Youth Mental Health

• The use of psychiatric medications to treat mental health and behavioral disorders in children and young adults has risen over the past 20 years – including the prescribing of more than one medication at once. This is putting roughly 1 in 4 young people who take psychiatric medicines at risk of serious drug interactions, a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania found. Read more here.

AI and Mental Health

• Chatbots and AI agents are becoming ever-more entwined in our lives – and our individual and collective mental health. Every week, it seems, brings a new story of people using chatbots and becoming mentally unhinged as a result of the process. Dozens of cases have surfaced of people experiencing psychological crises linked to their use of chatbots, leading to numerous lawsuits. As psychiatrist and former NIMH Director Tom Insel notes, 2026 may be the year when more people use chatbots than human therapists. While this will dramatically expand people’s access to mental health interventions, it also has the potential to unleash all kinds of havoc — both predictable and completely unforeseen. Read more here.

Older Adult Mental Health

• In this randomized clinical trial, brief telephone-delivered behavioral activation and mindfulness interventions by lay counselors sustainably reduced loneliness and enhanced well-being during 12 months in at-risk older adults, with social isolation as a partial mediator. These scalable interventions offered effective solutions for combating late-life loneliness. Future research should investigate the applicability of these interventions outside the Hong Kong context as well as their cost-effectiveness. Read more here.

Suicide Prevention

• In this cohort study, ERPO laws in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island were associated with substantial reductions in firearm suicides, with no evidence of substitution with non-firearm methods. These findings support ERPOs as targeted public health interventions to reduce firearm suicides without increasing suicides by other methods. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues

• A Christian group in Washington state announced a potentially landmark legal settlement that could establish new legal protections for harm reduction services for people experiencing drug addiction, including syringe exchange, under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Read more here.
• In the last decade, U.S. drug consumption behavior has shifted rapidly away from injecting and toward smoking. Once largely limited to the West Coast, a preference for smoking opioids has spread east since the Covid-19 pandemic, becoming especially pronounced in hard-hit cities like Philadelphia. Read more here.

Research Studies

• In this cohort study of the Swedish general population, the association between depression and criminal convictions varied across neighborhood types and was partially explained by familial factors. These findings underscore the relevance of considering contextual and familial influences and may offer insights for prevention and intervention strategies responsive to neighborhood social environments. Read more here.