BackgroundElevated post-stroke depressive symptoms are common among acute ischemic stroke (AIS) survivors and are associated with poor functional recovery. However, readily available biomarkers reflecting lipid–inflammation status remain limited. The ratio of non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (NHHR) may integrate atherogenic burden and inflammatory status and thus be associated with depressive symptom burden after stroke.MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 518 Chinese AIS patients. Admission NHHR was calculated from routine lipid panels. Depressive symptoms at 90 days were assessed using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), and elevated post-stroke depressive symptoms were defined according to the prespecified HAMD threshold. Multivariable logistic regression, restricted cubic spline (RCS) analysis, and subgroup analyses were conducted to examine the association between NHHR and elevated depressive symptoms.ResultsAmong the 518 patients, 179 exhibited elevated post-stroke depressive symptoms at 90 days. Higher NHHR levels were independently associated with increased odds of elevated depressive symptoms after adjustment for demographics, stroke severity, cognitive function, inflammatory markers, and coagulation parameters (OR = 1.35, P = 0.029). Dose–response trends were observed, and RCS analysis suggested a linear relationship without significant nonlinearity. No significant interactions were found across sex, smoking, alcohol use, hypertension, or diabetes subgroups.ConclusionsElevated NHHR at admission was independently associated with elevated post-stroke depressive symptoms at 90 days in Chinese AIS patients. As a simple, cost-effective, and readily obtainable biomarker, NHHR may facilitate early risk stratification and guide individualized interventions.
Suicide and suicidal behavior in the gulf cooperation council countries: a Systematic Review of behavioral patterns, sociocultural determinants, and structural vulnerabilities
Suicide and suicidal behavior in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries remain underrepresented in empirical research, largely due to cultural stigma, legal prohibitions, and systematic underreporting. The behavioral and sociocultural determinants of suicidal behavior in these contexts—where rapid modernization intersects with Islamic normative frameworks and large-scale labor migration—have received particularly limited systematic attention. This review synthesizes available evidence on the prevalence, behavioral patterns, risk factors, and structural determinants of suicidal behavior across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we searched PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for primary research published between 2000 and 2025. Fifty studies (34 GCC-specific and 16 contextual/comparative) met the inclusion criteria. Methodological quality was appraised using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale, JBI checklists, the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, and the AACODS checklist. The review protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/RZXY7; URL: https://osf.io/rzxy7/). The findings were organized into six dimensions: (1) suicide prevalence, risk factors, and associated behaviors; (2) cultural and religious influences; (3) mental health of specific at-risk populations; (4) healthcare and support services; (5) migrant worker vulnerabilities; and (6) research trends. Reported suicide rates in the GCC range from 1.5 to 4.2 per 100,000 but likely underestimate the true prevalence due to forensic misclassification and stigma. Migrant workers constitute a high-risk subgroup, with suicidal ideation reaching 68% among those facing acute financial distress. Islamic religiosity is associated with lower suicide mortality but simultaneously deters help-seeking by stigmatizing mental distress. Interpreted through a Durkheimian lens, these findings position suicidal behavior in the GCC as a social fact shaped by weakened social integration and normative fragmentation under rapid modernization. Effective prevention requires culturally adapted behavioral interventions that integrate labor welfare reforms with community-based mental health strategies.
