Tag: Mental health

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Higher Vitamin C Levels in Blood Linked to Healthier Aging Brains

Researchers in Japan have found that older adults with higher levels of vitamin C in their blood have a higher volume of gray matter in their brains and higher connectivity across brain regions involved in memory and attention. Published in PLOS One, their study raises the possibility of using dietary interventions to protect brain health as we age. 

“What I found most fascinating about this research is that we were able to detect these subtle but significant associations between a single nutritional factor and large-scale brain networks by utilizing a robust, community-based cohort of over 2,000 older adults,” said Tomohiro Shintaku, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology at the Hirosaki University Graduate School of Medicine. “It truly highlights the potential impact of our everyday dietary habits on our brain structures.”

Previous research had linked diets high in vitamin C with lower risk of developing cognitive impairment in older adults. However, this study is the first to look directly at a potential link between vitamin C levels in blood and changes in brain structure and connectivity within a large participant cohort. 

Shintaku and colleagues analyzed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and blood levels of vitamin C in 2,044 Japanese adults over the age of 64. They measured the volume of gray and white brain matter in each individual, as well as the connectivity between brain regions belonging to the default mode network, which are associated with important cognitive functions including autobiographical memory, future thinking, self-reference, and attention. Connectivity within the default mode network is also known to play a significant role in brain health, with lower connectivity being linked to cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, in addition to a number of psychiatric conditions including depression or schizophrenia. 

After adjusting for other factors that affect brain structure and connectivity, such as age, physical activity, and education level, results showed that higher levels of vitamin C were associated with a higher volume of gray matter across several brain regions, and with higher connectivity within the default mode network. 

“Our study demonstrates that higher plasma vitamin C levels are associated with better preserved structural connectivity of the default mode network, a key brain network involved in cognitive function,” said Shintaku. “This finding generates the exciting hypothesis that a diet rich in vitamin C might play a supportive role in maintaining brain health and mitigating age-related cognitive decline in older adults.”

More research will be needed to uncover the potential biological mechanisms driving this association and confirm whether there is a causal link between blood levels of vitamin C and changes in brain structure and connectivity. Going forward, the researchers plan to conduct studies looking at repeated measurements of vitamin C levels over time, accounting for additional lifestyle and nutritional factors that may influence these effects, and including cohorts with more diverse ethnicities and socioeconomic status. 

The post Higher Vitamin C Levels in Blood Linked to Healthier Aging Brains appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.

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A Self-Guided Web-Based Transdiagnostic Mental Health Program for People With Intellectual Disability: Single-Arm Trial

Background: People with intellectual disability experience rates of mental illness up to 3 times higher than the general population, yet face significant barriers to care, including limited clinician expertise, diagnostic overshadowing, and exclusion from key mental health services. Electronic mental health interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in the general population and may address these barriers for people with intellectual disability by providing accessible, tailored treatment. Objective: This study examined the ability of Healthy Mind, a self-guided, web-based transdiagnostic mental health program designed specifically for people with borderline to mild intellectual disability, to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression and improve functioning in people with intellectual disability. Methods: In a single-arm uncontrolled design, Australian residents aged ≥16 years with a diagnosis of borderline or mild intellectual disability, and mild-to-moderate symptoms of depression or anxiety on the Anxiety, Depression, and Mood Scale (ADAMS) were recruited online and offered access to Healthy Mind. Assistance from a nominated supporter was optional. Primary outcomes were symptoms of depression and anxiety (ADAMS). Secondary outcomes were psychological distress (Kessler Psychological Distress Scale [K10]) and functional impairment (World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 [WHO-DAS]). Outcomes were assessed at baseline, 8 weeks, and 3 months. In total, 80 participants (mean age 27.8, SD 7 y; n=37, 46% female; n=39, 49% identifying as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander) enrolled; 61% (n=49) nominated a supporter. Data were analyzed using multilevel models with random intercepts for participants. Results: No significant changes were found in ADAMS depression or anxiety scores from baseline to postintervention or follow-up. Similarly, no significant effects were found for K10 or WHO-DAS scores, except for an improvement in K10 scores between baseline and 3 months when controlling for cognitive functioning (n=15). Having a supporter was associated with lower baseline distress but did not moderate treatment effects. Engagement with Healthy Mind was low; 42.5% (n=34) did not access the program, and among those who did, the median number of completed modules was 7 (IQR 3-11). Greater module completion was associated with slightly higher WHO-DAS scores post intervention. Conclusions: This trial did not demonstrate significant improvements in mental health or functioning associated with Healthy Mind, likely due to low engagement, reduced statistical power, and the absence of a control group. Nonetheless, the study demonstrates the feasibility of recruiting and retaining people with intellectual disability in fully online trials and highlights the urgent need for strategies to improve engagement, including gamification, personalized content, and integrated social features. Electronic mental health remains a promising avenue for addressing the substantial mental health service gap for people with intellectual disability. Trial Registration: ANZCTR ACTRN12620000113954; https://tinyurl.com/2ecdmde8 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): RR2-10.3390/ijerph18052473
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Between Help and Harm: An Evaluation Study of Mental Health Crisis Handling by Large Language Models

