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Perinatal Depression in Ethiopia: 22.49% Pooled Umbrella Prevalence

MHD featured image for perinatal depression prevalence in Ethiopia.

An Ethiopian umbrella review estimated perinatal depressive symptoms at 22.49% across 8 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Antenatal and postnatal rates were similar, so the burden spans the whole perinatal window rather than clustering only after delivery.1 Research Highlights Overall pooled prevalence was 22.49%: Necho et al. combined 8 Ethiopian systematic reviews and meta-analyses covering 28 …

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Complex PTSD Therapy Helped Affect Regulation Most

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; …

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Social Media Abstinence Failed to Improve Well-Being

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 …

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

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 …

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Anxious Depression fMRI Meta-Analysis Finds Left Temporal Activation

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 …

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