Anxiety News

June 25, 2025

Top Headlines

USC's New AI Implant Promises Drug-Free Relief for Chronic Pain

June 23, 2025 — A groundbreaking wireless implant promises real-time, personalized pain relief using AI and ultrasound power no batteries, no wires, and no opioids. Designed by USC and UCLA engineers, it reads brain signals, adapts on the fly, and bends naturally ...

Humans Are Seasonal Creatures, According to Our Circadian Rhythms

May 30, 2025 — It's tempting to think that, with our fancy electric lights and indoor bedrooms, humanity has evolved beyond the natural influence of sunlight when it comes to our sleep routines. But new research shows that our circadian rhythms are still wild at ...

Sustained in the Brain: How Lasting Emotions Arise from Brief Stimuli, in Humans and Mice

May 29, 2025 — Humans and mice share persistent brain-activity patterns in response to adverse sensory experience, scientists find, opening a window to our emotions and, perhaps, neuropsychiatric ...

PREVENT Equation Accurately Estimated 10-Year CVD Risk and Those With Calcium Buildup

May 23, 2025 — A new risk calculator accurately identified participants who had calcium buildup in their heart arteries and those who had a higher future heart attack risk, in an analysis of about 7,000 adults in ...

Promising New Way to Modulate Brain Cell Activity to Potentially Treat Major Depressive Disorder in Adults

May 21, 2025 — A mechanism involving potassium channels in the brain that control brain cell activity could provide a new and fundamentally different way of treating depression symptoms in adults with major ...

Landmark Report Reveals Key Challenges Facing Adolescents

May 20, 2025 — Poor mental health, rising obesity rates, exposure to violence and climate change are among the key challenges facing our adolescents today, according to a global ...

How Serious Is Your Brain Injury? New Criteria Will Reveal More

May 20, 2025 — Trauma centers nationwide will begin to test a new approach for assessing traumatic brain injury (TBI) that is expected to lead to more accurate diagnoses and more appropriate treatment and follow-up for patients. The new framework expands the ...

Could Personality Tests Help Make Bipolar Disorder Treatment More Precise?

May 19, 2025 — A new study suggests that it might be possible to personalize care for people with bipolar disorder, using the results of detailed personality tests. It finds that such tests might help identify people who have certain combinations of personality ...

People With Critical Cardiovascular Disease May Benefit from Palliative Care

May 16, 2025 — Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on easing symptoms, addressing psychological and spiritual needs, and helping patients and caregivers make critical decisions aligned with their ...

How the Brain Allows Us to Infer Emotions

May 16, 2025 — Researchers have discovered how inferred emotions are learned. The study shows that the frontal part of the brain coordinates with the amygdala -- a brain region important for simple forms of emotional learning -- to make this higher-order emotional ...

Cyberbullying in Any Form Can Be Traumatizing for Kids

May 15, 2025 — New research shows that cyberbullying should be classified as an adverse childhood experience due to its strong link to trauma. Even subtle forms -- like exclusion from group chats -- can trigger PTSD-level distress. Nearly 90% of teens experienced ...

Combinations of Chronic Illnesses Could Double Risk of Depression

May 13, 2025 — People with multiple long-term physical health conditions are at a significantly greater risk of developing depression, a study ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:19pm EDT

New Chronic Pain Therapy Retrains the Brain to Process Emotions

May 7, 2025 — Researchers have created an effective therapy for chronic pain that reduces pain intensity by focusing on emotional ...

Social Drinking Also a Well-Worn Path to Alcohol Use Disorder

May 6, 2025 — When picturing a 'typical' alcoholic, people tend to imagine a person drinking at home alone. But that focus overlooks the social origins of many serious alcohol ...

PTSD Patients Show Long-Term Benefits With Vagus Nerve Stimulation

May 5, 2025 — In a recent clinical study, patients with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder were symptom-free up to six months after completing traditional therapy paired with vagus nerve ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low And Middle-Income Countries

May 5, 2025 — Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic ...

Teens With Mental Health Conditions Use Social Media Differently Than Their Peers, Study Suggests

May 5, 2025 — One of the first studies in this area to use clinical-level diagnoses reveals a range of differences between young people with and without mental ...

Dopamine Signals When a Fear Can Be Forgotten

May 4, 2025 — A new study shows how a dopamine circuit between two brain regions enables mice to extinguish fear after a peril has ...

Study Links Childhood Trauma to Increased Substance Use and Unexpected Effects on Heart Rate and Blood Pressure in Adolescents

May 4, 2025 — Childhood trauma significantly increases the likelihood of engaging in harmful alcohol consumption, smoking and illicit drug use, by the age of ...

How a Smartphone App Could Transform Mental Health Care

May 2, 2025 — Smartphones may often feel like a source of stress, feeding us an endless stream of bad news and social comparison. But what if they could also be the solution? A team of researchers believes they ...

