Remote work has soared in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. But, a new study suggests the practice has made workers more socially isolated, anxious and depressed compared to people who work in-person in offices and other settings.

"Other studies have found that workers are willing to give up 4 to 10% of their earnings in order to have the ability to work remotely," says Natalia Emanuel, an economist at Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the main author of the new study published in the journal Science. "So there is a great desire for remote work."

Yet she and her colleagues found that people in remote jobs have seen a rise in hours spent alone during the workday, and more visits to mental health care providers. In self-reports, they also assess their own mental health negatively.

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The Trump administration is taking another look at ending biannual clock changes, with an eye toward making daylight saving time (DST), or the "summer clock," permanent.

On May 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent in a 48-1 vote, part of a largely bipartisan push to end twice-yearly clock changes.

Although gaining extra winter evening daylight might seem like a win, health experts say permanent daylight saving time could disrupt people's natural circadian rhythms.

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Joel Snape’s article (What does stress really do to our bodies, 17 May) was informative regarding the physiology of stress, yet narrow in articulating the broader drivers of chronic stress in modern life. The piece frames stress largely through everyday frictions: hectic school runs, online arguments, forgotten shoes, driving fines and doomscrolling. It then suggests that stress management is primarily an individual regulatory issue: breathing patterns, rumination, resilience, therapy, exercise and self-care.

Keep reading here.

The Federal Trade Commission appears to be targeting transgender rights, going beyond its usual ways of operating to do so, according to experts and federal employees who spoke to WIRED.

Since July 2025, the agency has been gearing up to frame gender-affirming care for minors as a consumer-protection issue, in a move that a former FTC employee, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, described as “very strange.”

“I think their end goal here is to be on the front page, being warriors for the Trump anti-trans agenda,” they claim.

In January, the agency began requesting documents and materials from nonprofits that support health care providers who provide care to transgender people. The FTC issued what are known as civil investigative demands (CIDs)—instruments similar to subpoenas that an agency can use to conduct investigations—to the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the Endocrine Society. The cases are being brought by the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

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Nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide had mental disorders in 2023, reflecting a 95.5% increase since 1990, a new study has found.

The largest increases were in anxiety and depression, which were also the most common disorders in 2023. In third place was a residual category of personality disorders not accompanied by other mental or substance use disorders.

The study, published Thursday in the journal The Lancet, also revealed how trends concerning 12 mental disorders differed by age, sex, location and sociodemographic factors among 204 countries and territories — suggesting “that we are entering an even more concerning phase of worsening mental disorder burden globally,” the authors wrote in the study.

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The slang term “6-7” became nearly unavoidable for anyone interacting with children and adolescents last year. Originating from a somewhat obscure rap song in late 2024, it quickly gained momentum on TikTok and other social media platforms, evolving into a chant shouted in response whenever the numbers 6 or 7 cropped up in casual conversation. Primarily embraced by Generation Alpha—those born between 2010 and 2024—the phrase has become so pervasive that some schools have even banned its useopens in new window. Its meteoric rise demonstrates the internet’s power to propel fringe terms into the mainstream at warp speed.

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As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown stretches into its second year, researchers and health care workers say that it is creating a mental health crisis in immigrant communities.

Data from one primary care clinic in Los Angeles, shared exclusively with NPR, shows a sharp rise in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts among patients.

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As Gen Z women enter adulthood and start their careers, many are considering what their future lives could look like.

Nearly half (47%) of Gen Z women say they want to be happily married with kids and a stable job, according to a recent survey by EduBirdie, an online writing platform, of 2,000 respondents. Another 23% say they’d rather be highly successful, independent and famous, even if it means staying single.

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As the federal health department launches a plan to wean patients off antidepressants, mental health advocates and psychiatrists say blaming the United States' mental health crisis on overmedicalization and overprescription of psychiatric medications is an inaccurate portrayal of a complex problem.

"It really is an oversimplification," says Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, president of the American Psychiatric Association. "And it really ignores the larger reality, which is that too many patients really cannot access timely, comprehensive care that is much needed for our nation."

But, she adds that she and the American Psychiatric Association support any plans to better train healthcare providers to safely prescribe and wean patients off antidepressants.

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For “decades, the public conversation about mental health has been routed through the categories in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM,” says Awais Aftab. These “have been convenient for professional communication, insurance billing and conducting clinical trials, but they have given the false impression that each mental disorder is a relatively distinct problem with clear boundaries.” They “can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice” to the “nature of mental illness.”

