Resources
Psychology resources
Plain-language articles grounded in peer-reviewed research. Browse by topic or scroll for the latest.
OCD
View all →What the evidence says about CBT for young people with OCD
Obsessive-compulsive disorder often begins in childhood or adolescence, and parents and young people commonly want to know which treatment h…
Virtual Reality Exposure for Contamination OCD: Promising, but Mixed Results
Exposure and response prevention is a well-established approach to OCD, and researchers are now asking whether virtual reality can deliver i…
What Happens in the Brain When OCD Treatment Works
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and medications called SSRIs are both effective for some people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)…
Anxiety
View all →Online therapy for anxiety, with a real therapist alongside
Many people with an anxiety disorder find it hard to reach treatment. Cost, distance and waiting times all get in the way. One response has …
Testing Worries in Real Life: A New Treatment for Generalised Anxiety
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is not always easy to treat. Over the past three decades, researchers have developed sophisticated multic…
Screening for Anxiety in Women: What the Evidence Shows
Anxiety disorders are common in adolescent girls and adult women, yet they are often missed during routine health care. A systematic review …
Depression
View all →Mindfulness-based therapy and suicidal thoughts in depression
Suicidal thoughts are a serious part of depression for many people, and clinicians want to know which treatments can help. Zhang and colleag…
Matching Therapy to the Person: What Works Best for Whom in Depression
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) produce comparable average outcomes for depression. That raises an…
A Home-Based Program That Eased Depression in Older Adults
Treating depression in later life is not always straightforward, and a single approach often falls short. A research team led by Roh tested …
Emetophobia
View all →A different approach to the fear of vomiting in teenagers
Emetophobia is the specific fear of vomiting. It usually begins in childhood or adolescence, and it is often overlooked. The most familiar f…
Facing the Fear of Vomiting: A Case With Three Years of Follow-Up
Emetophobia, an intense fear of vomiting, is a specific phobia that remains under-researched and poorly understood. The authors of this pape…
Living with a Fear of Vomiting: What a Student Study Found
Emetophobia, an intense and specific fear of vomiting, is described by researchers as an underresearched disorder. People who live with it o…
OCPD
View all →Why Some People Wait Years Longer to Get Help for OCD
Obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder sound almost identical and are not the same thing. OCD involves …
Perfectionism and Anger: An Overlooked Personality Pattern in Trauma Survivors
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, sometimes called OCPD or the anankastic pattern, is marked by rigid perfectionism, a strong need …
One Teenager's Recovery From Anorexia and Perfectionism
Eating disorders and rigid, perfectionistic personality traits often occur together. Treating only the eating disorder can leave the deeper …
ECT
View all →Electroconvulsive therapy and Parkinson's disease: what the studies show
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a well-established treatment for psychiatric disorders, including depression and psychosis. It is deliver…
Magnetic Seizure Therapy Compared With ECT for Depression: A Large Trial
Magnetic seizure therapy (MST) is a newer convulsive treatment for depression, and earlier work suggested it has fewer cognitive side effect…
Electrode Placement in ECT for Bipolar Disorder: A Review
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment delivered by psychiatrists, and it is not part of psychological practice. This articl…
Virtual reality as a distraction during children's blood tests
Having blood drawn is one of the more painful and distressing procedures children go through. Wong and Choi tested whether an immersive virt…
Virtual Reality for Fear of Needles in Adults: A Small Pilot
Fear of needles leads many adults to avoid vaccinations, blood tests and other necessary care, which affects both individual and public heal…
A Single Virtual Reality Session for Contamination Worries
Exposure and response prevention is a first-line treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, yet many people with contamination worries nev…