What does the science actually say about cannabis and mental health? In this episode of In Conversation With, hosted by Dustin Graham (Deputy Editor, The Lancet Psychiatry), three leading researchers unpack a landmark collection of papers on cannabis and mental health published in the journal. Dr. Jack Wilson (University of Sydney) breaks down a comprehensive meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials, revealing striking evidence gaps. Dr. Wayne Hall (University of Queensland) synthesises multiple forms of evidence, exploring cannabis's complex relationship with psychosis, anxiety, and depression. Professor Tom Freeman (University of Bath) zooms out to examine international cannabis policy, from decriminalisation to commercial legalisation, and what those shifts mean for psychiatric outcomes. Together, they tackle the tension between public demand, commercial interests, and a rapidly evolving evidence base — and what policymakers and clinicians urgently need to know. Read the full collection at thelancet.com

A Health Policy piece in our April issue by Tasdik Hasan and co-authors titled: Co-designing a Bangla Mental Health Sign Language Bank in Bangladesh https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(25)00334-7/fulltext Continue this conversation on social! Follow us today at... https://thelancet.bsky.social/ https://instagram.com/thelancetgroup https://facebook.com/thelancetmedicaljournal https://linkedIn.com/company/the-lancet https://youtube.com/thelancettv

How can you stop traumatic flashbacks in just one session? Intrusive memories are so common after experiencing traumatic events and are one of the hallmark features of PTSD, but what if you could take away the power of those images without having to discuss them at length in therapy? In this episode, Emily Holmes talks about a new randomised controlled trial of an imagery-competing task, where participants are taught in just one guided session to recall a traumatic memory and then use mental...

Can personality disorder treatments be reduced to just a few months? The evidence base for personality disorder treatments, like dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) or mentalisation-based treatment (MBT), points towards treatments that last at least a year. Within the mental health field in general, though, in many countries there's a drive towards offering shorter treatments. But how short is too short, considering the needs of people with personality-related difficulties and the challeng...

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect mental health? Now that some years have passed since the pandemic's height, we can learn more from synthesising all the evidence about its shorter and longer term effects. In this episode, Ethelreda Nakimuli and Peter Jones talk about two new papers that gather the past 5 years of work on the pandemic and mental health and policy approaches. They talk about the different effects of the pandemic on different groups' mental health, how mental hea...

Body dissatisfaction has been rising among adolescents in recent years, and so have symptoms and diagnoses of mental disorders. To help us know what to do about increasing youth mental ill health, we need better understandings of what is driving it, but causal factors are hard to pin down. In this episode, Ilaria Costantini and Francesca Solmi talk about their new study that uses a longitudinal twin study to disentangle the genetic and environmental factors in the associations between a...

Weight gain is a typical side-effect of taking antipsychotics and can have a big impact on people. But for young people with bipolar disorder, metformin isn't commonly prescribed alongside an antipsychotic. In this episode, Melissa DelBello describes a huge randomised trial in the USA on metformin for young people with bipolar disorder taking antipsychotics, looking at its effects over a 2-year period. Click here to read the full article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS...

Up to 1 in 4 women and birthing parents experience perinatal mental health difficulties, but there isn't enough evidence around interventions that could help them, especially interventions that work with the parent-infant bond or that focus on a broad range of mental health difficulties rather than specific disorders. Camilla Rosan talks about what's needed in perinatal mental health services, and tells us about the trial she just led on Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P), a group int...

People living with dementia often have behavioural and psychiatric symptoms, such as agitation, and when these are severe, antipsychotics can be prescribed. Guidelines recommend prescribing antipsychotics at the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time, but does this really happen in practice? Juan Carlos Bazo Alvarez and Claudia Cooper's research team looked at primary care data from the UK, to assess prescribing practice, and found that prescriptions are higher and for long...

Why is physical health so important for people with mental illness? In this episode, we talk about a new paper on lifestyle interventions for people with mental illness, covering which aspects of those interventions are beneficial for physical and mental health, and looking at key recommendations for how to implement these interventions in mental health settings. Kasia Machaczek, Scott Teasdale, and Joe Firth talk about their new paper on this topic, which extends the work of a 2019 Lan...