substance use disorder Archives

CARES Addiction Risk Screening: 15-Stakeholder Preprint

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for CARES addiction risk screening implementation.

A 2026 medRxiv preprint interviewed 15 health-system stakeholders about CARES, a freestanding addiction-risk screening platform, and found a clear implementation split: people wanted better substance-use prevention tools than current clinic screening, but provider burden, stigma, knowledge gaps, and medical-record liability could block uptake.1 Research Highlights Stakeholders saw a screening gap: all 15 interviewees held leadership …

U.S. Substance-Use Disorder DALYs Rose 213.5%: Opioids Led

by GLOOM

A Global Burden of Disease analysis estimated that U.S. age-standardized substance-use disorder disability-adjusted life-year rates rose 213.5% from 1990 to 2019, with opioid use disorders producing the steepest increase and the largest state-level burden.1 Research Highlights U.S. cases rose sharply: prevalent substance-use disorder cases increased from 12.6 million in 1990 to 19.5 million in 2019.1 …

ACEs Poorly Predict Mental Illness in Canadian Data

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing a poorly-fit ROC-style curve and an ACE checklist, illustrating the gap between population-level association and individual prediction.

A 2026 nationally-representative study by Johnson, Parker, and Wade in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry tested ACE-style screening in 7,608 Canadian adults and replicated what US, UK, and New Zealand cohorts already found: predictive accuracy is poor, with AUCs of 0.62 to 0.67 across anxiety, mood, substance use, and suicidality — all below the conventional …

Psychiatric Brain Biomarkers Lack Clinical Use: 441-Study Map

by GLOOM

Psychiatric brain biomarkers have produced a large research literature but little routine clinical use. A 2026 evidence map found 441 primary studies and 27 systematic reviews of neuroimaging or neurophysiologic biomarkers for mental-health disorders, yet the field still looks too small, cross-sectional, and depression-heavy for ordinary diagnostic or treatment decisions.1 Research Highlights Large map, weak …

GLP-1 Drugs Suppress Reward Feeding Through an Amygdala-Dopamine Circuit

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for GLP-1 drugs, reward feeding, amygdala signaling, and dopamine circuitry.

GLP-1 drugs are usually described as appetite drugs, but a 2026 Nature mouse study mapped a more specific reward circuit: small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonists suppressed palatable-food intake through Glp1r-expressing central-amygdala neurons that reduced dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens during high-fat-food retrieval.1 That mechanism makes binge-eating and substance-use hypotheses more plausible without turning an animal …

Methamphetamine Treatment Access: 78% Had Never Sought Care

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for methamphetamine treatment access, stigma, and barriers to care in Australia.

A 2026 Australian interview study involving 27 adults with methamphetamine use problems found that 21 participants, or 77.8%, had never previously sought treatment for methamphetamine use. Research Highlights Most had never sought treatment: Peart et al. interviewed 27 adults and found that 77.8% had not previously sought methamphetamine treatment before entering the parent trial.1 3 …

Prior Cocaine Use Disrupts Orbitofrontal Hidden-State Coding

by GLOOM

A 2026 eLife study recorded 3,881 lateral orbitofrontal cortex units in rats and found that prior cocaine use made the OFC over-distinguish task positions that controls treated as functionally equivalent. The headline result was not gross task failure: cocaine-experienced rats still performed the odor task, but their OFC ensembles showed higher S1-vs.-S2 decoding than sucrose …