#qelbree

#qelbree

The condition, called recessive RNU2-2-related neurodevelopmental disorder, is associated with seizures and severe developmental delay in children less than a year-old, in areas such as speech and walking.

Polyvagal theory, introduced in 1994 by psychologist Stephen Porges, highlights the role of the autonomic nervous system in regulating our health and behavior. Our lived experience of engaging with the world is impacted by external environmental cues, internal physical sensations, and relational experiences (e.g., an impression of connection, safety, and trust between individuals). Neuroception is our body's unconscious surveillance system that shifts us into one of three autonomic states needed to respond to a situation: rest-and-digest (social and safe), fight-or-flight (mobilization), or shutdown/collapse (immobilization).

When a child is labeled "oppositional," adults often assume the problem is the child. In my experience as a child psychiatrist, the truth is often much more complicated. Both families sought out these schools, believing they were giving their children the best education possible. Instead, the schools failed their children, labeling them "oppositional" and "defiant" rather than addressing the root causes of their behavior.

The Missing Social Unit From middle school onward, American children don't belong to a "class" in any stable sense. They move continuously - subject to subject, room to room, teacher to teacher. There's extensive discourse around respect, equity, and inclusion. But there's remarkably little structured attention to the actual social life of any group. Because there isn't really a group.

At a press conference in late 2025, federal officials made some big claims about leucovorin, a prescription drug usually reserved for people on cancer chemotherapy. "We're going to change the label to make it available [to children with autism spectrum disorder]," said Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. "Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit." The FDA still hasn't made that label change. Since Makary's remarks, though, more than 25,000 people have joined a Facebook group called Leucovorin for Autism. Most members appear to be parents seeking the drug for their autistic children.

In the mid-1990s, child mental health researchers at top New York institutions injected grade-school boys with fenfluramine, also known as the diet drug "fen-fen," a substance that was later banned by the Food and Drug Administration, due to its links to valvular heart disease and pulmonary hypertension. The boys were all Black or Hispanic by design: Eligible participants were required to be African American or Hispanic because they were deemed to be at higher risk for developing disruptive behaviors.

Every day, many thousands of parents across the U.S. face the difficult question of whether to place their child or teenager on a psychotropic medication. Receiving a diagnosis of a mental disorder can be scary and confusing, for the youth as well as their parents/caretakers. What is ADHD? Depression? Anxiety? OCD? Bipolar? What are the available treatments? Do we have to use medications to treat the symptoms?

The standard explanation is that ketamine blocks NMDA receptors. These receptors bind glutamate, which is a chemical messenger found throughout the brain and body. By blocking NMDA receptors, ketamine increase "brain-derived neurotrophic factor" (BDNF), a protein which I refer to as "Miracle-Grow for the brain." BDNF promotes neuroplasticity-which is the growth of new connections (synapses) in the brain. This has traditionally been viewed as the primary mechanism responsible for ketamine's therapeutic benefits. But ketamine does so much more!

Are we overmedicating our children? My answer is yes. But not for the reason most people assume. The overmedication of children is not a story about reckless doctors or careless parents. It is not an argument against psychiatric medication. I prescribe medications to children and adolescents regularly, and I have seen them reduce suffering and save lives. The real problem lies elsewhere:

Statistics show that about one-third of people with depression achieve remission-meaning their symptoms are gone-with traditional antidepressant medications. This matched my experience treating people, and I had grown to accept that this was as good as it gets. Although I wasn't thrilled with the fact that many people continued to struggle with significant symptoms of persistent depression, it seemed this was as good as we could do.

Yes, there has been a shocking lack of progress in developing transformative psychiatric medicine (We need new drugs for mental ill-health, 5 February), but this may be because in mental health, drugs are not always the answer (see, for example, Richard P Bentall's Doctoring the Mind). Huge progress has been made in the effectiveness of talking therapies for example, free effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is available to all UK army veterans through the charity PTSD Resolution.

"We're trying to, as a government, understand what's driving this increase. "Is it simply awareness and a positive awareness that means that people who would have just gone unsupported and undiagnosed are just now realising that they may well have ADHD? "And then secondly, meeting the demand because we're really falling short on this in the NHS, so we are looking at this nationally."

Before treatment began, participants underwent neuroimaging. Instead of relying on a single modality, the researchers fused structural connectivity (how regions are physically wired) with functional connectivity (how regions co-activate at rest). The goal was not to throw every possible feature at a black box, but to learn a constrained pattern-what the authors call structure-function "covariation"-that carries the most predictive signal for outcome. In other words, the model tries to find the smallest set of connections that meaningfully forecasts symptom change.