Professor Caleb Lack

11/08/2025

Looking to wind down after a long week? How about a relaxing bedtime story by Dr. Lack, this time featuring tales from the Kiowa tribe...

https://youtu.be/mz61eZWCnK0?si=7aTHrG0CXVcxIV5b
(Also available on Spotify, Apple, and others)

11/07/2025

Ketamine has received a huge amount of interest in psychiatry over the past decade, especially as a treatment for depression. A newly published study sheds doubt on whether or not it’s actually effective over a placebo effect, though:

“Our initial hypothesis was that repeated ketamine infusions for people hospitalised with depression would improve mood outcomes,” McLoughlin said. “However, contrary to our hypothesis, we found this not to be the case. We suspect that functional unblinding (due to its obvious dissociative effects) has amplified the placebo effects of ketamine in previous trials. This is a major, often unacknowledged, problem with many recent trials in psychiatry evaluating ketamine, psychedelic, and brain stimulation therapies. Our trial highlights the importance of reporting the success, or lack thereof, of blinding in clinical trials.”

https://www.psypost.org/major-problem-ketamine-fails-to-outperform-placebo-for-treating-severe-depression-in-new-clinical-trial/

A clinical trial found that for hospitalized patients with severe depression, adding repeated ketamine infusions to standard care showed no significant benefit over a psychoactive placebo, suggesting the drug's antidepressant effects may be smaller than previously thought.

11/05/2025

By now, many of you will have seen the big article from The Cut on the psychotherapy called Internal Family Systems. Titled "The Truth about IFS, the Therapy that can Break You" the article is a great deep dive into one of the most currently trendy treatments and the many, many problems with it.

I really encourage you all to read that article (linked below), but also to understand the history of these kind of nonsensical treatments: ones not based on any good scientific theory or evidence, which end up doing much more harm than good. This isn't a new thing in psychotherapy, as anyone familiar with "The Memory Wars" of the 1980s and 1990s can attest (see here - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372340045_The_Memory_Wars_Then_and_Now_The_Contributions_of_Scott_O_Lilienfeld).

In short, IFS is both a) not evidence-based for any mental health conditions and b) fits all the hallmarks of a pseudoscientific treatment.

For a): There are three (3!) published clinical trials that have come out about IFS in the almost 40 years since it's inception that I'm aware of. In one it was compared to a monthly psychoeducational mailer for people with rheumatoid arthritis (Shadick et al., 2018) and the other compared it to no treatment (Sadr et al., 2023). So basically, it works better than nothing, but still showed very small effect sizes for both studies (the first on depressive symptoms, the second on "internet addiction."). Another (Hodgdon et al., 2021) was a "pilot" study with 17 people and no control groups (so it's not useful in determining effectiveness compared to placebo or regression to the mean).

I see people claim it's an EBT (evidence-based treatment) all the time. But the concept of ‘evidence based’ has been badly misused and distorted. When defenders of pseudoscience and dubious treatments do it, such as for IFS, they usually mean someone somewhere found X treatment worked, and then they published about it (usually a case report). So when people claim IFS is evidence based, asking them "What evidence and what quality is it?" is very revealing.

For b) IFS is a pseudoscience. It makes tons of non-falsifiable or untestable claims. To be scientific, a theory (and its resultant treatment) must (1) be falsifiable, and (2) make claims that are grounded in the broader psychological/neurological science. IFS makes MANY claims that I believe are unfalsifiable, ignores common factors that may be effective for some folks (e.g., when taken figuratively, "parts" of ourselves is in virtually every treatment, such as externalizing in CBT or narrative therapy), does not control for placebo or regression to the mean, and contradicts neuroscience (e.g., there are no empirical articles that show that neuroscience supports that we have different parts of ourselves literally).

And finally - IFS is not talking about "metaphorical" parts. Richard Schwartz literally believes there are distinct "entities" with and outside of yourself that influence your mental health - he calls them "fully autonomous beings." My favorite part people don't often talk about is the "Unattached Burdens" - which are literally magical demons that can get in you to cause problems (see https://doubleblindmag.com/does-internal-family-systems-therapy-implant-the-belief-of-demons-into-clients/).

Read the full article here and let me know your thoughts - https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html

11/04/2025

What’s that? It’s dark way too early and you need a new book to read ri get you through the depths of winter?

You are in luck, as my son Lucian has just released his first full length novel! It’s the follow up to the two best ape-themed videogames of recent years. That is right: the next installment of the Super Gorilla Quest series is here and it’s a freaking book!

Grab your Kindle and start reading!!!

https://amzn.to/4hCpfoort

11/04/2025

Do you have the fall and winter blues? A significant percentage of the population develops what is called "Seasonal Affective Disorder," but there are available treatments. The key is to start now, before the depths of winter sets in, with some small steps including using light therapy. This article is a great summary!

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/29/nx-s1-5546611/seasonal-depression-light-therapy-mental-health

11/01/2025

Looking to wind down after a long week? How about a relaxing bedtime story by Dr. Lack, this time about spiders...

https://youtu.be/mz61eZWCnK0?si=7aTHrG0CXVcxIV5b

(Also available on Spotify, Apple, and others)

10/30/2025

Ready to learn how to treat chronic tics and Tourette's Syndrome using our most effective therapy? Join me next week live with the Center for Emotional Health to learn all about Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT)!

https://learn.thecenterforemotionalhealth.com/courses/new-course-25

10/29/2025

Got five new (Spanish does) for the farm. Introduced them to our existing herd today, and it went well!

10/28/2025

Excellent new research showing that the rise in diagnoses of autism and ADHD aren’t due to symptom increases. In other words, there aren’t more kids with autism symptoms now, there are just more kids with autism diagnoses now.

“The rise in clinical diagnoses of ASD and ADHD in the adolescent/young adult population does not seem to be parallelled by a similar increase in ASD and ADHD symptoms.”

Read the full study - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178125002616

10/27/2025

Another study finds how being in nature can boost our well-being, physically and mentally. Get out and touch grass, as the kids say!

"Recreational time in nature is linked to greater positive and fewer negative emotions than time in built settings, but it is unclear whether benefits: a) are short-lived or ‘spill-over’ across the day; b) apply to both general populations and people with common mental health disorders (CMDs) such as depression and anxiety; and c) extend across different types of nature (green vs. blue spaces). ... Controlling for socio-demographic, temporal, and well-being factors, visits to nature were associated with greater happiness regardless of CMD status. Among those with CMDs, blue space visits also related to higher anxiety, possibly reflecting self-management. Results suggest nature visits support daily well-being, but blue spaces need further study"



https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439760.2025.2549296

10/24/2025

Looking to wind down after a long week? How about a relaxing bedtime story by Dr. Lack, this time about Hercules and his twelve labors...

https://youtu.be/nDiNmWP1_n4?si=7r-4aZhql7Nk6TDM

(Also available on Spotify, Apple, and others)

10/24/2025

Really well done new clinical trial shows that transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatment (e.g., the Unified Protocol for Emotional Disorders) can treat major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and PTSD as well as more specific, focused CBT (e.g., CBT for depression, CBT for panic disorder, Cognitive Processing Therapy).



https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000578942500111X