Administration of antidepressant drugs – principally selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – may induce clinically significant ‘apathy’ which can affect treatment outcomes adversely. We aimed to review all relevant previous reports.

We performed a PUBMED search of English-language studies, combining terms concerning psychopathology (e.g. apathy) and classes of antidepressants (e.g. SSRI).

According to certain inclusion (e.g. use of DSM/ICD diagnostic criteria) and exclusion (e.g. presence of a clinical condition that may induce apathy) criteria, 50 articles were eligible for review. Together, they suggest that administration of antidepressants – usually SSRIs – can induce an apathy syndrome or emotional blunting, i.e. a decrease in emotional responsiveness, to circumstances which would have triggered intense mood reactions prior to pharmacotherapy. The reported prevalence of antidepressant-induced apathy ranges between 5.8 and 50%, and for SSRIs ranges between 20 and 92%. Antidepressant-induced apathy emerges independently of diagnosis, age, and treatment outcome and appears dose-dependent and reversible. The main treatment strategy is dose reduction, though some data suggest the usefulness of treatment with olanzapine, bupropion, agomelatine or amisulpride, or the methylphenidate–modafinil–olanzapine combination.

Antidepressant-induced apathy needs careful clinical attention. Further systematic research is needed to investigate the prevalence, course, aetiology, and treatment of this important clinical condition.

Anxiety can interfere with attention and working memory, which are components that affect learning. Statistical models have been designed to study learning, such as the Bayesian Learning Model, which takes into account prior possibilities and behaviours to determine how much of a new behaviour is determined by learning instead of chance. However, the neurobiological basis underlying how anxiety interferes with learning is not yet known. Accordingly, we aimed to use neuroimaging techniques and apply a Bayesian Learning Model to study learning in individuals with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD).

Participants were 25 controls and 14 individuals with GAD and comorbid disorders. During fMRI, participants completed a shape-button association learning and reversal task. Using a flexible factorial analysis in SPM, activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and hippocampus was compared between groups during first reversal. Beta values from the peak of these regions were extracted for all learning conditions and submitted to repeated measures analyses in SPSS.

Individuals with GAD showed less activation in the basal ganglia and the hippocampus only in the first reversal compared with controls. This difference was not present in the initial learning and second reversal.

Given that the basal ganglia is associated with initial learning, and the hippocampus with transfer of knowledge from short- to long-term memory, our results suggest that GAD may engage these regions to a lesser extent during early accommodation or consolidation of learning, but have no longer term effects in brain activation patterns during subsequent learning.

Although yoga shows some promise as an intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), little is known about how yoga reduces PTSD symptoms. The current study hypothesised that aspects of interoceptive awareness would mediate the effect of a yoga intervention on PTSD symptoms.

We used data from our recently completed randomised controlled trial of a 16-week holistic yoga programme for veterans and civilians diagnosed with PTSD (n = 141) that offered weekly 90-minute sessions. We conducted a mediation analysis using interoceptive awareness and other variables that were associated with PTSD symptom reduction at mid-treatment and treatment end.

Although measures of anxiety, interoceptive awareness, and spirituality were identified in individual mediator models, they were no longer found to be significant mediators when examined jointly in multiple mediator models. When examining the multiple mediator models, the strongest mediator of the yoga intervention on PTSD symptoms was mental well-being at mid-treatment and stigma at the treatment end. The total effect of yoga on CAPS and PCL at the treatment end mediated by stigma was 37.1% (–1.81/–4.88) and 33.6% (–1.91/–5.68), respectively.

Investigation of mental well-being and mental illness stigma as potential mediators is warranted in future studies of yoga as a treatment for PTSD as they may prove to be important foci for yoga interventions.

The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Male Post-coital Affect Scale (MPAS), which was developed to assess positive post-coital feelings in men.

After a pilot study, we validated our scale on a sample of American heterosexual men, who answered our questionnaire on the internet through Amazon Mechanical Turk. We tested the reliability using internal consistency. The validity was examined by assessing content, face and construct validity by testing the association between our scale, the Experience in Close Relationships Scale and other instruments.

A total of 484 volunteers were included in the study. Cronbach’s α for the scale was 0.83. Our scale was negatively correlated with attachment avoidance, r(482) = −0.36, p < 0.001) and Perceived Stress Scale, r(482) = −0.18, p < 0.001, and positively correlated with sexual satisfaction, r(482) = 0.18, p < 0.001.

The MPAS is a reliable and valid tool to assess positive post-coital feelings in men.