Background: The use of large language models (LLMs)–powered chatbots has reshaped how people seek information and advice, including for emotional and mental health support. While LLMs can offer scalable support, their ability to safely detect and respond to acute mental health crises—including suicidal ideation, self-harm, and violent thoughts—remains poorly understood. Progress is hampered by the absence of unified mental health crisis taxonomies, annotated benchmarks, and empirical evaluations grounded in clinical best practices. Objective: We addressed these gaps by introducing (1) a unified taxonomy of 6 clinically informed mental health crisis categories; (2) an evaluation dataset of over 2000 user inputs drawn from 12 publicly available conversational mental health datasets, classified into crisis categories; and (3) an expert-designed protocol for assessing response appropriateness. We also used LLMs to automatically identify crisis-indicative inputs and conducted an auditing study of 5 LLMs to evaluate the safety and appropriateness of their responses. Methods: We developed a taxonomy of mental health crisis categories informed by clinical experts and established literature. From over 239,000 mental health–related user inputs collected from 12 Hugging Face datasets, we curated 2252 examples (206 for validation, 2046 for testing) covering all taxonomy categories. We evaluated 3 LLMs on their ability to classify inputs into crisis categories, selecting the model with the strongest agreement with human annotators as the judge to label the test set. We then audited 5 LLMs on their ability to generate safe and appropriate responses to the 2046 test examples. Response quality was measured using a clinically informed 5-point Likert scale (1=harmful and 5=fully appropriate), relying on an LLM-as-a-judge validated against human expert feedback. Results: Several LLMs exhibited high consistency and generally reliable behavior when responding to explicit crisis disclosures, but significant risks remain. A nonnegligible proportion of responses was rated as inappropriate or harmful, particularly in the self-harm and suicidal ideation categories. Substantial performance differences were observed across models: gpt-5-nano and deepseek-v3.2-exp achieved very low harmful response rates, whereas gpt-4o-mini, Llama-4-Scout-17B-16E-Instruct, and grok-4-fast-non-reasoning generated markedly higher rates of unsafe outputs. All models exhibited systemic weaknesses, including poor handling of indirect or ambiguous risk signals, reliance on formulaic responses, and frequent misalignment with user context. Conclusions: These findings underscore the urgent need for enhanced safeguards, improved crisis detection, and context-aware interventions in LLM deployments and highlight the central role of alignment and safety engineering—beyond model scale or openness—in determining crisis response reliability. Our taxonomy, dataset, and evaluation framework lay the groundwork for ongoing research in artificial intelligence–driven mental health support, helping to minimize harm and protect vulnerable users.
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<![CDATA[Why psychiatrists must talk about sex: sexual dysfunction can exacerbate comorbid psychiatric disorders and contribute to medication nonadherence.]]>
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Neural and autonomic regulation during brief mindfulness and relaxation interventions in clinical populations: a multimodal MEG study protocol

Mental disorders pose a major and growing challenge for health care systems worldwide, marked by persistent treatment gaps and limited access to psychotherapeutic care. Mind–body interventions such as mindfulness and relaxation practices are widely used in clinical contexts as low-threshold strategies to support stress regulation and psychological well-being. Despite their broad application, the mechanisms underlying their acute effects remain insufficiently understood, particularly regarding brain–body interactions. This study protocol describes a prospective multimodal investigation of regulation during brief mindfulness-and relaxation-based interventions in clinical populations (at least n = 15 adults with depression according to SCID-5-CV and at least n = 15 adults with adult ADHD according to SCID-5-CV). Using a standardized within-subject experimental paradigm, magnetoencephalography (MEG) will be combined with electrocardiography (ECG) and respiratory measures to capture fast neural dynamics and autonomic regulation during three randomized auditory conditions: mindfulness (body scan), relaxation (safe place imagery), and an auditory control condition (podcast). Subjective ratings of stress and relaxation will be collected repeatedly across the procedure, complemented by questionnaires characterizing interindividual differences relevant to regulation. Outcome measures will include indices of autonomic regulation derived from cardiac activity and respiration, as well as repeated subjective ratings of stress and relaxation across conditions. Neural measures (MEG) will be used to characterize condition-related brain dynamics and brain–body coupling metrics linking neural oscillations to cardiac and respiratory rhythms. Speech-related measures during auditory guidance and brief speech-production features from post-condition reflections will be included as complementary and exploratory extensions to increase psychotherapy relevance, while accounting for methodological challenges related to overt speech in MEG. By integrating neural, physiological, and subjective measures within a single standardized paradigm, this study protocol aims to advance a mechanistic understanding of brief mind–body interventions in clinically relevant populations. Focusing on dynamic brain– body interactions during stress and regulation, the proposed approach is designed to support transparent and reproducible investigation of regulatory processes that are relevant to psychotherapy-related mind–body approaches, clinical practice, and everyday self-regulation. The findings are expected to inform future translational research and contribute to the development of mechanism-informed and potentially personalized applications of mindfulness-and relaxation-based interventions.Study protocol registrationPreregistration can be found here: https://osf.io/3rhk4/overview.
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Cultural adaptation and feasibility of action over inertia in Japan: a multi-site pilot intervention study

