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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/artificial-intelligence-struggles-to-consistently-evaluate-scientific-facts/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Artificial intelligence struggles to consistently evaluate scientific facts</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 17th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Generative artificial intelligence programs can write fluently, but they still struggle to accurately and consistently evaluate basic scientific statements. A recent study shows that when an artificial intelligence is asked the exact same question multiple times, it often gives completely different answers. These results, published in the <em><a href="https://rbr.business.rutgers.edu/article/unstable-intelligence-genai-struggles-accuracy-and-consistency" target="_blank">Rutgers Business Review</a></em>, highlight the limits of current automated reasoning and the ongoing need for human oversight.</p>
<p>Generative artificial intelligence is a type of technology trained on massive databases of text to produce human-like writing. Millions of people now use these applications daily for tasks ranging from marketing to software development. The software writes with an authoritative tone that often sounds correct even when it is entirely wrong. Some high-profile consulting firms have even faced public embarrassment after relying on automated reports that included fabricated data.</p>
<p>Despite these known flaws, many businesses have partnered with technology vendors to incorporate these tools into their daily operations. Professionals frequently rely on automated software to analyze data, answer customer queries, and summarize research. The researchers wanted to know if the logical abilities of these programs actually matched their impressive vocabularies. They designed a test to see if the technology could reliably evaluate rigorous business concepts.</p>
<p>Mesut Cicek, an associate professor in the Department of Marketing and International Business at Washington State University, led the investigation. His co-authors included Sevincgul Ulu of Southern Illinois University, Can Uslay of Rutgers University, and Kate Karniouchina of Northeastern University. The team designed an experiment to test the software’s ability to interpret academic literature.</p>
<p>The researchers collected 719 scientific hypotheses from nine open-access business journals published since 2021. A hypothesis is a formal, testable prediction about how two or more things interact in the real world. For example, a statement might predict that a specific type of advertising increases consumer spending.</p>
<p>The team presented these statements to ChatGPT, a highly popular automated text generator. The program was asked to determine whether each statement was ultimately proven true or false by the actual research data. To test the stability of the program, the researchers submitted the exact same prompt ten separate times for each statement.</p>
<p>The entire experiment was run twice to track technological progress over time. The first test occurred in mid-2024 using an older version of the software. The researchers repeated the entire process in mid-2025 with an updated version of the application.</p>
<p>The results revealed a modest improvement in overall correctness, but the raw numbers were highly misleading. The software chose the correct answer 76.5 percent of the time in 2024 and 80 percent of the time in 2025. Because the questions only had two possible answers, a completely blind guess would be right half the time.</p>
<p>Once the researchers mathematically adjusted the scores to account for random guessing, the true performance dropped substantially. The effective accuracy rate hovered around a mere 60 percent. The software essentially earned a barely passing grade when it came to anticipating actual scientific findings.</p>
<p>The program performed exceptionally poorly when evaluating ideas that the original researchers had found to be false. The software correctly identified these unsupported statements only 16.4 percent of the time in 2025. The program displayed a strong bias toward agreeing with whatever statement it was fed, acting as a compliant assistant rather than an objective analyst. This tendency to blindly confirm existing ideas creates an echo chamber that can mislead decision-makers.</p>
<p>Consistency proved to be an even bigger problem for the automated system. When asked the same question ten times in a row, the software frequently contradicted itself. Sometimes the program would flip back and forth between true and false on consecutive attempts.</p>
<p>“We’re not just talking about accuracy, we’re talking about inconsistency, because if you ask the same question again and again, you come up with different answers,” Cicek said. In 2025, the program provided identical answers across all ten attempts for only 73 percent of the statements. For more than a quarter of the questions, the software gave at least one wrong answer during the ten trials.</p>
<p>The lack of a stable response pattern makes the software highly unreliable for individual searches. Users who ask a question once might get a completely different answer if they simply refresh the page. “There were several cases where there were five true, five false,” Cicek said.</p>
<p>The researchers also categorized the test questions by their logical difficulty. The software did best with direct cause-and-effect relationships, where one event leads straight to another. It struggled the most with conditional statements, which are ideas that depend on changing variables to be true.</p>
<p>These outcomes suggest that the program relies on recognizing common word patterns rather than actually understanding the concepts. It can mimic the structure of a logical argument without grasping the underlying meaning or context. The system possesses a high degree of linguistic fluency, but it lacks genuine theoretical flexibility. When faced with complex scenarios, the technology fails to adapt its reasoning.</p>
<p>The software remains bound by pattern recognition rather than true comprehension. “They just memorize, and they can give you some insight, but they don’t understand what they’re talking about,” Cicek said. The apparent improvements over the past year seem to stem from better text processing rather than deeper cognitive abilities.</p>
<p>For managers and analysts, these limitations carry substantial risks. The findings reveal that automated systems are currently too shallow to handle high-stakes decision-making on their own. As the text generated by these programs becomes smoother, users might easily miss hidden conceptual flaws.</p>
<p>The researchers advise professionals to use artificial intelligence for speed rather than substitution. A marketing team might use a text generator to brainstorm ideas or summarize long reports quickly. However, human experts must step in to verify whether the logic aligns with actual market evidence.</p>
<p>Professionals should also verify automated insights through repetition. Asking the same question multiple times can help expose underlying bias or instability in the software. Any conclusions generated by artificial intelligence should be treated as diagnostic clues rather than absolute facts.</p>
<p>The authors advocate for building organizational literacy regarding automated tools. Employees need to understand exactly where these programs excel and where they fail. Organizations should train their staff to audit the reasoning behind automated answers, rather than just trusting the numerical output.</p>
<p>The ultimate goal is to create a hybrid system that pairs human intelligence with automated speed. In this arrangement, software handles structural analysis while humans preserve interpretive judgment. This balanced approach ensures that technology supports human understanding rather than replacing it.</p>
<p>The authors noted a few minor limitations to their experiment. The study assumed that every published, peer-reviewed finding was entirely true or false, which leaves out some nuance in real-world science. Sometimes a scientific finding has mixed results that do not easily fit into a strict binary category.</p>
