A qualitative study in Scotland examined the links between financial instability, employment insecurity, and suicidality. Results indicated that financial stressors create a cycle of unmet basic needs, powerlessness, and social isolation. Job precarity and lack of support further exacerbate these relationships, contributing to suicidal ideation. The research was published in Death Studies.

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. World Health Organization statistics indicate that 700,000 people die by suicide every year worldwide, making it a significant global public health issue. Although major religions have historically condemned suicide, contemporary public health and psychological perspectives view it as a preventable outcome arising from complex interactions rather than a moral failing. Suicide rarely has a single cause; instead, it reflects the intersection of personal, relational, community, and societal factors.

Economic instability, job insecurity, and financial distress are consistently linked to higher suicide risk, with those in insecure employment disproportionately affected. Evidence from the U.K. and Scotland shows particularly high vulnerability among working-age adults, even as poverty increasingly affects households where someone is employed.

Precarious work conditions—such as low income, unpredictable hours, limited rights, and low job autonomy—contribute to chronic stress and poorer mental health. Furthermore, stigma surrounding financial hardship and job insecurity can deter help-seeking, increasing isolation and risk.

Study author Nicola Cogan and her colleagues wanted to explore how insecure employment and financial instability are perceived to contribute toward suicidal thoughts and behaviors among adults living in Scotland. They also sought to identify risk and protective factors associated with the mental health impacts of economic insecurity and offer policy recommendations for improving mental health support for people facing economic precarity.

The study included 24 individuals from Scotland who reported being paid less than the living wage or below the minimum income standard, were on zero-hours contracts, working in the gig economy, were job-seeking long term, or had experience with Universal Credit (the UK’s main welfare benefit system). Sixteen participants were men. The participants’ average age was 30 years. On average, participants reported that their last suicidal thoughts or behaviors occurred more than six months prior. Individuals who were currently suicidal were not included in the study.

Participants took part in semi-structured interviews focusing on the interplay between employment status, financial instability, and experiences of suicidal ideation or behavior. They received a £20 voucher for their participation. The researchers transcribed the interviews and conducted reflexive thematic analysis with the goal of identifying the key themes within the narratives.

Analysis of the interviews identified six key themes. The first theme was the “struggle to meet basic needs and the vicious cycle.” When participants experienced financial instability, it created a struggle to meet basic needs like food, housing, and healthcare. This battle degraded their mental health. Diminished mental health, in turn, reduced their ability to improve their financial situation, creating a vicious cycle.

The second theme was “feeling trapped and powerless.” Participants reported that feelings of entrapment intersected with suicidal thoughts and behaviors, as they struggled to envision any escape from the situation. Theme three was the “stigma of financial instability.” Feeling financially unstable negatively impacted participants’ self-worth and self-esteem, making them feel inadequate and helpless. Theme four was “thinking about suicide and acting on such thoughts.” During these times, many of them imagined suicide to be the only way out of their struggles.

The fifth theme was the “need for hope and support from supportive others.” For many participants, hope and support from friends, family, and other individuals fostered resilience and prevented them from acting on suicidal thoughts.

The sixth theme was “active help-seeking and gaining a sense of control.” For many participants, actively seeking help was a turning point in managing the intersecting challenges of financial instability and mental health distress. This enabled them to regain a sense of control over their circumstances.

“Reflexive thematic analysis identified key themes, highlighting how financial stressors create a cycle of unmet basic needs, powerlessness, and social isolation, which exacerbates suicidal distress. Workplace conditions including job precarity and lack of support, further intensified these experiences, while protective factors included supportive relationships and proactive help-seeking,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the mental health effects of financial instability. However, the study deliberately excluded prospective participants currently experiencing suicidality. Because of this, it did not fully capture the perspectives of individuals at the highest risk of suicide. Additionally, the collected data were based on the recall of past hardships, leaving room for recall and reporting biases to have affected the results.

The paper, “’It feels like the world is falling on your head’: Exploring the link between financial instability, employment insecurity, and suicidality,” was authored by Nicola Cogan, Susan Rasmussen, Kirsten Russell, Dan Heap, Heather Archbold, Lucy Milligan, Scott Thomson, Spence Whittaker, Dave Morris, and Danielle Rowley.

A study in Sexual and Relationship Therapy found that men are more open to casual sex and infidelity than women. The research also highlights a strong link between relationship dissatisfaction, the desire for uncommitted sex, and the intention to cheat.

Infidelity has long been defined as a violation of promises and commitments within a romantic relationship, reflecting a failure to uphold expectations of love, loyalty, and support. However, modern views conceptualize infidelity as physical, sexual, or emotional behaviors that violate relationship norms and cause distress and negative relationship outcomes. Exactly which behaviors constitute infidelity varies across couples, as norms regarding emotional and sexual exclusivity differ between relationships.

