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July 6, 2023

Beneficial Cognitive Effects of Transcranial Infrared Laser Stimulation (TILS) in Bipolar Disorder

Highlights from the International Society for Bipolar Disorders Conference Posters and Presentations, Chicago, June 22-25, 2023 -- Michael Gentry of The University of Texas At Austin reported on 30 individuals with remitte...
Treatments
July 5, 2023

Intravenous Arketamine As Adjunctive Treatment for Bipolar Depression

Highlights from Posters Presented at the Society of Biological Psychiatry Meeting, April 27-29, 2023 in San Diego -- I.D. Bandeira of Stanford University reported on the feasibility and safety of the (R)-enantiomer of keta...
Treatments
July 4, 2023

Lithium's Diversity of Assets

Editor’s Note: Lithium is vastly underutilized. There is wide spread ignorance about its many assets and misconceptions about its few side effects. Here is an update that should be of interest to potential users, family me...
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Treatments
July 3, 2023

The Systematic Treatment Optimization Program for Early Mania

Highlights from the International Society for Bipolar Disorders Conference Posters and Presentations, Chicago, June 22-25, 2023 -- A. Rathseesh and L. Yatham reported on the importance of systematic vigorous treatment of a...
Treatments
July 3, 2023

“Pharmacotherapy of Bipolar Depression”

Roger McIntyre gave a talk on the “Pharmacotherapy of Bipolar Depression” at the International Society for Bipolar Disorders Conference in Chicago, June 22-25, 2023 -- He pointed out that, contrary to the many approved age...
Treatments
July 2, 2023

Lumateperone Normalizes Pathological Levels of Acute Inflammation and Stimulates Important Pathways Involved in Mood Regulation

Highlights from Posters Presented at the Society of Biological Psychiatry Meeting, April 27-29, 2023 in San Diego -- Sophie Dutheil of Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. reported that “In male and female C57BL/6 mice subjected...
Treatments
June 22, 2023

Serotonin is Back

A review by Moncrieff et al in Molecular Psychiatry 2022 concluded that : “there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity.” This was widely repo...
Treatments
May 1, 2023

The Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Community Settings

Harold Sackeims’ review in Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 244-254 (2007) remains one of the best updates indicating that the cognitive effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) are not always benign. They followed 347 patie...
Treatments
April 5, 2023

Dramatic Prophylactic Response to Nimodipine: A Case Report

(This is an invited contribution by Robert Westhead.) -- This 50 year old man had a lifetime of incapacitating rapid cycling (10 days up and 10 days down) bipolar I disorder, but then for the past 4 years has had a complet...
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Treatments
January 20, 2023

Antihypertensives That Stimulate vs Inhibit Type 2 and 4 Angiotensin II Receptors Decrease Dementia

Marcum et al in JAMA New Open (2023) found that in “57,773 Medicare beneficiaries, initiation of antihypertensive medications that stimulate vs inhibit type 2 and 4 angiotensin II receptors was associated with a statistica...
Treatments
January 19, 2023

6 Minutes of Intense Cycling Produces Major Increases in BDNF

Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is necessary for new synapses and call survival. A new study in J. Physiology (2023) reports that the increases in BDNF from short intense cycling exercise are much greater than fro...
Treatments
December 27, 2022

U.S. FDA Approves VRAYLAR® (cariprazine) as an Adjunctive Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder

“A Phase 3 Study 3111-301-001 showed a clinically and statistically significant change from baseline to week six in the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) total score for patients treated with cariprazine at...
Treatments
December 15, 2022

Potential of Environmental Enrichment to Prevent Transgenerational Effects of Paternal Trauma

Gapp, K. et al. wrote about the “Potential of Environmental Enrichment to Prevent Transgenerational Effects of Paternal Trauma” in Neuropsychopharmacol 41, 2749–2758 (2016). -- They “used a mouse model of unpredictable mat...
Treatments
December 14, 2022

Lithium is a Lifesaver in Bipolar Disorder

Batya Swift Yasgur MA, LSW reported in Medscape Medical News on November 28, 2022 that “Mood stabilizers protect against suicide and all-cause mortality in patients with bipolar disorder (BD), including natural mortality, ...
Treatments
December 12, 2022

Intermittent theta burst magnetic stimulation (iTBS) is FDA approved.

As reported in Psych. News:?The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the SAINT Neuromodulation System for the treatment of refractory depression in adults, Magnus Medical Inc. (the manufacturer of the product)?an...
Treatments
December 1, 2022

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Equivalent to Escitalopram for Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

Hoge et al reported in JAMA Psychiatry (2022) that in a randomized clinical trial of 276 adults with anxiety disorders, 8-week treatment with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) was noninferior to escitalopram. The ...
Treatments
November 2, 2022

Cariprazine Effective in AD-Resistant MDD

Cariprazine Effective in AD-resistant MDD -- Maletic, V, et al. reported on Efficacy of Adjunctive Cariprazine Across Individual Depressive Symptoms in Major Depressive Disorder: A Post-Hoc Analysis. Poster presented at Ps...
Treatments
March 9, 2022

Review Describes Latest Findings on the Mechanisms of Psychedelic Drugs and Their Therapeutic Potential

In a 2021 review article in a special issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry devoted to “Psychedelics and Neurochemistry,” researcher Alaina M. Jaster and colleagues summarized recent findings on psychedelic drugs, includi...
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Treatments
March 2, 2022

Psilocybin Comparable to Escitalopram in the Treatment of Depression

Four randomized, controlled clinical trials have established that psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in “magic mushrooms,” has anti-depressant effects. Recently, a phase 2 clinical trial compared the effects of psiloc...
Treatments
February 23, 2022

MDMA Superior to Placebo in Treatment of Severe PTSD

An article by researcher Jennifer M. Mitchell and colleagues published in the journal Nature in 2021 reported that MDMA was more effective than placebo at treating severe post-traumatic stress disorder in an 18-week phase ...
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Treatments
April 2, 2021

Lithium Corrects Circadian Rhythm Abnormalities in Bipolar Depression

At a recent scientific meeting, researcher Monica Federoff described new findings about lithium’s effects in people with bipolar I disorder, especially regarding circadian rhythms. The 12-week study included 386 participan...
Treatments
May 22, 2020

New Type of Antipsychotic Drug for Schizophrenia Looks Promising

Photo by The-Lore.com on Unsplash -- In a 2020 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, researcher Kenneth S. Koblan and colleagues described a new type of antipsychotic drug treatment for schizophrenia. Almost all ...
Treatments
May 15, 2020

Cannabis Withdrawal Syndrome Occurs in Almost Half of Regular Users

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash -- A recent systematic review and meta-analysis by researcher Anees Bahji and colleagues in the open access medical journal JAMA Network Open describes the symptoms and prevalence of ca...
Treatments
May 8, 2020

Fish Oil Monotherapy on Depression in Adolescents at High Risk for Bipolar I Disorder: Ambiguity Persists

Fish oil supplements -- Researcher Robert K. McNamara and colleagues reported in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology in a 2020 article that 12 weeks of treatment with omega-3 fatty acids in the form of f...
Treatments
May 1, 2020

Gabapentin is Effective in Alcohol Use Disorder in Patients with Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash -- Researcher Raymond F. Anton and colleagues reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that compared with placebo, the anticonvulsant medication gabapentin helped people with alcoho...