#depression — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #depression, aggregated by home.social.
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Psychedelic raves act as a modern rite of passage with complex psychological effects, new research suggests
For frequent Israeli rave-goers who consume psychedelic drugs, the experience extends well beyond the hours spent dancing, with preparations beginning beforehand and physical, emotional, and social effects continuing after the party, according to a qualitative study in the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment. Participants described both positive experiences, including greater confidence and social connection, and negative effects such as exhaustion, nausea, low mood, and problems concentrating.
Rave parties combine electronic dance music, prolonged dancing, and often highly stimulating social and visual environments. Psychedelic and other psychoactive drug use is also common in some rave settings. Previous research has documented risks such as adverse drug reactions alongside reports of belonging, identity change, and meaningful or transformative experiences.
Yet researchers have typically focused on what people experience while they are actually at a rave. Far less is known about the period before attendees arrive or what happens as they return to ordinary routines afterward. That gap is particularly important because preparation can influence drug-related risk, while difficult physical or psychological after-effects may not become apparent until the event is over.
Led by Yula Milshteyn of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the researchers interviewed 27 Jewish Israeli rave attendees who regularly attended events and consumed psychedelic drugs. Participants were, on average, 38.3 years old; 18 were men and nine were women. Ten reported using MDMA at raves, 15 reported LSD, and two described using LSD or MDMA together with substances such as alcohol or marijuana.
Rather than using questionnaires with predetermined answers, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and analyzed how participants described and interpreted their own experiences. The approach produced five broad themes before a rave and four afterward.
Milshteyn and Bensimon discovered that preparation was not merely practical. Participants described physical rituals and drug-related preparation, excitement and mixed bodily feelings, attempts to clear negative thoughts, social bonding with friends, and practical activities such as organizing food, clothing, water, and tents. The researchers interpreted these practices through the idea of a “rite of passage”: temporarily leaving ordinary routines before entering a distinctive social setting.
Afterward, experiences were equally varied. Participants reported tiredness, dizziness, headaches, nausea, and vomiting in the days following events. Emotional accounts included joy, confidence, and empowerment, as well as less welcome experiences such as depression-like low mood and mood swings. Some people described positive changes in their creative or musical direction, while others reported reduced concentration and attention. Enhanced friendships and sociability formed another recurring theme.
The study therefore does not support a simple portrayal of rave experiences as either beneficial or harmful. The same participants could describe meaningful social or emotional changes alongside unpleasant physical and psychological consequences.
The researchers concluded that after the raves, “participants return to their normal life, yet with changes in physical, emotional, cognitive, and social aspects.”
Some limitations must be accounted for. For example, the sample was small, self-selected, and predominantly male. Furthermore, exact drug doses were not recorded, and no objective measurements of participants’ psychological or cognitive states were collected.
The study, “Preparations for rave music parties and consequences for attendees who consume psychedelic drugs,” was authored by Yula Milshteyn and Moshe Bensimon.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PsychedelicRaves #RiteOfPassage #RaveCulture #PsychedelicResearch #DJMDMA #LSDExperiences #PostRaveEffects #SocialConnection #CreativeImpact #AfterMathRave
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 02:08AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: How the United Nations is Using AI to Advance Human Rights
Source: United Nations News
Across agencies, the United Nations is implementing artificial intelligence tools to help promote peace, security, and human rights. The U.N. is also using AI to detect land mines, assess disaster damage, identify suspicious financial transactions, and monitor radioactive contamination. But as technology advances, the U.N. is emphasizing equity, human rights, and ethics to ensure that AI promotes development instead of threatening peace and...
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #UnitedNationsAI #HumanRights #AIforGood #EthicalAI #PeaceAndSecurity #DisasterResponse #AIInHumanRights #TechForDevelopment #AITransparency #DigitalEquity
-
'They thought this toerag would disappear': Why Joyce ditched the party that made him
By Leisa Scott and Robyn PowellBarnaby Joyce has survived bruising battles, personal crises and public ridicule. Is his latest move to One Nation masterful, or a fatal miscalculation?
#FederalGovernment #HumanInterest #FederalParliament #OneNation #Nationals #Liberals #PostTraumaticStressDisorder #Depression #LeisaScott #RobynPowell
-
A study of gene expression in cells of the hippocampus in patients with major depressive disorder found that, in comparison to controls, depression as associated with a reduction in neurogenesis.
Summary: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-brain-cell-formation-stalls-adults.html
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04571-8
#Science #MentalHealth #Depression #Hippocampus #Neurogenesis
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: This specific type of positive emotion predicts life satisfaction better than the rest
An analysis of data from two longitudinal studies conducted in Germany and the Netherlands found that both energized and pleasant positive emotions are associated with life satisfaction, but that this association was much stronger with pleasant positive emotions. The paper was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology.
Subjective well-being is a person’s overall evaluation of how well their life is going. It is typically described as a combination of how satisfied people are with their lives and how frequently they experience positive and negative emotions. Yet researchers still disagree about exactly how these components fit together and whether they reflect a single underlying form of well-being.
One particularly important source of confusion concerns positive affect, which is often treated as if it were one simple psychological state. In reality, the term can refer to very different experiences, ranging from calm pleasure and happiness to excitement, enthusiasm, interest, and energetic engagement.
This means that two studies can both claim to measure positive affect while actually assessing rather different emotional experiences. The distinction matters because pleasant and energized positive emotions may play different roles in well-being. Pleasant feelings may be especially closely connected to satisfaction because they signal that things are going well or that important goals have been achieved. More energized states such as interest, engagement, and enthusiasm may instead be especially useful for motivating activity, exploration, and personal growth.
Study author Jinrui Liu and her colleagues conducted a study in which they explored whether positive emotions and life satisfaction are associated with each other over time. They also wanted to know whether energized and pleasant positive emotions have associations of similar strength with life satisfaction. Finally, they wanted to know whether personality traits that predict energized positive emotions are the same ones that predict pleasant positive emotions.
Study authors analyzed data from the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics from Germany (PAIRFAM) and the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) from the Netherlands. PAIRFAM is a longitudinal study of more than 12,000 individuals from three different birth groups (those born between 1971 and 1973, between 1981 and 1983, and between 1991 and 1993). Study authors analyzed data collected between 2014 and 2021.
The LISS data used in this analysis was collected between 2013 and 2024. The LISS conducted monthly internet surveys of a sample of Dutch individuals aged 16 and older from 5,000 households in each data collection wave. They were recruited randomly from the Dutch population. The sample analyzed in this study included 17,532 participants. 53.3% of them were women.
The measure of pleasant positive emotions used in this analysis was derived from an assessment of depression in PAIRFAM, using items initially meant to capture a lack of depressive symptoms, which actually describe the presence of pleasant feelings (e.g., “I am happy”, “I feel good”).
The assessment of energized positive emotions came from the LISS dataset where the Positive and Negative Affect Scale was used. Both datasets contained a measure of life satisfaction. Additionally, both datasets contained assessments of participants’ personalities in line with the Big Five model (the BFI-20 in the PAIRFAM, and IPIP-50 in the LISS).
Results showed that both pleasant and energized positive emotions were associated with life satisfaction, but that the association with pleasant positive emotions was much stronger. The associations ran in both temporal directions, meaning that earlier life satisfaction was associated with later positive emotions and vice versa.
The associations of the two types of positive emotions with personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism also differed. Neuroticism showed a stronger negative association with pleasant positive emotions, while energized positive emotions were more strongly associated with extraversion.
“In sum, our results indicate that pleasant and energized PA [positive affect] are not interchangeable in longitudinal SWB [subjective well-being] dynamics. Both PA types showed bidirectional within-person associations with LS [life satisfaction] beyond their shared trait-like SWB factor, supporting the view that these SWB elements are further causally related beyond a common underlying construct. However, these associations were consistently stronger for pleasant PA with LS than energized PA,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the theoretical conceptualization of subjective well-being. However, it should be noted that the study authors’ measurements of energized and pleasant positive emotions were driven by the data that were available in the datasets they used. It is possible that different ways of measuring these two categories of positive emotions would yield different results.
The paper, “Jingle all the way? Pleasant and energized positive affect show differential longitudinal relationships with life satisfaction and personality,” was authored by Jinrui Liu, Joar Vittersø, Irene J. E. Teulings, Ragnhild Bang Nes, Lilian Mayerhofer, and Espen Røysamb.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LifeSatisfaction #PositiveAffect #PleasantEmotions #EnergizedPositiveEmotions #SubjectiveWellBeing #WellBeingResearch #JournalOfPositivePsychology #HappinessStudy #BigFivePersonality #LongevityOfWellBeing
-
‘I used to be a sceptic, but now I know mindfulness really works’ from the Daily Telegraph - by @antoniahoyle bit.ly/3RjOyAD I like it when rational sceptics discover the benefits for themselves #deepermindfulness #mindfulness #depression #anxiety
bit.ly/3RjOyAD -
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Depression may speed up cognitive decline by increasing social isolation
URL: https://www.psypost.org/depression-may-speed-up-cognitive-decline-by-increasing-social-isolation/
A large study of older adults in China suggests that experiencing depressive symptoms can lead to a decline in mental sharpness partly by causing people to withdraw from their social circles. The findings suggest that public health programs designed to treat depression could also help preserve memory and thinking skills by keeping people socially engaged. The research was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Dementia and cognitive decline are major health concerns for aging populations worldwide. Research has frequently shown that older adults who experience a decline in memory and thinking abilities often experience depression at the same time. The exact relationship between the two conditions has been difficult to pin down. Some studies suggest depression speeds up mental decline, while others propose the reverse is true.
