PurposePhysical, emotional, and sexual violence and abuse occurring between close or extended family members are forms of family violence (FV). The negative impacts of FV are diverse, numerous, and pervasive for all individuals involved. To effectively support individuals experiencing FV, services designed to reduce and prevent FV and its associated harms must maintain participant engagement. Therefore, the purpose of this realist review was to synthesize literature on barriers and facilitators to individuals’ engagement in FV services so that relevant strategies can be implemented to improve service effectiveness.MethodsThis realist review was conducted systematically and searched five databases up to August 2024, screening 1, 334 evidence sources. Findings were examined in relation to families and parents, including mothers, fathers, and children, and were supplemented by relevant service provider perspectives.ResultsMost findings from the 24 included studies focused on facilitators of engagement. Priming and introductory sessions, provider-family rapport, group formats, empathy, trustworthiness, and family-centred approaches that consider familial needs and goals were identified as important facilitators of engagement in FV services. Prominent barriers included socioeconomic challenges, competing demands, childcare responsibilities, inadequate provider-client rapport, limited accessibility, intense initial meetings, and long service duration.ConclusionsRooted in family-centred approaches and interagency collaboration, recommended strategies to improve family engagement in FV services focus on opportunities during service: 1) intake; 2) initiation; and 3) delivery. These strategies are described in relation to context (e.g., socioeconomic factors) and potential mechanisms (e.g., perceived cultural safety), and could be further evaluated using implementation science methods to optimize family engagement in FV services.
Power without limits: exploring emotional regulation, moral authority, and psychiatric overreach through the Wizarding World of Harry Potter
BackgroundPsychiatry has never had more tools to relieve psychological suffering. Psychopharmacology, neuromodulation, early intervention, digital monitoring, and preventive approaches have expanded what clinicians can do. Yet this growing technical capacity also raises an uneasy question: when does care become control? Cultural narratives can offer spaces for examining such tensions, particularly when they dramatize power, vulnerability, suffering, and moral authority.AimThis narrative review uses the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as a conceptual lens to examine emotional regulation, moral authority, and psychiatric overreach, focusing on two contrasting figures: Lord Voldemort and Isidora Morganach.MethodsA theory-informed narrative review was conducted using a concept-focused analytic framework and structured conceptual synthesis. Literature was identified through focused searches in PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Google Scholar from database inception to June 2026, complemented by backward reference tracking. Sources covered Harry Potter scholarship, emotional regulation, psychological flexibility, narcissism and Dark Triad traits, medicalization, overdiagnosis, clinical ethics, and narrative medicine. To improve transparency, the synthesis distinguished direct literature on the Wizarding World from indirect psychiatric, psychological, ethical, and medical humanities scholarship used for conceptual interpretation.ResultsTwo pathways to psychiatric overreach and an intermediate zone of proportionate care were identified. The first, represented by Voldemort, involves destructive domination, emotional suppression, denial of vulnerability, instrumental use of others, and coercive authority. The second, represented by Isidora Morganach, involves hyper-compassionate control, intolerance of suffering, elimination of negative affect, moral certainty, and paternalistic intervention. Between these extremes, the intermediate zone emphasizes emotional integration, psychological flexibility, shared decision-making, contextual judgment, ethical proportionality, and clinical humility. Although one pathway is cruel and the other compassionate, both illustrate power exercised without sufficient emotional integration or ethical restraint.ConclusionBy exploring psychiatric questions through the Wizarding World, this review highlights how narrative frameworks can clarify the ethical boundaries of intervention. The central lesson is not that intervention is dangerous, but that intervention must remain proportionate, reflective, and ethically bounded. Psychiatry’s task is not to abolish all distress, but to relieve suffering while preserving autonomy, meaning, and human vulnerability.
