The rising prevalence of depression, with its associated suicide risk, demands effective fast-acting treatments. Ketamine has emerged as promising, demonstrating rapid antidepressant effects. While early studies show swift mood improvements, its precise mechanisms remain unclear. This article aims to compile and synthesize the literature on ketamine’s molecular actions. Ketamine primarily works by antagonizing NMDA receptors, reducing GABAergic inhibition, and increasing glutamate release. This enhanced glutamate activates AMPA receptors, triggering crucial downstream cascades, including BDNF-TrkB and mTOR pathways, promoting synaptic proliferation and regeneration. Moreover, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated alterations in brain networks involved in emotional regulation, including the Default Mode Network (DMN), Central Executive Network (CEN), and Salience Network (SN), which are frequently disrupted in depression. Despite the promising findings, the literature reveals significant inaccuracies and gaps in understanding the full scope of ketamine’s therapeutic potential. For instance, ketamine engages with opioid receptors, insinuating a permissive role of the opioid system in amplifying ketamine’s antidepressant effects, albeit ketamine does not operate as a direct opioid agonist. Further exploration is requisite to comprehensively ascertain its safety profile, long-term efficacy, and the impact of genetic determinants, such as BDNF polymorphisms, on treatment responsiveness.

Background: Anxiety disorders significantly reduce patients’ quality of life. Current pharmacological treatments, primarily benzodiazepines and antidepressants, are associated with numerous side effects. Consequently, there is a continual search for alternative methods to traditional therapies that are less burdensome for patients and broaden their therapeutic options. Our objective was to determine the role of selected alternative methods in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Methods: In this review, we examined recent evidence on alternative treatments for anxiety disorders, including physical activity, mindfulness, virtual reality (VR) technology, biofeedback, herbal remedies, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), cryotherapy, hyperbaric therapy, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. For this purpose we reviewed PubMed and after initial search, we excluded works unrelated to our aim, non-orginal data and animal studies. We conducted second search to cover all minor methods. Results: We included 116 studies, which data is presented in Tables. We have investigated which methods can support treatment and which can be used as a stand-alone treatment. We assessed the risks to benefits of using alternative treatments. Conclusion: Alternative treatments significantly expand the options available to patients and clinicians, with many serving as adjuncts to traditional therapies. Among the methods presented, mindfulness has the most significant therapeutic potential.

Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) is a rare imprinting-related neurodevelopmental disorder caused by loss of paternally expressed genes within the chromosome 15q11–q13 region, including SNORD116, MAGEL2, and NDN. It provides a natural model for examining how genomic imprinting disruptions shape neural development and psychiatric vulnerability. This review synthesizes current evidence to clarify the mechanistic pathways linking imprinting defects and epigenetic dysregulation to neuropsychiatric outcomes in PWS. Published studies—including patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models, animal knockout systems (e.g., Magel2-null models), transcriptomic and DNA methylation datasets, and human neuroimaging research—were identified through targeted searches of PubMed and Web of Science and integrated narratively rather than through systematic procedures. Across these data sources, deletion-type PWS is primarily associated with impaired neuronal maturation, altered serotonergic signaling, and locus-specific transcriptional dysregulation. Maternal uniparental disomy (mUPD) is characterized by broader epigenetic alterations within the imprinted domain, genome-wide transcriptional effects, dopaminergic pathway alterations, and disrupted prefrontal–limbic connectivity linked to increased psychosis risk. Importantly, available evidence supports substantial phenotypic and mechanistic overlap between PWS subtypes, with genotype–phenotype associations reflecting probabilistic tendencies rather than categorical distinctions. Collectively, convergent findings across molecular, neurochemical, and systems-level studies support a mechanistic continuum extending from imprinting defects to behavioral phenotypes. These insights position PWS as a translational model for understanding how epigenetic dysregulation contributes to psychiatric risk and highlight the need for genotype-informed, mechanistically grounded research to advance biomarker development and targeted therapeutic strategies.

Anxiety disorders significantly reduce patients' quality of life. Current pharmacological treatments, primarily benzodiazepines and antidepressants, are associated with numerous side effects. Consequently, there is a continual search for alternative methods to traditional therapies that are less burdensome for patients and broaden their therapeutic options. In this review, we examined recent evidence on alternative treatments for anxiety disorders, including physical activity, mindfulness, VR technology, biofeedback, herbal remedies, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), cryotherapy, hyperbaric therapy, vagus nerve stimulation, MDMA, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Our objective was to determine the role of these selected alternative methods in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Alternative treatments significantly expand the options available to patients and clinicians, with many serving as adjuncts to traditional therapies. Among the methods presented, mindfulness has the most significant therapeutic potential.