The Department of Veterans Affairs has implemented a new policy requiring younger veterans to sign consent forms and engage in documented discussions regarding the risks and benefits of antidepressants before receiving a prescription, according to The New York Times. In a separate development, the acting Navy secretary disclosed that eight sailors assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide.
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that approximately 49,000 people in the United States died by suicide in 2023—a figure more than double the 23,000 homicide deaths recorded that same year, per the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Emergency room visits for pediatric mental health crises surged 65% between 2019 and 2025 at Children’s Hospital Colorado, a state grappling with one of the nation’s highest youth suicide rates, Axios reports.
On the treatment front, an investigational smartphone application demonstrated efficacy in reducing the severity of negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia in a randomized trial published in JAMA Network Open. Conversely, Acadia Pharmaceuticals announced that its investigational Alzheimer’s disease psychosis drug, remlifanserin, failed to meet its primary endpoint in a Phase II trial, though the company intends to proceed with Phase III studies for the 5HT2A receptor inverse agonist.
Adherence to antipsychotic medication was linked to increased outpatient behavioral health visits and fewer emergency department encounters among young adults experiencing first-episode psychosis, according to a separate JAMA Network Open study. In other research, a multipronged electronic health record intervention promoting nonpharmacologic pain management post-surgery successfully reduced opioid exposure without negatively affecting patient-reported outcomes, a cluster randomized trial showed.
Prescribing trends indicate a shift in clinical practice: the annual prevalence of dispensed benzodiazepines fell 26.7% from 2013 to 2024, reflecting heightened clinical caution and updated safety labeling, per the American Journal of Psychiatry. Regarding cannabis use, roughly 9% of older adults reported past-year use, with 11% of that group meeting criteria for cannabis use disorder, a study in Addiction found. A systematic review and meta-analysis in Psychological Medicine further associated cannabis use with an elevated risk of violent behavior in both psychiatric patients and the general population.
Addressing systemic gaps, Chicago has launched a street psychiatry team to deliver mental health care directly to unhoused individuals, CBS News reports. Finally, a small pilot crossover trial published in JAMA Psychiatry indicated that patients with major depressive disorder experienced lower depression and anxiety scores after reducing their intake of ultraprocessed foods. Actor Sylvester Stallone recently disclosed that an “obsession” with his physique during his career peak led to bulimia and a dangerously low body fat percentage of 2.6%, NBC News noted. Related research in JAMA Network Open suggested that smartphone ownership at age 12 correlated with eating disorder symptoms by age 14.
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