Memory-focused therapy: an integrated intervention to reduce trauma symptoms, maladaptive cognitive processes, and emotional distress in Afghan youth
BackgroundAfghan youth continue to face chronic war-related trauma, terrorist violence, and severe disruptions to education and social support systems, resulting in high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. There is a critical need for culturally responsive, low-intensity, and feasible psychological interventions that can be delivered in low-resource and unstable settings.ObjectiveThis study conducted a preliminary evaluation of the efficacy, acceptability, and mechanisms of change associated with Memory-Focused Therapy (MFT), an integrative intervention targeting autobiographical memory processing, acceptance-based regulation, and future self-construction among youth affected by the Kaaj Education Center attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.MethodsA single-group repeated-measures design was used with 26 participants assessed at baseline, post-intervention, and three-month follow-up. Standardized measures of PTSD, depression, anxiety, stress, cognitive avoidance, cognitive fusion, resilience, and posttraumatic growth were administered. MFT was delivered in 12 structured group sessions. Additionally, qualitative data from semi-structured interviews and therapist field notes were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsQuantitative analyses showed significant reductions in PTSD symptoms, depression, anxiety, stress, cognitive avoidance, and cognitive fusion from baseline to post-intervention, alongside significant increases in posttraumatic growth. Several of these improvements were maintained at follow-up. Qualitative findings reflected four overarching themes: (1) facilitator experiences and implementation challenges in high-risk contexts, (2) improvements in cognitive and emotional processing, (3) growth in meaning, relationships, values, and future orientation, and (4) exposure to traumatic memories and reduced avoidance.ConclusionFindings provide preliminary evidence that MFT is a feasible, acceptable, and potentially effective intervention for trauma-affected Afghan youth. By integrating trauma memory processing, present-moment emotional regulation, and future-oriented meaning-making, MFT appears to support improvements in psychological coherence, self-continuity, and resilience. Further controlled and longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these effects and examine underlying mechanisms.
Parental broad autism phenotype traits and executive function in families of children with autism spectrum disorder
BackgroundParents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) frequently exhibit subclinical Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) traits, though their relationship with executive function (EF) remains underexplored. This study investigated associations between parental BAP traits and their EF performance.MethodsThe Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) was used to assess the BAP traits in parents of children with ASD and parents of healthy children. Among them 20 of the high-BAP ASD parents with a total BAPQ score exceeding 3.55 and 20 of the parents of typically developing children completed executive function tests. The researchers utilized the flanker, 2-back, and Task-switching paradigm to examine their EF. Correlations analysis was used to analyze BAP-EF relationships.ResultsThe self-reported questionnaires indicated that parents of children with ASD had significantly higher BAPQ scores than non-ASD’s parents, with fathers scoring 41.21% versus 15% (χ2 = 31.628, p < 0.01), and mothers 26.25% versus 8.37% (χ2 = 25.764, p < 0.01). Parents of ASD children exhibited significantly prolonged reaction times on the Flanker task (528.95 ± 78.90 ms vs. 426.80 ± 18.40 ms, T = 15.639, p<0.01), with BAPQ total scores positively correlating with slower responses (R² = 0.2325, p = 0.0313). Paradoxically, they demonstrated accelerated 2-Back incongruent reaction times (537.60 ± 80.21 ms vs. 665.70 ± 137.17 ms, T = 6.715, p=0.001) but reduced accuracy (0.947 ± 0.037 vs. 0.983 ± 0.016, T = 16.875, p<0.01), where BAPQ again correlated with reaction times (R² = 0.2318, p = 0.0316). Crucially, these associations were absent in controls, and BAPQ scores showed no relationship with task accuracy in either group.ConclusionsBAP traits are associated with attentional control challenges (indexed by Flanker Task) and a maladaptive speed-accuracy tradeoffs during working memory demands.
An AAV vector for glial cells
Nature Biotechnology, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41587-026-03193-2
Delivery of an in vivo–selected AAV into the glymphatics achieves broad transduction of human glial cells in chimeric mice.
Efficient targeting of human glial progenitor cells in vivo with engineered AAV vectors and glymphatic delivery
Nature Biotechnology, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41587-026-03185-2
Viral vectors delivered through the brain glymphatics achieve widespread targeting of glial cells.
Oncology must confront hidden side effects
Nature Medicine, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04554-9
As a new generation of cancer drugs continues to extend the lives of people with cancer, strategies for recording and managing their toxicity and long-term effects will need innovation too.
Microglial TDP-43 mediates myelin refinement and represses Tyrobp cryptic exon inclusion in mice
Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02348-3
Compagnion et al. show that TDP-43 loss in microglia causes myelin defects, oligodendrocyte precursor cell imbalance and motor deficits in mice. They identify TDP-43 as a regulator of the TREM2-DAP12 signaling, through the control of Tyrobp mis-splicing.
NHS staff to face sack or prison for unlawful patient data access
NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey has said NHS staff face the sack or even prison if they access patient records unlawfully.
Another big premium hike on the horizon
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Good morning from your shriveled-up Fourth of July leftovers. On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read in public for the first time, in Philly’s Independence Square. It was subsequently published in newspapers throughout the no-longer-colonies, though not always on the front page (!).