Researchers suspect that a third factor, a lack of social contact, might bridge the gap between mental health and mental sharpness. Jia Fang and Meifen Zhang, nursing researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China, wanted to understand the sequence of these events over time. They theorized that depression acts as an internal stressor that drains a person’s energy and motivation to socialize.
When people withdraw from friends and family, they lose out on the mental stimulation that social interactions provide. This lack of engagement can erode what researchers call cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve is the brain’s ability to improvise and find alternative ways of getting a job done, which helps protect against memory loss. The researchers hypothesized that treating depression might prevent this loss of social contact and subsequently protect the aging brain.
To test their hypothesis, Fang, Zhang, and their colleagues analyzed data from a large study of 9,220 adults aged 45 and older. The participants were part of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, a nationwide project tracking the health of older adults. The average age of the participants was about 58 years old, and a majority lived in rural areas. The researchers looked at information collected during three different periods: 2013, 2015, and 2018.
The team assessed depressive symptoms using a standard ten-question survey. This test asked participants how often they felt fearful, lonely, or unable to get going during the previous week. To measure social isolation, the researchers looked at four objective factors. They counted whether participants were unmarried, lived alone, had contact with their children less than once a week, or participated in no social activities.
Finally, the researchers measured cognitive function through memory and mental math tests. Participants were asked to recall a list of ten words immediately and after a short delay. They also completed tasks like subtracting seven from one hundred multiple times in a row, stating the current date and season, and copying a drawing of intersecting shapes.
The researchers used a statistical technique to see how these three variables influenced each other across the five-year span. They adjusted their mathematical models to account for factors like age, educational background, marital status, urban or rural residence, and physical mobility.
The analysis revealed a specific chain of events. High levels of depressive symptoms in 2013 predicted an increase in social isolation by 2015. In turn, that increased social isolation in 2015 predicted lower scores on the memory and thinking tests in 2018.
The statistical models confirmed that social isolation acted as a bridge between depression and cognitive decline. Depression appeared to cause people to pull away from their social networks. The researchers noted that people with depression might harbor negative thoughts about their self-worth, leading them to actively or passively avoid friends and family. The resulting isolation then contributed to a worsening of their mental acuity.
The researchers also tested the reverse scenario to see if a decline in memory caused people to become depressed by making them socially isolated. The results were not statistically significant in that direction. While a drop in cognitive scores did predict more social isolation later on, that isolation did not predict future depressive symptoms.
The researchers pointed to psychological theories on aging to explain this lack of connection. As people age, they tend to selectively choose who stays in their social networks, prioritizing close emotional bonds and letting go of casual acquaintances. Even if older adults become more isolated due to memory issues, they might not necessarily become depressed if they are content with a smaller, more intimate circle of support.
While the study tracked people over five years, the research relies on observational data. This means the researchers cannot definitively prove that depression causes social isolation or that isolation directly causes cognitive decline. Other unmeasured aspects of a person’s life or health could influence these outcomes.
The specific bridging effect of social isolation was relatively small. The statistical models indicated that social isolation accounted for about three percent of the total effect that depression had on cognitive function. This suggests that depression likely influences brain health through multiple different pathways, such as biological changes or inflammation, rather than just through a reduction in socializing.
The measurement of social isolation also had limitations. The researchers only counted objective facts about a person’s social life, like how often they saw their children. The data did not capture the subjective feeling of loneliness or the emotional quality of the participants’ relationships. A person might see family often but still feel lonely, or they might live alone but feel perfectly content.
Despite the small individual effect, the researchers noted that interventions targeting social engagement could have massive benefits when applied to large aging populations. Public health strategies that help depressed older adults reconnect with their communities could be an important piece of the puzzle for maintaining brain health. Future studies could explore whether specific programs, like community groups or technology classes, offer the best protection against memory loss.
The study, “Social isolation mediates association between depressive symptoms and cognitive function: Evidence from China health and retirement longitudinal study,” was authored by Jia Fang, Wencan Cheng, Huiyuan Li, Chen Yang, Ni Zhang, Baoyi Zhang, Ye Zhang, and Meifen Zhang.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/depression-may-speed-up-cognitive-decline-by-increasing-social-isolation/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DepressionAndCognition #SocialIsolation #CognitiveDecline #MentalHealthAging #MemoryProtection #BrainHealth #PublicHealth #ChinaHealthStudy #AgingPopulation #SocialEngagement
-
Schwermütigkeit – Über seelischen Schmerz ohne eindeutige Adresse und den Raum, den Heilung vielleicht braucht.
👉️️ https://whisper7.substack.com/p/schwermutigkeit
#Gesundheit #Wohlbefinden #Philosophie #DepressionMelancholy – On emotional pain without a clear address, and the space healing may need.
👉️️https://whisper7.substack.com/p/melancholy
#Health #Wellness #Philosophy #Depression -
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Maternal stress during pregnancy linked to children’s social communication skills
Children whose mothers experienced high levels of stress during pregnancy and shortly after birth may face lasting challenges with social communication. A recent analysis indicates that early exposure to maternal hardship predicts poorer communication skills as youth progress from childhood into adolescence. The research was published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.
Social cognition is the broad ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to social information. It encompasses several distinct skills, including the capacity to recognize emotions in others and the ability to engage in reciprocal social communication. Emotion recognition typically emerges early in life and stabilizes during late childhood. In contrast, complex social communication abilities continue to mature well into adolescence.
The time before birth and the first few months of life represent a sensitive window for brain maturation. During this period, the developing nervous system is highly responsive to environmental inputs. Elevated maternal stress can lead to changes in fetal neurodevelopment, potentially by increasing the transfer of stress hormones across the placenta. This biological process can influence the growth of brain regions involved in social and emotional processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
Past research has linked early adversity to various emotional and behavioral difficulties, but it has remained uncertain exactly how maternal stress affects specific types of social cognition. Theodora Kokosi, Marta Francesconi, and Eirini Flouri at University College London conducted this study to examine whether prenatal adversity influences distinct social skills differently. They specifically wanted to track these skills across multiple developmental stages, from middle childhood through late adolescence.
The researchers analyzed data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. This large study tracks the health and development of youth born in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. The analytic sample for this investigation included 10,177 participants who had data available for at least one measure of social cognition.
To gauge early adversity, mothers completed established checklists documenting stressful life events they had experienced. These inventories capture a variety of challenging situations, ranging from relationship difficulties to financial strain. The mothers filled out these surveys at 18 weeks of pregnancy and again at eight weeks postpartum. The researchers combined these responses to create a cumulative score of adverse life events spanning the early prenatal period through the first two months of the child’s life.
The first outcome the researchers evaluated was social communication. Parents completed a standardized checklist assessing their child’s social reciprocity and communication behaviors. This assessment occurred at four different time points: when the children were 8, 11, 14, and 17 years old.
The researchers found that higher maternal exposure to stressful life events was associated with poorer offspring social communication. This link held even after adjusting for factors like family socioeconomic status, maternal postpartum depression, and the child’s intelligence scores. The negative association between early adversity and social communication also widened slightly as the children aged from 8 to 17 years old.
The authors suggest that this widening gap might reflect the changing nature of social environments. As teenagers navigate increasingly nuanced social expectations, underlying communication difficulties may become more pronounced. Early disruptions to neural systems involved in social processing could make it harder for youth to keep up with these escalating demands.
The study also examined emotion recognition, which relies on different neurocognitive systems than social communication. At age eight, children completed a task evaluating their ability to identify emotions from static images. They viewed photographs of faces displaying fear, happiness, sadness, or anger, and they were asked to categorize the expression.
Maternal exposure to stressful life events was not related to the children’s performance on this facial emotion recognition test. Early life adversity did not appear to hinder or help a child’s ability to interpret basic facial expressions. The researchers note that static image tests might not always capture subtle changes in emotional processing.
At age 14, the teenagers completed a different type of emotion recognition assessment. This computer-based test required participants to identify emotions based on the movement patterns of abstract geometric shapes. For example, an animated triangle repeatedly jabbing at a circle was intended to convey anger.
In this case, greater maternal exposure to stressful life events from mid-pregnancy to the early postpartum period predicted slightly better performance on the movement-based task. While this result might seem counterintuitive, it aligns with certain developmental theories. Some researchers propose that individuals raised in unpredictable environments develop a heightened sensitivity to dynamic social cues as a way to adapt and survive.
There are a few caveats to consider when interpreting this research. The study relied on parent reports to measure the children’s social communication skills. This method can introduce subjective bias, as parents might interpret their children’s behaviors differently based on their own experiences or stress levels.
