Ah. «The only democracy in the Middle East” with “the most moral army in the world” strikes yet again.

the flu vaccine was literally invented by the US Department of War during WW2

heritage.umich.edu/stories/the-...

Word!

To ulike narrativer om Helseplattformen i Dagens Medisin i dag.

The same White House that hyped Leucovorin is now hyping psychedelics, and zeroing in on ibogaine, a cardiotoxic substance!

Gaza's war amputees short of prostheses under Israeli restrictions Fourteen-year-old Fadel al-Naji used to be a keen footballer but is now largely confined to his home in Gaza City since both legs were severed in an Israeli drone attack in September.

www.reuters.com/world/middle...

1. The paper with the implausibly large effects of Omega-3 fatty acids on mental health was now retracted. A little thread on the process where @ianhussey.mmmdata.io and I was involved.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This looks like a really interesting project!

«Drugs that target amyloid beta proteins in the brain likely have no clinically meaningful positive effects, while increasing the risk of bleeding and swelling in the brain, a new Cochrane review has found.»

Wow. Edna Foa was born in December 1937 and stopped working full-time in 2023. So she stopped working full-time at the age of 85. That’s impressive. 😅

When I finished cognitive behavioural therapy on the NHS ~15 years ago, I remember consciously improving the answers on my exit PHQ-9 and GAD-7 surveys because I felt bad for the therapist.

Such tools are the basis of many experiments and service evaluations!

These issues 👇 permeate basically all clinical trials of psychotherapy.

A note to bullet point 2. I see now that the participants, who were university students, "received academic credit for completing the assessments, independent of their level of engagement with the intervention." This might explain why there was no drop-out/attrition at 3 months FU.

3. The difference between conditions in terms of anxiety symptoms is explained by a marginal symptom reduction (≈1 point) in the experimental arm and a marginal INCREASE (≈1 point) in symptoms in the face-to-face group therapy condition and WL.

A few observations.
1. The sample consisted of university students with very mild symptoms.
2. Curiously, there is *no* drop-out/attrition at 3 month FU, which is somewhat odd...

Conversational AI Agent for Psychiatric Symptoms and Digital Therapeutic Alliance This randomized clinical trial assesses the efficacy of a conversational artificial intelligence (AI)–based platform for anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, well-being, and life satisf...

Trial of a conversational AI chatbot which apparently (I haven't read full-text yet) achieved better outcomes than face-to-face group therapy in terms of anxiety symptoms and well-being (but not for depressive and posttraumatic symptoms).
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Very good commentary. It’s a shame the journal declined to publish it.

Finally someone dared to say it: effective psychodynamic therapy for anxiety disorders is plausibly based on exposure.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Ping, @apapsychiatric.bsky.social.
www.reuters.com/business/med...

Misguided: A Commentary on the 2025 American Psychological Association PTSD Treatment Guideline for Adults | American Journal of Psychotherapy PsychiatryOnline.org is the platform for all American Psychiatric Association Publishing journals, DSM, and bestselling textbooks, as well as APA Practice Guidelines, and continuing medical education.

Anyone with access to full-text of this article? psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/... 🙏

Line chart of estimated annual suicide deaths per 100,000 people from 1980 to 2023, where the global rate peaks near 15 per 100,000 in 1995 and then declines to about 9 per 100,000 by 2023 (roughly a 40% fall). The estimates are age-standardized and based on modeled global suicide patterns that include adjustments for missing data and underreporting. Data source: IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2025). License: CC BY.

The global suicide rate has fallen since the 1990s, but the death toll is still high—

Even after years of working with global health data, one statistic I’m always struck by is the number of people who die by suicide every year. In 2023, it was estimated to be around three-quarters of a million.

Another clinical trial indicating that emotion regulation skills training does not improve outcomes of trauma-focused psychotherapy for PTSD.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/...

Barn drept etter droneangrep i Iran Ett barn skal være drept i Khuzestan-provinsen i Iran etter at en israelsk drone ble skutt ned onsdag kveld, melder iranske medier. Barnet skal ha mistet livet da vrakdeler fra dronen traff bakken ett...

Dette er "våpnehvile" på israelsk. Verken Israel eller USA er til å stole på. At Iran fremstår som mer trovedig, er ganske utrolig. www.nrk.no/nyheter/barn...

Israel hits Lebanon with massive wave of airstrikes Israeli military announces ‘largest coordinated strike’ against Hezbollah since war began on 2 March

Once again, Israel attests that it is the main rogue state in the Middle East.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

An Empirical Assessment of the Cost of Dichotomization of the Outcome of Clinical Trials We have studied 21 435 unique randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR). Of these trials, 7224 (34%) have a continuous (numerical) outcome and 14 211...

Perhaps due to the loss of information when dichotomising continuous outcomes? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Ping, @apapsychiatric.bsky.social and @scpdiv12.bsky.social.

Kostnaden er ikke 14,2 milliarder for å skrote Helseplattformen Når ulike kostnadstyper og balanseposter samles i ett tall, risikerer tallet å fungere som en politisk prislapp snarere enn som et presist beslutningsgrunnlag.

"Kostnaden for en ny løsning er anslått til 4,9 mrd kr. (...) [K]ostnadene for [Helseplattformen] i samme periode er anslått til 5,4 mrd kr. (...) [D]et [kan] dermed kreve mindre ressurser å velge en ny løsning enn å fortsette med [Helseplattformen]. www.dagensmedisin.no/e-helse-hels...

Agree that mental disorders are complex. Whether they are *more* complex than cancers is another matter. I'm also open for the idea that *other*, perhaps non-traditional, interventions might hold promise. However, I would be pleasantly surprised to see substantially better outcomes vs. existent TXs.

Obviously difficult to say. Perhaps we reached a «ceiling effect» (aka placebo effect? 🤷‍♂️) in clinical psychology already in the 70’s? Still, I would guess that oncologists asked the same question - is there room for improvement? - in the 70’s. In hindsight we now know there was room for improvement.

After 40 years of working as psychiatrist and researcher, I cannot answer this question.