The most common forms of infidelity are sexual and emotional infidelity. Sexual infidelity usually involves physical sexual behaviors with someone other than one’s partner. Emotional infidelity consists of forming intimate emotional bonds with a person other than the partner that breach relationship rules agreed upon by the couple. Research indicates that sexual and emotional infidelity often co-occur; they are, most often, not independent phenomena.

A key psychological characteristic linked to infidelity is sociosexuality. Sociosexuality is the level of openness to casual sex without commitment. Individuals with higher sociosexuality are more likely to engage in both sexual and emotional infidelity, as their attitudes and desires may conflict with monogamous relationship norms.

Study author Paula Pricope and her colleagues wanted to investigate whether sociosexuality plays a mediating role in the relationship between relationship satisfaction and intentions towards infidelity. They also wanted to know whether these associations are the same in men and women. The authors hypothesized that men would be more inclined to engage in infidelity compared to women and that their sociosexuality would be higher (i.e., they would be more open to casual sex).

Study participants were 246 individuals from Romania. Their average age was 24 years. All participants were volunteers. Sixty-one percent of participants were women. Seventy-two percent were in a non-marital romantic relationship, while 28% were married. Sixty-eight percent of participants were from urban areas of Romania.

Participants completed assessments of intentions towards infidelity (the Intentions Towards Infidelity Scale), relationship satisfaction (the Relationship Assessment Scale), and sociosexuality (the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory – Revised).

Results showed that individuals reporting stronger intentions towards infidelity tended to have higher sociosexuality and be less satisfied with their relationships. In other words, individuals more willing to cheat on their partners tended to be more open to uncommitted sex and less satisfied with their relationships. Men tended to report higher sociosexuality and higher intentions towards infidelity than women.

The authors tested a statistical model proposing that lower relationship satisfaction leads to higher sociosexuality, which, in turn, increases intentions to cheat. The results indicated that this pathway was significant specifically for men. For male participants, lower relationship satisfaction was linked to higher sociosexuality, which then predicted higher intentions to cheat. However, this mediation pathway was not significant for women.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of infidelity. However, all study data came from self-reports, leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow for causal inferences.

While it is indeed possible that lower relationship satisfaction leads to increased sociosexuality and infidelity intentions, it is also possible that higher sociosexuality and infidelity intentions reduce relationship satisfaction or make it harder for a person to be satisfied with a committed relationship. Other possibilities also remain open.

The paper, “The roles of sociosexuality and gender in the relationship between relationship satisfaction and intentions toward infidelity: a moderated mediation model,” was authored by Paula Pricope, Tudor-Daniel Huțul, Adina Karner-Huțuleac, and Andreea Huțul.

An experimental study conducted in China found that a 5-week emotion-targeted mindfulness training improved participants’ working memory accuracy for faces displaying emotions, with the exception of faces displaying fear. The improvements continued to be present one month after the training was completed. The research was published in npj Science of Learning.

Mindfulness is the practice of intentionally paying attention to the present moment with openness and without judgment. It involves noticing thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and external experiences as they arise. Mindfulness has roots in Buddhist meditation traditions but is widely used today in secular psychological and health contexts. It is commonly cultivated through practices such as meditation, breathing exercises, and mindful movement.

Research shows that mindfulness can reduce stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. It can also improve emotional regulation and increase awareness of habitual reactions. Mindfulness helps people relate differently to difficult thoughts and feelings rather than trying to suppress or avoid them. In everyday life, it can be practiced during routine activities such as eating, walking, or listening.

Study author Hui Kou and her colleagues wanted to explore the impact of mindfulness training on working memory for faces and the cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect. They conducted an experiment.

Study participants were 120 undergraduate students from a medical university in China. Ninety of them were women. Participants’ average age was 20 years. All participants were right-handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Study authors randomly divided participants into a training and a control group. The training group underwent 5 weeks of mindfulness training based on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and cognitive therapy. They had 2 hours of training per week.

The goal of the training was to enhance emotion perception and emotion regulation, so the contents of each weekly training focused on the topic of emotions. The control group had two lectures on mindfulness designed to concentrate on general principles of mindfulness. Each lecture lasted 60 minutes and did not include experiential practices.

Before and after the training and 1 month after the training was finished, participants completed assessments of mindfulness (the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire), and a cognitive test assessing their visual working memory for faces displaying emotions. In the cognitive test, participants first viewed two faces for one second. This was followed by a two-second blank screen (delay period), after which another face appeared.

