Summary: A new longitudinal study shows that maintaining or adopting regular physical activity during midlife meaningfully improves women’s physical health-related quality of life later in life. Analyzing data from over 11,000 participants followed for 15 years, researchers found that women who consistently met World Health Organization (WHO) physical activity guidelines — or who began meeting … Read more

Behavioral activation (BA) is an evidence-based therapy commonly used to treat depression. Its central aim is to help people reconnect with meaningful and rewarding activities by reducing withdrawal, avoidance, and inactivity, which often maintain or worsen depressive symptoms. BA focuses on increasing engagement with life through simple, concrete activation strategies. For many people with depression, … Read more

Summary: A focused, four-day treatment for panic disorder has produced striking and lasting results in recent research. Known as the Bergen 4-Day Treatment (B4DT), this concentrated cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) format delivers rapid relief: almost 90% of patients report marked improvement one week after treatment. Long-term follow-ups show sustained gains and continued improvement months later, … Read more

Summary: Time spent outdoors and culturally supported practices for managing fear can help children process and regulate negative emotions. Source: North Carolina State University New study of Mapuche communities in southern Chile broadens understanding of children’s emotional capabilities A recent study of families and educators in southern Chile challenges some common Western assumptions about children’s … Read more

When you meet someone for the first time, one of the first questions they’ll often ask is your name. The next question usually concerns what you do for a living. That pattern shows how much we use work as a social identifier. When there is no job to describe, people often feel awkward, embarrassed, or … Read more

Adult IQ for Very Preterm and Very Low Birth Weight Babies Can Be Predicted by Age Two, Study Finds Research from the University of Warwick shows that the adult IQ of individuals born very preterm or with very low birth weight can be reasonably predicted as early as age two. The prospective study was led … Read more

Summary: A new study in eLife reports that adults who were born very prematurely and experienced small brain injuries around birth show lower dopamine levels in the brain. Complications at Birth Linked to Lasting Changes in Brain Chemistry Researchers at King’s College London, in collaboration with teams from Imperial College London and the Icahn School … Read more

Mindfulness is a frequent focus at PositivePsychology.com, appearing in articles that define mindfulness, explain how it is used in therapy, and offer practice techniques for adults, children, and teens. For many people, understanding and practicing mindfulness takes time and effort. Even more challenging can be the idea of measuring mindfulness. Mindfulness—as being fully present and … Read more

Summary: A major meta-analysis finds that for most common diseases, inherited gene variants explain only a small fraction of risk—typically under 5–10 percent—while metabolic, environmental and lifestyle factors play a much larger role. Source: University of Alberta New research from the University of Alberta indicates that, in most cases, your genes account for only a … Read more

Feeling low, hopeless, detached, or overwhelmingly sad is something most people experience at times. When these feelings persist for weeks or months and interfere with daily life, they may meet the criteria for clinical depression. Depression is common globally, affecting more than 264 million people. Many of those affected do not receive the help they … Read more