Reviews & Analysis

A study drawing on the expansive UK Biobank dataset to explore the lifestyle, genetic and biological underpinnings of mental health highlights the influence of lifestyle on depression risk and suggests that detailed investigations into lifestyle factors, in conjunction with psychological aspects and advanced analysis methods, may reveal a deeper understanding of the complexities of mental health.

A large-scale prospective cohort study with 287,282 participants revealed that the integration of multiple healthy lifestyle factors (a favorable lifestyle) was associated with a lower risk of depression. Categorizing participants on the basis of their polygenic risk scores for depression demonstrated that the effect of this favorable lifestyle persisted even among participants with high genetic susceptibility.

The role of personality in brain health remains unclear. A systematic search demonstrated that lower levels of warmth, diligence, sociability and curiosity, and a higher level of nervousness, were predictive of increased risk of brain disorders. Brain structure, inflammation and lipid metabolism partially explain the associations between personality and brain disorders.

Using resting-state functional MRI, we revealed a dysfunction pattern in the white matter of people with four major psychiatric disorders. This pattern is distinct from structural changes and has specific molecular and genetic bases.

By integrating neuroimaging and multi-omics data, we established links between individual genetic variations and macro- to microscale brain circuit dysfunctions, specifically in corticocortical and corticostriatal circuits, that contribute to the diverse clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. These findings advance our understanding of the disease’s heterogeneity and offer potential treatment insights.

Loechner et al. present an expert consensus on how to e-mental health, from the development to research and evaluation of e-mental health interventions, a useful guide with practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners wanting to explore the field of e-mental health.

We searched for changes in the levels of plasma proteins that could potentially help to identify adolescents at risk of developing mental health issues. Our candidate biomarkers were associated with key enriched biological pathways, including immune responses, blood coagulation, neurogenesis and neuronal degeneration.

This Perspective presents the heightened risk of psychopathology and negative outcomes among the offspring of people with severe mental illness and calls for proactive support.

A large-scale study of more than 500,000 Norwegian adolescents showed that socio-economically disadvantaged adolescents experienced more adverse changes in well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic across a variety of domains, and that these negative changes persisted even after all pandemic restrictions were lifted in Norway.

Psychotic phenomena in early Parkinson’s disease are understudied and underappreciated. Bernasconi et al.¹ report that such phenomena, when combined with evidence of low-frequency activity in frontal regions on EEG, herald a later decline in frontal cognitive functions, underlining their significance and need for timely, accurate detection.

In this Review, Hodes and Kropp discuss the lessons we have learned from using sex as a biological variable in stress and mood disorder research and how we should shape our questions to avoid sex-based disparities in mental health care.

This Review discusses the adverse consequences of phenotypic imprecision for discovering reproducible biological correlates of psychopathology and provides recommendations for precision phenotyping that will help to overcome these challenges.

In early childhood, many children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder experience challenges in adaptive behavior that are needed to meet the demands of daily life. Mandelli et al. propose the use of a data-driven prediction model to identify unique subgroups of autistic preschoolers based on a ‘snapshot’ of adaptive skills.

This study used the DSM-5-recommended diagnostic standard to conduct a nationwide multi-center survey of the non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior of patients with psychiatric conditions. We investigated the prevalence of NSSI in 3,407 patients of various ages and with various psychiatric diagnoses from 15 hospitals in China.

Occhipinti and co-authors argue in this Perspective that by contrast to gross domestic product, the Mental Wealth metric provides an improved indicator for assessing economic and social production, including brain capital, measuring mental health and capital and emotional health and well-being.

Unipolar depression is a common mental disorder that is increasingly treated with neuroimaging-guided therapeutics. Cash et al. use brain connectomics in 57 heterogeneous neuroimaging studies to report meta-analytic brain networks linked to aberrant emotional and cognitive processing in individuals with unipolar depression.

Will connectome-based predictive modeling change how we care for people at risk of late-life suicide? A novel two-step modeling approach used by Gao et al. in their study sheds light on the road ahead.

This Review summarizes the advances in personalized medicine and drug discovery in psychiatry and suggests a framework for the development of clinically relevant biological subtypes in the field.

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at increased risk of suicide and face a shortage of efficient treatments options. A new study shows that brain stimulation by magnetic seizure therapy, combined with dialectical behavioral therapy, reduces suicidality, depressive symptoms and interpersonal symptoms in people with BPD.

Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease that involves white matter lesions throughout the brain, and depression is a common comorbidity. In this paper, Siddiqi, Kletenik et al. propose the use of a recently developed technique known as lesion network mapping to identify a common depression network that may represent a treatment target for neuromodulatory approaches to treating depression.