TAAR1 Agonists in Schizophrenia: Promise, Pitfalls, and Path Forward Introduction Antipsychotic drug development has been shaped for decades by strategies that modulate dopamine D2 receptors, either through antagonism or partial agonism. While these approaches reliably control acute positive symptoms, they leave critical gaps: persistent negative symptoms, cognitive impairment, and a substantial metabolic and neurological side-effect…

GLP-1 Agents in Psychiatry: Managing Antipsychotic Weight Gain and Mood-Related Signals Medically reviewed by Paul E. Bebbington ; Phern-Chern Tor; andPichet Udomratn | Last updated: 27 August 2025 Introduction Weight gain and metabolic complications remain among the most serious challenges in the long-term treatment of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Many widely used antipsychotics, particularly second-generation agents…

Digital Phenotyping in Mental Health: Accuracy, Utility, and Ethics Introduction The concept of digital phenotyping using passive data streams from smartphones, wearables, and other connected devices to quantify human behavior and physiology has generated intense interest in psychiatry over the past decade. Advocates argue that by capturing subtle, continuous markers of activity, speech, mobility, and…

Psychedelics 2.0: After MDMA’s Setback, Where Does the Field Go – and What About Psilocybin? Medically reviewed by PChina Jin LI (李锦) Institute of toxicology , Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing Introduction The last decade has witnessed a rapid resurgence of interest in psychedelic-assisted therapies for psychiatric disorders. Driven by limited progress with conventional…

Long COVID and Psychiatry: Phenotypes, Mechanisms, and Care Pathways Medically reviewed by PChina Jin LI (李锦) Institute of toxicology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing Introduction Since the early waves of the pandemic, it has become clear that for a substantial minority of individuals, recovery from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection does not mark the end of…

Adolescents, Social Media, and Mental Health (2025 Update) Introduction Few topics in adolescent psychiatry have generated as much public concern or as much conflicting evidence as the impact of social media on youth mental health. Headlines warn of an epidemic of loneliness, depression, and anxiety among teens tethered to their phones, while others emphasize the…

Antipsychotics Beyond Dopamine: The Muscarinic Turn Medically reviewed by Paul E. Bebbington, MA, MPhil, FRCPsych; Phern-Chern Tor, MBBS; and Pichet Udomratn, MD | Last updated: 12 June 2025 Introduction For more than half a century, antipsychotic treatment has rested on the pharmacological foundation of dopamine D2 antagonism: the idea that attenuating hyperdopaminergic signaling in striatal circuits would quell hallucinations,…