<p>The team also limited their consistency test to ten repetitions per question using a single software platform. Future investigations should involve a higher number of repetitions to confirm these patterns. Researchers should also test a wider variety of artificial intelligence programs to see if the flaws are universal.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the research suggests that users must remain vigilant. Human judgment remains a necessary check on these increasingly common digital systems. “Always be skeptical,” Cicek said. “I’m not against AI. I’m using it. But you need to be very careful.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://rbr.business.rutgers.edu/article/unstable-intelligence-genai-struggles-accuracy-and-consistency" target="_blank">Unstable Intelligence: GenAI Struggles with Accuracy and Consistency</a>,” was authored by Mesut Cicek, Sevincgul Ulu, Can Uslay, and Kate Karniouchina.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-brain-scanning-method-safely-tracks-how-alzheimers-drugs-work-in-living-patients/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New brain scanning method safely tracks how Alzheimer’s drugs work in living patients</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 17th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03288-3" target="_blank">Molecular Psychiatry</a></em> provides evidence that a combination of non-invasive brain scanning and computer modeling can successfully measure how a dementia drug interacts with specific brain receptors in living patients. The research suggests that this approach could replace invasive procedures to confirm how well new treatments work in the brain. These findings offer a practical way to speed up the testing and development of novel therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>“To make progress in new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, we need tests (tools, assays) that can ‘see’ the changes in the living human brain with the same level of detail and insight that is taken for granted in animal models,” explained study author <a href="https://neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/member/jamesrowe/" target="_blank">James Rowe</a>, a professor of cognitive neurology at <a href="https://ftd.neurology.cam.ac.uk/" target="_blank">the University of Cambridge</a>.</p>
<p>Traditionally, medical researchers have relied on animal models or post-mortem tissue to understand how drugs affect brain cells. Direct tests on living human brains are often unrealistic because of the protective blood-brain barrier and the solid enclosure of the skull.</p>
<p>This anatomical reality creates a significant hurdle when trying to prove that a new experimental drug actually reaches its intended target. The scientists conducted this study to test if they could measure a drug’s exact mechanism of action from the outside of the body without needing blood tests, biopsies, or injections. They focused on a well-known Alzheimer’s medication called memantine to see if their non-invasive methods could accurately detect how the drug operates.</p>
<p>Memantine is typically prescribed to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease. The scientists focused their attention on N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors, which are specific docking stations on brain cells that help manage memory and learning. In a healthy brain, these receptors are tightly regulated by magnesium, which acts like a biological blocker to prevent excess calcium from flooding and damaging the cells.</p>
<p>In Alzheimer’s disease, this natural blocking mechanism tends to fail. This failure leads to an overload of calcium that disrupts brain function and contributes to progressive cognitive decline. The drug memantine helps by restoring this block and protecting the cells from becoming overloaded with calcium.</p>
<p>To observe these microscopic actions, the scientists used a technique called magnetoencephalography. This is a highly sensitive neuroimaging method that maps brain activity by recording the small magnetic fields produced by natural electrical currents in the brain. The scientists combined this non-invasive scanning method with advanced computer models that mathematically simulate the complex electrical behavior of brain cell networks.</p>
<p>“We proposed that the combination of magnetoencephalography with detailed computational models of an individual patient’s brain can achieve this. Since a lot is known about the drug memantine and its clinical benefit in Alzheimer’s, we used it as the test case for our method to study people with dementia,” Rowe said.</p>
<p>The scientists conducted two separate experiments to test their approach. In the first experiment, they recruited 19 neurologically healthy adults. The participants completed two brain scanning sessions spaced two weeks apart, receiving a 10-milligram dose of memantine in one session and a placebo pill in the other.</p>
<p>During the scans, the participants passively listened to a series of repeating audio tones that occasionally changed in pitch. The tones were played at half-second intervals over multiple five-minute blocks to establish a predictable rhythm. This repetitive auditory procedure triggers a specific brain reaction known as mismatch negativity.</p>
<p>Mismatch negativity is an automatic neurological response to an unexpected sound that disrupts an established pattern. It relies heavily on healthy N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors to function properly and process the new auditory information. The scientists found that memantine successfully increased the blockage of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors, exactly as the drug is designed to do.</p>
<p>The advanced computer models accurately detected this microscopic change simply by analyzing the magnetic fields generated during the audio task. This provided strong evidence that the mathematical models could accurately track drug effects inside a living human brain. The combination of safe brain scanning and customized computer modeling allowed the researchers to confirm the drug’s mechanism without invasive procedures.</p>
<p>In the second experiment, the scientists tracked 42 patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. All of these patients had tested positive for amyloid proteins, which are a hallmark biological sign of the disease. The researchers measured the patients’ brain activity using the same audio task at the beginning of the study.</p>
<p>The researchers then conducted a follow-up scan for 30 of these individuals about 16 months later to see how their brains had changed. The scientists observed that the brain’s automatic response to unexpected sounds was significantly weaker in the patients with Alzheimer’s disease compared to the healthy adults. This electrical response became even weaker as the disease naturally progressed over the 16-month period.</p>
<p>The neurological response was also weaker in patients who scored lower on the Mini-Mental State Examination, which is a standard questionnaire used to measure cognitive impairment. Lower scores on this standard test indicate more severe symptoms of dementia. Using their computer models, the scientists found that the natural blockage of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors was noticeably reduced in the patients with Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>This reduction in receptor blocking worsened as the patients’ cognitive scores declined. It also worsened over time between the first and second scanning sessions. These findings confirm that Alzheimer’s disease and the drug memantine have opposite effects on the brain.</p>
<p>“The combination of safe, non-invasive MEG scanning with biophysical models of each patient’s brain, was able to show the correct mechanism of action of the drug,” Rowe told PsyPost. “This clears the way to explore the potential of new drugs. The importance of our study was to be able to detect how it works just from scanning the brain from the ‘outside,’ in living people non-invasively, with no bloods, no biopsy, no injections.”</p>
<p>The scientists emphasize that dementia is an illness that can be treated, much like cancer or diabetes. Ongoing research will eventually yield new and better therapies, and tools like these brain scans will help identify those therapies faster.</p>
