QAnxiety

02/13/2026

New research from the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education at the University of Calgary suggests we may be able to detect neural markers of depression and anxiety before symptoms begin in high-risk adolescents.

In a longitudinal study of youth ages 11 to 17 with a family history of internalizing disorders, researchers examined resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) using baseline brain scans. Participants had no prior clinically significant episodes at study entry and were followed for 18 months to track new onset of depression or anxiety.

Key finding: Adolescents who later developed depression or anxiety already showed distinct patterns of altered connectivity at baseline, particularly in subcortical regions involved in emotion and reward processing, including striatal and limbic circuits, and their connections with parietal and visual regions.
Importantly, these differences were present before clinical onset and remained significant after controlling for age, s*x, and subclinical symptoms, suggesting altered striatal connectivity may serve as a pre-morbid biomarker.
If replicated in larger and more diverse samples, these findings could
• Improve early identification of high-risk youth
• Inform targeted prevention strategies
• Help refine interventions, including behavioral therapies and neuromodulation approaches

For more info see:

01/22/2026

New International OCD Treatment Guidelines (2025) have been published!

The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT), in collaboration with the International College of Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders (ICOCS), has released the 2025 International Guidelines for the Management of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Developed by a global panel of OCD experts and informed by systematic literature reviews, expert consensus, and lived-experience feedback, these guidelines provide clear, practical, and evidence-based recommendations for OCD care across the lifespan.

These guidelines include:
- Foundations of OCD diagnosis and management
- Psychological, pharmacological, and neuromodulation treatments
- Approaches to treatment resistant OCD
- Pediatric and adolescent OCD
- OCD in special populations and future directions

Recommendations are organized by levels of evidence and summarized in accessible tables, making them especially useful for day-to-day clinical decision-making. For more information see the article below:

01/22/2026

Can music-based digital therapeutics help reduce anxiety?

In a randomized study of individuals with moderate anxiety already taking medication, music combined with auditory beat stimulation (ABS) significantly reduced anxiety and negative affect compared to a pink noise control. Importantly, longer listening times led to greater improvements, suggesting a dose–response effect, with the strongest reductions seen after 36 minutes of exposure.

With over 1,300 participants screened and 144 randomized, these findings replicate earlier evidence that music with ABS may provide acute anxiety relief, especially when access to traditional treatments like CBT is limited due to cost, time, or availability.

For more information, see the full study below:

Anxiety is one of the most frequently reported mental health conditions worldwide, yet access to effective treatments such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) remains limited due to cost, time, and potential side effects. Music-based digital therapeutics, particularly when combined....

12/29/2025

OCD or an Anxiety Disorder? Getting the Diagnosis Right:

In this video interview Dr. Jesse M. Crosby shares what you should know about OCD and common anxiety disorders, answering questions to help clinicians, educators, and loved ones recognize the difference between naturally occurring anxiety, potentially debilitating anxiety disorders, and OCD. He explores the keys to their accurate diagnoses and answers audience questions about treatment approaches.

Link to the video:

Watch McLean videos and webinars on demand including OCD or an Anxiety Disorder? Getting the Diagnosis Right

12/15/2025

The FDA has approved the FL-100 transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) system (by Flow Neuroscience) for adults with moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder, either as monotherapy or adjunctive treatment in non–treatment-refractory cases.

In a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial of 174 adults, participants self-administered tDCS at home under remote supervision. Active treatment resulted in significantly greater symptom improvement, with higher clinical response (58% vs 38%) and remission (45% vs 22%) rates compared with sham.

New treatments such as tDCS become increasingly important as the prevalence of depression has increased 60% over the past decade, with around one-third of patients not achieving remission with first-line treatments. This approval represents an important step toward accessible, non-pharmacologic, home-based neuromodulation therapy in mental health care.

11/26/2025

A recent study by Calderaro et al., 2025 looked at how dopamine system function relates specifically to social anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Using neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI), a non-invasive proxy for midbrain dopamine activity, on 43 adolescents (mean age =12years), the study found that higher NM signal in the substantia nigra region were associated with more severe social anxiety, but not generalized anxiety symptoms.

Given that social anxiety often begins earlier in life and responds less robustly to exposure-based treatments, dopamine-related pathways may represent a promising target for future, more tailored interventions.

These preliminary findings suggest distinct neural mechanisms underlying social vs. generalized anxiety and highlight NM-MRI as a promising tool for probing dopamine-related etiological pathways and informing future targeted interventions in youth mental health.