Efficacy and predictors of cognitive stimulation therapy combined with pharmacotherapy for mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized controlled trial
IntroductionAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with progressive cognitive decline, functional impairment, and reduced quality of life. Although pharmacological treatments such as cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine are commonly used, their clinical benefits remain limited and heterogeneous. Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) may provide additional benefits when combined with standard pharmacotherapy. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy of modified CST combined with standard drug therapy on cognitive function, activities of daily living, and quality of life in patients with mild-to-moderate AD and to explore key predictors of CST efficacy using a multivariate regression model.MethodsThis evaluator-blinded randomized controlled trial enrolled 80 patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD), who were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to either the modified CST plus standard pharmacotherapy group (study group, n = 40) or the standard pharmacotherapy-alone group (control group, n = 40).The modified CST program comprised 14 weekly 45-minute sessions. The primary endpoint was the change in the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale–Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) score from baseline to post-intervention. Secondary measures included the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) scale and the Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s disease (QOL-AD) questionnaire. Data were analyzed using an intention-to-treat (ITT) approach. Independent predictors of treatment efficacy were identified using a two-stage screening strategy (univariate screening and stepwise regression).ResultsA total of 75 patients completed the study, and 80 were included in the ITT analysis. After 14 weeks of intervention, baseline-adjusted ANCOVA showed that the study group had significantly better post-intervention ADAS-Cog scores than the control group. The adjusted mean difference in ADAS-Cog score was -3.28 points (95% CI: -3.72 to -2.83; P < 0.001), favoring the study group. Significant baseline-adjusted between-group differences were also observed for ADL (adjusted mean difference = -4.93, 95% CI: -8.39 to -1.47; P = 0.006) and QOL-AD (adjusted mean difference = 2.69, 95% CI: 1.01 to 4.37; P = 0.002), both favoring the study group. Higher years of education (β = -0.54, P < 0.001), regular physical activity (β = -0.28, P = 0.003), higher baseline Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (β = -0.22, P = 0.001), and active hobbies (β = -0.20, P = 0.002) were significant independent predictors of CST efficacy.DiscussionModified CST combined with medication significantly delays cognitive decline and improves QOL-AD in patients with mild-to-moderate AD. Educational attainment, lifestyle factors, and cognitive reserve are key determinants of CST efficacy. Relevant institutions should develop targeted enhancement protocols for patients with lower educational levels or insufficient cognitive reserves when implementing CST.Trial RegistrationChinese Clinical Trial Registry, identifier ChiCTR2600118654, https://www.chictr.org.cn.
Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why.
It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. Yesterday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 °C (about 97 °F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it felt like 39 °C.
It’s frightening that we are seeing such temperatures in the UK in June. According to the Met Office, the country’s national weather and climate service, June temperatures peaked at an average 19 °C (66 °F) in England between 1991 and 2020. Across Europe, the heat wave is likely to cause thousands of deaths. There will be other awful consequences for agriculture, infrastructure, and the health system.
But this week I want to look at what the heat does to our minds and brains. Personally, I’ve found it almost impossible to think straight. The heat is distracting and my mind is foggy. I dread to think about the conditions of people who work outdoors, in even hotter regions.
It’s not just exhaustion and confusion. The effects of heat on the brain can be deadly. And researchers are still trying to figure out why.
Studies have confirmed that as temperatures rise, people seem to get more irritable and more violent. Most of these studies are based on associations, though. It’s difficult to directly study how a heat wave might affect our thinking, says Catherine Thompson, a cognitive psychologist at Liverpool Hope University.
She has been studying the effects of extreme heat on firefighters instead. It’s easier to measure people’s cognitive skills before and after they undergo scheduled training that involves entering a burning building.
It’s early days, but the team found that firefighters found it harder to focus and control their attention immediately after heat exposure—something people in heat waves can empathize with, I’m sure.
The firefighters’ skills returned to normal after 20 minutes or so of cooling down. But they’d experienced just 15 minutes of intense heat exposure. Thompson doesn’t know what the effects of living through a days-long heat wave might be—or how long they’ll last. Figuring that out might involve shipping cognitive test kits to thousands of people during the few days’ notice of an impending heat wave. “My guess [is] that no one’s done it because it’s just so difficult to do,” says Thompson.
Still, researchers can learn about some of the impacts of heat waves through studies after the fact. And those studies suggest that the heat seems to have more disastrous outcomes for people with mental-health disorders.
Those outcomes become apparent when temperatures rise above what is considered typical for a given region. “There seems to be a correlation where the hotter it gets, especially during the hottest times of the year, the worse the mental-health outcomes,” says Joshua Wortzel, who directs the Heat-Mind Lab at Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut.
In a study published in 2023, Emma Lawrence at the University of Oxford, who studies the effect of climate change on mental health, and her colleagues reviewed the evidence linking mental-health outcomes to ambient outdoor temperatures. They found that during heat waves, there was a 9.7% increase in the rate of hospital admissions for people with such conditions.
“People who live with mental-health conditions are among the most susceptible to the physical impacts of heat,” says Lawrence. People with schizophrenia were found to have been three times more likely to die during the record-breaking heat wave that affected Canada in 2021, for example.