<p>BuT the study does have a few limitations that should be noted. The computer models only focused on two specific brain regions to keep the mathematics manageable, even though the brain’s response to sound involves a much larger network. Including the entire network would have made the computer simulations too complex to run efficiently.</p>
<p>For future research, the scientists plan to test the effects of newer experimental drug treatments using this same method. They hope their scanning technique can quickly show whether a new drug is successfully interacting with its intended target in the brain.</p>
<p>“Our method can be used to tell if a new drug is worth investing more time and resources on, or whether it can be put aside and let researchers focus on other options,” Rowe said. “This means we could reduce the time, risk and cost of testing new drugs. It’s a team effort – with patients, doctors and researchers all working together.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03288-3" target="_blank">Alzheimer’s disease and memantine effects on NMDA-receptor blockade: non-invasive in vivo insights from magnetoencephalography</a>,” was authored by Juliette H. Lanskey, Amirhossein Jafarian, Laura E. Hughes, Melek Karadag, Ece Kocagoncu, Matthew A. Rouse, Natalie E. Adams, Michelle Naessens, Vanessa Raymont, Mark Woolrich, Krish D. Singh, Richard N. Henson, and James B. Rowe.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/actively-open-minded-thinking-protects-against-political-extremism-better-than-liberal-ideology/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Actively open-minded thinking protects against political extremism better than liberal ideology</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 17th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2025.2520186" target="_blank">Thinking & Reasoning</a></em> has found that a specific type of open-mindedness is a better predictor of healthy reasoning than simply identifying as a political liberal. The research suggests that while open-minded thinking and liberal ideology often overlap, they are fundamentally different psychological traits. The findings help clarify how people process information and resist political extremism, regardless of their political party.</p>
<p>Actively open-minded thinking is a cognitive style where a person intentionally seeks out information that contradicts their own beliefs. People who score high in this trait tend to tolerate ambiguity, avoid jumping to conclusions, and willingly revise their opinions when presented with new evidence. It involves temporarily stepping back from your own assumptions to objectively evaluate a complex situation.</p>
<p>“This study was conceived after finishing my book on myside bias, <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3PqiNa5" target="_blank">The Bias that Divides Us</a></em>. Writing that book was a reminder about how politicized many areas of psychology had become,” said study author <a href="http://keithstanovich.com/Site/Home.html" target="_blank">Keith E. Stanovich</a>, emeritus professor of applied psychology and human development at the University of Toronto.</p>
<p>“I thought that actively open-minded thinking, a thinking disposition that my research group has studied for some time, had the potential to become politicized. The reason is that actively open-minded thinking is related to many adaptive epistemic attitudes (which is why it is a good thinking disposition to have a high score on). Additionally, actively open-minded thinking displays a moderate correlation (around .35) with political liberalism.”</p>
<p>“I could too easily see that correlation being over-interpreted in popular discussions. I wanted to explore, in more detail, the nature of the overlap between actively open-minded thinking and liberalism.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers recruited 682 adult participants from the United States using an online crowdsourcing platform called Prolific. The sample was relatively diverse, with a median age of 39 years, and included 406 women and 264 men. Participants completed an online survey that took a median time of 22 minutes to finish.</p>
<p>The scientists measured several psychological and political variables using a six-point scale. They assessed political affiliation, religious commitment, and actively open-minded thinking using a specialized 13-item questionnaire. This specific questionnaire was designed without the word “belief” to prevent confusing political or religious views with basic information processing skills.</p>
<p>The researchers also measured a wide variety of mental states and attitudes that typically disrupt logical thinking. These included beliefs in the paranormal, paranoia, and traits associated with the Dark Triad, which is a psychology term for a combination of narcissism, manipulative behavior, and a lack of empathy. They also tested participants for both right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, as well as extreme political attitudes like the endorsement of political violence.</p>
<p>The survey also evaluated extreme skepticism and extreme trust in institutions. Scientists used a hidden causal forces scale to measure excessive suspicion of elites, alongside a government credulity scale to measure an overly trusting attitude toward government actions.</p>
<p>To test how well participants evaluated complex information, the survey included questions about established conspiracy theories. Participants had to identify mature false conspiracies, like the idea that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, as well as historically verified true conspiracies. Finally, the researchers presented a set of nine contested statements that were deliberately designed to appeal to liberal political biases but lacked strong factual backing.</p>
<p>The data provides evidence that actively open-minded thinking is not just a proxy for liberal ideology. While the two traits did show a moderate positive correlation, they separated dramatically when it came to evaluating irrational or extreme ideas. For instance, liberal ideology was positively associated with left-wing authoritarianism.</p>
<p>In opposition to that trend, actively open-minded thinking showed a significant negative correlation with left-wing authoritarianism. This means that people with high open-mindedness scores were less likely to hold authoritarian views, even if they leaned left politically. The same pattern emerged with anti-democratic attitudes and the endorsement of political violence, where liberalism showed a positive association, but open-mindedness showed a negative one.</p>
<p>Actively open-minded thinking also consistently protected against illogical psychological states. High open-mindedness scores negatively correlated with paranormal beliefs, paranoia, and Dark Triad traits. Liberal ideology either showed no connection to these unhelpful mental states or correlated with them in an unhealthy direction.</p>
<p>The data also provides evidence that liberal ideology is associated with an excessive amount of trust in government entities. Open-minded thinking, on the other hand, showed a negative correlation with both extreme government trust and extreme anti-establishment skepticism.</p>
<p>The scientists also found that open-mindedness was a much stronger predictor of truth-seeking than political ideology. Both open-mindedness and liberalism helped people discriminate between true and false historical conspiracies. However, actively open-minded thinking had a significantly higher correlation with this ability, making it the only variable in the study that consistently predicted accurate conspiracy evaluation.</p>
<p>The conspiracy theory evaluation portion of the study highlighted how open-mindedness encourages healthy skepticism. While many psychological variables correlated with believing both true and false conspiracies simultaneously, open-minded thinking followed a purely logical pattern. High scores in this trait were linked to rejecting debunked historical plots while remaining open to verified government controversies.</p>
<p>When faced with the nine highly partisan, liberal-leaning statements, the differences between ideology and open-mindedness became even more distinct. Liberal participants tended to agree with these statements, which included exaggerated claims about systemic bias and the economy. Meanwhile, participants who scored high in actively open-minded thinking tended to reject these partisan lures, demonstrating an ability to separate facts from politically appealing narratives.</p>