The study is also observational, which means it cannot prove that maternal stress directly caused the differences in social cognition. Other unmeasured environmental or genetic factors could contribute to the observed associations. Additionally, some participants dropped out of the longitudinal study over time, and this missing data could influence the statistical estimates of how communication skills change with age.
The measures used in the study also capture only a fraction of the broader concept of social cognition. Social cognition includes other sub-domains, such as the ability to understand different mental states or draw inferences about the causes of actions. It remains unknown if maternal stress influences these other specialized skills in the same way.
Future investigations could benefit from incorporating objective, observer-rated assessments of social communication to supplement parent reports. Researchers might also explore the biological mechanisms linking maternal stress to fetal brain development. Examining specific pathways, such as changes in immune function or stress hormone regulation, could clarify exactly how the early environment shapes lifelong social skills.
The study, “Prenatal exposure to stressful life events and offspring social cognition across childhood and adolescence,” was authored by Theodora Kokosi, Marta Francesconi, and Eirini Flouri.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MaternalStress #PrenatalStress #SocialCognition #ChildDevelopment #AdolescentDevelopment #EarlyAdversity #SocialCommunication #EmotionRecognition #Neurodevelopment #AvonLongitudinalStudy
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 09:12AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Multilingual people may have brains up to 13 years younger
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260821012226.htm
People who speak several languages may have brains that age more slowly, with four-language speakers showing brains that appeared about 13 years younger than those of monolinguals. Starting earlier and becoming highly fluent were also linked to a stronger effect.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260821012226.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MultilingualBrain #BrainAging #LanguageLearning #BilingualBenefits #CognitiveHealth #FourLanguageFluency #BrainAgeDifference #EarlyLanguageExposure #Neuroscience #HealthyAging
-
@RadicalSocialWorker thanks for sharing this. I live in Oregon and am in the process of engaging with these services for help with the #ChronicPain and its associated #depression and #anxiety that I've been dealing with since cancer treatment a couple decades ago. It's a bit scary but after interviewing with a bunch of the registered service centers I've found a good match so it's really gonna happen. #MentalHealth #psilocybin
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People who favor dark humor tend to exhibit more problematic personality traits
The way a person jokes may offer a subtle glimpse into their underlying psychological makeup and how they handle interpersonal relationships. A recent study published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts suggests that people who favor darker forms of humor, such as sarcasm and cynicism, tend to show higher levels of maladaptive personality traits. In contrast, those who use lighter, more playful humor tend to display fewer traits associated with personality disorders.
Humor is a universal human behavior that does more than just make people laugh. It serves as a tool for emotional regulation, social bonding, and communicating complex ideas. “Humor is one of the most fascinating forms of human communication, and I have been studying its psychological functions for about 15 years,” said lead author Alberto Dionigi, a psychologist and cognitive behavioral psychotherapist at the Noesis Clinical Center in Italy.
“I am a psychologist and Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapist, and my main research interest is understanding how humor can influence the way we cope with emotions, relate to other people, and express our personality,” Dionigi explained. Psychologists often break humor down into different comic styles. Lighter styles include fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit, which generally promote positive feelings and social connection.
Darker comic styles include irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism. These styles often rely on criticism, mockery, or a sense of superiority, which can strain relationships if used excessively. “We often think of humor as something inherently positive, but this is not always the case,” Dionigi said. “Humor can promote wellbeing, reduce stress, and facilitate social relationships, but it can also be used to criticize, distance ourselves from others, express hostility, or protect ourselves from vulnerability.”
Past research linking humor to personality mostly focused on standard traits, like extraversion or agreeableness. The authors of this new research wanted to explore how these eight specific comic styles align with a wider range of personality disorder traits.
“For this reason, we decided to investigate whether different ways of using humor are associated with specific maladaptive personality traits,” Dionigi added. “Rather than simply asking whether someone has a “good sense of humor,” we examined eight different comic styles, ranging from lighter forms such as fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit to darker forms such as irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism.”
The scientists focused on a normative adult sample. This means they studied everyday people rather than patients formally diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Mental health professionals recognize that personality disorder traits exist on a continuous spectrum. Many people possess subclinical levels of these traits, meaning they have certain cognitive or behavioral tendencies that do not meet the threshold for a full medical diagnosis.
The researchers surveyed 599 Italian adults with an average age of 40. Participants completed the survey online, answering questions from the Comic Style Markers questionnaire. This tool measures how frequently a person uses the eight different humor styles. The survey asked participants to rate statements on a scale from one to seven based on how well the descriptions matched their behavior.
For example, a statement measuring fun was “I am a funny joker,” while a statement measuring sarcasm was “Biting mockery suits me.” Next, the participants completed the Personality Belief Questionnaire-Short Form. This tool measures dysfunctional thinking patterns associated with ten different personality disorder traits. These traits include avoidant, dependent, passive-aggressive, obsessive-compulsive, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, schizoid, paranoid, and borderline tendencies.
An avoidant trait was measured with statements like “I should avoid unpleasant situations at all costs.” An antisocial trait was measured with statements such as “Force or cunning is the best way to get things done.” The researchers analyzed the collected data to see which personality traits predicted which humor styles. The authors controlled for the age and sex of the participants during their statistical analysis to isolate the effects of personality.
The findings indicate that darker comic styles are consistently linked to more problematic personality features. “I think the main message is that humor is not simply positive or negative: how we use humor matters,” Dionigi explained. “In our study of 599 Italian adults, we found that darker comic styles, particularly sarcasm and cynicism, were more strongly associated with maladaptive personality traits.”
Sarcasm and cynicism showed the strongest positive associations with passive-aggressive, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline traits. The statistical models explained up to 23 percent of the variance in the use of cynical humor. This indicates a moderate statistical relationship, meaning that almost a quarter of the differences in how often people use cynical humor can be predicted by these specific personality traits.
These patterns suggest that individuals with antagonistic or impulsive tendencies might use sarcasm and cynicism as socially acceptable ways to express dominance. “For example, they were related to traits involving interpersonal antagonism, distrust, hostility, and emotional dysregulation,” Dionigi said. “This does not mean, of course, that a sarcastic person has a personality disorder. Our participants came from the general population, and we investigated personality traits on a continuum, not clinical diagnoses.”
Irony and satire also showed positive links to maladaptive traits, though the associations were slightly weaker. Satire, which involves mocking foolish behavior to correct it, was associated with both narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive traits. The researchers propose that narcissistic individuals might use satire to mask their feelings of superiority in a socially acceptable format.
Meanwhile, those with obsessive-compulsive traits might use satirical humor as a way to enforce moral rules and maintain a sense of order. Irony was positively linked to borderline, paranoid, and obsessive-compulsive patterns. The authors suspect irony provides a cognitive distance that helps people regulate intense emotions. “Similarly, irony may sometimes help people create emotional distance from difficult experiences,” Dionigi noted.
The researchers caution against labeling any humor style as strictly good or bad. “One aspect I would emphasize is that our results should not be interpreted as saying that some forms of humor are “healthy” and others are “pathological.” Humor is much more complex than that,” Dionigi explained. “Even darker styles can have adaptive functions depending on the context. Satire, for example, can be used to criticize problematic behaviors or social norms and encourage reflection and change.”
Lighter comic styles were mostly isolated from these darker personality traits. “On the other hand, lighter forms of humor were generally less strongly related to maladaptive personality traits and were more connected with social affiliation, playfulness, and cognitive flexibility,” Dionigi added. Fun and benevolent humor showed weak or negative associations with maladaptive tendencies.
Avoidant personality traits, which involve a deep fear of social rejection, were negatively associated with fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit. People with high avoidant traits tend to withdraw from social situations, which likely reduces their opportunities to engage in playful banter and share jokes.
“A frequent reliance on cynical or sarcastic humor, for example, may sometimes offer clues about hostility, distrust, or the need to maintain emotional distance, while difficulty using more affiliative forms of humor may be associated with social withdrawal or vulnerability,” Dionigi said.
The histrionic personality trait, characterized by excessive attention-seeking and emotionality, heavily predicted the use of fun and humor. Individuals with these traits may use playful jokes to maintain the spotlight and engage with their audience. Wit, which involves clever verbal associations, was positively associated with narcissism, suggesting that self-enhancing individuals might use intellectual humor to impress others. Additionally, men in the sample reported higher scores on the darker, more maladaptive forms of humor than women did.
“So, perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that our sense of humor may tell us something about the way we relate to ourselves and to other people,” Dionigi said. “Humor can be a way of connecting, playing, and sharing positive emotions, but it can also become a socially acceptable way of expressing hostility, keeping emotional distance, or defending ourselves.”
A cross-sectional design was used for this research, meaning all data was collected at a single point in time. This setup indicates associations between variables but cannot determine cause and effect. “An important caveat is that this was a cross-sectional study, so we cannot establish causality,” Dionigi explained. “We can say that certain personality traits and comic styles are associated, but we cannot say that personality traits cause a particular type of humor, or vice versa.”
The study relied entirely on self-reported questionnaires. People often lack objective self-awareness, especially regarding their own negative traits, and they may answer in ways that make them look better than they actually are.