In order to protect people, we need a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying these effects. After all, a lot of things change when it’s very, very hot. Some people may end up stuck indoors, avoiding outdoor play and exercise, and it can be difficult to get a good night of sleep, for example. Sleep, socializing, and exercise are all really important for our mental health.
But whether unusual heat does something specific to our brains is, as Wortzel puts it, “the million-dollar question.”
Research in lab animals suggests that excessive heat can alter the way chemical signals work in our brain. The levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, for example, seem to increase when rats and mice are exposed to high temperatures, according to multiple studies. The heat may also interfere with the way networks in our brains communicate with each other. It might affect the way oxygen reaches our brain cells.
“There are so many biological reasons why brains may be negatively affected by heat,” says Wortzel.
Emerging research suggests that for whatever reason, children and young people are among the most vulnerable. In research published earlier this week, Wortzel and his colleagues saw a 2.97% increase in the suicide rate among people in the US aged 15 to 24 for every 1 °C increase in average monthly temperature. That’s more than double the increase seen in people over the age of 24 (which is concerning in its own right).
Other work hints that heat exposure might have long-term consequences for children’s brain development. Babies who were exposed to either extreme heat or cold appeared to have altered white matter by the time they were nine to 12 years old—although it’s not clear how these impacts might affect an individual child.
“It seems that extreme temperature exposure for very young children may affect their brain development,” says Lawrence, who spoke to me from Oxford. She was meant to be in London for Climate Action Week, but her event, which focused on extreme heat, ended up being canceled … owing to the extreme heat.
We are living through the effects of climate change. And that brings a new urgency to the question of how heat affects our brains. Children born in 2020 are predicted to experience around seven times the number of heat waves their grandparents did, says Lawrance. “[We] need to be serious about adapting to a warming world.”
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
Young Adults’ Perspectives on an Ecological Momentary Intervention for Drinking to Cope: Qualitative Study
<strong>Background:</strong> Young adults have high rates of mental health problems, such as mood or anxiety symptoms, and high rates of problematic drinking. Many young adults who undergo psychiatric hospitalization to address depression and anxiety symptoms also engage in risky drinking and tend to drink to cope with negative emotions. However, in many cases, treatment programs focusing on mood and anxiety symptoms often fail to adequately address problematic alcohol use in young adults. <strong>Objective:</strong> This study aimed to address this treatment gap by investigating patient perspectives on a potential ecological momentary intervention mobile app. Researchers used qualitative methods to gather perspectives of young adults hospitalized for psychiatric care on their use of drinking to cope with negative emotions and their feedback for a prospective app designed to suggest healthy coping strategies when participants report low mood and cravings to drink. <strong>Methods:</strong> We recruited a total of 12 young adults admitted to a partial hospitalization program to participate in a qualitative interview. To be eligible, participants needed to be aged 18-25 years and report drinking at least once weekly, binge drinking at least once monthly, drinking to cope with negative emotions, and depression and/or anxiety symptoms. <strong>Results:</strong> Qualitative analysis of our data resulted in 4 major themes. These included (1) motivations to use substances, (2) healthy coping, (3) general reactions to the proposed app, and (4) suggestions for the app. Participants generally had insight about their use of alcohol to cope and were able to identify several motivations for drinking; the most frequent motivations were to alleviate anxiety and depression, although many participants noted drinking to cope with other emotions, such as guilt or loneliness. Participants overall had positive responses to the prospective intervention and reported that they would appreciate the portability of a digital intervention in helping them “step down” from higher levels of psychiatric care. Participants also made several valuable suggestions about content, features, and usability, such as suggesting ways to “gamify” the app to increase use. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> This feedback will be crucial in designing and testing an ecological momentary intervention designed to reduce drinking to cope in young adults hospitalized for psychiatric care.
Affiliate Updates: Summer 2026
An IOCDF Affiliate carries out the mission of the International OCD Foundation through programs at the local community level within the United States. Each Affiliate is an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization run entirely by dedicated volunteers.
Below will be quarterly updates from our Affiliates, organized by state. Click the (+) to open each menu and read updates and find contact information for clinics near you.
The post Affiliate Updates: Summer 2026 appeared first on International OCD Foundation.
Mental Illness Shows Context-Specific Genetic Effects
Many DNA variants linked with neuropsychiatric disorders (NPD) that do not code for proteins depend on neuronal activation, a study suggests.
