Paranoia is receiving increasing attention in its own right, since it is a central experience of psychotic disorders and a marker of the health of a society. Paranoia is associated with use of the most commonly taken illicit drug, cannabis. The objective was to determine whether the principal psychoactive ingredient of cannabis-∆(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-causes paranoia and to use the drug...
A recent large population study of 130,000 adults in the United States failed to find evidence for a link between psychedelic use (lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin or mescaline) and mental health problems. Using a new data set consisting of 135,095 randomly selected United States adults, including 19,299 psychedelic users, we examine the associations between psychedelic use and mental...
The discovery of ketamine's rapid and robust antidepressant effects opened a window into a new generation of antidepressants. Multiple controlled trials and open-label studies have demonstrated these effects across a variety of patient populations known to often achieve little to no response from traditional antidepressants. Ketamine has been generally well tolerated across patient groups, with...
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program in patients with chronic bothersome tinnitus on the (1) severity of symptoms of tinnitus and (2) functional connectivity in neural attention networks. STUDY DESIGN: Open-label interventional pilot study. SETTING: Outpatient academic medical center. SUBJECTS: A total of 13 adult participants with a median...
IMPORTANCE: Sleep disturbances are most prevalent among older adults and often go untreated. Treatment options for sleep disturbances remain limited, and there is a need for community-accessible programs that can improve sleep. OBJECTIVE: To determine the efficacy of a mind-body medicine intervention, called mindfulness meditation, to promote sleep quality in older adults with moderate sleep...
BACKGROUND: Prospective studies on the relationship between course of cannabis use and clinical outcome in patients with non-affective psychotic disorders are inconclusive. The current study examined whether (1) persistent, recently started, discontinued and non-cannabis-using patients with a psychotic disorder differed with regard to illness outcome at 3-year follow-up, and (2) whether timing...
Previous studies have indicated a role for beta-arrestin2 in the regulation of brain cannabinoid effects and cannabinoid CB1 receptors, but whether beta-arrestin1 has a role has not been investigated. To determine the role of beta-arrestin1 in cannabinoid activity. Beta-arrestin1 -/- mice and their wild-type (+/+) counterparts were assayed for antinociceptive and temperature-decreasing effects...
Pregnant women with histories of depression are at high risk of depressive relapse/recurrence during the perinatal period, and options for relapse/recurrence prevention are limited. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has strong evidence among general populations but has not been studied among at-risk pregnant women to prevent depression. We examined the feasibility, acceptability, and...
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has long been regarded as the standard for quick antidepressant response. Recently, ketamine has been touted as an even faster antidepressant, notably in the report by Ghasemi et al. (2014) in which 18 patients (nine in each group) were given three intravenous ketamine infusions or three ECT treatments and followed for 1 week (Ghasemi et al., 2014). While the...
A qualitative analysis (The Empirical Phenomenological Psychological method) of interviews involving eight patients (depression, burn-out syndrome, and chronic pain) was carried out in order to obtain knowledge regarding the effects of flotation tank therapy. This knowledge might be helpful for both professionals and potential floaters. The analysis resulted in 21 categories, which were...