“Humor is a highly interpersonal behavior, so future studies could include ratings from partners, friends, or clinicians, as well as behavioral measures of how people actually use humor in real-life interactions,” Dionigi noted.
The sample consisted primarily of Italian adults, and nearly 73 percent of the participants were women. This demographic imbalance and specific cultural setting might limit how well the findings apply to other populations. “Our sample was also composed mainly of nonclinical Italian adults, so the findings should not automatically be generalized to people diagnosed with personality disorders or to other cultures,” Dionigi said.
Future studies could track people over time and across different cultures to better understand how humor and personality interact throughout a lifespan.
“One question I find particularly interesting for future research is whether it is not only which humor style people use, but also how effectively they use it that matters,” Dionigi explained. “Two people may both use sarcasm, for example, but with very different interpersonal effects. It would also be interesting to study these relationships in clinical populations and among professional humor performers.”
As a psychotherapist, Dionigi hopes this research encourages people to think more deeply about their own habits. “So, rather than asking “Is humor good or bad?”, perhaps we should ask: “What kind of humor am I using, with whom, and what function is it serving in this particular moment?””
The study, “Humor and Personality Disorders: Associations Between Comic Styles and Maladaptive Personality Traits in a Normative Adult Sample,” was authored by Alberto Dionigi, Mirko Duradoni, and Laura Vagnoli.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DarkHumor #HumorAndMentalHealth #ComicStyles #PersonalityTraits #Sarcasm #Cynicism #Satire #HumorResearch #PsychologyOfHumor #SocialBehavior
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Weight-loss drugs linked to rare eye condition in massive data review
URL: https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-drugs-linked-to-rare-eye-condition-in-massive-data-review/
A massive new review of medical data indicates that patients taking popular weight-loss and diabetes medications may face a higher risk of developing a rare but serious eye condition. The research, published in Neurology, found that people using semaglutide experience sudden vision loss at a higher rate than those using other treatments. The results offer a detailed look at the potential side effects associated with this rapidly growing class of drugs.
Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy is a condition in which blood flow to the optic nerve is restricted. This vital nerve connects the eye to the brain, and a lack of blood flow causes the tissue to swell. The swelling results in sudden, painless vision loss, typically in just one eye. The condition frequently leads to permanent visual damage, making it the leading cause of acute optic nerve injury in older adults.
Risk factors for this type of nerve damage include high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea. Certain anatomical features, such as having a crowded optic nerve head in the back of the eye, can also increase a person’s vulnerability. Because these risk factors overlap heavily with metabolic diseases, isolating the true cause of the neuropathy in patients is often difficult.
Medications like semaglutide belong to a class of drugs known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists. These drugs mimic a naturally occurring hormone in the body to delay stomach emptying and reduce a person’s appetite. They also help the pancreas release insulin in response to meals, which controls blood sugar levels. Doctors prescribe them widely to treat type 2 diabetes and clinical obesity.
Millions of patients now take these medications globally, making the identification of rare side effects a public health priority. Recent observational studies looking at these medications and eye health have produced conflicting results. Some individual studies suggested the drugs increased the risk of optic neuropathy. Other analyses found no association or even hinted at a protective effect against vision loss.
To synthesize the available data and resolve these contradictions, a team of researchers conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis. Thanansayan Dhivagaran, Fahad Butt, and Luckshann Arunasalam of the University of Western Ontario led the study. They collaborated with Edward Margolin and other colleagues from the University of Toronto.
The researchers systematically searched medical databases for observational studies published up to April 2025. They specifically looked for studies comparing the risk of optic neuropathy between patients using the medications and those using alternative treatments. The team established strict criteria to avoid counting the same patients multiple times across overlapping data registries.
They pooled data from five main studies to form a massive sample of 1,593,554 patients. This group included 682,456 patients using semaglutide and 911,098 using other drugs. The team used specialized Bayesian statistical models to calculate the relative risk and the overall incidence of the eye condition. These models are particularly useful for analyzing extremely rare medical events.
The primary analysis revealed that semaglutide use was associated with a 152 percent higher risk of developing the optic neuropathy compared to the use of alternative medications. The statistical models showed a 99.9 percent probability that the true relative risk was greater than one. Despite this relative increase, the absolute number of cases remained very low in the population.
The researchers calculated an overall incidence of 118 cases per 100,000 semaglutide users. Across all medications in this class, including dulaglutide and exenatide, the incidence was 85 cases per 100,000 users. These numbers translate to less than a fraction of a percent of all patients taking the drugs.
The team then looked specifically at patients with diabetes to see if the underlying condition influenced the risk. They analyzed data from five studies covering roughly 1.59 million individuals. This massive subset was split between semaglutide users and those managing their diabetes with other treatments.
Among patients with diabetes, semaglutide users had a 141 percent higher risk of developing the eye condition compared to non-users. The absolute risk in this specific group was estimated at 125 cases per 100,000 semaglutide users. The statistical evidence supporting this association remained extremely strong across multiple sensitivity analyses.
Next, the researchers examined the risk among patients prescribed semaglutide specifically for obesity. They pooled data from two studies that included a large sample of 116,613 patients. This group consisted of 58,254 semaglutide users and 58,359 individuals taking alternative weight-loss medications.
In the obesity subgroup, semaglutide was associated with a 77 percent higher risk of the optic neuropathy compared to the alternative treatments. The incidence rate in this group was notably higher at 712 cases per 100,000 semaglutide users. The researchers noted that the statistical certainty for this specific subgroup was moderate rather than strong.
To provide more context, the researchers evaluated how semaglutide compared directly to other specific classes of drugs. They analyzed data comparing semaglutide to SGLT2 inhibitors, which are another common type of diabetes medication. This comparison involved a massive sample of nearly 948,000 patients.
Patients taking semaglutide had roughly twice the risk of developing the vision condition compared to those taking SGLT2 inhibitors. The team also compared semaglutide to other drugs within the same class in a sample of about 865,000 patients. When compared to users of other similar medications, semaglutide users faced a 61 percent higher risk.
The exact biological reason for this association remains unknown. One hypothesis suggests that the blood pressure-lowering effects of the medications might reduce blood flow to the optic nerve head. Animal and human studies show that these drugs interact with bodily systems regulating sodium absorption and blood pressure. In susceptible individuals, this chronic reduction in local blood pressure could trigger the neuropathy.
Weight loss itself might also indirectly lead to lower blood pressure, compounding the effect. Patients experiencing rapid weight loss may require adjustments to their existing blood pressure medications to prevent sudden drops. If these adjustments are not made, the resulting low blood pressure might leave the optic nerve vulnerable to injury.
Because this meta-analysis relied exclusively on observational data, the results cannot prove that semaglutide directly causes the eye condition. Patients prescribed these newer medications often have more severe or poorly controlled metabolic diseases. Advanced diabetes and obesity are themselves major drivers of vascular damage and nerve problems. This underlying disease severity could be contributing to the higher rates of vision loss in the treatment groups.
The researchers also noted that it takes time for the medications to reach their maximum effect in the body. Cases of vision loss that occur shortly after a patient starts the drug might reflect preexisting vascular risks rather than a side effect of the treatment. Additionally, the studies included in the review mostly featured White populations from the United States, Denmark, and Norway. This demographic limitation restricts how broadly the findings can be applied to other groups.
Health care providers must weigh this rare risk against the well-documented systemic benefits of the medications. Large clinical trials have shown that these drugs reduce the incidence of cardiovascular death, nonfatal heart attacks, and strokes. The medications may even protect against other prevalent eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. For the vast majority of patients, the broad improvements in metabolic health likely outweigh the low absolute risk of this specific neuropathy.
Future research will need to track visual outcomes in patients over longer periods while strictly controlling for existing vascular risk factors. Prospective trials could help clarify the exact biological mechanisms linking the medications to blood flow changes in the eye. Until more data is available, the authors suggest that doctors discuss potential visual risks when prescribing these medications. Patients initiating therapy should seek prompt ophthalmic evaluation if they experience sudden visual changes.
The study, “Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists and Risk of Nonarteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” was authored by Thanansayan Dhivagaran, Fahad Butt, Luckshann Arunasalam, Isabel Bae, David Mikhail, Brendan K. Tao, Jim Shenchu Xie, Michael Balas, Marko Popovic, and Edward Margolin.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-drugs-linked-to-rare-eye-condition-in-massive-data-review/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SemaglutideEyeRisk #OpticNeuropathy #GLP1RA #WeightLossMedication #DiabetesTreatment #EyeHealthUpdate #VisionLossAwareness #SGLT2vsGLP1 #MetabolicHealth #NeurologyResearch
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The “sense of absence” may explain why disconnected teens turn to addictive behaviors
Recent psychological research provides evidence that adolescents who feel emotionally detached and unnoticed by others may be more likely to engage in addictive behaviors as a way to cope. A newly developed psychological scale allows scientists to measure this subjective sense of absence, which appears to act as a bridge connecting poor family communication to various addictions. These findings were recently published in two separate papers in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.
Yaniv Efrati, head of the Addictive Behaviors Lab at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Education, and Marc N. Potenza of Yale University wanted to better understand why some teenagers turn to the internet, substances, or repetitive behaviors to manage their emotions. Existing psychological concepts like loneliness or emptiness describe isolation or a lack of meaning in life, but the researchers suspected something deeper might be occurring.