<p>For example, one statement claimed that prestigious universities actively conspire to keep out minority students. While liberal participants were more likely to agree with this broad claim, highly open-minded participants were more likely to reject it. This trend held true across the majority of the politically charged statements.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that the key feature of actively open-minded thinking is cognitive decoupling. This mental process allows a person to detach from their current social context or partisan identity when evaluating a claim. It forces the brain to separate factual analysis from emotional beliefs and identity politics.</p>
<p>This distancing requires significant mental effort, making it a relatively rare mental style. Because it is so difficult to separate identity from information, many people naturally fall back on their political ideology to make decisions. Open-minded thinking scales seem to identify the people who are willing to put in that extra mental work.</p>
<p>“The take home message of the study turned out to be that actively open-minded thinking comprises the ‘good’ part of liberalism,” Stanovich told PsyPost. “Specifically, being liberal without displaying actively open-minded thinking is no advantage at all in avoiding suboptimal thinking. Liberalism without actively open-minded thinking does not associate with positive epistemic outcomes, but the converse (high actively open-minded thinking without liberalism) often does.” </p>
<p>“Liberalism is moderately correlated with left-wing authoritarianism, but the actively open-minded thinking shows a significant negative correlation. Performance on the actively open-minded thinking shows significant negative correlations with a host of variables that disrupt epistemic rationality (e.g., paranormal beliefs, paranoia, the Dark Triad, government credulity) but liberal ideology either does not correlate with these variables or correlates positively (that is, in the maladaptive direction).”</p>
<p>A limitation of this research is its reliance on self-reported survey data from a single online platform, which might not perfectly represent the entire general public. The contested beliefs used in the study were also specifically chosen to tempt liberal respondents, meaning a different set of questions would be needed to test conservative blind spots in the exact same way. These factors mean the results provide a specific snapshot rather than a complete picture of political psychology.</p>
<p>Future research will focus on the relationship between actively open-minded thinking and general intelligence. The scientists plan to investigate whether the mental benefits of actively open-minded thinking are simply a byproduct of higher intelligence. They hope to determine if this cognitive style provides unique advantages for processing information independently of a person’s basic intellectual ability.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2025.2520186" target="_blank">Actively open-minded thinking and liberal ideology – associations and dissociations</a>,” was authored by Keith E. Stanovich and Maggie E. Toplak.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-common-antidepressant-shows-promise-for-treating-post-orgasmic-illness-syndrome/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">A common antidepressant shows promise for treating post-orgasmic illness syndrome</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 16th 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent case report published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdag049" target="_blank">The Journal of Sexual Medicine</a></em> details the experiences of two men who found relief from a rare, debilitating condition triggered by ejaculation. The patients, who suffered from severe flu-like and cognitive symptoms after orgasm, experienced major improvements after taking an antidepressant medication. These findings offer a potential therapeutic option for an illness that currently has no standard treatment.</p>
<p>Post-orgasmic illness syndrome is a medical condition characterized by physical and cognitive symptoms that emerge shortly after a person experiences an orgasm. People with this condition often report extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, feverishness, and difficulty concentrating. These symptoms typically last anywhere from two to seven days, frequently causing individuals to avoid sexual activity entirely.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.psypost.org/post-orgasmic-illness-syndrome-can-severely-disrupt-relationships-and-mental-health-new-study-suggests/" target="_blank">emotional toll</a> of this condition can be severe. Men dealing with these symptoms often report low self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, and immense strain in their intimate relationships. Many patients internalize the blame for their sexual difficulties, believing that their physical or psychological makeup is fundamentally flawed.</p>
<p>The exact biological mechanisms behind this illness remain poorly understood. Some medical professionals suspect the condition stems from an autoimmune response, where the body mistakenly attacks its own seminal fluid. Other researchers propose that the syndrome is driven by an imbalance in the nervous system and hormones, specifically involving brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine.</p>
<p>Because the root cause is still debated, doctors have struggled to find reliable treatments. Past attempts have included allergy medications, anti-inflammatory drugs, and even therapies designed to desensitize the immune system to semen. However, these interventions often yield inconsistent results, leaving many patients without relief.</p>
<p>Thalia Herder, a psychiatrist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, and her colleagues authored the new report to explore an alternative treatment pathway. They wanted to investigate whether regulating specific chemical signals in the brain could alleviate the physical and mental exhaustion. The research team focused on the use of sertraline, a common medication known as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.</p>
<p>This type of drug is typically prescribed for depression and anxiety, but it also alters how the brain handles stress responses and sexual function. By increasing the availability of serotonin between nerve cells, the medication might help stabilize the nervous system after the intense physical and emotional release of an orgasm. Herder and her team documented the clinical outcomes of two patients who received this treatment.</p>
<p>The first patient was a 28-year-old man who had experienced extreme fatigue, a general unwell feeling, nasal congestion, and “brain fog” after orgasm for his entire life. These symptoms reliably appeared within an hour of ejaculation and persisted for up to a week. The man had previously tried taking allergy pills and pain relievers, but neither provided any benefit.</p>
<p>During his clinical evaluation, doctors noted that he became highly irritable and struggled with mental clarity during these post-orgasmic episodes. He also revealed a long history of severe discomfort in social settings, leading the medical team to diagnose him with social anxiety disorder. To address both the social anxiety and the post-orgasmic symptoms, his doctors prescribed a daily dose of sertraline.</p>
<p>After three months of gradually increasing the dosage, the patient reported a substantial reduction in both his social anxiety and his post-orgasmic illness. The intensity of his physical fatigue and cognitive fog decreased, and the duration of his symptoms shortened. He did not experience any adverse side effects from the medication.</p>
<p>The second patient was a 29-year-old man who experienced profound fatigue, muscle pain, and a lingering sense of worthlessness after both partnered sex and masturbation. These issues had plagued him since he first became sexually active as a teenager. His post-orgasmic symptoms routinely impaired his performance at work, forcing him to plan his sexual activity around his professional schedule.</p>
