medRxivJuly 10, 2026Daniel Copeland, Naoise Mac Giollabhui, Louisa G Sylvia et al.
preprint
Background: Despite growing evidence that lifestyle interventions reduce depressive symptoms, the psychological mechanisms underlying these effects remain poorly understood. This study examined whether mindfulness and rumination mediate the antidepressant effects of heated yoga (HY), a multicomponent intervention combining physical activity, attentional training, and thermoregulatory stress....
Background Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains a challenging condition to treat. Nonpsychedelic pharmacotherapies have modest efficacy, and trauma-focused therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) demonstrate higher response rates than medications, yet they suffer from high dropout rates (25–35%) and limited...
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition characterized by a pervasive pattern of impulsivity, affective dysregulation, and cognitive-perceptual symptoms. Treatment of BPD remains a significant challenge to mental health clinicians. People who suffer from BPD frequently have comorbid psychiatric disorders, which makes treatment more complex. This case study describes a...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of senile dementia, is poised to place an even greater societal and healthcare burden as the population ages. With few treatment options for the symptomatic relief of the disease and its unknown etiopathology, more research into AD is urgently needed. Psychedelic drugs target AD-related psychological pathology and symptoms such as depression. Using...
Spanish speaking family caregivers of people living with dementia have limited supportive resources in Spanish. There are few validated, culturally acceptable virtual interventions for reducing these caregivers’ psychological distress. We investigated the feasibility of a Spanish language adaptation of a virtual Mentalizing Imagery Therapy (MIT) program, which provides guided imagery and...
Introduction: Family caregivers of patients with dementia suffer a high burden of depression and reduced positive emotions. Mentalizing imagery therapy (MIT) provides mindfulness and guided imagery skills training to improve balanced mentalizing and emotion regulation. Objective: Our aims were to test the hypotheses that MIT for family caregivers would reduce depression symptoms and improve...
More than 50 million people worldwide live with a dementia, and most are cared for by family members. Family caregivers often experience chronic stress and insomnia, resulting in decreased mental and physical health. Accessibility of in-person stress reduction therapy is limited due to caregiver time constraints and distance from therapy sites. Mentalizing imagery therapy (MIT) provides...
Abstract Background Some staging models for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) have been developed in the attempt to predict treatment outcome, in particular with electroconvulsive therapy. However, these models have not been tested in predicting clinical outcome of ketamine treatment. We assessed the relationship between patients' classification with different TRD staging models and...
BACKGROUND Several studies indicate that ketamine has rapid antidepressant effects in patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). The extent to which repeated doses of ketamine (versus placebo) reduce depression in the short and long term among outpatients with TRD and chronic, current suicidal ideation remains unknown. METHODS Twenty-six medicated outpatients with severe major...
Depression is associated with high levels of mind-wandering and low levels of self-compassion. However, little is known about whether and how these two factors interact with one another to influence depressive symptoms. The current study examined the interaction between mind-wandering, self-compassion and depressive symptoms in a depressed sample and tested the effects of an eight-week...
Chronic pain is a disabling illness, often comorbid with depression. We performed a randomized controlled pilot study on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) targeting depression in a chronic pain population. Participants with chronic pain lasting ≥ 3 months; DSM-IV major depressive disorder (MDD), dysthymic disorder, or depressive disorder not otherwise specified; and a 16-item Quick...
An impaired ability to suppress currently irrelevant mental-sets is a key cognitive deficit in depression. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) was specifically designed to help depressed individuals avoid getting caught in such irrelevant mental-sets. In the current study, a group assigned to MBCT plus treatment-as-usual (n = 22) exhibited significantly lower depression scores and...
Body awareness has been proposed as one of the major mechanisms of mindfulness interventions, and it has been shown that chronic pain and depression are associated with decreased levels of body awareness. We investigated the effect of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on body awareness in patients with chronic pain and comorbid active depression compared to treatment as usual (TAU; N =...
Ketamine rapidly reduces thoughts of suicide in patients with treatment-resistant depression who are at low risk for suicide. However, the extent to which ketamine reduces thoughts of suicide in depressed patients with current suicidal ideation remains unknown. Between April 2012 and October 2013, 14 outpatients with DSM-IV-diagnosed major depressive disorder were recruited for the presence of...