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A single psychedelic trip may cause physical changes in the brain that could explain why some people report psychological benefits from the experience, a small study suggests.

The research, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, focused on psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms. The drug has been the subject of a number of studies in people that have found it appears to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. It has also shown promise in addiction medicine.

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Trauma does not live only in memory. It lives in the beliefs clients hold about themselves.

“I am not safe” and “It was my fault” are not irrational thoughts; they are conclusions the nervous system drew during an experience it could not fully process.

We see the client whose panic attacks began six months ago, but whose hypervigilance began in childhood; the high-functioning professional unable to let go of perfectionism; the parent who dissociates during bath time without understanding why. The past does not stay in the past. It shapes attachment, self-concept, relationships, avoidance and somatic reactivity.

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Brain health is of paramount importance to nearly all Americans, yet few are aware of the latest science on how to nurture it.

The Alzheimer’s Association released its annual report Tuesday, which included a survey of more than 3,800 adults 40 and older, 99% of whom indicated brain health is at least as important as physical health.

About 88% of the respondents said maintaining brain health is “very important,” but only 9% said they knew “a lot” about how to do it.

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The link between childhood mental illness, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and adverse economic outcomes in adulthood is more prevalent and stronger than previously thought, according to research from the University of Aberdeen.

A review of all relevant research conducted over the past 10 years has found a consistent association between diagnosis of a mental illness such as anxiety and low mood in childhood and an increased likelihood of unemployment and claiming benefits as an adult.

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In the study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, experts identified significant socioeconomic inequalities in access to care and clinical outcomes, with children and young people living in the most deprived neighborhoods more likely to have their referral to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) rejected, and to have worse clinical outcomes at 12 months' follow-up from their referral.

Younger children, particularly those aged under 11, were also less likely to receive help, hampering earlier intervention efforts.

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President Trump has signed an executive order to make certain psychedelic drugs more available to treat mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. He directed $50 million in federal funds to make them more accessible, and ordered the Food and Drug Administration to fast track a review of such drugs as psilocybin and ibogaine.

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In a recent comprehensive longitudinal study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed data from more than 5,000 adult offspring to investigate whether the timing of children’s exposure to parental depression was associated with mental health outcomes decades later. Study findings revealed that cumulative exposure to both maternal and paternal depression was associated with higher odds of anxiety and depression in adulthood.

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Hannah Fowles was spiraling. 

It had been a grueling day at work, and by the time the 22-year-old from Provo, Utah, got home, panic was bubbling in her chest as her thoughts raced and her cheeks flushed red.

“I was starting to get super overheated and I couldn’t calm myself down,” Fowles told The Post. “Nothing that I normally do, like breathing exercises or lying down in a dark room, was working.”

Then she saw the bag.

Just weeks earlier, Fowles and her therapist had put together a small, grab-and-go kit filled with items to help calm her mind when anxiety strikes — an idea she’d first come across while scrolling on TikTok.

She now reached for it, swallowing her anxiety medication and pressing a cold pack to the back of her neck. She flicked on a small portable fan, letting the cool air wash over her face, while in her other hand, she gripped a spiky fidget toy, feeling its prongs dig into her palm as the panic began to ebb. 

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Most weeks when I meet with my therapist, she triages some aspect of my life that is actively bursting at the seams — my inability to rationally talk about politics, for example, or the state of my personal finances. But, every so often, life feels uneventful, and I head into sessions with nothing to talk about. On a number of occasions, I’ve considered cancelling these appointments. Why waste 45 minutes of my time and spend $30 on a copay when I feel fine and have nothing to say?

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Sharon Thomas, a psychologist and director of signal-session therapy at the Ross Center in Washington, D.C., said both counselor and client enter the session with expectations: “That the client will be able to have meaningful change in their life, and that we’ll see an improvement in both their self-efficacy and a decline in their symptoms in just one visit.”

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Google has updated its Gemini AI offering with a "Help is available" module that will provide connections to care when a conversation signals a user may need mental health support, and a "one-touch" interface with an immediate connection to a crisis hotline should the AI recognize references to possible suicide or self-harm.

The "Help is available" module will provide immediate connections to real-world resources and human support, while the "one-touch" offering will provide a direct route to quickly connect with real‑world crisis hotlines or support services via call, text, chat or through the hotline's website.

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An independent panel of autism experts plans to meet in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to challenge the Trump administration's views on autism spectrum disorder.

The newly formed Independent Autism Coordinating Committee is billing itself as a science-based alternative to an existing federal entity called the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.

