The distinction between a cancer admission and a critical illness admission matters more than it might first appear. Oncology wards are, by design, environments where patients and families are surrounded by staff who understand the trajectory of the disease, the purpose of each treatment, and the rhythms of recovery. Intensive care units, by contrast, are built around physiological stabilization. Their priorities are airway, circulation, sedation and organ support, and their communication structures are organized around rapid clinical decision-making rather than the slower, more deliberate conversations that families coping with cancer often need. When a person with cancer crosses that threshold, their caregiver effectively crosses it too, moving from a world of scheduled treatments and familiar oncology teams into one of alarms, visiting restrictions and daily prognostic uncertainty. The Flinders University review suggests that this transition is precisely where caregivers become most vulnerable, and least visible.

The figures reported in the review are striking in their consistency. In one of the included studies, 71 per cent of caregivers experienced symptoms of anxiety and roughly half reported symptoms of depression, proportions that far exceed what is typically observed in the general population. Almost all participants reported difficulty caring for themselves, a finding that captures something subtle but important: caregivers in these situations frequently stop attending to their own basic needs, including nutrition, sleep, medical appointments and personal time, because the emotional gravity of the ICU pulls everything else into its orbit. Exhaustion, poor sleep and social isolation were common threads across the nine international studies, which together involved 924 participants. These are not trivial complaints. Sleep deprivation and chronic stress are known to impair immune function, cardiovascular health and cognitive performance, and prolonged caregiver strain is associated in broader research with elevated risks of depression, burnout and even increased mortality among caregivers themselves.

What makes the cancer context distinctive is the layering of two separate sources of uncertainty. Caregivers of any critically ill patient face the immediate question of whether their loved one will survive the current crisis. Caregivers of cancer patients carry an additional, longer shadow: the knowledge that even if this crisis resolves, the underlying disease and its treatment continue. The review’s senior author, Professor Catherine Paterson, points to this combination as the source of support needs that are not always recognised by health services. A caregiver may be simultaneously processing the mechanics of ventilator weaning, the implications of a recent scan, the logistics of childcare, and the fear that the cancer has progressed. Each of these demands a different kind of information, delivered by a different part of the health system, and the review found that the interfaces between intensive care and cancer services are often where communication breaks down.

The methodological character of the review deserves attention. As a mixed methods systematic review, it synthesised both quantitative measurements of psychological symptoms and qualitative accounts of lived experience, drawing on nine studies conducted across different countries and healthcare systems. This breadth matters because it suggests the findings are not an artefact of any single health system’s organisation. The pattern of caregiver distress appeared regardless of whether the underlying system was more or less resourced, more or less family-centred, or more or less integrated between critical care and oncology. At the same time, the review exposed a significant blind spot in the evidence base itself: only two of the included studies examined the perspectives of healthcare professionals and the role of the multidisciplinary team in supporting caregivers. This means the field knows a great deal about what caregivers feel and comparatively little about what clinicians observe, prioritise or believe they are able to offer, a gap that shapes what kinds of interventions can realistically be designed.

The practical consequences of unrecognised caregiver distress extend well beyond the caregiver. Informal caregivers are, in a very real sense, an extension of the care team. They notice subtle changes in a patient’s condition, advocate during handovers, interpret medical information for other family members, and provide continuity once the patient leaves hospital. A caregiver who is exhausted, anxious and under-informed is less able to perform these functions, and the quality of the patient’s recovery may suffer as a result. Conversely, there is growing recognition in the broader literature that supporting family members is not a peripheral kindness but a component of patient-centred care with measurable effects on outcomes, readmission rates and the sustainability of care at home after discharge.

The review also highlights the temporal dimension of caregiver suffering. Some participants continued to experience distress months after the critical illness had passed, a finding consistent with wider research on post-intensive care syndrome, which recognises that the psychological aftermath of a critical illness can persist long after discharge for both patients and families. For cancer caregivers, this persistence may be compounded by the ongoing treatment schedule, the possibility of recurrence, and the cumulative fatigue of a journey that began well before the ICU admission and continues long after it. Follow-up care that focuses solely on the patient therefore risks missing a household-level problem that has been quietly accumulating throughout.

