Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Zrinka Sosic-Vasic, Max Bergmann, Julia Kroener
Adding Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to standard inpatient care for depression and insomnia may improve symptoms more than usual care alone. Eight psychiatric inpatients received eight ACT sessions alongside cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. Depressive symptoms, insomnia, psychological flexibility, acceptance of sleep problems, and quality of life all improved significantly from before treatment to one week and three months after treatment. No significant changes occurred during the baseline period before ACT began. The findings suggest ACT is a promising transdiagnostic adjunct for inpatients, but results are preliminary due to the small sample and lack of a control group.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Valerio Ricci, Domenico De Berardis, Giovanni Martinotti et al.
Cannabis use, especially high-potency THC products, is consistently linked to elevated dissociative experiences in patients with first-episode psychosis. Users scored 11-13 points higher on the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II than non-users, and daily high-potency use tripled the odds of clinically significant dissociation (OR: 3.21). These dissociative symptoms, along with more severe anomalous self-experiences, predicted poorer functional outcomes at 12 months (GAF scores: 52 ± 14 vs. 67 ± 12). About 75% of patients showed reduced dissociation after stopping cannabis, suggesting potential reversibility. The evidence certainty was moderate for dissociation severity and low for self-disturbance outcomes.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
correction
A correction was issued for a published article: the average number of ayahuasca uses in the ayahuasca group was revised from 69.4 to 55.7 (standard deviation 82.1). Participants had used ayahuasca 5.2 times more than psilocybin, 4.6 times more than mescaline, and 5.6 times more than LSD. The authors state the error does not alter the scientific conclusions.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Ahmad H Almadani, Ayedh H Alghamdi, Fahad B Alfahad et al.
In a survey of 283 adults with depression, about half (52.3%) were willing to receive nasal esketamine, and 51.2% preferred its weekly or biweekly dosing over daily antidepressants. However, 79.5% cited cost as a barrier, and major concerns included medication unavailability (59.7%), fear of addiction (50.5%), anticipated stigma (24.4%), and first-month dosing frequency (21.2%). Notably, 77.4% were nonadherent to their current psychiatric medication. Adherence was higher among those who had previously used esketamine and among those who had someone to stay with them during and after treatment. The findings underscore the need for patient education, family involvement, and logistical support to address barriers and improve acceptance.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Leonard Marx, Zümrüt Duygu Sen, Lena Vera Danyeli et al.
Ketamine's rapid antidepressant effects are thought to involve glutamate signaling and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), but how these two factors interact is unclear. In a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover study with 35 healthy men, researchers measured glutamate levels in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex using 7 Tesla magnetic resonance spectroscopy and plasma BDNF levels before and after infusions of S-ketamine or placebo. A significant interaction emerged between treatment condition and changes in glutamate on BDNF level changes, with a trend-level positive correlation between glutamate and BDNF changes only in the ketamine group. These findings offer initial in vivo evidence that ketamine's influence on BDNF is tied to its glutamatergic action.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Meng-Han Zhang, Yi-Fan Wang, Juan Li et al.
A 55-year-old woman with depressive catatonia, who had a poor response to initial treatment with benzodiazepines and aripiprazole and could not receive modified electroconvulsive therapy due to deep vein thrombosis, was given a single sub-anesthetic dose of intravenous esketamine (0.2 mg/Kg) combined with desvenlafaxine. Catatonia symptoms, measured by the Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale, dropped from 19 to 0 within 4 hours. Depressive symptoms, measured by the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale, fell from 46 to 9 at 48 hours, and the improvement remained stable over 20 weeks. Esketamine may offer a rapid and safe option for catatonic patients who cannot undergo electroconvulsive therapy or do not respond to conventional treatment.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Julia Marek, Magdalena Domek-Gumprecht, Agata Macionga et al.
A biennial online survey of 2,447 people aged 13–63 in Poland found that marijuana is the most commonly used illicit psychoactive substance, though consumption is infrequent (35.6% use once every few months or less) and mainly occurs in social settings (50.2%) or at home (52.3%). Most respondents (83.6%) never tested substance composition, and 51.4% relied on visual estimation for dosing. Sixty percent had neglected daily responsibilities, and 16.8% faced legal issues. Nearly half had seen a psychiatrist, primarily for depression; of those, 41.1% had attempted suicide and 70.5% used illicit substances before their first consultation. Only 40% consistently disclosed substance use to a physician. Stimulant use and related medical consultations are rising, psychedelic use is declining, and solitary use now exceeds 25%.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Rocco Miazzi, Clara Cestonaro, Silvia Righetto et al.