The new group's first meeting comes just weeks after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed 21 new members to the federal panel.

Keep reading here: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/19/nx-s1-5752354/new-autism-alternative-group-maha-ideological-agenda

Kim Freudenberg, a longtime teacher in San Francisco, knew that raising two boys meant a lot of hard conversations. She warned them about all the usual dangers: drugs, alcohol, sex, social media, riding a bike without a helmet.

"Never once did I even think that I needed to say 'gambling,'" she recalls.

One day, when her oldest son was 11, he was watching someone play video games on a livestream and clicked on a link in the comments. It took him to an offshore online casino.

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Artificial intelligence chatbots are so prone to flattering and validating their human users that they are giving bad advice that can damage relationships and reinforce harmful behaviors, according to a new study that explores the dangers of AI telling people what they want to hear.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, tested 11 leading AI systems and found they all showed varying degrees of sycophancy — behavior that was overly agreeable and affirming. The problem is not just that they dispense inappropriate advice but that people trust and prefer AI more when the chatbots are justifying their convictions.

“This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist: The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement,” says the study led by researchers at Stanford University.

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A Colorado teenager is sounding the alarm on social media’s impact on young girls after surveying more than 1,000 peers nationwide and finding strong links between platform use and rising rates of anxiety, depression and sleep deprivation.

"I saw that social media was just a driving factor of all mental health issues, anxiety, depression," 17-year-old Hallie Zilberman told Fox News on Sunday.

Zilberman surveyed over 1,000 teenage girls nationwide to better understand today's mental health crisis. The results revealed some common contributors to negative mental health, one being social media, which prompted her to delete her own Snapchat and Instagram

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Psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, adversely affect the daily functioning and well-being of millions of people worldwide. Understanding the neural and genetic underpinnings of these disorders can help medical and psychiatry researchers to devise more effective methods to predict the risk that they will emerge, as well as diagnosing and treating them.

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Neuroaesthetics merges aesthetics with neuroscience to explain how sensory experiences affect the brain. When applied to urban environments, it examines the ways in which sensory aspects of architecture and other features of cities influence responses through perception, stress, cognition, and social interactions. Cities can drive you crazy with noise, pollution, and stress, but they also offer colors, lights, and fractal structures whose repeating patterns have been shown to be therapeutic. Unfortunately, environments that promote mental wellness are not accessible to everyone. Previous studies show that aesthetic deprivation in low-income and marginalized urban communities can make other disadvantages, like environmental stress, even worse.

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Chronic pain has a way of upending a life.

In her memoir This Is the Door, writer Darcey Steinke writes that “pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do”.

In her case, excruciating pain from a herniated disc forced a multitude of changes – sitting down hurt so much that she “basically had to stand up all day long”, she says. Emotionally, it was a rollercoaster: “I was roiling, anxious, fragmented,” she writes.

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So you want to reclaim your time and attention by spending less time on your phone. How do you do that when your phone is designed to suck you in and keep you scrolling?

Life Kit spoke to experts in behavioral science, psychology and technology for real-world advice. The key, they say, is to find effective ways to resist that constant urge to keep picking up your phone.

For some people, the solution may be as simple as practicing self-awareness: Do you really need to look at your phone right now, or do you actually need something else? Others may need a little more help from blockers that limit access to apps and websites.

Keep reading here.

The weight of the world is increasingly showing up in therapy these days — from fears of the war with Iran to worries about the job market to anxiety about immigration enforcement.

And, the counselors themselves are also feeling the strain.

Coming up at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two mental health professionals about how therapists are coping with stress and burnout and how all of us can all take care of ourselves in especially difficult times.

Keep reading here.

Houston considered himself lucky to have lived the majority of his life without experiencing anxiety. Still, that meant that when his panic attacks started in 2022, it felt like going from zero to 100. Sometimes the attacks would strike at work, leaving him hyperventilating and breathless. Other times they would wake him in the middle of the night, his body in a cold sweat.

“I didn’t know what a panic attack was,” says Houston, who spoke to C&EN on the condition of withholding his full name because he fears his mental health history could disqualify him from employment. “To go from nothing to full throttle was crazy.”

When Houston went to the emergency room after a panic attack, a doctor asked him whether he had been taking anything that could affect his hormones. About a week prior, Houston had stopped taking finasteride, a hormone-active anti-hair-loss cream. It appeared that what started as an attempt to curb hair loss would become a years-long struggle to get his mental health back to baseline.