IntroductionAction Over Inertia (AOI) is a recovery-oriented intervention designed to promote occupational engagement and support personal recovery through changes in everyday activity patterns. While AOI has been examined in Western contexts, its applicability and clinical adaptation in East Asian settings remain underexplored. This study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the feasibility and cultural adaptation of a group-based AOI program in Japan.MethodsA mixed-methods pilot feasibility design was used. The quantitative component was a single-arm repeated-measures pilot study conducted across four psychiatric daycare facilities in Japan. Outcomes were assessed at baseline, post-intervention, and 1-month follow-up in 12 participants with serious mental illness using the Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS), Temple University Community Participation Measure-Japanese version (TUCP-J), and Social Functioning Scale (SFS), alongside symptom severity assessed with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). These measures were used as exploratory clinical outcomes to describe preliminary patterns of change and to inform future controlled studies, rather than to determine intervention effectiveness. The qualitative component involved semi-structured interviews with occupational therapists who delivered the intervention, to contextualize the quantitative findings and identify implementation barriers and adaptations. The quantitative intervention study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University, Japan (2023-0209), and registered with the UMIN Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN000045392). The qualitative interview study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee for Research Involving Human Participants, Nihon Fukushi University, Japan (23-041-03).ResultsNo significant improvements were observed in the exploratory outcomes of recovery, participation, or social functioning. Although BPRS showed a significant overall time effect, post-hoc comparisons between time points were not significant, and this change cannot be causally attributed to AOI because of the single-arm design. In an exploratory observation, participants with higher symptom severity appeared to show lower community participation. Qualitative findings suggested that the intervention dose, participant–program fit, readiness for activity change, and group-based delivery conditions may need further optimization within Japanese psychiatric daycare settings.DiscussionThe findings suggest that group-based AOI may be feasible to implement in Japanese psychiatric daycare settings, but further cultural and clinical adaptation is needed before effectiveness can be evaluated in controlled trials. Adaptation may require preserving AOI’s theoretical foundations while making the intervention less exposing, less abstract, and more accessible in group-based settings. Future studies should use controlled designs, longer follow-up periods, and broader outcome indicators to examine the effectiveness and implementation of culturally adapted AOI.Clinical trial registrationUMIN Clinical Trials Registry https://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/, identifier UMIN000045392.
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Usability, Relevance, and User Engagement of a Government-Sponsored and Community Co-Designed Digital Mental Health Website During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Pilot Study on Latino/a/x Adults

Background: Latino/a/x adults have higher rates of unmet mental health needs than other racial and ethnic groups. One promising solution to help bridge this gap in care is digital mental health tools. Digital tools, such as self-help websites, have demonstrated the ability to enhance mental health literacy, reduce stigma, and improve mental health symptoms. Despite the potential benefits, engagement remains a critical challenge, and there has been a large oversight of unique considerations for Latino/a/x adults as end users. Objective: Guided by the Technology Acceptance Model and the Behavioral Model for Vulnerable Populations, the study’s overarching objective is to characterize within-group variation of Latino/a/x adults’ engagement with a government-funded, prevention-focused mental health website that was co-designed with community partners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The Together for Wellness/Juntos Por Nuestro Bienestar (T4W/Juntos) website offered free digital mental health resources to help Californians cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. A pilot evaluation of the website involved baseline and 4-week follow-up surveys about demographics, behavioral health needs, and overall website user experience. This current subanalysis focused on a stratified sample of Latino/a/x adult participants (baseline N=131; baseline and follow-up n=68). The baseline sample was mostly female (106/130, 81.5%); 66.9% (87/130) preferred to use the website in English and 30% (39/130) preferred Spanish. Behavioral health needs were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-2, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2-item scale, and a COVID-19 stressors checklist. We measured usability, comfort using the website, relevance of the website, and past-month use of resources. Data were analyzed using ordered and standard logistic regression methods. Results: Latino/a/x adults who preferred using the website in English (odds ratio [OR] 13.76, <.001) compared with Spanish were more comfortable using the website. Compared with adults aged 18‐30 years, adults aged 41‐50 years had significantly lower odds of agreeing that the website was easy to use. Sensitivity analyses revealed that participants who found the website easier to use (OR 2.22, =.001) and those with greater behavioral health needs (OR 1.22, =.045) were more likely to perceive the website’s topics as relevant. Participants with higher behavioral health needs at baseline were more likely to use the website and engage with resources for anxiety or stress at follow-up (OR 1.42, =.047). Conclusions: This study addresses gaps in understanding Latino/a/x adults’ experiences with a prevention-focused mental health website. The language-based disparity in comfort highlights the need to significantly improve the user experience for Latino/a/x Spanish speakers. Still, the website can be a helpful resource for Latino/a/x adults with high behavioral health needs, bridging a critical gap in support. A collaborative approach to developing resource-rich websites with trusted community organizations is vital for effectively reaching Latino/a/x communities and tailoring resources to address their unique needs.