Frontiers in Psychology
June 30, 2016
Marasha De Jong, Sara W. Lazar, Kiran Hug et al.
200 citations
Chronic pain and depression are linked to reduced body awareness. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) increased certain aspects of body awareness—specifically self-regulation and not distracting from bodily sensations—more than treatment as usual in 31 patients with chronic pain and active depression. The improvement in depression severity was partly explained by the increased ability to not distract from bodily sensations. These results offer preliminary support for the idea that mindfulness interventions can enhance body awareness in this population and highlight its clinical importance.
Spirituality in Clinical Practice
August 2, 2018
Jonathan Greenberg, Tanya Datta, Benjamin G. Shapero et al.
37 citations
Depression is linked to high levels of mind-wandering and low self-compassion. In a depressed sample, mind-wandering was associated with higher depressive symptoms only among those with low self-compassion. Self-compassion predicted improvement in depression. An eight-week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) program increased self-compassion and reduced mind-wandering compared to a treatment-as-usual control group. Longitudinally, increases in mind-wandering were linked to increases in depressive symptoms only among those whose self-compassion decreased. Self-compassion can protect against the harmful effects of mind-wandering in depression, and MBCT effectively targets both protective and risk factors for depression.
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
November 9, 2016
Jonathan Greenberg, Benjamin G. Shapero, David Mischoulon et al.
17 citations
Depressed individuals often struggle to suppress irrelevant mental sets, a cognitive deficit linked to the disorder. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) plus treatment-as-usual, compared to a wait-list plus treatment-as-usual control, led to significantly lower depression scores and greater improvements in the ability to suppress irrelevant mental sets. Improvements in mental-set suppression were associated with reductions in depression. This provides initial evidence that MBCT can enhance this cognitive function and that such enhancement relates to depressive symptom relief.
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
August 7, 2023
Alexander Pilozzi, Simmie Foster, David Mischoulon et al.
16 citations
Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of senile dementia, will impose a growing societal and healthcare burden as the population ages. With few treatments for symptomatic relief and unknown causes, more research is urgently needed. Psychedelic drugs target AD-related psychological pathology and symptoms such as depression. Through microdosing, they may help combat the disease by eliciting psychiatric benefits via serotonin and dopamine pathways. This review examines studied benefits of a few psychedelic compounds that may show promise in treating AD and attenuating its depressive symptoms. The putative mechanism of action is that psychedelics act mainly as serotonin receptor agonists and induce potential beneficial effects for treating AD and related depression.
Journal of personality disorders
April 1, 2025
Albert Yeung, Michael Alpert, David Mischoulon
3 citations
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) involves impulsivity, emotional instability, and perceptual symptoms, and is often complicated by co-occurring conditions like depression. This case study describes ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) for a patient with both BPD and depression. KAP combines ketamine's antidepressant and psychedelic effects with psychotherapy, relying on the patient's inner healing intelligence and the therapist-patient relationship. Positive outcomes suggest that further systematic research into KAP for BPD and other personality disorders is warranted.
Psychiatry Research Case Reports
May 22, 2026
Albert Yeung, Huiqiong Deng, Wendy Feng et al.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) may offer a viable treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Asian American patients, who face cultural barriers such as stigma and collectivist values that complicate mental health care. In a case study of a 26-year-old Asian American woman with chronic PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, 11 intramuscular ketamine sessions (mean dose 88.2 mg) over eight months, paired with integration therapy, led to symptom improvement on standardized measures (PCL-5, PHQ-9, GAD-7). The patient's choice to work with an Asian therapist highlighted the importance of cultural concordance. KAP remains understudied in Asian communities.