QAnxiety

03/27/2026

A new Canadian study out of McMaster University (Halladay et al. 2026) highlights a concerning shift in the relationship between cannabis use and mental health over the past decade.

Researchers analyzed two nationally representative surveys from 2012 (n=25,113) and 2022 (n=9,861) examining cannabis use and internalizing mental health conditions among Canadians aged 15+. The findings show significant changes in both prevalence and strength of association.

Key findings:
• The prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), major depressive episodes (MDE), and cannabis use roughly doubled between 2012 and 2022
• Suicidality rates remained stable overall, but increased by 44% among youth
• More frequent cannabis use was linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality, with a clear dose-response relationship.

These findings highlight the importance of early identification, prevention, and integrated mental health and substance use care, especially as cannabis use patterns continue to evolve post cannabis legalization and post-pandemic.

For more information see the article below:

Objective As epidemiological patterns of cannabis use and internalizing problems evolve globally, it is critical to reassess their associations—particularly in ...

02/25/2026

Presenting new research on treatments for anxiety disorders, OCD and PTSD in the 36th Annual Therapeutics Queen's University Faculty of Health Sciences

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 ...