TMS Versus Medication in Older Adults With Treatment-Resistant Depression: New Evidence Challenges the Traditional Treatment Sequence
For older adults living with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), choosing the next treatment can be particularly challenging. Persistent depression often coexists with medical illness, multiple medications, cognitive concerns, and increased vulnerability to adverse effects. Should clinicians add another medication, switch antidepressants,…
Human Brain Organoids in Mice: A New Window Into Brain Development and Psychiatric Disease
What happens when human-derived brain tissue is allowed to develop within a living nervous system? A new study published in Nature offers an important experimental answer—and opens new possibilities for studying the biology of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. In “Developmental…
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine Honors Optogenetics: Why Controlling Brain Circuits With Light Changed Neuroscience
Today, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for discoveries that led to optogenetics—a technology that allows scientists to control the activity of selected nerve cells with light. For…
Treatment-Resistant Depression Is a Dynamic Continuum: Why Timing, Reassessment, and Treatment Sequencing Matter
For decades, treatment-resistant depression (TRD) has often been described using a deceptively simple rule: major depressive disorder that has not responded adequately to at least two antidepressant trials of sufficient dose and duration. That definition remains useful for research, regulation,…
Can ECT Reduce the Risk of Death in Severe Depression? What the Latest Evidence Shows
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is best known for something immediate: it can produce rapid and substantial improvement in severe depression, including illness accompanied by suicidality, psychosis, catatonia, or treatment resistance. But could its benefits extend beyond symptom relief? A 2026 review…
What Is Interventional Psychiatry? Defining a Field at a Crossroads
Psychiatry is changing. For much of modern psychiatric practice, the psychiatrist’s therapeutic toolkit has been organized around two major domains: psychotherapy and medication. Yet over the past several decades, a growing group of treatments has changed what psychiatrists can directly…
ECT After Temporal Lobectomy: What a Complex Case Teaches Us About Treating Severe Depression
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments available for severe, treatment-resistant depression, particularly when depression is accompanied by suicidality, psychosis, catatonia, or marked functional decline. But what happens when a patient who may benefit from ECT also…
From Ions to Mood: What Our Research on the Ouabain Model Reveals About Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder is defined clinically by changes in mood, energy, activity, cognition, and behavior. Yet beneath these recognizable symptoms lies a much more difficult question: What biological processes cause the brain to shift between different mood states? This question has…
Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression: Can It Work in Public Mental Healthcare?
For years, psychedelic-assisted therapy has generated excitement because of the possibility that a single treatment session might produce meaningful antidepressant effects lasting for weeks or longer. But an important question remains: Can psychedelic therapy move beyond highly specialized research environments…
Treating Bipolar Disorder Across the Lifespan: What Does the Best Available Evidence Tell Us?
Bipolar disorder presents clinicians with an unusual treatment challenge: the same diagnosis can require fundamentally different treatment strategies at different moments in a patient’s life. A medication that is effective during acute mania may not be the best treatment for…