Adolescent MDMA use is linked to psychological disturbances such as increased depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and attempts, as well as neuropsychological deficits in memory, attention, and executive functioning. Neuroimaging evidence suggests MDMA disrupts serotonergic pathways, potentially causing persistent brain changes. The review synthesizes 14 human studies but notes methodological limitations like small sample sizes, high rates of polydrug use, and lack of longitudinal designs, complicating causal conclusions. The findings underscore the need for targeted prevention and harm reduction for adolescents.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Pablo Sabucedo, Oscar Andión, Robert A Neimeyer et al.
correction
A three-arm, non-randomized controlled trial protocol compares Ayahuasca-assisted Meaning Reconstruction therapy (A-MR) with Meaning Reconstruction therapy alone and a no-treatment control for people who lost a first-degree relative within the prior 12 months. The authors hypothesize that A-MR will produce greater reductions in normal and pathological grief symptoms, and greater improvements in quality of life and posttraumatic growth, than either control condition. The rationale draws on neurobiological evidence that ayahuasca stimulates neuroplasticity and on psychological evidence that psychedelic experiences can facilitate meaning reconstruction and cognitive reappraisal. No controlled studies have tested psychedelic-assisted therapy for prolonged grief disorder.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2024
Angelika Ecker, Charlotte Fritsch, Daniel Schleicher et al.
A single mindfulness exercise did not produce immediate observable changes in mood, stress, state mindfulness, heart rate, or heart rate variability among healthy adolescents aged 12 to 19. The study assigned 78 adolescents to either a mindfulness or an active control group, measuring subjective and physiological parameters before and after the intervention. While no significant interactions between time and intervention were found, heart rate showed a main effect of time, and all subjective parameters showed a main effect of trait mindfulness. Age influenced heart rate and state mindfulness. Trait mindfulness correlated strongly with trait anxiety and depression scores. The findings suggest that a single mindfulness session may not have immediate effects in healthy adolescents, though mindfulness may still support resilience over time.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2023
Yan Li, Yan Chen, Charlotte Martial et al.
A Chinese version of the Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale was translated and validated on 79 near-death experience testimonies. The translation used Brislin's back-translation model, and the scale showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.846). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the scale's structure. This new Chinese NDE-C scale is now available to screen people who have had near-death experiences or near-death-like experiences (e.g., from meditation) and to quantify their subjective experiences, enabling further research on this phenomenon in Eastern cultural contexts.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2026
Aleš Oblak, Sara Rigler, Nika Kovačič et al.
Ruminations are persistent, repetitive, distressing thoughts about negative events and moods, linked to psychiatric disorders and suicidality. This study provides a detailed description of ruminating from a lifeworld perspective, using micro-phenomenological interviews with 51 participants (107 interviews, 79 episodes). Ruminating is an epistemic practice driven by a need to resolve uncertainty after a collapse of commonsense understanding, leading to intellectualization and detachment from embodied responses. It involves paralysis, emptiness, and problematic relationships with knowledge. Rather than a maladaptive thought pattern, ruminating constitutes a complex lifeworld, suggesting a reconceptualization from a unified symptom to a system of interrelated altered experiences.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2026
Lena Palaniyappan
Biological psychiatry struggles to find valid targets for mechanistic research because both diagnostic categories and individual symptoms are abstract symbols defined circularly within a closed interpretive system, creating a symbol grounding problem that blocks discovery of biomarkers. The author argues that progress requires separating ungrounded symptoms like delusions and hallucinations, which are co-constructed through personal and clinical interpretation, from grounded signs—directly observable features anchored in shared sensorimotor reality. A Minimal Grounding Set (MGS) can be recovered from common psychosis criteria, exemplified by disorganization and impoverishment. This MGS offers a privileged pathway for neuroscientific inquiry, with predictions that biological correlates will be most replicable for MGS, that MGS will serve as modular anchors in symptom networks, and that precision psychiatry programs depend on separating MGS from ungrounded symptoms.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2023
Clementine J Edwards, Oliver Owrid, Lucy Miller et al.
A novel 10-item tool, the Voice Characterisation Checklist (VoCC), reliably assesses how much people personify the voices they hear. Among 170 participants who heard distressing voices, 94% reported some degree of voice personification. Most described voices as distinct auditory experiences with basic attributes like gender and age, and many attributed intentions and personalities to them. However, fewer than half attributed mental states to the voice or identified a known historical relationship. The VoCC showed acceptable internal consistency and good inter-rater reliability, making it useful for testing whether voice characterisation influences treatment outcomes in therapies like AVATAR therapy.