<p>This patient also struggled with lifelong premature ejaculation, a condition that had not responded to physical exercises or numbing ointments. Because selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are known to delay ejaculation, his doctors prescribed a daily dose of sertraline. Within one month of starting the medication, his time to ejaculation increased substantially.</p>
<p>Alongside the improvement in his sexual functioning, the man noticed a marked decline in his post-orgasmic muscle pain, weakness, and mood disturbances. The researchers noted that this therapeutic effect remained stable over a three-year observation period. Like the first patient, he experienced no notable negative side effects from the daily medication.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that sertraline may work by calming the body’s neuroendocrine system. An orgasm involves a coordinated burst of autonomic and endocrine activity, which includes the release of various hormones and stress signals. In people with post-orgasmic illness syndrome, this system may become dysregulated, leading to a prolonged and exhausting stress response.</p>
<p>By blocking the reuptake of serotonin, sertraline helps quiet excessive stress-related signaling in the brain. The drug also mildly influences dopamine, a chemical tied to motivation and reward. Normalizing these pathways may prevent the intense drops in energy and mood that characterize the post-ejaculatory crash.</p>
<p>While these outcomes are highly encouraging, the researchers caution that a definitive cause-and-effect relationship cannot be established from just two patients. Case reports are observational accounts of individual medical treatments, meaning they lack the strict controls found in larger clinical trials. The statistical strength of these results was not significant, as the sample size is too small to draw broad mathematical conclusions.</p>
<p>It is possible that the medication only works for a specific subset of people. Patients whose symptoms are driven by nervous system imbalances or underlying anxiety might respond well, while those with primary immune system allergies might not. Other limitations include the lack of standardized symptom tracking and the presence of overlapping psychiatric conditions in both men.</p>
<p>Despite these drawbacks, case reports offer an essential starting point for medical discovery. They allow doctors to share novel observations and unexpected treatment successes that might otherwise go undocumented. By publishing these individual successes, researchers can generate new hypotheses and guide the design of larger, more rigorous studies.</p>
<p>Moving forward, the authors recommend that scientists conduct controlled clinical trials to better understand how selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors interact with this specific syndrome. Future research should aim to identify the exact biological markers that predict whether a patient will respond to this type of medication. Until then, the findings suggest that doctors should consider evaluating patients’ psychological and neurological profiles when searching for individualized treatments.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdag049" target="_blank">Postorgasmic illness syndrome (POIS) in two patients responding to sertraline: a case report</a>,” was authored by Thalia Herder, Rikus Knegtering, Nynke Boonstra, and Kor Spoelstra.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-reverse-timeline-of-tragedy-reveals-the-warning-signs-of-incel-violence/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">A reverse timeline of tragedy reveals the warning signs of incel violence</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 16th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2024.2417824" target="_blank">Deviant Behavior</a></em> maps the warning signs and systemic failures that precede deadly attacks by men who identify as involuntary celibates. By working backward from four distinct tragedies, researchers identified a chain of severe social isolation, untreated mental health struggles, and missed opportunities for intervention. These insights offer a roadmap for recognizing the warning signs of misogynistic extremism and stopping future acts of mass violence.</p>
<p>The internet hosts a vast array of communities, some of which are united by shared grievances. One such group is the “incel” subculture, a primarily online network of men who express deep frustration over their inability to form sexual or romantic relationships with women. This community exists within a broader digital space known as the manosphere, where extreme misogyny and male supremacy are common themes. Many incel forums operate as echo chambers that promote a highly distorted view of gender dynamics.</p>
<p>Within these digital spaces, women are routinely dehumanized and blamed for the social rejection these men experience. Most individuals who participate in these online forums never commit acts of physical harm. A small fraction, however, radicalizes to the point of committing targeted violence against women and society at large. This escalation is often driven by a sense of aggrieved entitlement, a psychological state where individuals feel they are being denied something they inherently deserve.</p>
<p>When these expectations go unmet, some individuals view violence as a justified method to reclaim their perceived masculine authority. Christopher J. Collins, an assistant professor of social work at Salem State University, led a research team to investigate the sequence of events that transforms online hatred into real-world bloodshed. The team recognized that predicting violence is incredibly difficult. Because many people who display warning signs never actually commit a crime, threat assessment professionals face a high rate of false positives.</p>
<p>To improve these assessments, Collins and his colleagues wanted to isolate the specific historical and immediate factors that push an at-risk individual over the edge. To achieve this, the researchers utilized a technique called Root Cause Analysis. Investigators routinely use this method in fields like medicine and aviation to review adverse events and prevent future accidents. Rather than trying to predict the future, Root Cause Analysis works entirely in hindsight.</p>
<p>Researchers start with a specific disastrous event and systematically build a reverse timeline. This process allows them to identify both the immediate triggers and the long-standing conditions that paved the way for the tragedy. The team selected four specific instances of incel-related mass violence in the United States for their analysis. These included the 2014 Isla Vista mass murders in California and the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon.</p>
<p>They also examined the 2017 Aztec High School shooting in New Mexico and the 2018 hot yoga studio shooting in Tallahassee, Florida. The researchers chose these cases because they occurred after the Isla Vista attack, an event that acts as a modern turning point for violent incel ideology. For each case, the investigators gathered a wide array of public and official documents. They reviewed police reports, autopsy results, personal manifestos, and public online posts.</p>
<p>By cross-referencing these varied sources, the team built highly detailed, backward-looking timelines of each offender’s life. This approach allowed them to categorize the different risk factors that appeared across the four events. The researchers separated their findings into two distinct categories. The first category included long-term conditions that persisted over years, which the team called distal risk factors.</p>
<p>The second category involved immediate events and systemic failures occurring close to the time of the attacks, known as proximal pathways. Every single offender in the study shared a specific set of long-term risk factors. These included severe social isolation, extreme narcissism, and a deeply entrenched online presence. Instead of forming meaningful relationships in their physical communities, the attackers spent vast amounts of time in extremist forums.</p>