Participants’ task was to indicate whether that final face was among the two initially shown. There were 48 such trials in one block. There were 5 blocks in total. All faces in one block displayed the same emotion and the emotion displayed was different in each block. The emotions the faces displayed were happy, sad, angry, fearful, and neutral.

The results showed that the mindfulness training resulted in improved working memory accuracy for facial stimuli across all examined emotional expressions except fear. One month after the training was finished, these improvements were still present. Participants from the training group performed better than those in the control group both immediately after the training and one month later.

Statistical analyses indicated that, after the training, participants processed information on faces they viewed more efficiently when making memory decisions regardless of the emotion the face displayed. The stronger this increase in processing efficiency was, the more accurate participants’ memory performance became.

“These findings demonstrate that mindfulness training induces lasting improvements in both accuracy and processing efficiency of visual working memory, independent of facial emotions, clarifying its cognitive mechanisms,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific knowledge on the effects of mindfulness training. However, it should be noted that the study used just a single working memory task, with a single type of stimuli. It remains unknown how much the findings would generalize to different working memory tasks and to stimuli that are not faces displaying emotions.

The paper, “Mindfulness training enhances face working memory: evidence from the drift-diffusion model,” was authored by Hui Kou, Wei Luo, Xiaodong Li, Jia Wu, Qianguo Xiao, and Taiyong Bi.

A longitudinal study in Christchurch, New Zealand found that individuals who displayed the most severe ADHD symptoms as adolescents were at an elevated risk of developing substance use disorder, depression, and suicidal ideation in early adulthood. They were also more likely to engage in crime and be unemployed. These individuals tended to have lower income and living standards, and less stable relationships. The paper was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and/or impulsivity that interfere with daily functioning or development. It typically begins in childhood, although many individuals continue to experience symptoms into adolescence and adulthood. Most often, ADHD is diagnosed when an individual starts school as behavior caused by ADHD comes into conflict with school rules.

ADHD is more commonly diagnosed in males, although females are often underdiagnosed due to less overt symptoms. Genetic factors play a major role in ADHD. ADHD often co-occurs with other conditions such as learning disorders, anxiety, depression, or oppositional behavior. Symptoms can significantly adversely affect academic performance, work productivity, and social relationships.

Study author James A. Foulds and his colleagues used data from a 40-year longitudinal study of a birth cohort in Christchurch, New Zealand to estimate the association between ADHD symptoms in adolescence and a broad range of mental health and psychosocial outcomes in early adulthood up to 40 years of age.

Data used in this analysis came from the Christchurch Health and Development Study. This study enrolled 1,265 individuals born in Christchurch in 1977 and assessed them annually from birth to 16 years of age. After that, data were collected when participants were 18, 21, 25, 30, 35, and 40 years of age. In the final three data collection waves, 75–80% of surviving study participants provided their data.

Data used in this analysis were assessments of ADHD symptoms, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder symptoms when participants were 14–16 years of age. Of the data collected between 16 and 40 years of participants’ age, study authors used information on substance use disorders (alcohol and cannabis), illicit drug use, and internalizing mental health problems.

Internalizing mental health problems are psychological difficulties characterized by inwardly directed distress, such as anxiety, depression, and withdrawal. Of the data collected between participants’ 25 and 40 years of age, this analysis used information on participants’ unemployment (lasting at least 3 months), relationship breakdowns, income, and home ownership.

Results showed that the 25% of participants with the most severe ADHD symptoms in adolescence were more likely to smoke tobacco (34% vs 15%), fulfill criteria for alcohol use disorder (26% vs 14%), and cannabis use disorder (18% vs 7%) compared to participants with less severe or no ADHD symptoms.

These individuals also more often met the criteria for major depression (29% vs 19%), anxiety disorders, and suicidal ideation. They were more likely to have been arrested (9% vs 3%), more likely to have engaged in both violent and property crime, and were more often unemployed. Participants who had the most severe ADHD symptoms as adolescents owned their homes less often and tended to have lower personal income. They more often reported breakdowns of relationships.

“Higher levels of adolescent ADHD symptoms are associated with substance use problems and criminal offending in adulthood. Long-term secondary prevention activities are needed to detect and manage coexisting problems among adults with a history of ADHD,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between ADHD symptoms in adolescence and key life outcomes in adulthood. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a group of individuals born in a single city (Christchurch) in the same year (1977), meaning that the observed associations may be affected by cultural and social specificities of Christchurch during the studied period. Results in other cultures and other historical periods may differ.

