8‑week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course found to be as effective as Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat adults with anxiety disorders, and with far fewer side effects

Anx­i­ety is the most com­mon psy­chi­atric dis­or­der, with over 301 mil­lion ?peo­ple affect­ed around the world. Whether extreme anx­i­ety aris­es in social sit­u­a­tions, is trig­gered by a par­tic­u­lar pho­bia, or man­i­fests as a gen­er­al unease in the world, it can severe­ly affect people’s every­day func­tion­ing and lead to high lev­els of dis­tress. Luck­i­ly, there are…

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Next: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy?

How ecsta­sy and psilo­cy­bin are shak­ing up psy­chi­a­try (Nature): … The Impe­r­i­al study was one of a spate of clin­i­cal tri­als launched over the past few years using illic­it psy­che­del­ic drugs such as psilo­cy­bin, lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide (LSD) and MDMA (3,4‑methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as mol­ly or ecsta­sy) to treat men­­tal-health dis­or­ders, gen­er­al­ly with the close…

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Mental Health Innovation and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Verily Life Sciences to Startup Mindstrong

— For­mer Alpha­bet exec is work­ing on an idea to detect men­tal health dis­or­ders by how you type on your phone (CNBC): “Can a smart­phone detect whether a user is sui­ci­dal or depressed? That’s the promise of an explod­ing num­ber of men­tal health entre­pre­neurs, who are explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to mon­i­tor users’ smart­phone behav­ior to detect…

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Is Mental Health ready to start transitioning towards measurable brain circuits, away from subjective symptoms?

To Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness, Read the Brain (Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): Although sci­en­tists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, approach­es to treat­ing men­tal ill­ness­es have not kept up. As neu­ro­sci­en­tists learn more about brain cir­cuits, Stan­ford psy­chi­a­trist Amit Etkin fore­sees a time when diag­noses will be based on brain scans rather…

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Study: An innovative telehealth service to provide high quality ADHD treatment

. An unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that many chil­dren with ADHD do not have access to high qual­i­ty, evi­­dence-based treat­ment for ADHD. This is espe­cial­ly true in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where chil­dren are gen­er­al­ly treat­ed by pri­ma­ry care providers who may have less ADHD-spe­­cif­ic train­ing than child psy­chi­a­trists and where

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