<p>In these digital spaces, they consumed and shared hateful, anti-woman rhetoric alongside other extreme political content. This constant exposure to extreme beliefs likely desensitized the men to violence. It also reinforced their distorted views of themselves as superior beings who were unfairly victimized by society. Three of the four men also had a documented history of being bullied during their youth.</p>
<p>Mental health struggles were another persistent theme across the offenders’ histories. All four attackers experienced and documented suicidal thoughts at various points in their lives. The researchers noted that suicidal ideation is incredibly common within the incel subculture. The attackers often viewed their violent acts as a final display of power that would culminate in their own deaths.</p>
<p>As one piece of cited literature explains, “the violence risk is not just for others, but for the Incel themselves.” The study also revealed that three of the offenders had been prescribed psychiatric medications at some point. However, autopsy reports and police interviews indicated they did not consistently take these medications as directed. The researchers cautioned that while mental health treatment is intended to improve functioning, professionals must remain alert to inconsistent usage.</p>
<p>When examining the proximal pathways, a glaring pattern emerged regarding missed interventions. In all four cases, close family members noticed alarming behaviors but failed to take effective action. Relatives often expressed concern but did not report the warning signs to professionals who could have intervened. Even when authorities were alerted, the response was consistently inadequate.</p>
<p>Three of the attackers had previous interactions with law enforcement regarding threatening online behavior or stalking. Despite these encounters, authorities never escalated their investigations beyond basic welfare checks. Police received tips about violent, misogynistic songs and online posts, but these warnings were ultimately deemed non-actionable. The researchers noted that these systemic failures to intervene allowed the offenders to proceed with their plans unchecked.</p>
<p>Easy access to firearms acted as the final immediate pathway to violence in every case. All four attackers legally purchased the guns used in their crimes. In most instances, they bought these weapons in the days or weeks just before the attack, indicating a clear period of preplanning. At the time of these shootings, none of the states involved had laws allowing authorities to temporarily remove firearms from individuals displaying warning signs.</p>
<p>Extreme risk protection orders have since been enacted in these states, but their absence at the time proved fatal. The research team outlined a few limitations to their investigative work. The study relied heavily on publicly available information, meaning some confidential medical or legal details remained inaccessible. Disparities in media coverage and the sealing of official records can lead to an incomplete understanding of an offender’s exact psychological state.</p>
<p>Because the results were not statistically significant in a predictive sense, the findings cannot act as an absolute checklist for future violence. Additionally, the small sample size of four American cases limits how broadly these patterns can be applied. The combination of specific cultural dynamics and open gun laws in the United States may create a unique environment for radicalization. The researchers suggested that future investigations should examine international cases, such as the 2018 van attack in Toronto or the 2021 shooting in Plymouth, England.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2024.2417824" target="_blank">Incel Perpetrated Violence: Distal and Proximal Risk Factors and Pathways</a>,” was authored by Christopher J. Collins, Melissa G. Murphy, Katherine Reid, and James J. Clark.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/higher-skin-carotenoid-levels-in-toddlers-predict-better-motor-and-language-development/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Higher skin carotenoid levels in toddlers predict better motor and language development</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 16th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A longitudinal study of toddlers initially between 12 and 18 months of age found that higher levels of skin carotenoids at the start of the study predicted trending improvements in cognitive development in the period up to 30 months of age. These toddlers also showed stronger fine motor skills improvements across the entire 12-month period, and increased gains in their ability to understand spoken words in the latter part of this period. The research was published in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement.</p>
<p>Skin carotenoids are naturally occurring pigments that accumulate in human skin after being consumed in the diet. They mainly come from fruits and vegetables that are rich in carotenoids, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, and tomatoes. Carotenoids include compounds like beta-carotene, lycopene, and lutein, which are known for their antioxidant properties.</p>
<p>When these compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream, some of them are deposited in the skin where they can be detected and measured. Skin carotenoid levels are considered a noninvasive biomarker of fruit and vegetable intake. Researchers sometimes use specialized optical devices, such as reflection spectroscopy scanners, to estimate carotenoid levels in the skin. Higher skin carotenoid levels are generally associated with healthier dietary patterns and greater consumption of plant-based foods.</p>
<p>Study authors Laura M. Rosok and her colleagues wanted to study the changes in sensory memory, vision, cognition, language, and motor abilities in toddlers over a 12-month period starting in their second year of life. They also wanted to examine whether skin carotenoid levels predict developmental changes in this period of life. Study authors hypothesized that toddlers with higher levels of carotenoids in the skin would experience stronger developmental changes during the study period.</p>
<p>Study participants were toddlers recruited from East Central Illinois. They were 12-18 months old at the start of the study and 24-30 months old at the time of the final assessment. 51 toddlers started the study, 46 provided their data at the study mid-point, and 41 of them participated in the final assessments.</p>
<p>Toddlers’ skin carotenoid concentrations were measured using the Veggie Meter<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/2122.png" alt="™" class="wp-smiley">, a device that relies on reflection spectroscopy to identify pigments in the skin within the carotenoid light spectrum. At the start of the study, 6 months after the start, and 12 months after the start of the study, parents or guardians of participating toddlers provided three 24-hour recalls of their toddlers’ food intake. They reported what their toddlers ate and drank on three separate days during a 2-week period.</p>
<p>Toddlers completed a set of behavioral assessments using the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development IV Screening Test, which measures cognition, receptive and expressive communication, and fine and gross motor skills. They also completed two electroencephalography (EEG) assessments of their brain activity—mismatch negativity and visual evoked potentials.</p>
<p>The mismatch negativity measurement detects the brain’s automatic detection of deviations in a sequence of auditory stimuli. Visual evoked potentials are used to assess visual sensory pathways by recording electroencephalographic activity while a toddler is viewing a specific picture (a reversing checkerboard pattern).</p>
<p>The results showed that toddlers with higher skin carotenoid levels at the start of the study experienced increased gains in fine motor skills across both the first six months and the full 12-month study period. They also experienced increased gains in their ability to understand spoken words (receptive communication) in the latter half of the study. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the researchers found no significant changes in the toddlers’ sensory memory or visual processing (the EEG measurements) over the 12 months, nor were these brain wave outcomes predicted by baseline skin carotenoid levels.</p>