Lead author Shalyn Rourke’s observation that caregivers are often putting their own wellbeing aside points toward one of the central practical challenges: caregivers themselves rarely present as patients. They do not have a bed, a chart or a named clinician responsible for their welfare. They are, in the language of health services, an invisible population embedded within someone else’s episode of care. Identifying distress in such a population requires deliberate screening, dedicated communication channels and staff who are trained and rostered to look beyond the bedside. Professor Paterson’s suggestion that nurses and the wider multidisciplinary team are well placed to detect signs of distress reflects this reality, since nurses typically have the most sustained contact with families during an ICU stay and are often the first to notice when a caregiver is struggling.

The researchers’ call for coordinated, family-centred care implies several concrete shifts. It suggests that information given to families should be consistent across the intensive care and oncology teams, so that caregivers are not left reconciling contradictory messages about prognosis or treatment intent. It suggests that caregivers should be included in follow-up after ICU discharge rather than simply fading from the system once the patient stabilises. And it suggests that health services should develop ways of identifying caregivers at particular risk, whether because of the severity of the patient’s illness, the caregiver’s own health status, or the practical burdens of juggling work, family and hospital visits simultaneously.

What the review ultimately reframes is the unit of care itself. A critical illness in a person with cancer is not an event that happens to one individual; it happens to a network of people whose wellbeing is interdependent. The 924 participants in these nine studies were, in most cases, the people holding households, finances and emotional life together while the patient fought for survival. If the goal of intensive care is to return patients to meaningful lives, and the goal of cancer care is to sustain patients through long and demanding treatment journeys, then the wellbeing of the people who make both possible cannot remain an afterthought. The evidence assembled by Rourke, Paterson and their colleagues makes the case that recognising caregiver distress is not an act of charity at the margins of medicine, but a structural requirement of care that genuinely serves the patient at its centre.

Subject of Research: Caregiver wellbeing and supportive care needs during critical illness in people with cancer

Article Title: When cancer turns critical, the patient isn't the only one suffering

Article References: When cancer turns critical, the patient isn't the only one suffering. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: cancer, intensive care, caregivers, mental health, anxiety, depression, systematic review, nursing, Flinders University, supportive care, ICU, family caregivers

The paper, titled ‘The first brain at the centre: An enteric reframing of the nervous system,’ was authored by Dr Tim Hibberd, Hayley Rhodes and Professor Nick Spencer of Flinders University. It was published as a commentary, meaning it presents an interpretive argument synthesized from existing evidence rather than the results of a single new experiment. Even so, its implications reach into the heart of evolutionary neuroscience, because it suggests that the energy-hungry business of digestion, not cognition, may have been the original driving force behind the emergence of nervous tissue in early animals.

At the center of the argument is the enteric nervous system, the vast web of neurons embedded in the walls of the gastrointestinal tract. Often described as the body’s ‘second brain,’ this network contains hundreds of millions of neurons in humans, a number that rivals or exceeds the neuronal population of the spinal cord. Crucially, the enteric nervous system can operate without direct input from the brain or spinal cord. It senses the chemical and mechanical conditions of the gut lining, processes that information locally, and coordinates complex patterns of muscle contraction, secretion and blood flow that make digestion possible. Isolated segments of intestine continue to generate coordinated peristaltic activity in laboratory conditions, a striking demonstration of just how autonomous this system is.

Dr Hibberd, from Flinders’ College of Medicine and Public Health, argues that this autonomy is precisely why the enteric nervous system deserves to be reconsidered as the body’s original neural architecture. ‘We are proposing a different way of looking at the nervous system,’ he says. ‘The enteric nervous system in the gut can sense its environment, process information and coordinate complex responses. In many ways, it functions like a brain in its own right.’ By that logic, he and his colleagues contend, it may be more accurate to think of the gut’s neural network not as a second brain but as the first one.

