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Recovery Update features the most recent articles from throughout the field of psychiatric rehabilitation. Stay up to date on all the latest mental health news through this weekly newsletter.
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The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health has launched its annual Take Action for Mental Health L.A. County campaign, a month-long series of events and activities marking May as Mental Health Awareness Month.
Utah has taken a cautious but nationally significant step into psychedelic science. On March 19, Gov. Spencer Cox signed House Bill 390, the Veterans PTSD Clinical Research Amendment, authorizing a state-funded clinical study of psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans with treatment‑resistant post‑traumatic stress disorder.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared in 2023 that our newest epidemic is loneliness and isolation. While COVID-19 certainly impacted us, it's not the only factor, and he recognized this as an issue prior to COVID.
As the pandemic closed down schools in 2020, Tracy Jacobson's daughter, like many kids, started to struggle with mental health. "That was probably the beginning of the significant mental illness for Jayden," Jacobson says.
Over the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 national suicide prevention hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11% below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls, a new study has found.
The Food and Drug Administration said recently it will offer ultra-fast review to three psychedelic drugs being developed to treat mental health conditions, including depression, the latest step by the Trump administration toward possible approval of the experimental treatments.
Aspiring U.S. lawyers should not be required to disclose details of their mental health conditions or treatment in order to become licensed to practice, a key organization has concluded. The National Conference of Bar Examiners has eliminated a question requiring would-be lawyers to report "any condition or impairment" that affects their ability to practice law, including mental, emotional, or nervous disorders or conditions from the sample character and fitness application, opens new tab it provides to states.
Pretend play is a significant and often magical part of childhood. Children have huge imaginations and use these to turn rocks into spaceships, tables into forts or pens into fairies. They might pretend to be "mum" or to "cook dinner."
Scientists have identified two specific types of brain cells that behave differently in people with depression, offering a clearer picture of what is happening inside the brain. By analyzing donated brain tissue with advanced genetic tools, the researchers found changes in neurons linked to mood and stress, as well as in immune-related microglia cells. These differences point to disruptions in key brain systems and reinforce that depression is rooted in biology, not just emotions.
Gender-diverse adolescents who experience bullying and live in states with persistently unsupportive gender identity laws are significantly more likely to suffer escalating psychological distress compared to their peers, according to new research by UCLA Health. The findings, published in JAMA Network, draw on one of the largest, most comprehensive adolescent brain development studies in the U.S. The study results suggest that the mental health burden carried by gender-diverse youth is not an inherent consequence of gender diversity but rather is shaped by the social and political environments in which these young people live.
New research using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) reveals that employment stability and in-person work buffered older adults against depression during the first year of COVID-19. Older adults who continued working outside the home during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced better mental health than those who shifted to remote work or lost their jobs, according to a study published in Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada.
The intricate interplay between hormones and mental health represents a rapidly evolving frontier in psychiatric research and clinical practice. Hormones, once primarily considered regulators of physiological processes such as metabolism, growth, and reproduction, are now recognized as potent neuromodulators that profoundly influence brain development, emotional regulation, cognition, and behavior. This introduction comments upon the critical role of hormones in mental health through specialized lenses.
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