The study authors also note that only 5 participants were prescribed stimulant medication for their ADHD. This differs from the modern situation where people suffering from ADHD receive medication for their condition much more often. Finally, it remains unknown how much the association with the outcomes is due to ADHD symptoms and not due to other co-occurring conditions like autism spectrum disorder, a condition that was largely not diagnosed properly in the 1970s.

The paper, “Long-term outcomes associated with adolescent ADHD symptomatology: birth cohort study,” was authored by James A. Foulds, Joseph M. Boden, Jessica A. Kerr, Katie M. Douglas, Michaela Pettie, Jesse T. Young, Mairin R. Taylor, Katherine Donovan, and Richard Porter.

A study conducted in Taiwan found that autistic individuals tend to show differences in gut microbiota composition compared to both non-autistic individuals and their siblings without autism. More specifically, the autistic group showed distinct differences in the beta diversity of their gut microbiota. Individuals with more Anaerostipes bacteria exhibited significantly less social impairment and internalizing problems. The paper was published in Translational Psychiatry.

The gut microbiota is the complex community of microorganisms, mainly bacteria, that live in the human gastrointestinal tract. These microorganisms play a crucial role in digestion, metabolism, immune function, and protection against pathogens.

They also communicate with the central nervous system through a bidirectional communication pathway called the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Signals between the brain and the gut microbiota travel via multiple physiological paths, including the vagus nerve, immune system biochemicals, and microbial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids.

Research shows that, through the microbiota-gut-brain axis, gut microbiota can influence brain development, stress reactivity, and emotional regulation. Differences in gut microbiota composition have been associated with psychological characteristics such as anxiety, depression, stress sensitivity, and cognitive functioning.

Experimental studies suggest that altering the gut microbiota through diet, probiotics, or antibiotics can lead to changes in mood and behavior. Early-life microbiota development appears particularly important for later psychological outcomes.

Study author Jung-Chi Chang and his colleagues wanted to investigate the associations between gut microbiota composition and autism features. They also wanted to compare microbial profiles between autistic individuals, their non-autistic siblings, and unrelated non-autistic individuals. The study authors hypothesized that gut microbiota diversity would differ between these three groups and that the gut microbiota composition of autistic individuals and their siblings would show unique features compared to non-autistic individuals.

The study included 239 autistic individuals, 102 non-autistic biological siblings of these individuals, and 81 unrelated non-autistic children and young adults from Taiwan. The average age of the autistic participants and their siblings was approximately 12 years, while the average age of the unrelated non-autistic participants was approximately 14. In general, participants’ ages ranged between 4 and 25 years.

Autistic participants were required to have a clinical diagnosis of autism. This diagnosis was confirmed through interviews conducted by the authors (using the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule). Non-autistic participants were required to have no diagnosis of psychiatric disorders or neurological or systemic medical conditions.

The study authors obtained information about participants’ autism-related behaviors and emotional and behavioral issues from their caregivers (using the Social Responsiveness Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist). Study participants provided fecal samples, allowing the authors to analyze the composition of their gut microbiota. Participants and their parents also reported any gastrointestinal symptoms the participants had experienced in the past 4 weeks.

Results showed that, compared to unrelated non-autistic participants, siblings of autistic individuals had higher alpha diversity, while autistic participants had a different beta diversity in their gut microbiota.

Alpha diversity of gut microbiota refers to the diversity of microbial species within a single individual or sample, reflecting the richness and evenness of the community. Beta diversity of gut microbiota reflects differences in microbial composition between individuals or samples, indicating how distinct their microbial communities are from one another.

Unrelated non-autistic participants had a higher relative abundance of Blautia, Eubacterium hallii group, Anaerostipes, Erysipelotrichaceae UCG 003, Parasutterella, and Ruminococcaceae UCG 013 at the genus level compared to autistic participants and their siblings. The family Prevotellaceae and genera Agathobacter microbes were more abundant in siblings of autistic participants compared to both autistic participants and unrelated non-autistic participants. Individuals with more Anaerostipes bacteria tended to have significantly less social impairment and internalizing problems.

“Our study reveals unique microbial compositions in the ASD [autism spectrum disorder] and SIB [siblings] groups and a relationship between behavior patterns and microbial composition. These findings suggest the potential of microbial interventions for autistic individuals that warrant further exploration,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between gut microbiota composition and psychological processes and characteristics. However, it should be noted that the cross-sectional design of this study does not allow for causal inferences to be derived from the results.

The paper, “Identifying gut microbiota composition disparities in autistic individuals and their unaffected siblings: correlations with clinical characteristics,” was authored by Jung-Chi Chang, Yu-Chieh Chen, Hai-Ti Lin, Yan-Lin Chen, and Susan Shur-Fen Gau.