The evolutionary reasoning behind this claim rests on a simple biological imperative. For any organism, the overriding priority is securing energy: capturing nutrients, breaking them down and distributing them to tissues. Early multicellular animals faced this challenge without the benefit of centralized nervous systems. A diffuse network of neurons arranged around the digestive apparatus would have provided an immediate survival advantage, allowing a primitive gut to detect food, respond to it and coordinate the movements needed to move it through the body. Only later, as animals grew larger, more mobile and more behaviorally complex, would centralized brains have become useful, and even then, the Flinders researchers argue, the brain’s fundamental role remained to support the gut’s mission of energy acquisition.

This perspective aligns with features of modern nervous system diversity. Many animals with simple body plans, including certain cnidarians and other basal lineages, possess nerve nets with little or no centralization, organized largely around the oral and digestive regions. In more complex animals, the gut tube retains its own complete nervous system regardless of how elaborate the brain has become. The persistence of this independent enteric circuitry across such a wide range of species, the researchers suggest, hints at its ancient origins. Rather than being a derived or secondary feature, the gut’s nervous system may preserve the architecture of the earliest nervous systems that ever evolved.

Senior author Professor Nick Spencer, from Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, says the theory helps explain a puzzle that has long interested physiologists: why the gut remains so influential in directing functions throughout the body, long after brains capable of vision, memory and movement appeared. ‘The gut is constantly gathering information and communicating with other organs,’ says Professor Spencer. ‘It plays a major role in regulating digestion, metabolism and other functions essential for survival. These fundamental processes may have helped drive the evolution of the nervous system.’ The gut, in this framing, is not a passive organ awaiting instructions but an active sensing and signaling hub whose outputs ripple through hormones, immune signaling and neural pathways to shape appetite, metabolism and even mood.

The reframing also speaks to a growing body of research on the gut-brain axis, the bidirectional communication network linking the gastrointestinal tract with the central nervous system. The vagus nerve provides a direct neural highway between gut and brain, while gut-derived hormones modulate hunger, satiety and glucose regulation. Clinical observations have reinforced the significance of this axis: alterations in gut function are increasingly documented in conditions as varied as Parkinson’s disease, obesity and diabetes. In Parkinson’s disease, for example, aggregates of the protein alpha-synuclein have been detected in the enteric nervous system, prompting ongoing debate about whether pathological processes may begin in the gut before reaching the brain. A theoretical framework that treats the gut’s nervous system as primary, rather than peripheral, could reshape how such connections are investigated.

The Flinders team is candid that their proposal is unlikely to change medical practice overnight. As an opinion piece, it functions as a challenge to the field, an invitation to reinterpret existing evidence through a different lens rather than a definitive proof of gut-first neural evolution. But the authors argue that the conceptual stakes are high, because the assumptions scientists bring to anatomy shape the questions they ask about disease. ‘The way we think about the body shapes the way we investigate disease,’ says Dr Hibberd. ‘If we begin to view the gut as a central player in nervous system function, it may open up new avenues for research.’ Those avenues could include exploring the enteric nervous system as a therapeutic target for metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders, or re-examining the evolutionary record of early animals with fresh attention to the neural tissue surrounding the digestive tract.

Whatever the ultimate verdict of the scientific community, the paper injects new energy into one of evolution’s oldest questions. If the Flinders researchers are right, the human brain, with all its capacity for language, art and abstraction, is best understood not as the founding organ of the nervous system but as a brilliant late addition, recruited in service of an older, quieter intelligence coiled within the gut. The idea invites scientists and the public alike to reconsider where the story of the nervous system truly began: not in the skull, but in the ancient, energy-driven demands of the gut that every animal, from the simplest worm to the human being, still carries at its core.