“Much of the research on adolescent addictive behaviors focuses on specific risk factors and asks what makes some young people more vulnerable than others,” Efrati said. “As a researcher, I found myself asking a somewhat different question: Is there a more fundamental subjective experience that might help us understand what lies behind adolescents’ involvement in addictive behaviors?”
This specific feeling is known as a sense of absence. It describes a state in which a young person might feel like they are watching their own life from the outside or struggling to participate in daily activities. “It describes an experience that has both an internal and an interpersonal dimension,” Efrati explained. “Internally, an adolescent may experience a sense of emptiness, inner disconnection, or the feeling that something important is missing, even when it is difficult to identify exactly what that is.”
The interpersonal aspect involves adolescents feeling misunderstood or unseen by the people who matter most. “An adolescent can feel that something is missing within while simultaneously feeling that others do not really see or understand them,” Efrati said. “I wanted to examine whether this broader experience of absence might be meaningfully connected to adolescents’ relationships with significant others and, at the same time, to their involvement in different addictive behaviors.”
To explore this, Efrati and Potenza designed their initial study to create a reliable way to measure this complex emotional state. They developed a new questionnaire called the Sense of Absence Scale. They recruited a sample of 1,555 adolescents from the general community in Israel, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old. The participants completed the newly designed 14-item survey alongside established questionnaires measuring online addictions, loneliness, emptiness, mental pain, hope, and suicidal thoughts.
The researchers found that the new scale functioned very well across different genders and religious backgrounds. The scale successfully captured a unique emotional experience that overlapped with, yet remained distinct from, general psychological distress. For instance, the sense of absence scale shared about 59 percent of its statistical variance with feelings of emptiness and 42 percent with mental pain.
The researchers initially expected the results to closely mirror established psychological concepts. “What surprised me most was the way the Sense of Absence emerged as a distinct psychological construct,” Efrati said. “When we first began conceptualizing the construct and developing the questionnaire with Prof. Marc Potenza from Yale University, we assumed that it would largely reflect a combination of experiences we already know well, particularly emptiness, psychological pain, and loneliness.”
Instead, the data revealed a unique blend of internal and interpersonal detachment. “However, both the theoretical development and the statistical findings suggested something broader and more coherent,” Efrati said. “The Sense of Absence captures not only an internal experience of emptiness or disconnection, but also an important interpersonal experience: the feeling that I am not truly seen, understood, or emotionally recognized by the people around me.”
Previous research tends to treat loneliness and emptiness as separate experiences. “The Sense of Absence appears to bring together the internal feeling that ‘something is missing in me’ with the relational feeling that ‘others do not really see me,'” Efrati noted. “The fact that these experiences formed a coherent construct in their own right was one of the findings that surprised us most.”
Higher scores on this new scale aligned with higher levels of problematic online behaviors, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts, while indicating lower levels of hope and self-compassion.
Using this validated tool, Efrati conducted a larger follow-up study to map out exactly how this emotional state fits into a teenager’s broader psychological world. This study involved 2,564 adolescents from the general Israeli community with an average age of about 16 years. Participants completed online questionnaires assessing their sense of absence, attachment styles, and the quality of their communication with their parents.
The participants also reported on a wide variety of addictive behaviors. These included alcohol and drug use, problem gambling, shopping addiction, internet gaming disorder, problematic social media use, smartphone addiction, problematic pornography use, and compulsive sexual behavior. Efrati used a statistical technique called network analysis to map how all these different psychological and behavioral variables interact with one another in a complex web.
Network analysis allows scientists to visualize which factors act as central hubs connecting different clusters of behavior. The results indicated that the sense of absence held the most central and influential position in the entire psychological network. Its influence score was about 7.8 percent higher than the second-most influential factor, which was problematic social media use.
The analysis grouped the sense of absence together with relational factors, such as attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, and parent-adolescent communication. These social and family dynamics formed one distinct cluster in the network. The addictive behaviors formed separate clusters, with online addictions grouping together and substance or impulse-based addictions forming another group.
The sense of absence acted as the strongest bridge connecting the family and relational cluster to the various addiction clusters. The direct links between poor parent-adolescent communication and addictive behaviors were relatively sparse and weak. Instead, the data suggests that poor communication and insecure attachments relate strongly to a sense of absence, which in turn relates to engagement in addictive behaviors.
In this network, the sense of absence showed stronger mathematical associations with relational factors than it did directly with the addictions.
“The main takeaway is that when we think about addictive behaviors in adolescence, we should look beyond the behavior itself and ask what the young person may be experiencing underneath it,” Efrati told PsyPost. “Findings suggest that a sense of inner emptiness, feeling unseen by others, and difficulty feeling meaningfully connected may be important parts of the broader picture.”
This internal void might make a teenager more vulnerable to seeking out the temporary stimulation or relief provided by addictive habits. “This does not mean that feeling unseen causes addiction, and the study cannot establish that kind of causal relationship,” Efrati noted.
“For parents, teachers, and professionals, the message may therefore be quite simple: alongside asking what an adolescent is doing, how much they are using a smartphone, gaming, drinking, or engaging in other potentially addictive behaviors, it may also be important to ask how they are feeling in their relationships. Sometimes understanding the experience surrounding the behavior may tell us something important that focusing on the behavior alone does not reveal.”
Building stronger family connections could offer a protective effect against these behaviors. “When discussing the prevention of addictive behaviors among adolescents, we often focus on screen time, gaming, substance use, or setting limits,” Efrati explained. “These are important, but our findings suggest another question: What might the adolescent be seeking through this behavior? Parenting is not only about supervision, but also about being present, listening, and creating a relationship in which adolescents feel seen, heard, and significant.”
The cross-sectional design of both studies only captures data at a single point in time, meaning the research cannot determine the exact sequence of events. “The main caveat is that this was a cross-sectional study, so we cannot determine causality or the direction of the associations,” Efrati said. “Although the network analysis identifies meaningful connections among relational experiences, Sense of Absence, and addictive behaviors, longitudinal research is needed to understand how these relationships develop over time.”
Another limitation is that the new survey does not specify exactly who the teenager feels absent from. A teenager might feel invisible to their parents but highly valued by their friends, and the current questionnaire does not separate these distinct social relationships. The scale also lacks established clinical cutoffs, meaning mental health professionals cannot yet use it to definitively diagnose a specific level of impairment.
Future research will need to test the survey in different cultural contexts and age groups outside of Israel. “Our next step is to examine the Sense of Absence longitudinally and understand how it develops across adolescence and relates to changes in addictive behaviors, including both online addictive behaviors and substance use,” Efrati said.
“More broadly, this research offers another perspective on adolescent addiction: beyond asking how much time adolescents spend online, whether they use substances, or what behaviors they engage in, we may also need to ask what they are experiencing underneath these behaviors and whether they feel connected, present, and truly seen in their relationships. Ultimately, we hope this perspective can inform prevention efforts that strengthen adolescents’ sense of connection and belonging.”
The study, ““Feeling unseen”: Generation and psychometric validation of a scale assessing sense of absence,” was authored by Yaniv Efrati and Marc N. Potenza.
The study, “Filling the void: sense of absence as a comprehensive bridge between attachment, parent–adolescent communication, and addictive behaviors among adolescents,” was authored by Yaniv Efrati.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SenseOfAbsence #AdolescentAddiction #YouthMentalHealth #AttachmentTheory #ParentAdolescentCommunication #OnlineAddictions #GamerAddiction #EmotionalConnectivity #LonelinessAndEmptiness #PreventivePsychology
-
DATE: August 22, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Global data shows a sharp rise in adult ADHD diagnoses and medication prescriptions
Diagnoses for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have increased in many countries across all age groups, our latest review has found. We have also shown that prescriptions for ADHD treatments have seen similar increases across all age groups.
Our latest review, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, drew together the recently published research on ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions across the world.
We found that in the UK, increases in recorded ADHD diagnoses and treatment prescriptions occurred across all age groups between 2000 and 2018.
The greatest rise in ADHD diagnoses across this period was among children. However, there was also a distinct increase in adults. For example, among men aged 18-29 there was an approximately 20-fold increase in diagnoses and an almost 50-fold increase in prescriptions.
The sex ratio of ADHD diagnoses in childhood and adolescence was approximately 4:1 male to female. However, the ratio of diagnoses in adulthood is nearly 1:1. This shift may partly reflect increased recognition of how ADHD presents in girls and adults – groups that have historically been underdiagnosed.
Alongside these increases in ADHD diagnoses, there has also been an increase in prescriptions for ADHD treatments.
In England, prescriptions of central nervous system stimulants (the main prescription treatments for ADHD) increased by 32% in adults over 18 in 2021-22. In children under 17, prescriptions increased by 12% from 2022-23. This was also the first time that more adults were prescribed these drugs than children since records started in 2015.
A retrospective study of over 154 million people from 13 countries, including in North America, Europe and Asia, demonstrated that use of ADHD medication prescriptions had increased in these regions as well.