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What you’ve got there from the sun on your face is a massive boost of serotonin!” says Alison Greenwood, founder of Dose of Nature, the charity successfully prescribing time outside as a treatment for mental health.

Greenwood is striding round Pensford Field, a tiny patch of wildness tucked behind houses in south-west London. The bright day is illuminating the early blackthorn blossom, gleaming off the pond where a heron watches tiny froglets and shadows of birch trees on a wood-chip path. “All these trees and plants are giving off phytoncides, and they’re good for your immune system too,” the former NHS psychologist says.

The key, she says, is the rediscovery of something very old: “The idea that nature is good for our mental health and wellbeing has been around for millennia. We evolved outside, under the sky, [and so] we are animals that are caged most of our time, in schools or cars or offices or homes. As soon as we get outside, we’re free.”

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While an existential fear of death is nothing new, and nor are claims to conquer mortality with elixirs or holy grails, extending your lifespan is no longer an aspiration dependent on following a disciplined diet and exercise regime alone. Nowadays, there is also an increasingly expansive menu of biohacks purported to boost health, offered at self-styled “longevity clinics”. Rather than being confined to Hollywood and the uber-rich, such clinics are beginning to proliferate among the affluent mainstream. Conduct an online search for longevity and, in the UK alone, there are numerous results for longevity services or longevity medicine.

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Analysis of a large, nationally representative survey shows that stroke survivors under age 50 have more problems concentrating and running errands and experience more poor mental health days than older stroke survivors do. Younger survivors who were not working faced the greatest challenges in their recovery. The study comes as stroke rates among younger people have increased rapidly in recent years, driven in part by sedentary lifestyles and rising obesity rates.

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When you think about finding a purpose, you might think it's something grand in scale — like starting a non-profit. But a new book argues that purpose can be found in smaller everyday actions that help or support those around us.

The book is called Mattering: The secret to a life of deep connection and purpose. In it, author Jennifer Wallace explains that scientists have found the need to matter, or feel valued by others is fundamental to being human.

Keep reading here.

Taking a multivitamin every day for two years appears to slow some markers of biological ageing – albeit to a small degree, research suggests.

While chronological age is based on how long a person has lived, biological age reflects the state of the body. Estimates of the latter are often based on changes in patterns of DNA methylation – modifications to DNA that accumulate with age and affect how genes function.

One theory is that by slowing the rate of biological ageing, it may be possible to prevent or mitigate age-related illness, meaning people have more years of good health.

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People with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder die on average 10 to 20 years earlier than the general population. The main causes of this are cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, which are triggered or exacerbated by a lack of exercise. Now, an international team of scientists led by MedUni Vienna is calling for physical activity to be recognized as an integral part of psychiatric treatment and is also describing specific steps for successfully integrating it into practice.

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Evidence continues to mount suggesting that GLP-1 drugs may help people cut back on cigarettes, drinking and opioid use.

As the medications — which include semaglutide and tirzepatide — have grown in popularity, anecdotal reports have emerged of people who said they no longer felt the urge to drink alcohol or use drugs while taking a GLP-1. Peer-reviewed studies have since followed.

“An accumulating body of studies are showing positive potential for using GLP-1s for substance use,” said Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at the USC Institute for Addiction Science in Los Angeles.

Keep reading here.

Every day, you show up for others. You listen, advocate, and provide guidance that transforms lives. You create hope, inspire growth, and strengthen communities.

That is real superhero work.

This month, we want to hear your superhero story. We’re collecting 30-second vertical videos from social workers and all mental health professionals that capture your WHY—the moment, mission, or meaning that drives the heroic work you do. 

Share your story and you could win a $100 Amazon gift card, no purchase necessary. 

Video submission deadline: Friday, March 20, 2026.

Learn more: https://aatbs.com/national-social-work-month

Millions of people are using ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence tools for therapy, but with little government regulation, there's no guarantee these apps are helping—or that they won't cause harm. Cornell researchers are recommending new guidelines for developing safe and responsible large language model (LLM)-based mental well-being apps by consulting relevant experts and reviewing existing state and federal regulations. They proposed four ways to think about the apps, based on whether or not they guarantee certain benefits and how reliably those benefits are delivered.

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Fear of flying affects about 25 million Americans, and many psychologists say that the way to get over a fear is to gradually face it. But that's often hard to do with air travel if you're on your own, in public, surrounded by strangers. That's where the Fear of Flying Clinic comes in: over four days, participants are able to get slow exposure to the flying experience, as well as training and support from mental health and aviation professionals.