Subject of Research: Evolutionary origins of the enteric nervous system and the gut-first hypothesis of brain evolution

Article Title: What evolved first – our brain or gut?

Article References: What evolved first – our brain or gut?. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: enteric nervous system, evolution, gut-brain axis, neuroscience, digestion, Flinders University, Journal of Physiology, brain evolution, Parkinson's disease, metabolism, second brain, physiology

Lead author Professor James Smith, a Matthew Flinders Professor of Health and Social Equity and Co-Director of the FHMRI Health Equity Impact Program at Flinders University, frames the issue in starkly equitable terms. Where someone lives, he argues, should not determine the quality of healthcare they receive. His position reflects a growing body of international research showing that the geography of medical training matters as much as its content. Students who spend meaningful time living and learning in rural communities develop a deeper understanding of local health priorities, form professional and personal relationships in those settings, and are substantially more likely to build their careers there. The implication is that workforce distribution can be influenced long before a graduate ever signs an employment contract, simply by changing where education takes place.

The paper points to Australia’s sustained investment in rural medical education over the past two decades as evidence that targeted training programs can deliver measurable benefits. Between 2016 and 2018, more than 30 per cent of government-supported medical students spent a year or longer at a rural clinical school, an extended immersion that goes well beyond the short observational placements common in many curricula. Graduates with substantial rural placement experience were significantly more likely to enter rural medical practice after qualifying. This pattern, documented across multiple cohorts and consistent with findings from the United States and elsewhere, suggests that extended place-based learning functions as a form of workforce pipeline: the community effectively gets to know the student, and the student gets to know the community, before either commits.

The technical logic behind this effect is worth unpacking. Rural and remote practice demands a distinctive skill set that differs in important ways from metropolitan hospital medicine. Practitioners in small communities often work with broader scopes of practice, fewer on-site specialists, limited diagnostic infrastructure and greater reliance on telehealth and coordinated referral networks. They must also navigate the social determinants of health that weigh heavily in remote settings, including housing, food security, transport and environmental exposures. Training in these environments allows students to acquire procedural confidence, adaptability and systems literacy that classroom-based urban education struggles to replicate. Equally important, it cultivates relationships, with local clinicians, community organisations and patients, that make rural practice feel achievable and attractive rather than isolating.

Associate Professor Emma Kennedy AM, a co-author of the paper, emphasises that successful healthcare is built on strong community connections. Healthcare, she notes, is about more than treating illness; it is also about understanding people, families and communities. Rural medical education is at its best, in her view, when future doctors learn alongside the communities they will one day serve. This framing shifts the purpose of rural placements from a logistical exercise, sending students somewhere for a rotation, to an educational philosophy in which the community itself is a co-teacher. Community partnerships of this kind require sustained institutional commitment, mutual respect and genuine benefit flowing back to the host community, not merely the extraction of training opportunities.

A central argument of the paper concerns First Nations knowledge, sovereignty and leadership. The authors state that reconciling and recognising First Nations sovereignty is critical to advancing health and wellbeing outcomes, and they call on medical schools to increase support for First Nations students, strengthen opportunities for First Nations leadership, and embed cultural safety throughout medical training. Cultural safety, in this context, is not a checklist of cultural awareness content but an ongoing standard of practice in which healthcare is delivered in ways that recognise power imbalances, respect identity and meet the expectations of the community being served. Embedding it throughout training, rather than confining it to a single module, is presented as essential to producing graduates who can work effectively and respectfully with First Nations patients and communities.

Co-author Professor Jaquelyne Hughes, a Torres Strait Islander woman of the Wagadagam people, argues that First Nations perspectives are essential to building effective healthcare systems. Communities, she says, hold valuable knowledge about what works for their people. When First Nations voices are included in education, research and healthcare delivery, the result is a stronger system that is more culturally responsive and more effective for everyone. Her point carries a broader methodological implication for medical education: knowledge about health is not held exclusively by universities and hospitals. Communities with long histories of managing health, illness and wellbeing in their own contexts possess expertise that, when genuinely incorporated into curricula and governance, improves the fit between services and the populations they are meant to reach.

