Psychiatric ServicesJuly 1, 2026Joshua Mitchell, Benjamin Bregman, Renuka Surujnarain et al.
Aided by COVID-19-era regulatory flexibilities, direct-to-consumer telemedicine has expanded access to mental health care. Ketamine prescribed off-label for psychiatric conditions is increasingly marketed online and delivered at home through telehealth platforms. Taking a wrongful death lawsuit against a telehealth ketamine provider as a point of departure, the authors examine how combining...
Racial-ethnic diversity is lacking in psychedelic science. Efforts have been made to increase racial-ethnic representation among clinical trial participant populations, but much work remains. This column aims to describe this disparity, outline potential benefits of eliminating this disparity, and provide recommendations for achieving equity and justice within the research landscape of...
Psychiatric ServicesJune 25, 2025Michael Liu, Rachel Branning, Austin Lee et al.2 citations
This study sought to investigate racial-ethnic disparities in the utilization of intravenous ketamine and intranasal esketamine therapy for major depressive disorder. The TriNetX platform was used to identify 861,179 patients diagnosed as having moderate-to-severe recurrent major depressive disorder between January 2019 and October 2024. Patients were divided into non-Hispanic White,...
Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being used in schools to improve students' mental, emotional, and behavioral development. Although many mindfulness programs exist, the types of programs that are effective for specific age groups remain unclear. In this systematic review, the authors used established rating criteria to describe the level of evidence for school-based mindfulness...
In recent years, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies have reentered the realm of rigorous scientific inquiry, garnering much attention from both the psychiatric community and the broader public. Headlines on major media platforms frequently tout the psychedelic future of psychiatry, and patients increasingly ask about the prospect of using psychedelics during their sessions. Despite this...
Psychedelics have the ability to fundamentally alter the consciousness of individuals who take them and thus pose unique legal risks for psychiatrists interested in incorporating them into their practice. Several issues related to malpractice may be relevant, including absence of standards of care, risk of harm, inappropriate treatment, and the doctrine of respondeat superior. In addition to...
Despite some progress toward greater inclusion, individuals with personal experience of psychosis are rarely integrated into the training of clinicians or knowledge generation. Their exclusion increases the risk that dominant ways of conceptualizing psychosis primarily reflect second- and third-person observations rather than first-person experiences. Observed only from the outside, the...
Excited delirium, a diagnosis not found in the DSM and lacking clear criteria, has been used to explain fatalities of people in police custody, especially deaths of young Black men, and to exculpate police officers from responsibility. The label has also been invoked to justify the forceful restraint and sedation of people who may fail to obey the orders of law enforcement; ketamine, a...
The past decade has seen a renaissance of research interest into the psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelic compounds. In 2019, Oakland and Denver became the first two jurisdictions in the United States to decriminalize the possession of psychedelic-containing organisms. As research and public policy continue to evolve, it becomes increasingly plausible that psychedelics will become viable...
The study explored population-based service planning for mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). Evidence suggests the usefulness of MBCT in relapse prevention for individuals reporting three or more major depressive episodes. Depression data were from the Canadian Community Health Survey. A simulation model estimated recurrence rates and population sizes to sustain MBCT therapists (each...
Near-death experiences, or mystical experiences during encounters with death, are reported to have beneficial effects despite their phenomenologic similarity to pathological states. This study explored the prevalence of near-death experiences and associated psychological distress by using a cross-sectional survey of 832 psychiatric outpatients. Standardized measures of near-death experiences...