<p>While the data hinted at a possible link between carotenoid levels and overall cognitive improvements, this specific finding was not statistically significant, meaning the researchers could not conclusively prove that relationship.</p>
<p>“These findings suggest that skin carotenoids may be linked to cognitive, language, and motor development in toddlers,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about biochemical indicators of cognitive development. However, it should be noted that the design of this study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results. Additionally, the authors noted that the sample was predominantly white and from high-income households, which limits the generalizability of the findings to a broader, more diverse population.</p>
<p>The paper, “Associations between Skin Carotenoids, Sensory Processing, and Developmental Milestones in Midwestern Toddlers across 12 Months,” was authored by Laura M. Rosok, Lexi M. Fifield, Rhea Sarma, Shelby A. Keye, Anne M. Walk, Kara D. Federmeier, and Naiman A. Khan.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/cannabidiol-may-help-treat-severe-alcohol-addiction-and-protect-the-brain-from-damage/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Cannabidiol may help treat severe alcohol addiction and protect the brain from damage</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 16th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A compound found in cannabis may help reduce alcohol addiction and withdrawal symptoms, according to new research in animals that suggests the substance could protect the brain from damage caused by heavy drinking. This study was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02164-6" target="_blank">Neuropsychopharmacology</a></em>.</p>
<p>Alcohol addiction remains a serious global health issue. People with alcohol use disorder often struggle with uncontrollable drinking and experience severe withdrawal symptoms when they try to stop. While several medications exist to help treat alcohol addiction, many provide only limited benefits or cause unwanted side effects.</p>
<p>A potential alternative is cannabidiol (CBD), a naturally occurring compound in the cannabis plant. Unlike THC, it does not produce the “high” associated with marijuana. Recently, researchers have studied CBD for a variety of medical uses, such as reducing anxiety and treating epilepsy.</p>
<p>Previous animal studies hinted that CBD might also reduce alcohol consumption and alcohol-seeking behavior. However, many of those experiments involved animals that were not fully dependent on alcohol, and the new research aimed to explore whether CBD could help in cases that more closely resemble severe, established alcohol addiction.</p>
<p>Conducted by a team at the University of California San Diego and led by senior author Giordano de Guglielmo, the researchers conducted a series of experiments using 166 rats (87 males and 79 females) that were exposed to alcohol over long periods. In one model, rats were repeatedly exposed to alcohol vapor to induce physical dependence and mimic the severe neuroadaptive changes seen in human alcoholics.</p>
<p>In another model, the animals voluntarily self-administered alcohol vapor, allowing researchers to observe patterns similar to the human transition from casual drinking to compulsive habits. The researchers then injected some of the animals with regular doses of CBD and compared their behavior and brain changes with rats that did not receive the compound.</p>
<p>The results revealed that rats treated with CBD drank significantly less alcohol during acute withdrawal periods and showed fewer physical withdrawal symptoms. They also displayed reduced anxiety-like behaviors and decreased sensitivity to physical pain, which are common during alcohol withdrawal and often drive patients to relapse.</p>
<p>To ensure CBD was specifically targeting alcohol addiction and not simply reducing the animals’ overall desire for any reward, the researchers also offered the rats sweet saccharin water. CBD had no effect on their consumption of the sugar water, proving its therapeutic effects were specific to alcohol-motivated behavior.</p>
<p>CBD also fundamentally changed how the animals’ brains responded to alcohol. The compound restored normal electrical activity in a brain region called the basolateral amygdala, which is heavily involved in stress, emotional regulation, and addiction-related behavior. Severe chronic alcohol use had previously depressed and disrupted this region’s electrical excitability.</p>
<p>In addition, CBD acted as a neuroprotectant. While chronic alcohol exposure usually causes brain cell death and inflammation, CBD prevented this damage specifically in the nucleus accumbens shell and the dorsomedial striatum. These specific brain areas control voluntary, goal-directed behavior, suggesting CBD may help prevent the brain from shifting into a state of compulsive, uncontrollable habit.</p>
<p>Another important finding was that CBD successfully blocked relapse-like behavior triggered by severe stress, a major cause of relapse in people recovering from addiction.</p>
<p>Importantly, CBD did not appear to increase the sedative effects of alcohol or interfere with normal movement, indicating that the compound’s benefits were not simply due to making animals too impaired to drink.</p>
<p>De Guglielmo and colleagues concluded, “Chronic CBD administration mitigates key behavioral and neurobiological features of alcohol dependence by reducing withdrawal symptoms, lowering relapse risk, restoring basolateral amygdala neuronal excitability, and preventing neurodegeneration.”</p>
<p>Despite the promising results coming from animal experiments, the researchers are optimistic about human applications. The study noted that the blood-plasma levels of CBD achieved in these rats closely match the safe therapeutic levels already seen in humans taking FDA-approved oral CBD for conditions like epilepsy. This makes the findings highly translatable, though further clinical trials will be necessary to determine optimal dosing to treat alcohol addiction in humans.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02164-6" target="_blank">Cannabidiol mitigates alcohol dependence and withdrawal with neuroprotective effects in the basolateral amygdala and striatum</a>,” was authored by Selen Dirik, Michelle R. Doyle, Courtney P. Wood, Paola Campo, Angelica R. Martinez, McKenzie Fannon, Maria G. Balaguer, Spencer Seely, Bryan A. Montoya, Gregory M. R. Cook, Gabrielle M. Palermo, Junjie Lin, Madelyn D. Sist, Parsa K. Naghshineh, Zihang Lan, Sara R. M. U. Rahman, Raymond Suhandynata, Paul Schweitzer, Marsida Kallupi, and Giordano de Guglielmo.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/suicide-risk-in-older-adults-with-autistic-traits-is-linked-to-depression-and-isolation-more-than-autism-itself/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Suicide risk in older adults with autistic traits is linked to depression and isolation more than autism itself</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 16th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00579-0" target="_blank">Nature Mental Health</a></em> suggests that higher rates of suicidal thoughts and self-harm among older adults with autistic traits are not directly caused by the traits themselves. Instead, this increased risk appears to be driven by accompanying challenges, such as depression, trauma, and social isolation. These findings provide evidence that targeted mental health support and fostering social connections could help protect this vulnerable population.</p>
<p><em>If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a mental health crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the free and confidential Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or chat live at <a href="http://988lifeline.org" target="_blank">988lifeline.org</a>.</em></p>
<p>Much of autism research has focused heavily on children and young adults. This focus leaves a scarcity of information about how the condition affects people in midlife and older age.</p>