See the article below for more information:

11/22/2025

Case study finds that Deep-Brain Stimulation leads to Major OCD Symptom Reduction:
A UCSF research team has reported a proof-of-concept clinical case demonstrating that patient-specific brain mapping can guide deep-brain stimulation (DBS) to achieve rapid and substantial reduction in severe, treatment-refractory OCD.

Using invasive electrophysiological mapping across the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuit, the research team identified individualized stimulation sites associated with acute symptom improvement. These data were used to precisely implant a DBS device targeting two nodes within the right ventral capsule, regions structurally connected to the orbitofrontal and cingulate cortices.

Following activation, the patient experienced a 62% reduction in OCD severity at 6 months, with rapid improvements noted shortly after stimulation began.

This case provides the first demonstration that invasive brain mapping can optimize DBS targeting for OCD, potentially enabling personalized neuromodulation in future patients. It also suggests that high-frequency neural activity in specific CSTC circuit nodes may correlate with symptom severity, offering a possible biomarker for future interventions.

For more information see the attached research paper:

Deep brain stimulation has been used to treat severe, refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with variable outcomes across multiple anatomical targets. To overcome these limitations, we developed an invasive brain mapping paradigm in which electrodes were implanted across the OCD cortico-str...

11/12/2025

A few weeks ago, our research team had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. It was an incredible opportunity to learn about the latest and emerging research and treatment modalities being implemented by psychiatrists across Canada. We were also honoured to share our group's work exploring serotonergic psychedelics for treating anxiety symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric conditions at this meeting.

11/08/2025

Great day of learning at the Centre for Psychedelics Health Research (CPHR) Annual Scientific Meeting at Providence Care Hospital.

09/19/2025

New OCD Research Findings:
A recent clinical trial published in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Stern et al., found that ondansetron (an anti-nausea drug) may help reduce OCD symptom severity in patients already taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

The study found:
- Participants with OCD who received ondansetron + SRI showed significant reductions in overall OCD severity as well as changes in brain connectivity linked to compulsive behaviours.

- Ondansetron alone was not found to improve OCD symptoms.

- This study highlights the potential of serotonin receptor modulation as strategy for treating treatment-resistant OCD.

For more information see:

Results of a new clinical trial shed light on mechanisms that may give rise to some of the repetitive behaviors experienced in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette’s disorder. The results also add to past evidence suggesting that an FDA-approved medicine called ondansetron, when added ...

09/09/2025

A summary of: Are Psychedelic Agents Ready for Prime Time as Stand-Alone Treatments?

An editorial by: Claudio N. Soares, MD,PhD, MBA
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In the 1950s and 1960s, psychedelic research was a growing field. Low-dose “psycholytic” therapy with L*D was used to help patients lower defences and access deeper emotions in psychotherapy, while higher-dose “psychedelic therapy” aimed to produce transformative, mystical experiences thought to support recovery from depression, anxiety, and even alcoholism. Although early reports were promising, many of these studies lacked rigorous controls, and when stricter trials failed to replicate the results, the field lost credibility and momentum.

Recently research on using psychedelics for mental health has reemerged, but with far more rigorous scientific methodology. A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial by Robison et al., (2025) tested whether psychedelics can function as stand-alone treatments. The trial included 198 adults with moderate-to-severe generalized anxiety disorder, randomized to receive a single dose of pharmaceutical-grade L*D (MM120) at 25 -200 μg doses, or placebo. No psychotherapy was paired with the intervention.
Results were compelling: at 4 weeks, both the 100 μg and 200 μg doses showed significant reductions in anxiety symptoms. At 12 weeks, 65% of patients in the 100 μg group responded, and nearly half achieved remission. Improvements in depressive symptoms were also observed.

While questions remain about long-term durability, dropout rates, and how to integrate such treatments into clinical practice, this is the first trial to show that a psychedelic can produce substantial and lasting reductions in anxiety symptoms without psychotherapy. This marks a turning point in psychedelic science, moving it closer to mainstream psychiatry.

The link to the entire editorial:

If one sought psychological support in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a reasonable chance they would be offered lysergic acid diethylamide (L*D) to facilitate and enhance the depth of the psychotherapeutic experience. That practice became known as a psycholytic approach,1 in which L*D was...

06/18/2025

Congratulations, Queen's University!

The university achieves a fifth straight global top 10 ranking and the top spot in Canada for advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.