The findings, in Science, highlight the power of cell stimulation to reveal context-specific “hidden” genetic effects in conditions such as schizophrenia.
They suggest that genetic regulation is not fully revealed by measuring gene expression alone.
Instead, gene activity—at least in the brain—may depend on context and the physiological state of neurons.
“Liang et al. demonstrate that the genetic processes that underlie neuropsychiatric disease are heavily determined by a dynamic physiological environment rather than by fixed cellular conditions,” said Biao Zheng, PhD, and Panos Roussos, PhD, from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, in a Perspective article accompanying the study.
They added: “To understand disease genetics, we might need to study the genome in motion and not at rest.”
Genome-wide association studies have revealed hundreds of genetic loci associated with mental illness, with more than 280 identified for schizophrenia alone.
But many of these DNA regions do not encode proteins and their impact is often subtle and difficult to detect.
To investigate further, Lifan Liang, PhD, from the University of Chicago, and co-workers studied gene expression and chromatin accessibility in single neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells collected from a hundred human donors.
The single-cell multi-omics study involved assessing transcriptional and epigenomic profiles before and after neurons were activated through potassium-induced depolarization.
The team found that much of the activity in regulatory DNA regions only became apparent with neuronal stimulation.
Both the number of detectable expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs)—genetic variants associated with differences in gene expression—and chromatin accessibility QTLs (caQTLs)—DNA variants associated with differences in chromatin accessibility—rose after neuronal stimulation.
Shared and cell type-specific transcription factors worked together, possibly through regulatory cascades, to drive cell type-specific neuronal responses to stimuli.
eQTLs after stimulation had substantially weaker overlap with brain eQTL catalogs derived from postmortem tissue compared with eQTLs before stimulation.
This suggested that many relationships between regulatory DNA activity and gene expression become detectable only during neuronal activation and could be missed by traditional tissue-based studies.
A higher number of caQTLs were associated with neuropsychiatric disease compared with eQTLs, suggesting that disease-associated genetic variants could have detectable effects on regulatory DNA even when downstream changes in gene expression were not obvious.
Supporting this, chromatin accessibility and transcriptional responses to neuronal activation often occurred at different times.
Regulatory regions associated with genes that respond rapidly to neuronal stimulation often remained accessible after transcription subsided. By contrast, some late response genes exhibited accessible chromatin before their expression was induced.
When taken together, these observations implied that chromatin accessibility can be an indication of both prior and future transcriptional potential.
“We identified thousands of cell type–specific and activity-dependent quantitative trait loci for gene expression (eQTLs) and chromatin accessibility (caQTLs), helping prioritize NPD risk variants and genes that manifested functional effects only upon neuronal stimulation,” the researchers asserted.
They added: “Our work provides mechanistic insights on neuron subtype–specific activity-dependent gene regulation, substantially expanding the repertoire of context-specific causal variants and genes for NPD and other brain traits.”
The post Mental Illness Shows Context-Specific Genetic Effects appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
<![CDATA[Transgender psychiatrists of color share APA first-panel insights on identity, allyship, and gender-affirming care—urging intersectional, culturally engaged mental health practice.]]>
The Download: Europe’s heat wave hits the grid, and IBM’s chip targets Moore’s Law
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants
Europe is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the grid is being pushed to its limits as people turn to fans and air-conditioning to try to stay cool. But some power plants won’t be online to help handle the load.
The main source of stress is increased demand, largely driven by cooling. And the challenges are only expected to worsen as climate change brings more frequent and intense heat waves.
Find out how rising temperatures are stretching power supplies—and how utilities can adapt.
—Casey Crownhart
What Europe’s heat wave means for the power grid
Grid planning in the age of climate change generally means that we need a lot more supply, and quickly. But one interesting facet to this challenge is that in some places, seasonal patterns are shifting, compounding the difficulty of meeting demand.
Europe has historically seen its grid peak in the winter when electric heating is widespread. So some planned outages happen in the spring and into the summer, which is affecting the supply right now. But a growing need for air-conditioning will alter the balance.