<p>Older autistic adults have been found to have worse outcomes in terms of reduced life expectancy. They also face a disproportionate risk of mental health difficulties, such as anxiety and depression, compared to non-autistic adults. Epidemiological data suggests that up to ninety percent of autistic adults over the age of fifty in the United Kingdom remain undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.</p>
<p>At the same time, earlier studies have shown that diagnosed autistic people face a much higher risk of dying by suicide compared to the general population. Understanding the factors that influence suicide risk in older populations is a high priority in public health. Older adults generally face a higher risk of suicide overall, and the unique social and mental health challenges experienced by people with autistic traits may compound this risk.</p>
<p>“Suicide has been identified as a leading cause of death in autistic populations, and the risk of suicide in the general population sharply increases in older age,” explained study authors <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/respect-lab" target="_blank">Gavin Stewart</a> and <a href="https://www.adaptlab.net/" target="_blank">Josh Stott</a>, a senior research fellow at King’s College London and a professor of ageing and clinical psychology at University College London, respectively.</p>
<p>“Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-025-00693-x" target="_blank">previous work</a> has found that middle-aged and older autistic people have very high rates of suicidal ideation (thoughts of death or dying) and suicidal self-harm. Despite this, the causes of these suicidal behaviors are understudied in older autistic populations.”</p>
<p>For their new study, the researchers analyzed data from an ongoing online health study in the United Kingdom known as the PROTECT study. The sample included 9,979 adults between the ages of 50 and 97. Roughly seventy-five percent of the participants were female.</p>
<p>Because autism is so frequently undiagnosed in older generations, the scientists used a ten-question survey to measure autistic traits rather than relying on official medical diagnoses. Participants who scored highly on this survey were placed in a high autistic traits group, which consisted of 672 people. The remaining 9,307 participants formed the low autistic traits group.</p>
<p>The participants completed several questionnaires designed to measure their current mental health and social well-being. These surveys screened for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The term post-traumatic stress disorder refers to a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.</p>
<p>The surveys also measured two distinct social concepts: loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness is defined as a person’s subjective, negative feeling of being alone. Social isolation is defined as an objective lack of regular contact with friends or family members. Finally, the researchers asked participants if they had ever experienced thoughts that life was not worth living or if they had ever harmed themselves with the intention of ending their life.</p>
<p>The researchers used a statistical technique called path analysis to look for indirect relationships between the variables. This method helps scientists understand if an intermediate factor, known as a mediator, explains the connection between a starting point and an endpoint.</p>
<p>The scientists found that adults in the high autistic traits group reported higher rates of suicidal thoughts. Specifically, twenty-nine percent of the high traits group had experienced suicidal thoughts more than once, compared to just sixteen percent of the low traits group. Self-harm with suicidal intent was also twice as common in the high traits group, affecting six percent of those participants compared to three percent of the others.</p>
<p>When the researchers looked closer using their statistical model, they found that the direct link between autistic traits and suicidal behaviors was actually quite weak. Instead, the higher rates of suicidal thoughts were almost entirely mediated by symptoms of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, loneliness, and social isolation. This provides evidence that these associated mental and social struggles explain the higher risk, rather than the autistic traits themselves.</p>
<p>The pathway for suicidal self-harm was slightly different. The researchers found that suicidal self-harm was mediated by depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, social isolation, and being male. Symptoms of anxiety and subjective feelings of loneliness did not mediate the relationship between autistic traits and suicidal self-harm.</p>
<p>“Overall, our findings suggest that improving mental health support and social connection for autistic adults, particularly those over 50, could help reduce the risk of suicidal behaviors,” Stewart and Stott told PsyPost.</p>
<p>While each individual mental health or social problem had a relatively small effect on its own, the researchers noted that these factors often occur together. In their analysis, as one mental health issue increased in severity, the others tended to increase as well. This cumulative burden tends to have a meaningful impact, eventually pushing individuals toward a state of crisis.</p>
<p>“The main takeaway of our study is that higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicidal self-harm in adults with high autistic traits are not directly associated with autism itself,” Stewart and Stott explained. “Instead, they are largely linked to other challenges that autistic adults may experience, especially mental health difficulties and social isolation.”</p>
<p>“Problems such as being depressed, being anxious, having experienced trauma, being lonely, and being socially isolated explain the increased risk of suicidal behaviours. Although each of these problems have a small effect on its own, together they can have a meaningful impact on someone, making them reach periods of crisis like suicide.”</p>
<p>The researchers caution against a potential misinterpretation of their study regarding formal autism diagnoses. Because the study focused on people with high autistic traits rather than officially diagnosed autism, it is not possible to confirm that all participants in the high-trait group would meet strict clinical criteria for autism. </p>
<p>“Our study looks at people with high autistic traits, rather than autism diagnoses,” Stewart and Stott said. “We used this approach because we see <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-111323-090813" target="_blank">very high rates of underdiagnosis</a> of autism in adult populations, particularly in midlife and old age. We want to caveat that while using autistic trait measures can be a powerful way to explore the experiences of populations where underdiagnosis is high, it is not a replacement for examining these experiences in populations with autism diagnoses.”</p>
<p>Another limitation of the study is its cross-sectional design, meaning the data was collected at a single point in time. This prevents scientists from proving a strict cause-and-effect relationship between mental health challenges and suicidal behaviors. </p>
<p>Future research could to track individuals over time to clarify how mental health symptoms and suicidal thoughts unfold chronologically. The researchers plan to continue exploring the experiences of middle-aged and older adults on the autism spectrum. </p>
<p>“Our research groups (the ReSpect Lab at KCL and the ADAPT Lab at UCL) have a range of studies underway looking at the experiences of middle-aged and older autistic people,” the researchers explained. “Together, we have a particular interest in improving identification of undiagnosed autistic people, as well as improving access to mental health support for autistic people more broadly. We’re also interested in age-related conditions and how to improve identification and care for people living with dementia.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00579-0" target="_blank">Autistic traits and suicidality in midlife and old age: investigating mediating effects of mental health and social connectedness</a>,” was authored by Eleanor Nuzum, Radvile Medeisyte, Aphrodite Eshetu, Sarah Hoare, Anne Corbett, Clive Ballard, Adam Hampshire, Elizabeth O’Nions, Amber John, Gavin R. Stewart, and Joshua Stott.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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