Why diagnoses and prescriptions are increasing
A few key factors can largely explain the increase in both ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions that we’ve seen. This includes increased public awareness of the condition, better understanding by doctors of the way symptoms present and the availability of new and improved medications.
Additionally, there is better awareness of how ADHD manifests in groups who may have previously been missed because their symptoms did not match with those typically exhibited in boys and adolescents. This includes women and girls and people with predominantly inattentive symptoms.
However, these factors may only tell part of the story. Our review also revealed other drivers may deserve careful consideration.
For instance, there has been much debate over whether there is an issue of overdiagnosis and over-prescribing. Legitimate questions about whether some attention difficulties might be over-medicalised have also been raised. On the other hand, some authors have argued that there is no evidence to suggest overdiagnosis is occurring in the UK.
Understanding the full picture requires looking beyond the obvious explanations to examine cultural, economic, social and technological pressures in a globally competitive environment that may be influencing both diagnosis rates and treatment choices.
Looking forward
The rising rates of ADHD diagnoses and treatment represent a complex picture. There have been genuine improvements in recognising a real disorder that was historically overlooked (particularly in adult men and women), better clinical awareness and perhaps also some degree of over-identification in certain environments.
What seems clear is that ADHD, long thought of as a children’s disorder, is now being treated as what it truly is: a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder affecting millions of people across the globe.
As awareness continues to grow, the challenge ahead lies in preserving limited NHS resources, while ensuring those who genuinely need these resources have improved access.
The wait time for an ADHD diagnosis in England currently ranges from two to 15 years. With increasing rates of diagnoses and prescriptions to manage ADHD, there are concerns that demand will soon outstrip NHS capacity entirely.
What could be a solution is the discovery of ADHD biomarkers – an objectively measurable indicator of a biological state or condition that can be detected in signatures in the brain. Currently, ADHD is diagnosed by a doctor who often has to rely on self-reported symptoms. Having biomarkers could improve the accuracy of diagnoses, ensuring those who have the condition get the support they need earlier on.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ADHD #ADHDDiagnosis #ADHDMedications #ADHDWorldwide #AdultADHD #ADHDWomen #ADHDKids #StimulantMedication #MentalHealthAwareness #PublicHealthResearch
-
A reminder for those of us who live with mental illness❤️
#mentalillness #mentalwellness #ptsd #cptsd #bpd #plural #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #depression #anxiety #ptsdrecovery
-
DATE: August 21, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Women face higher risks of partner violence during the weeks their partners cheat
An analysis of the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study data found that women were more likely to experience violence from their intimate partners at the time the partner was having another sexual partner. This was the case both in situations where the couple did not have an explicit agreement about monogamy and when they had an agreement to be monogamous (that the partner broke). The probability that the relationship will be dissolved was higher after these events. The paper was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Intimate relationships are an important part of adolescence and early adulthood. They help young people develop skills that can shape their relationships later in life. Yet young relationships do not always provide positive experiences. Conflict, controlling behavior, violence, and infidelity can all occur during this period. Therefore, learning to end an unhealthy relationship may be just as important a developmental task as learning how to form and maintain one.
People generally decide whether to remain with a partner by weighing what they gain from the relationship against its emotional and practical costs. Negative experiences can increase those costs, reduce relationship satisfaction, and make being single or finding another partner seem more attractive.
However, not every harmful experience has the same meaning or the same likelihood of bringing a relationship to an end. Physical aggression, psychological abuse, threats, and controlling behavior can overlap, making it difficult to separate their individual effects on a relationship. Infidelity can be particularly destabilizing because it represents a clear violation of an explicit expectation of monogamy and introduces another person into the relationship.
Study authors Jennifer S. Barber and Yasamin Kusunoki examined how intimate partner violence and non-monogamy (having more than one partner at the same time) co-occur and shape the probability of relationship dissolution. They differentiate between two types of non-monogamy – ambiguous-consent non-monogamy and non-consensual non-monogamy.
Ambiguous-consent non-monogamy is a situation where a person has concurrent sexual partners without an explicit agreement about monogamy or non-monogamy. Non-consensual non-monogamy represents a situation where a person has additional sexual partners while in a committed monogamous relationship (this is also called cheating). Study authors expected that intimate partner violence and these two types of non-monogamy will tend to co-occur in relationships and that they increase the probability of subsequent relationship dissolution.
They analyzed data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study. This study involved 1003 young women who were 18-19 years old at the start of the study, drawn from a diverse Michigan county. 992 of them agreed to participate in the longitudinal part of the study. The study followed these women for 2.5 years, to 20-22.5 years of age. It was focused on young pregnancies. Participants were sampled randomly using a database of all driver’s license holders and personal ID card holders for that county. 84% of women selected for participation in this way agreed to participate.
The study began with a 60-minute face-to-face baseline survey focused on respondent’s current intimate relationship, attitudes, and experiences related to intimate relationships and pregnancy. This was followed (for participants who agreed to participate in the longitudinal part of the study) by brief weekly online or telephone surveys to assess ongoing experiences.
Overall, 75% of participants participated in the study for at least 18 months. Participants received small payments for their participation and completion of weekly surveys. Study authors excluded women who did not have sex with male partners, as well as women whose relationships ended before the follow-up surveys began, making the final analyzed sample 895 women.
Results showed that 80% of participants’ relationships ended during the study period. 41% of relationships included fighting (but without intimate partner violence), and 28% of relationships included intimate partner violence. 52% of participants experienced intimate partner violence.
Participating women reported engaging in non-consensual non-monogamy (cheating) in 5% of relationships, while they reported their partner doing this in 7% of relationships. They reported engaging in ambiguous-consent non-monogamy in 9% of relationships, while reporting this for their partner in 16% of relationships.
They reported having sex during 42% of weeks in which they had a partner. On average, relationships lasted 9 months and 85% of them did not include pregnancies or births. 6% included a pregnancy that did not lead to a birth, and 8% of these relationships resulted in a child. Partners were, on average, 2 years older than respondents.
Participants were more likely to experience violence from their partner in the weeks when their partner was having another sexual partner, both in situations where this represented ambiguous-consent non-monogamy and when it was non-consensual non-monogamy (i.e., when the partner was cheating). Relationships were more likely to dissolve after both types of non-monogamy and after intimate partner violence.
The authors framed these findings using expectancy violations theory, which is the idea that people have strict standards for how their partners should behave, and breaking those rules triggers a severe reassessment of the relationship.
“Findings, interpreted through expectancy violations theory, suggest NCNM [non-consensual non-monogamy i.e., cheating on a partner in a monogamous relationship] and ACNM [ambiguous consent non-monogamy i.e., having additional sexual partners without an explicit agreement] function as powerful relational breaches, while physical IPV [intimate partner violence] (assault) may operate differently from chronic psychological IPV in predicting dissolution,” study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of romantic relationships. However, although the study collected data on participants’ own non-monogamous behavior, the authors did not report the associations between these types of participants’ behavior and intimate partner violence. Therefore, it remains unreported whether participating women’s own non-monogamous behaviors were associated with intimate partner violence, or how often participants’ and their partners’ non-monogamous behaviors co-occurred. Additionally, the paper did not measure participant-perpetrated intimate partner violence in the same way it measured violence perpetrated by their partners, making the asymmetry starker.
The paper, “Intimate Partner Violence, Ambiguous and Non-Consensual Non-Monogamy, and Breaking Up During Young Adulthood,” was authored by Jennifer S. Barber and Yasamin Kusunoki.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #IntimatePartnerViolence #NonMonogamy #CheatingImpact #RelationshipDissolution #YoungAdultsRelationships #IPVAwareness #MonogamyExpectations #RelationshipDynamics #StaySafeInRelationships #GenderViolenceResearch
-
DATE: August 21, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Caffeine might ease anxiety and depression by calming brain inflammation
Caffeine appears to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression in rodents by reducing inflammation in the brain. A recent systematic review of 17 animal studies found that the widely consumed stimulant consistently diminished behavioral signs of distress and lowered levels of inflammatory molecules. The findings were published in Translational Psychiatry.
Mental health conditions like anxiety and depression involve physical changes in the nervous system. Over the past few decades, researchers have identified neuroinflammation as a major contributor to these mood disorders. When the body experiences chronic psychological stress or illness, the immune system often responds by releasing proteins called cytokines.
These cytokines travel to the brain and activate specialized immune cells known as microglia and astrocytes. Once activated, these glial cells can disrupt the normal balance of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. This inflammatory process can trigger behaviors associated with mood disorders, such as a loss of motivation or heightened fear responses.
Caffeine is a psychoactive substance that primarily works by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain. Adenosine is a chemical that naturally accumulates during the day, binding to specific receptors to promote sleepiness. By blocking these receptors, caffeine keeps the brain alert.
Adenosine receptors are not just involved in wakefulness. A specific subtype, called the A2A receptor, is prominently featured on the surface of microglia and astrocytes. Prolonged stress can cause an overabundance of these A2A receptors, which makes the brain’s immune cells highly sensitive and prone to causing inflammation.