Read the full story on how climate change is reshaping electricity demand.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things climate. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
IBM unveils chip technology that could help extend Moore’s Law another decade
IBM has built a new prototype chip with around 100 billion transistors on an area the size of a fingernail. That’s twice the density of the company’s previous state-of-the-art technology announced in 2021. And the design could pave the way for faster and more energy-efficient computers for years to come.
In the last fifteen years, transistors have been shrunk close to their limits. They can’t get smaller without their function deteriorating. IBM’s new chip resolves this with an approach familiar to urban planners: building up.
Here’s how the strategy is bringing new hope to the technology industry.
—Sophia Chen
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Anthropic says Alibaba “illicitly” extracted Claude’s capabilities
It claims the Chinese firm ran a “brazen” campaign to access the model. (BBC)
+ It says it’s the “largest known distillation attack” on the company. (CNBC)
+ The technique trains a weaker model on a stronger one’s outputs. (FT $)
+ Anthropic previously accused other Chinese rivals of using it. (CNN)
+ But it’s still feuding with the White House. (MIT Technology Review)
2 NASA has detected possible chemical signatures of ancient life on Mars
The Perseverance rover spotted complex carbon on rocks. (New Scientist $)
+ The molecules are typically associated with dead organisms. (Guardian)
+ The US has lost its lead in the hunt for alien life. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The EU has joined a US pact to stop relying on Chinese AI
Much of the rest of the world seems to still be a battleground for control. (FT $)
+ China is expanding its AI push in the Global South to counter the US. (The Wire China)
+ Chinese AI experts are freaking out about the AI arms race. (Wired $)
4 OpenAI and Broadcom have unveiled their first jointly designed AI chip
Jalapeño is built to power large-scale AI systems like ChatGPT. (NYT $)
+ It’s part of OpenAI’s push to “build the full stack.” (CNBC)
5 A new report shows ICE has built a vast hi-tech surveillance system
It includes facial recognition, drones, and data scraping.(Guardian)
+ Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil citizens with AI? (MIT Technology Review)
6 Electronics can now be printed onto living tissue
Which could enable smart implants and ingestible diagnostics. (The Economist $)
7 The data center boom is sparking a third wave of inflation
Demand for memory chips is pushing prices higher.(WSJ $)
8 Companies are scrambling to curb spending on AI token “chewing”
Accenture data shows non-technical staff are draining budgets. (404 Media)
9 Claude Design is creating a bland wave of website uniformity
The AI tool is homogenizing the internet’s aesthetic. (The New Yorker $)
10 Elon Musk has lost his trillionaire status
Thanks to SpaceX stock coming back to Earth. (Business Insider)
Quote of the day
“Tom Brown is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage.”
—A person directly familiar with calls between the Trump administration and Anthropic tells Wired that they’ve improved since cofounder Tom Brown replaced CEO Dario Amodei in the talks.
One More Thing
TONY LUONG
The quest to learn if our brain’s mutations affect mental health
For years, scientists searching for the roots of conditions like schizophrenia, autism, and Alzheimer’s have focused on single genes. But the real source may lie in a more complex genetic puzzle inside the brain.
Mike McConnell has spent decades exploring the idea that neurons do not all share identical DNA, and that these differences could help explain psychiatric disease. His work has contributed to evidence that brain cells can form a “genetic mosaic,” with mutations that vary across the brain.
Discover how this could reshape our understanding of mental illness.
—Roxanne Khamsi
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ This classical reimagining of the Super Mario soundtrack is exquisite.
+ At long last, we can calculate the fuel efficiency of launching our enemies into the Sun.
+ Before CGI, explosions were an art form. This compilation of classic practical effects is pure action-movie nostalgia.
+ Cambridge botanists lovingly recreated a 336-year-old garden to honor the “father of natural history.” (Big thanks to reader Peter Ryan for the find!)
Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Common Elements Treatment Approach (CETA) in Peru: Mechanisms of Individual and Intergenerational Change
Conditions: Violence; Parenting; Poverty; Depression; Mental Health; Posttraumatic Stress; Economic Factors; Child Psychology
Interventions: Behavioral: Common Elements Treatment Approach; Behavioral: Enhanced Case Managment
Sponsors: University of Notre Dame; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Recruiting
Interventions: Behavioral: Common Elements Treatment Approach; Behavioral: Enhanced Case Managment
Sponsors: University of Notre Dame; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Recruiting