Anxiety is tough to deal with at the best of time. It’s even tougher when we’re in the midst of a pandemic that is causing chaos around the globe. Dr Olivia Remes shares her top tips on looking after your mental health during this difficult period.

Parents of children with genetic conditions that cause learning disabilities are at risk of mental health problems, suggests new research published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The teams behind the study have called for greater support for parents whose child receives a genetic diagnosis for their learning disability.

Different learning difficulties do not correspond to specific regions of the brain, as previously thought, say researchers at the University of Cambridge. Instead poor connectivity between ‘hubs’ within the brain is much more strongly related to children’s difficulties.

New brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Bumetanide – a prescription drug for oedema (the build-up of fluid in the body) – improves some of the symptoms in young children with autism spectrum disorders and has no significant side effects, confirms a new study from researchers in China and the UK. Published today in Translational Psychiatry, the study demonstrates for the first time that the drug improves the symptoms by decreasing the ratio of the GABA to glutamate in the brain. GABA and glutamate are both neurotransmitters – chemical messengers that help nerve cells in the brain communicate.

Autistic mothers are more likely to report post-natal depression compared to non-autistic mothers, according to a new study of mothers of autistic children carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge. A better understanding of the experiences of autistic mothers during pregnancy and the post-natal period is critical to improving wellbeing. The results are published in Molecular Autism.

The famous, but bizarre, ‘rubber hand illusion’ could help people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder overcome their condition without the often unbearable stress of exposure therapy, suggests new research.

An international team of researchers has identified key networks within the brain which they say interact to increase the risk that an individual will think about – or attempt – suicide. Writing in Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers say that their review of existing literature highlights how little research has been done into one of the world’s major killers, particularly among the most vulnerable groups.

Deprivation affects men and women differently, writes Olivia Remes, PhD candidate at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, with men more likely to experience depression.