The paper also highlights the importance of recruiting more students from rural backgrounds into medical careers. The evidence here parallels the placement findings: students who come from regional, rural and remote areas are often more likely to return to those communities after graduating, bringing with them an existing understanding of local life and, frequently, family and social ties that anchor them in place. Admission policies, financial support and pathway programs that widen access for rural students are therefore not simply equity measures, although they are that too; they are workforce strategies. Combined with extended rural placements and community-embedded curricula, they form a coherent pipeline in which recruitment, training and retention reinforce one another rather than operating as disconnected stages.

The international scope of the argument is significant. Rural health workforce shortages are not unique to Australia; they affect the United States, Canada, and many low- and middle-income countries where remote communities face the compounding disadvantages of distance, infrastructure gaps and historical inequities. By drawing on evidence across these settings, the authors position rural medical education as a transferable model rather than a local experiment. The core principles, extended place-based learning, genuine community partnership, cultural safety, First Nations leadership in curriculum and governance, and targeted recruitment of rural-origin students, can be adapted to different health systems while retaining the same underlying mechanism: aligning the location and culture of training with the locations and cultures where care is most needed.

Professor Smith summarises the investment case plainly: investing in rural medical education is ultimately an investment in healthier communities. By building training opportunities in rural and remote settings and listening to communities, he argues, it is possible to build a stronger workforce, reduce health inequities and improve health outcomes for future generations. The paper, published as a commentary in the BMJ, arrives at a moment when health systems in multiple countries are grappling with maldistributed workforces and persistent gaps in outcomes between metropolitan and remote populations. Its message is that the solution does not begin in the clinic or the employment market, but earlier, in the design of medical education itself, and that the communities long underserved by that education are also the ones best placed to help redesign it.

Subject of Research: Rural and remote medical education with First Nations communities and its impact on healthcare workforce distribution

Article Title: Rural medical training key to stronger healthcare in First Nations communities

Article References: Rural medical training key to stronger healthcare in First Nations communities. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: rural medical education, First Nations health, Flinders University, British Medical Journal, health equity, workforce sustainability, cultural safety, rural clinical schools, community partnerships, remote healthcare, medical training, health workforce

The survey’s most striking finding is not the length of the waits themselves but how clinicians judge them. Most of the GPs surveyed considered delays of this magnitude unacceptable, saying that young people should ideally begin receiving care within weeks rather than months. That professional consensus matters because it comes from the very doctors who manage the consequences of the delay. More than 90 percent of respondents said long waits increased the risk that young people would disengage from treatment, experience worsening symptoms, feel abandoned by the health system, and become less likely to seek help in the future. In other words, the waiting list is not a neutral queue in which patients simply hold their place. It is an active clinical risk factor, one that can erode the motivation that brought a teenager through the clinic door in the first place.

The study arrives amid mounting national concern about access to timely mental healthcare for children and young people in Australia. Recent data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare have highlighted a substantial mental health burden among young Australians, while the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has warned of a growing shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists. That workforce shortfall carries a specific danger flagged by the college: children and adolescents may only reach specialist services once their needs have become complex, meaning the system encounters them later, when treatment is more demanding and outcomes are harder to secure. The Flinders and Black Dog Institute findings give that warning a primary care dimension, showing how the shortage cascades downward into everyday general practice.

The scale of the demand shock is evident in the survey’s own numbers. Eighty percent of the GPs reported having seen an increase in adolescents presenting with depression or anxiety over the previous year. Faced with that rising tide and with specialist appointments months away, most doctors did not simply refer and wait. More than 80 percent reported increasing the number of appointments they offered and expanding the support they provided to young patients during the waiting period. General practitioners, in effect, improvised an interim mental health service, scheduling extra consultations, monitoring risk, supporting parents, and trying to keep adolescents connected to care until a specialist became available.

