What are you here to understand?
Free guides, tools and screeners for mental health, from Reid Robison, MD, a psychiatrist and clinical trial investigator in Utah. Every guide cites its sources and says so when the evidence is thin.
About 30 validated screeners, private to your browser: depression, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD and more.
If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, any hour. Suicide prevention guides and tools
Suicide prevention
What prevents suicide, and what each of us can do. 6 posts and 5 tools.
- Keeping people safeWhat prevents suicide and how to check in on someone
- The warning in the boxWhy some psychiatric medicines carry a suicide warning
- What lies underneathThe science of suicidal pain: theories and neurobiology
- A plan for the hardest hourBuild a safety plan, with a free tool you can save or text
Therapy
How therapy works, and the approaches I trust. 15 posts and 6 tools.
- Coming home to the bodyInteroception, embodiment, and guided ways back into the body
- The committee insideInternal Family Systems, with tools to map your parts
- The gentlest experimentHakomi: mindfulness, the body and loving presence
- Feelings are dataAn emotion primer through Emotion-Focused Therapy
Psychedelic medicine
Ketamine, MDMA and psilocybin: the evidence and the risks. 15 posts and 5 tools.
- When the trip doesn't endHPPD: when visuals linger after psychedelics, and what helps
- The hidden therapistHow music works inside a psychedelic session
- How much of the change is the molecule?The drug, the therapist, or neither: what does the work?
- Ketamine and the suicidal crisisRapid relief of suicidal thinking: what we know and don't
Mind & perception
Placebo, perception, music and the strange ordinary mind. 17 posts and 2 tools.
- Made in the shadeSeventy years of teen slang, comics, and the adolescent brain
- Solve for nowTen equations of meditation, each with an experiment to run
- The ninety seconds afterWhat to do in the gap between a trigger and your reaction
- What emotional intelligence actually isThe evidence on EI: what it is, what it predicts, how to train it
Psychopharmacology
How psychiatric medicines work, interact and cost. 12 posts and 3 tools.
- Was it the pill?Placebo, nocebo, and how to tell what a medicine is really doing
- The life of an adverse eventHow a side effect becomes a line in the package insert
- The orexin frontierThe brain's wake switch, the sleep drugs, and the new agonists
- The reuptake eraHow reuptake blockers built modern psychiatry, Prozac onward
Depression & mood
What it is, what helps, and what’s new. 10 posts and 3 tools.
- One size fits fewPrecision psychiatry and pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing, explained
- How therapy worksThe predictive brain, and why talking with someone changes it
- Serotonin & serotonin syndromeSerotonin syndrome: how to recognize it, which combinations matter
ADHD & attention
How attention works, the medicines, and what’s new. 4 posts and 7 tools.
- New ADHD medications since 2021Every ADHD approval since 2021, and what each one costs
- Your attention isn't brokenWhy focus feels broken, and how to train it back
- Explore four FDA labelsSimtriyo, Azstarys, Qelbree and Onyda XR: dosing, trials, side effects, warnings, interactions and blood levels.
PTSD & trauma
How trauma changes the brain, and how people heal. 6 posts and 3 tools.
- MDMA, measuredAn evidence-graded MDMA harm-reduction reference
- MDMA: a research reportTwo positive trials, one FDA rejection, and what comes next
- Methylone: a research reportA smoke-shop stimulant now in Phase 3 for PTSD
Body & health
Fitness, aging, the heart and the body–brain link. 6 posts and 2 tools.
- Heart Risk NavigatorYour blood pressure and cholesterol, explained, with a risk calculator
- The Impossible CountryYetis, inner fire and levitating lamas: a century of strange science
- The Lifespan AtlasAging organ by organ, decade by decade
- Burn ClockHow long your skin can take today's sun
Anxiety & OCD
Worry, panic, obsessions and what quiets them. 5 posts and 2 tools.
- The doubting diseaseOCD: what it is, how it is measured, and how exposure works
- The worry engineGeneralized anxiety and its relatives, with a self-check for each
- 4-OH-DiPT: a research reportThe shortest-acting oral psychedelic, now in trials
Food & eating
Food noise, sugar, appetite and the eating brain. 5 posts and 1 tool.
- Gluten is (usually) not the enemyCeliac, sensitivity, nocebo, and gluten in eating disorders
- No one chooses thisEating disorders explained for families, and what to say
- The Gray Vial YearsHow GLP-1 injections became normal, and three earlier waves
- Food NoiseUnwanted thoughts about food: why, how much, what helps
New: the curious garden. A herbarium you can fall into: fourteen plants that change minds, from plate to molecule to the field they leave in a brain. Also: the perception lab.
Latest
All posts- Made in the shade
Seventy years of teen slang with animated comics for each era, a translator quiz, the truth about generations, and a scroll through the adolescent brain as it prunes, speeds up and does something stupid in front of its friends. Mind & perception
- The curious garden
A herbarium you can fall into: fourteen psychoactive plants, from botanical plate to tissue to molecule to receptor to the field they leave in a brain. Art room
- Solve for now
A mathematical adventure through meditation: ten equations, from suffering = pain × resistance to the mindfulness vector, each with an experiment you can run on your own mind. Mind & perception
- The ninety seconds after
What happens in the gap between a trigger and what you do about it, which moves in that gap have evidence, and a guided rehearsal that builds your own if-then plan. Mind & perception
- What emotional intelligence actually is
The evidence version: three things called the same name, what EI predicts beyond IQ and personality, the four skills that are real, whether it can be trained, and where mindfulness fits. Mind & perception
- Coming home to the body
Embodiment and interoception: the body's eighth sense, where emotions live, how stress and trauma push us out, which body-based practices have evidence, and guided ways back in. Therapy
Also here
Clinical trials in Orem, Utah
At Inner Space Research we run phase 2 and 3 trials of new medicines for depression, generalized anxiety and more. Taking part is free and closely monitored, and many studies compensate you for your time.
560 S State St, Suite D-1, Orem, UT. (801) 871-5516
I'm Reid Robison. I'm a psychiatrist, I run clinical trials, and I teach at the University of Utah. I write these guides for patients, families and other clinicians, and I build the tools I wish I'd had in clinic. Everything here is free. When the evidence is strong I'll say so, and when it isn't I'll say that too.