Because caffeine blocks these A2A receptors, scientists suspect it might act as a brake on the brain’s inflammatory response. Neurobiologists Laís da Silva Neves and Paula Campello-Costa at the Fluminense Federal University in Brazil wanted to synthesize the existing data on this topic. Along with their colleagues, they set out to analyze how caffeine influences both brain inflammation and behavior in animal models.
The research team conducted a systematic review, a process that involves collecting and evaluating all the published scientific literature on a specific research question. They combed through online databases and identified 17 rodent studies that met their strict inclusion criteria. Every selected study featured a control group to allow for objective comparisons.
The team first looked at six studies focusing on anxiety. In these experiments, researchers induced anxiety in adult rats through various stressful scenarios. These included acute stressors, like a brief period of sleep deprivation or exposure to the scent of a predator, as well as chronic stressors, such as repeated physical restraint.
During or after these stressful events, the rodents received caffeine. The method of administration varied by study. Some animals received the substance through their drinking water, while others were given direct injections or fed through a gastric tube.
Scientists then measured the animals’ anxiety levels using established behavioral tests. A common method involves placing the rodent in an elevated, cross-shaped maze with both open and enclosed arms. Anxious animals will generally hide in the dark, enclosed arms, while less anxious animals will spend more time exploring the exposed sections.
Neves, Campello-Costa, and their team noted that caffeine consistently promoted exploratory behaviors, indicating a reduction in anxiety. This behavioral shift was accompanied by distinct physical changes in the animals’ brains. The rodents treated with caffeine exhibited lower levels of oxidative stress, a type of cellular damage associated with psychological strain.
Brain tissue analysis also revealed a drop in several pro-inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. At the same time, the caffeine-treated animals showed increased levels of anti-inflammatory molecules. The substance effectively prevented the microglia and astrocytes from entering a highly reactive, damaging state.
The remaining eleven studies in the review focused on animal models of depression. To mimic the biological mechanisms of depression, researchers in several of these studies injected the mice or rats with lipopolysaccharide. This molecule is a structural component of bacterial cell walls, and injecting it tricks the animal’s immune system into launching a massive, body-wide inflammatory response.
Other depression models utilized chronic unpredictable mild stress or long-term sleep deprivation. To assess whether the animals had entered a depressive-like state, researchers used tests that measure motivation and the capacity to experience pleasure. For example, they tracked whether the rodents lost interest in drinking sweetened water, a behavior that mirrors the loss of pleasure seen in human depression.
Across the different models, caffeine administration protected the rodents from developing these depressive-like behaviors. The animals maintained their motivation in physical tests and continued to seek out rewards like sugar water. In some of the studies, caffeine performed just as well as standard antidepressant medications like imipramine.
When examining the biological data from these depression models, the reviewers found a similar pattern to the anxiety studies. Caffeine reversed the chemical changes induced by the bacterial components or the chronic stress. The treated rodents displayed higher levels of protective antioxidant enzymes and fewer inflammatory markers in regions of the brain associated with memory and emotion.
A few of the evaluated studies also tested substances closely related to caffeine, such as caffeic acid and green tea extract. These compounds provided similar mood-boosting and anti-inflammatory benefits. Some research even suggested that standard caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee both lowered inflammation, though the behavioral benefits were sometimes tied strictly to the caffeine.
While the review points to a robust anti-inflammatory effect, translating these findings to humans requires caution. Animal models can replicate specific neurochemical mechanisms, but they cannot capture the subjective, conscious experience of human anxiety or depression. The behavioral tests only act as proxies for actual mood disorders.
Almost all the studies in this review used adult male rodents. This uniformity makes the data easier to pool and compare, but it leaves a major gap in the scientific literature. It remains unknown if caffeine produces the exact same neuroinflammatory responses in female rodents or in animals at different developmental stages, such as adolescents or the elderly.
The amount of caffeine administered in these experiments also varied widely. Some doses were relatively low, mimicking the concentration a human might get from a standard cup of coffee. Other studies used extremely high doses that would be toxic to humans.
One study in the review actually demonstrated that a massive dose of caffeine worsened anxiety and increased brain inflammation in sleep-deprived rats. High doses of stimulants are known to trigger panic and hyperactivity in both humans and animals. Future research will need to determine the exact doses and consumption habits required to safely harness caffeine’s anti-inflammatory properties for mental health treatments.
The study, “Effects of caffeine on neuroinflammation in anxiety and depression: a systematic review of rodent studies,” was authored by Laís da Silva Neves, Giovanna Várzea Roberti Monteiro de Mattos, Yasmin Oliveira-Nazareth, Rosane Souza da Silva, and Paula Campello-Costa.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CaffeineForMentalHealth #Neuroinflammation #AnxietyAndDepression #MicrogliaAstrocytes #A2AR #InflammationAndMood #RodentStudyInsights #CaffeineBenefits #MentalHealthResearch #TranslationalPsychiatry
-
DATE: August 21, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Oxytocin has opposite effects on men’s generosity depending on a their childhood experiences
Childhood experiences can leave a lasting imprint on a person’s willingness to help strangers, but a naturally occurring hormone called oxytocin might have the power to temporarily shift these tendencies. A recent study published in Translational Psychiatry suggests that a dose of oxytocin can increase altruistic donations in adults who experienced higher levels of childhood adversity, producing the opposite effect in those with fewer adverse early experiences. The findings provide evidence that early life events shape how the brain responds to social chemicals later in life.
Altruistic behavior involves choosing to help others even when it comes at a personal cost. Past research indicates that experiencing adversity during childhood, such as emotional neglect or physical abuse, is linked to lasting reductions in this type of generous behavior.
Seeking to uncover the biological factors behind this trend, scientists designed a new experiment. The research team was led by Nina Marsh, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Germany, and Vanessa Jeske, alongside colleagues from the University of Bonn and Georgetown University.
“What fascinates me about altruism is that helping another person—particularly a stranger at a personal cost—is anything but self-evident,” Marsh said. “Yet we see it across societies and throughout human history. Understanding what enables people to transcend immediate self-interest is therefore not only a question about social behavior, but also about something fundamental to human coexistence. It is precisely this complexity that makes the study of human altruistic behavior so fascinating to me.”
People who encounter severe early stressors often develop a heightened sensitivity to social threats, which can make it more difficult for them to form trusting bonds or engage in acts of generosity as adults.
“One question that has fascinated me is how our earliest life experiences shape our willingness to help others later in life,” Marsh noted. “Adverse childhood experiences are remarkably complex and can affect people in very different ways. While their links to mental health have been studied extensively, much less is known about how they relate to prosocial behavior in adulthood.”
To understand if this decline in prosocial behavior can be temporarily altered, the researchers looked to oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone produced in the brain that plays a role in regulating social behaviors like empathy, bonding, and trust. “We therefore wanted to explore whether childhood adversity might shape how people respond to oxytocin during altruistic decision-making—and what happens in the brain during those decisions,” Marsh said.
The scientists recruited 54 healthy young men, with an average age of about 25, for a placebo-controlled experiment. Participants were screened to ensure they had no current or past psychiatric illnesses. The research team also measured and controlled for several baseline factors, including anxiety, depressive symptoms, autistic traits, empathy, personal income, and how often the participants had donated money in the past year.
Participants were randomly assigned to receive either a nasal spray containing oxytocin or a placebo spray with no active ingredients. Neither the participants nor the scientists running the experiment knew who received which spray. About 40 minutes after taking the nasal spray, participants completed a monetary donation task while lying inside a high-resolution brain scanner known as an MRI. This specific timing was chosen to capture the peak behavioral and neural effects of the nasal spray.
During the brain scan, participants were given an initial endowment of 60 Euros. They viewed 60 short profiles on a screen, with 40 profiles describing a stranger in a state of need and 20 describing individuals with no specific need. For each scenario, participants had up to 15 seconds to choose to donate anywhere from zero to one Euro in 10-cent increments. They were informed that any money they chose to give would be deducted from their final payout.
In the placebo group, the scientists found that early life experiences predicted donation amounts. Participants who reported higher levels of childhood adversity donated an average of just 8.22 Euros in total. Participants with lower levels of childhood adversity donated more than twice that amount, averaging 20.01 Euros.
The oxytocin spray produced contrasting effects depending on a person’s background. For those with a history of higher childhood adversity, oxytocin nearly doubled their altruistic behavior, raising their average total donation from 8.22 Euros to 15.68 Euros. For participants who experienced lower childhood adversity, oxytocin had the opposite effect. In this low-adversity group, the hormone cut their average donations by 53 percent, dropping their total from 20.01 Euros down to 9.46 Euros.
This bidirectional result suggests that the hormone does not act as a simple switch that uniformly turns on generosity. “Our findings once again challenge the popular idea to refer to oxytocin as a simple ‘love hormone,'” Marsh told PsyPost.
“Oxytocin does not uniformly promote prosocial behavior—its effects are much more complex. We know that individual characteristics as well as environmental and biographical factors can influence both the direction and magnitude of oxytocin’s behavioral effects. Our study suggests that early life experiences are another important part of this picture.”
Rather than acting as a universal booster for giving, oxytocin appears to tune a person’s sensitivity to social cues based on their existing baseline. “Perhaps the most important takeaway is that early life experiences do not determine who we become,” Marsh said. “But they may shape how we respond to social and neurobiological signals later in life.”