Seasonal Changes Affect Alcohol Tolerance and Your Waistline

May 1, 2025 — Researchers have found that drug effectiveness, alcohol tolerance, and carbohydrate metabolism change with the seasons. Their findings are based on a comprehensive seasonal gene expression map, which ...

Temporary Anxiety Impacts Learning

Apr. 25, 2025 — Researchers found that a brief episode of anxiety may have a bigger influence on a person's ability to learn what is safe and what is not. A new study used a virtual reality game that involved ...

Vision Loss Fear May Keep Some from Having Cataract Surgery

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study finds vision loss fears may deter some patients from cataract surgery, despite it being the only effective treatment. The research underscores the role of doctor-patient relationships in ...

Psychedelics Can Reverse Neuroimmune Interactions That Boost Fear

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study suggests that fear and the immune system are connected in previously unknown ways. Researchers found that the immune system can influence stress and fear behaviors by changing how brain ...

Insomnia and Sleep Medication Use Connected to Disability in Older Adults

Apr. 18, 2025 — For adults over the age of 65, higher levels of both insomnia symptoms and sleep medication use were associated with higher risk of disability a year later, according to a new ...

Apr. 16, 2025 — A new study suggests that climate trauma -- such as experiencing a devastating wildfire -- can have lasting effects on cognitive ...

Stress, Depression Factor Into Link Between Insomnia, Heavy Drinking

Apr. 14, 2025 — A new study suggests that perceived stress and depression factor into the relationship between insomnia and hazardous drinking -- perhaps not a surprise. But because the relationship between insomnia ...

Police Officers Face Twice the Risk of Traumatic Brain Injuries and PTSD, Survey Finds

Apr. 11, 2025 — Police officers are more than twice as likely to have traumatic brain injuries compared to the general ...

Even Under Stress, Male-Female Pairs Had Each Other's Backs

Apr. 8, 2025 — When faced with a potential threat, mice often freeze in place. Moreover, when two animals are together, they typically freeze at the same time, matching each other's periods of immobility. In a ...

Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Improve Chronic Low Back Pain

Apr. 7, 2025 — Eight weeks of mindfulness or cognitive behavioral therapy were associated with improved pain, physical function and quality of life and reduced daily opioid dose in adults with chronic low back pain ...

Fear of Rejection Influences How Children Conform to Peers

Apr. 4, 2025 — The fear of rejection -- familiar to many children and adults -- can significantly impact how kids behave in their peer groups, according to new ...

Medicinal Cannabis Is Linked to Long-Term Benefits in Health-Related Quality of Life, Study Finds

Apr. 2, 2025 — Patients prescribed medicinal cannabis in Australia maintained improvements in overall health-related quality of life (HRQL), fatigue, and sleep disturbance across a one-year period, according to a ...

PTSD Can Undermine Healthy Couple Communication When People Fear Their Emotions

Mar. 31, 2025 — Fear of emotions among couples with PTSD is associated with unproductive communication, according to a new ...

Change in Oxygen Standards for Trauma Patients?

Mar. 31, 2025 — A recent study finds most critically injured patients can recover with less supplemental oxygen than has previously been ...

Discrimination-Related Depression, Anxiety Pronounced Among Multiracial, White, Asian Populations

Mar. 28, 2025 — A new study found that over half of US adults experienced some form of discrimination, and individuals with high exposure to discrimination have more than five times the chances of screening positive ...

Biological Pathway in the Brain Could Help Explain Why Teenage Girls Are More Depressed Than Boys

Mar. 25, 2025 — Research has shown that a biological brain mechanism called the 'kynurenine pathway' is imbalanced in adolescents with depression, and this imbalance is more pronounced in teenage girls ...

Study Finds Unique Brain Changes Linked to Witnessing Trauma

Mar. 18, 2025 — Researchers discovered distinct molecular differences in how the brain processes directly experienced versus witnessed trauma -- a finding that could lead to more targeted treatments for ...

Worldwide Study Finds High Rates of Depression and Anxiety in People With Chronic Pain

Mar. 10, 2025 — A novel analysis of more than 375 published studies concluded that the association between chronic pain and rates of depression and anxiety is staggering. The study found that 40% of adults with ...

Why Some Are More Susceptible to Developing PTSD Symptoms Than Others

Mar. 5, 2025 — People with a more active amygdala (an area in the brain involved in processing information relevant to threats) are more likely to develop PTSD symptoms after experiencing trauma than people with a ...

ChatGPT on the Couch? How to Calm a Stressed-out AI

Mar. 3, 2025 — Distressing news and traumatic stories can cause stress and anxiety -- not only in humans, but these stories can also affect AI language models, such as ChatGPT. Researchers have now shown that these ...

Research Indicates Effects of PTSD on Body Vary by Culture

Feb. 28, 2025 — Anthropologists, social scientists and veterans are analyze the relationship between the hormones cortisol and testosterone and PTSD in a non-industrialized ...

Violence Alters Human Genes for Generations, Researchers Discover

Feb. 27, 2025 — First study of its kind reveals epigenetic signatures of violence passesd to ...