Professor Bridianne O’Dea, Little Heroes Professor in Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Flinders University Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, framed the human stakes of the delay in blunt terms. Young people are reaching out for support, she said, but many are left waiting too long for the care they need. For a teenager experiencing anxiety or depression, a delay of several months can feel like a lifetime, with parents worried, young people struggling, and GPs doing everything they can to support them while they wait. That description captures a triad of strain, the patient, the family, and the family doctor, all carrying the burden of a gap in the service system that none of them created.

Yet the survey also exposed a capability gap at the heart of this improvised safety net. Although GPs were overwhelmingly willing to step up their care, most rated their knowledge of the most effective strategies for supporting adolescents during the waiting period as only basic or adequate. This is a crucial technical distinction. Managing a young person’s mental health while they wait for specialist treatment is not the same as routine general practice; it involves monitoring clinical risk, maintaining engagement, and applying evidence-based interim support strategies that many GPs have had little formal training in. The researchers argue this is precisely where the system can intervene, by better equipping and supporting GPs during the waiting window rather than leaving them to improvise under pressure.

O’Dea described GPs as having become a vital safety net for young people caught in a stretched mental health system, providing ongoing mental healthcare while adolescents wait for specialist services. They are managing clinical risk, supporting families, and helping adolescents stay engaged with care, she said, often under significant pressure and without enough resources. The framing is important because it reframes the waiting period as a clinical phase in its own right, one with its own evidence base, its own best practices, and its own support needs, rather than as dead time between referral and treatment. Treating it that way, the researchers suggest, is an opportunity to reduce harm even before specialist capacity expands.

The findings add to growing calls from Australia’s mental health sector for earlier and more accessible support for children and young people, and O’Dea argues the challenge must be tackled on two fronts simultaneously. The first is structural: improving timely access to specialist services and reducing the wait times themselves. The second is interim: asking what can be done during the weeks and months between referral and treatment. Until specialist access improves, she said, providing safe, effective and accessible support during that period may help reduce distress and keep young people connected to treatment, rather than leaving families and GPs to navigate the wait alone. The distinction matters for policy, because investments in interim support and investments in workforce expansion are complementary, not competing, responses.

The research, a cross-sectional survey of general practitioners’ perspectives on wait times for adolescent mental health specialists and services in Australia, was led by O’Dea with colleagues from Flinders University and the Black Dog Institute and published in the Australian Journal of Primary Health. Its methodological approach, capturing the frontline view of 190 GPs nationwide, offers a ground-level measure of a problem that is usually discussed in workforce statistics and funding announcements. What the survey reveals is a system in which the first and often only point of contact for struggling teenagers is a general practitioner with limited specialist backup, limited interim-care training, and a waiting list measured in months. The researchers are now calling on GPs to take part in a new service pilot designed to support young people while they wait, a direct attempt to convert the survey’s central finding, that the waiting period is a clinical risk window, into a structured, evidence-based response. Whether that pilot can ease the pressure on families and doctors will depend on how quickly the sector acts on what its own frontline clinicians have made unmistakably clear.

Subject of Research: General practitioners' perspectives on wait times for adolescent mental health specialist services in Australia

Article Title: Teens wait months for mental healthcare as GPs step in to bridge the gap

Article References: Teens wait months for mental healthcare as GPs step in to bridge the gap. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: adolescent mental health, general practitioners, wait times, Australia, Flinders University, Black Dog Institute, psychologists, psychiatrists, primary care, anxiety, depression, health workforce shortage

The findings carry particular weight because they demonstrate that earlier underwater discoveries at Murujuga, first reported by the Deep History of Sea Country project in 2020 and again in 2023, were not isolated anomalies. Instead, they form part of a broader submerged cultural landscape spread across a region now inscribed on the World Heritage list. For archaeologists studying the deep history of the Australian continent, this distinction between a single lucky find and an extensive, patterned distribution of cultural material is fundamental. It means the seabed around Murujuga can be studied systematically, with sites predicted, located and interpreted in relation to one another, much as terrestrial landscapes are.

