The best pharmacological treatment practices for relapse prevention in patients with first-episode schizophrenia are unclear. We aimed to assess different treatment strategies used before and after the first relapse, and their associations with subsequent relapse risk.

Suicide helpline services (SHSs) are viewed as an essential part of suicide prevention. In the context of increased demand experienced by the services through the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as reduced funding, we aimed to evaluate such services to help assess their effectiveness and resilience.

People with lived experience of mental health difficulties have highlighted that research outcomes do not capture issues they feel are important. This mismatch might affect the validity of trials, such that beneficial effects could be missed or results could be counted as a benefit when they are not. Co-development of patient-reported outcome measures ensures patient perspectives are captured adequately. To identify mental health outcome measures that meet a strict definition of being co-developed and to describe the methods and quantity of involvement at each pre-defined stage of measure co-development, we searched five electronic databases (MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Embase) for relevant papers, alongside a search of the non-peer reviewed literature and handsearching. The study was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024520941). Retrieved papers were independently screened and quality was assessed following PRISMA guidelines. Extracted data were synthesised narratively. The search identified 23 mental health outcome measures from 34 papers. The most frequent types of involvement to co-develop outcomes were service-user researchers and lived experience groups as advisors undertaking activities such as leading qualitative exercises, but there were gaps. Many benefits were reported such as increased relevancy and acceptability of the measures. Based on these findings, recommendations for methods and a novel scale for judging quantity of involvement for co-development were identified, but challenges for co-development remain. The reviewed papers show that co-development is possible and could provide more relevant and meaningful outcomes for clinical practice and research.

High-quality estimates of the epidemiology of the autism spectrum and the health needs of autistic people are necessary for service planners and resource allocators. Here we present the global prevalence and health burden of autism spectrum disorder from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 following improvements to the epidemiological data and burden estimation methods.

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating ADHD medications often use strict eligibility criteria, potentially limiting generalisability to patients in real-world clinical settings. We aimed to identify the proportion of individuals with ADHD who would be ineligible for medication RCTs and evaluate differences in treatment patterns and clinical and functional outcomes between RCT-eligible and RCT-ineligible individuals.

There is a need for theoretically grounded and testable suicide-focused psychological therapies, especially in people with severe mental health problems, specifically non-affective psychosis. We aimed to test both the underlying mechanisms and efficacy of a suicide-focused therapy, cognitive behavioural suicide prevention for psychosis (CBSPp).

Adolescent mental health appears to be in crisis, yet few studies have comprehensively charted the course of common mental disorders (CMDs; depression and anxiety) across this key life stage. We aimed to describe the course of CMD symptoms in adolescence by summarising annual prevalence, cumulative incidence, and course for depression and anxiety, both separately and as comorbid CMDs, by sex assigned at birth in a contemporary Australian cohort.

Although studies of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy are accumulating, there is no consensus regarding best practice of the psychotherapeutic component. In this systematic review, we summarised the quality of reporting on psychological interventions in research about psychedelic treatments. The design followed PRISMA guidelines and was preregistered in PROSPERO (CRD42022319221). We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Embase for original studies on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and included 45 studies assessing psilocybin, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), lysergic acid diethylamide (known as LSD), or ayahuasca, for the treatment of mental disorders. Psychological interventions were done heterogeneously across studies, and completeness of information reported about these interventions was mostly low, according to an adaptation of the Template for Intervention Description and Replication checklist. In studies including MDMA, psychotherapy was more homogeneous and more procedural details were provided. Improved reporting on psychological interventions of psychedelic treatments will support replicability, generalisability, and accurate interpretation of research, while enhancing feasibility and safety of future clinical research and real-world implementation of treatments.

The comparative benefits and harms of available interventions for ADHD in adults remain unclear. We aimed to address these important knowledge gaps.