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In the United States, it’s common but wistful thinking to believe politics can be separated from the rest of our lives. You may “want to keep politics out of it”—out of conversations with friends and family, out of pop culture, or sports. But to understand the mood in America, and what that means on an individual level, we need to think of politics as something that is inseparable from everything else. Mental health can be a political outcome, and mental health can influence politics.

Keep reading here.

Would you be a different person if you had grown up somewhere else? A growing body of research is helping to answer this age-old nature versus nurture question and what it means for your identity.

In one sense, every human being's DNA is unique and its fundamental structure (in big-picture terms) does not change depending on where we go.

But DNA alone does not make us who we are, says Ziada Ayorech, a psychiatric geneticist at the University of Oslo in Norway. Born in Uganda, Ayorech moved to Canada when she was three, spent most of her life in the UK, and then moved to Norway a couple of years ago. "When I think about all the places I've lived and all the ways they have influenced my perspective, I intuitively imagine there's no way that that couldn't have made a difference," says Ayorech.

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A new report from Congress has raised the alarm about children with mental health conditions being held in juvenile detention, rather than getting treatment.

"Prolonged Incarceration of Children Due to Mental Health Care Shortages," released Thursday by the staff of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, is based on a survey sent to administrators of public juvenile detention facilities around the country. About half of those who responded to the survey reported they had, at some point, kept children incarcerated when they could have been released into offsite mental health care.

"This should shock America's conscience," Ossoff says. "Children with special needs, locked up for extended time instead of getting the mental health care that they need."

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The most effective exercises for tackling symptoms of depression and anxiety include running, swimming and dancing, a new study suggests.

Group workouts may offer even greater benefits for those with depression, especially young adults and new mothers.

Researchers, whose findings were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, are urging mental health professionals to "prescribe exercise with the same confidence as traditional treatments".

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When it comes to mental health, the math is sobering as the 2026 Winter Olympics approach.

About half of the U.S. Olympians and U.S. Paralympians set to compete at the Milano Cortina Games will not be at their best mentally, according to Jonathan Finnoff, chief medical officer of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC).

"Going into the Games, we know that 50 percent of Olympic athletes and 60 percent of Paralympic athletes are going to report some symptoms of mental health concern," Finnoff said in October at the Team USA Media Summit in New York.

So is the USOPC prepared to support those athletes? (The U.S. Olympic team is comprised of 232 athletes and the final U.S. Paralympic team will be announced March 2.)

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If you’re one of the millions of people who take a daily probiotic for digestive health, you may be getting an unexpected bonus: support for your mental health. The gut-brain connection has been a hot topic in health research, and scientists are increasingly finding that the trillions of microorganisms living in your digestive tract do far more than help you break down food. They may also influence your mood.

Depression affects more than 280 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, making it one of the leading causes of disability globally. While conventional treatments like therapy and medication remain the cornerstone of depression care, researchers have been exploring complementary approaches that could enhance treatment outcomes. One promising avenue: targeting the gut microbiome with probiotics.

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Think of a psychiatric condition, something like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, panic disorder or anorexia nervosa. Nowadays many of us take for granted that a mental health care professional can help determine if we have one of these conditions. But how do they make that diagnosis?

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In the past several years, researchers have started pioneering strategies that utilize personal data from phones, watches, and fitness trackers as well as health records and brain scans to more accurately select the most effective treatment for individuals—essentially bypassing the trial-and-error phase. This data can include metrics about everything from sleep and social connections to brain circuitry patterns and suicidality. Psychologists are also starting to explore how AI could use this personal data—shared only with the individual’s permission—to help people identify patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. These discoveries can in turn help clinicians and individuals pinpoint the ideal evidence-based solution for an individual experiencing anything from panic attacks and insomnia to depression and anxiety.

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I was a tenured professor, a published novelist, and a married father of two sons when I lost everything — because of a drug I was prescribed for a condition most people think is a joke.

Restless legs syndrome, or RLS, is often misunderstood or dismissed entirely. But for those of us with the severe form, it’s brutal: It feels like insects crawling up your bones from the inside. The only relief is movement. So you walk. All night. Until you collapse.

While the phrase “restless legs syndrome” accurately describes the condition, it is not a helpful name for the disorder. Most of the hundreds I’ve met with RLS cite the name itself as the biggest obstacle to getting the care and support they need. The silliness betrays the seriousness. Indeed, the Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation attempted a rebrand in the early 2000s — from RLS to Willis-Ekbom disease — but the new name never really caught on.

Keep reading here.