The scale of what was lost to the sea is difficult to overstate. More than two million square kilometres of Australia’s continental shelf was submerged as sea levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age, a process that unfolded over thousands of years as ice sheets melted and ocean basins filled. Before that transformation, generations of First Nations peoples lived across landscapes that now lie beneath the ocean, including coastal plains, river valleys and freshwater springs that would have made the region attractive for settlement. The newly documented sites offer a rare, direct window into that drowned world, capturing two distinct kinds of places within what was once dry, connected land.

The first of these sites centres on an ancient freshwater spring, a feature that would have been nothing short of vital in the arid northwest. Reliable water sources in such environments act as anchors for human activity, drawing people together for drinking, food procurement, social gatherings and ceremony. The presence of stone artefacts associated with the spring is consistent with such a pattern of congregation, indicating that this spot on the now-submerged plain was a focal point in the lives of the people who used it. The second site tells a different story: it is associated with a rocky hill overlooking an ancient river channel, a vantage point that would have offered both practical advantages and a different set of resources. Together, the two sites show how people used different parts of the landscape when the archipelago was still connected by dry land, moving between springs, hills and watercourses in ways that structured their daily and seasonal lives.

Among the most technically significant results of the analysis is evidence of raw material selection and transport. Some of the artefacts were made from stone sourced from around Rosemary Island, approximately 23 kilometres from where they were ultimately found on the seabed. That distance matters. It suggests that people deliberately moved valuable stone resources across a landscape that is now entirely underwater, carrying preferred raw materials over considerable distances either for immediate use or as part of broader exchange and mobility patterns. In archaeological terms, such transport demonstrates decision-making about stone quality, availability and curation, and it provides a measurable link between distinct places within the drowned landscape, effectively reconstructing ancient connections that no land-based survey could ever recover.

The research is the product of a partnership between underwater archaeology researchers from Flinders University, The University of Western Australia, James Cook University and the University of York in the United Kingdom, working with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and its Rangers. Crucially, the collaboration was not a token consultation. Rangers from the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation Land and Sea Unit trained as scientific divers and worked alongside the archaeologists to locate and document the underwater cultural sites. Malik Churnside and Richard Variakojis, Rangers from the Land and Sea Unit and co-authors on the paper, undertook scientific diver surveys and made some of the underwater discoveries themselves, embedding Indigenous expertise and custodianship directly into the scientific process.

Lead researcher Professor Jonathan Benjamin, a specialist in marine archaeology at Flinders University’s College of Human Sciences and Culture, emphasised the value of working beside trained Indigenous Rangers who actively contributed to this challenging scientific research. Underwater survey in this environment is far from straightforward: visibility, currents, tides and the sheer difficulty of recognising cultural material on a seabed that has been reshaped by thousands of years of marine processes all combine to make such work demanding. Recognising a stone artefact amid natural rock, and distinguishing a deliberate human deposit from geological scatter, requires both archaeological training and an intimate understanding of the country in question, which is precisely what the partnership model provides.

For the Ngarda-Ngarli people, the Traditional Owners of the region, the findings confirm an understanding of Country that has never been confined to what is above the waterline. Vincent Adams, Director of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, noted that the Ngarda-Ngarli people have cared for Murujuga for at least 50,000 years, and that the research shows their cultural landscape extends far beyond the shoreline and into Sea Country, where important parts of their story remain preserved beneath the sea. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander frameworks, Sea Country is not an empty marine space but a living part of Country, holding ancestral connections, responsibilities and knowledge. The archaeological evidence now aligns with that understanding in a form recognised by mainstream science.

