Saunas and hot tubs are pleasant and “therapeutic” for most of us, so it may be no surprise that scientists are trying to turn such experiences into psychiatric treatments. Whole-body hyperthermia (WBH) is a treatment that has long been used as an effective adjunct for treatment of certain kinds of cancers, and recently researchers have been testing it for depression.

While there is some overlap with major depression, complicated grief has core symptoms of yearning and sorrow and great difficulty accepting the reality of death. It’s one of the more controversial proposed DSM disorders, with critics seeing it as medicalizing a normal human experience.

Skin picking disorder is a compulsive behavior affecting 5% of people. N-acetylcysteine is an antioxidant that increases glutamate, and studies have shown that it is effective for excoriation’s sister disorder, trichotillomania (hair pulling). These data prompted investigators to try N-acetylcysteine in the treatment of SPD.

When patients become severely suicidal, we have few good treatment options. Recognizing the need for more options, Israeli researchers studied the use of very low doses of buprenorphine in suicidal patients. Patients with suicidal ideation were recruited from four medical centers.

In the summer of 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that post-marketing surveillance showed that patients taking greater than 40 mg/day of citalopram were at greater risk of QT prolongation. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) alerted its providers to this warning. VA researchers recently published a study detailing the results of this warning on patients.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is well known to cause short-term amnesia and disorientation around the time of treatment. However, for most of our patients, these cognitive side effects improve and disappear fairly quickly, usually within a few days. We have less information about how long-term ECT may affect our patients, such as those who have had multiple courses over the years, or those who have undergone maintenance monthly treatments. A recent study provides us with some reassuring data.

Second-generation antipsychotics (SGA) are used for a variety of psychiatric conditions, but even though they’ve been around for 20 years, we know little about what impact they have on the developing fetus. These medications are widely considered to be relatively safe during pregnancy, but this assumption is based on scant evidence. In this paper, researchers tapped into the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) National Pregnancy Registry of Atypical Antipsychotics and reported some reassuring results.

Many studies have shown that light therapy works for seasonal affective disorder, but does it work for non-seasonal major depression? That’s less clear. Systematic reviews have yielded inconclusive results, in part because prior studies have had methodological weaknesses. A new study with a robust design was just published.

Botulinum toxin A, commonly known as Botox, may be more than an anti-aging treatment. A new study has found that when Botox is injected between the eyebrows, it not only has a cosmetic effect—it also yields a long-lasting antidepressant effect.