anxious depression with highlighted limbic and prefrontal regions from an earlier draft framing.

A 2026 fMRI meta-analysis of 11 studies found a narrow anxious-depression signal: 829 anxious-depression patients differed from 681 non-anxious MDD patients in left middle temporal gyrus activation (SDM-Z = 2.046, p = 0.020), while healthy-control contrasts centered on the anterior commissure and right middle frontal gyrus. The calibrated interpretation is not “amygdala and insula hyperactivity …

Gamma Brain Stimulation Helps Schizophrenia More Than Depression

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of gamma-frequency brain stimulation showing TMS coil and oscillation waveforms in 30-50 Hz range over a brain.

A 2026 meta-analysis of 56 controlled trials found the clearest gamma-frequency neuromodulation signal in schizophrenia: overall symptoms improved vs. control (g = −0.46), global cognition improved (g = 0.55), and MDD showed a smaller depression effect than the schizophrenia symptom estimate (g = −0.34). Bipolar disorder and autism stayed directional but nonsignificant, and the paper’s …