For those whose social sensitivity was lowered by early adversity, oxytocin might boost their attention to others’ needs into an optimal range for helping. For those who already have high social sensitivity, extra oxytocin might make them overly sensitive or hesitant, reducing their willingness to give. “In our study, oxytocin did not simply make people ‘more altruistic,'” Marsh noted. “Its effects differed depending on participants’ childhood experiences, highlighting how biology and individual life history can interact in shaping social behavior.”
Brain scans helped explain these behavioral shifts by tracking functional connectivity, which is a measure of how well different brain areas communicate with one another in real time. The scientists focused on the connection between the medial prefrontal cortex and the middle cingulate cortex. The medial prefrontal cortex is a brain area involved in taking another person’s perspective and regulating emotions. The middle cingulate cortex is a region that helps detect socially relevant information and guides adaptive responses.
In the placebo group, higher childhood adversity was associated with stronger communication between these two brain regions, and this heightened neural connectivity corresponded with lower donation amounts. When given oxytocin, this communication pattern reversed. The hormone reduced the connectivity between these regions in the high-adversity group, which aligned with their increased willingness to donate money to strangers.
The researchers combined the behavioral data and the brain connectivity data into a single predictive mathematical model. This combined model explained almost 47 percent of the variation in how much money people chose to donate. This finding indicates that altruistic behavior is not just a psychological trait but is deeply rooted in the architecture and communication patterns of the brain.
Relying on self-reported questionnaires to measure childhood adversity means that memories of early experiences might be incomplete or influenced by a person’s current mood. “Childhood adversity is highly complex and heterogeneous: different types, timing, duration, and severity of adverse experiences may have very different effects, which cannot be fully captured by a single retrospective measure,” Marsh pointed out. “Our findings therefore provide an empirical foundation that describes associations with reported childhood adversity.”
Because the study only included healthy young men, the findings do not necessarily apply to broader populations. “Also, our sample consisted exclusively of healthy men, so the findings need to be replicated in larger and more diverse samples, particularly including women,” Marsh said. “Finally, our findings should not be interpreted as evidence that oxytocin can ‘reverse’ the effects of childhood adversity or as supporting its clinical use for this purpose.”
Observing how the brain’s social networks operate under various types of stress will help clarify exactly how early life events alter social processing.
“My long-term research asks a much broader question: What are the conditions under which empathy-based altruism unfolds?” Marsh explained. “I want to better understand how biographical, environmental, and neurobiological factors interact to shape our willingness to help others. This means looking beyond individual factors in isolation and studying how our experiences and biology jointly shape empathy, trust, cooperation, and altruistic behavior.”
The study, “Early life adversity shapes neural and behavioural responses to oxytocin during altruistic decision-making,” was authored by Nina Marsh, Vanessa Jeske, Mari Babasiz, Angela Herscheid, Ann-Kathrin Kreuder, Rüdiger Stirnberg, Tony Stoecker, Abigail A. Marsh, Johannes Schultz, and René Hurlemann.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Oxytocin #Altruism #ChildhoodAdversity #SocialNeuroscience #BrainConnectivity #ProsocialBehavior #Neurobiology #Hormones #DonationBehavior #MentalHealthResearch
-
DATE: August 21, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: How physical stress symptoms shape the emotional content of women’s dreams
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-physical-stress-symptoms-shape-the-emotional-content-of-women-s-dreams/
Women who experience physical symptoms like headaches or muscle pain without an obvious medical cause often report experiencing more negative and intense dreams. A recent survey of adult women explored how these physical sensations, alongside general bodily awareness, relate to the emotional content of their nighttime experiences. The results, published in Dreaming, reveal a distinct link between daytime physical discomfort and negative dream themes.
The human brain processes emotional and physical stress in varied ways. Sometimes, psychological distress such as anxiety or emotional exhaustion translates into physical symptoms like nausea, back aches, or dizziness. This phenomenon is known as somatization.
Somatization occurs when the body expresses emotional pain through physical language. It is often observed in individuals who find it difficult to identify or verbalize their feelings. The physical symptoms are very real to the person experiencing them, even if they originate from psychological stress rather than a physical injury.
Another aspect of how people experience their physical selves is body awareness. This concept refers to a person’s sensitivity to internal physical sensations and physiological processes. It includes recognizing changes in the body, sensing the sleep cycle, or noticing the early signs of an illness.
People with high body awareness tend to feel more in tune with their physical existence. They often excel at recognizing their own physiological reactions to external events.
Dreams provide another window into how the brain handles emotional regulation. Dreaming happens primarily during the rapid eye movement, or REM, stage of sleep. During this phase, the brain regions responsible for processing emotions become highly active, often generating vivid and emotionally charged narratives.
Caglayan Pinar Ozturk, a researcher at Suleyman Demirel University in Turkiye, wanted to understand how these elements overlap. Past research has questioned the connections between chronic pain and dream activity, but less is known about how general body awareness and non-chronic physical symptoms relate to dream content.
Ozturk designed a study to examine whether a person’s level of body awareness relates to their dream themes. The researcher also wanted to test whether physical symptoms of stress correspond to the types of dreams these individuals experience.
Ozturk recruited 213 adult women between the ages of 18 and 65 to participate in an online survey. The participants were predominantly young to middle-aged and held university degrees. To isolate the effects of everyday physical symptoms and general body awareness, the researcher excluded individuals with diagnosed psychiatric conditions, sleep disorders, and chronic diseases.
The participants completed three separate questionnaires. The first assessed their dream themes over the past six months, asking them to rate how often they experienced specific dream scenarios on a scaled grading system. The second questionnaire measured their body awareness by asking how closely they track their internal bodily sensations.
The third survey evaluated their somatization symptoms, asking participants to report any physical complaints they experienced over the past 15 days. These complaints included everyday ailments such as headaches, chest pain, numbness, and nausea.
When analyzing the responses, Ozturk found that the relationship between a person’s body awareness and their overall level of somatization was not statistically significant. Being highly tuned to internal bodily sensations did not mean a participant was more or less likely to report physical symptoms of stress.
However, the results showed a weak but positive association between body awareness and dream themes. Women who scored above average in body awareness reported more frequent dream themes, particularly negative ones.
This association might occur because people who pay close attention to their bodies also possess better memory recall for their internal experiences, including dreams. Cognitive processes that regulate attention to the body often overlap with the working memory required to encode and recall dream narratives upon waking.
The strongest pattern emerged between physical symptoms and dream content. Ozturk found a moderate, positive association between a participant’s total physical symptoms and their dream themes. As the participants reported more physical symptoms during waking hours, their dream content tended to become increasingly negative.
Headaches emerged as the most common physical complaint, followed by muscle pain and back pain. The researcher analyzed how these specific symptoms paired with particular dream themes. Nearly every physical symptom measured was associated with at least one negative dream theme.
For example, women who reported waking physical pain like headaches, chest pain, and lower back pain frequently reported dreams about being harmed by others. They also experienced dreams centered on feelings of discomfort, hidden emotions, health problems, and anxiety.
Sensations of weakness or heaviness in the body were linked to an especially wide range of emotional dream themes. Participants who felt weak or heavy during the day reported more dreams involving emotional blockages, interpersonal conflict, aggression, and defeat.
Even specific symptoms like a sensation of a lump in the throat correlated with intense nighttime narratives. Women who felt this symptom frequently dreamed about being blocked, experiencing discomfort, and harboring hidden emotions. These patterns suggest that physical discomfort might share a psychological foundation with the emotionally charged narratives the brain constructs during sleep.
The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning the data was collected at a single point in time. This approach makes it impossible to determine whether physical symptoms cause negative dreams, or if negative dreams cause subsequent physical symptoms. Both experiences might simply arise from a shared underlying source of psychological stress.
The questionnaires also covered different timeframes, which complicates the interpretation of the results. Participants reported their dream themes over a six-month period, but they only reported their physical symptoms over the past 15 days. Because of this short window, the physical complaints cannot be classified as chronic pain.
The dream assessment tool used in the survey contained mostly negative dream themes. This imbalance likely influenced the finding that higher body awareness corresponds with more negative dreams. A more balanced assessment tool might reveal different patterns for neutral or joyful dream content.
Future research could provide a broader view by assessing positive dream content, dream clarity, and the exact frequency of dream recall. Investigating these variables over a longer timeframe could clarify how daily physical sensations shape nighttime brain activity. Researchers could also explore how these relationships play out in populations with diagnosed chronic pain conditions to see if the emotional themes of their dreams mirror their physical experiences in similar ways.
The study, “An Examination of the Relationship Between Body Awareness, Dream Themes, and Somatization in Adult Women,” was authored by Caglayan Pinar Ozturk.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-physical-stress-symptoms-shape-the-emotional-content-of-women-s-dreams/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BodyAwarenessDreams #Somatization #DreamThemes #NegativeDreamContent #WomenDreams #PhysicalSymptomsDreams #REM_sleep #DreamResearch #HeadachesAndDreams #EmotionalRegulationDreams
-
Man Makes 200+ Trips to Remote Villages to Connect Elders with Their Children Working Abroad