Adams also pointed to the implications of the region’s World Heritage recognition, observing that it brings new responsibilities as well as global recognition, and that research of this kind strengthens the community’s ability to identify, understand and protect the whole Murujuga cultural landscape, including Country that was submerged when sea levels rose thousands of years ago. That protective dimension is significant. Submerged heritage is vulnerable to industrial activity, anchoring, dredging and other seabed disturbances, and it is far less visible, and far less legally established, than terrestrial archaeology. Documented sites, mapped distributions and published evidence give custodians and regulators a concrete basis for managing what lies beneath the water with the same seriousness applied to heritage on land.

The study, an observational study published in Quaternary Science Reviews under the DOI 10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.110307, builds on the landmark discoveries reported in 2020 and 2023 by the Deep History of Sea Country project team, and its authors are affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures. The authors declare no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work. Taken together, the discoveries reframe the drowned continental shelf not as a void between archaeological sites but as an integral, preserved component of Australia’s deep human history, one in which freshwater springs, rocky hills and transported stone record the movements and decisions of people whose world the ocean swallowed at least 9,000 years ago, and whose descendants continue to read that story from beneath the waves.

Subject of Research: Submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites and stone artefact transport on the drowned cultural landscape of Murujuga, Western Australia

Article Title: Australia’s oldest underwater archaeology reveals ancient life within a lost landscape

Article References: Australia’s oldest underwater archaeology reveals ancient life within a lost landscape. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: underwater archaeology, Murujuga, Aboriginal heritage, sea-level rise, Quaternary Science Reviews, continental shelf, stone artefacts, Rosemary Island, Sea Country, Flinders University, last Ice Age, World Heritage

The research, led by PhD candidate Jamie Wilson at Flinders University, focuses on what the authors describe as a vulnerable transition window in an athlete’s development: the years between 17 and 24, when teenagers and young adults move from junior competition toward elite senior levels. During this period, athletes face a convergence of pressures that few other young people experience. The study found that 84.6 percent of the young athletes surveyed held outside employment while pursuing their sporting careers, and 61.5 percent were simultaneously studying. These figures illustrate the reality of the dual-career lifestyle, in which intense training schedules must be fitted around exams, shifts at work and the ordinary developmental tasks of early adulthood.

At the heart of the study is a concept drawn from occupational therapy known as occupational balance, which refers to how individuals distribute their time and energy across the full range of activities that make up a life, including sport, education, paid work, leisure and rest. The researchers argue that this balance is not a peripheral concern but a powerful force shaping mental health outcomes. When a young athlete’s daily routine becomes dominated almost entirely by training and competition, the structure that once made sport enjoyable can become a source of strain. As Wilson explains, when a passion once pursued for fun begins to consume every waking hour, young athletes face heightened risks for poor mental health and wellbeing, both in the present and later in life.

The study identifies several key factors that contribute to poor mental health among young athletes on the elite pathway. The first is the sheer volume of time that sport and training demand, which can leave little room for recovery, social connection or the exploration of other interests. The second is the frequent need to relocate, often at a young age, which uproots athletes from stable relationships with family, friends and community support networks at precisely the stage of life when those connections matter most. The third is a more insidious dynamic: many athletes report feeling objectified, treated as a commodity whose value depends entirely on performance, with support systems that are contingent on results rather than on the person behind them.

A fourth factor compounds the others. The culture of elite sport often imposes what the researchers describe as superhuman expectations, an implicit demand that athletes be endlessly resilient, tireless and immune to doubt. This framing creates profound obstacles to seeking help. A young athlete who believes they must appear invulnerable is far less likely to disclose anxiety, burnout or depression to coaches, medical staff or even family members. The result is a silent accumulation of distress during a developmental window in which mental health trajectories for adulthood are being established.

The research also highlights that risk is not distributed evenly across the sporting population. Female athletes and those who compete in individual sports tend to face greater threats to their mental health, the researchers report. Individual athletes, who train and compete without the shared burden and camaraderie of a team, may carry the full weight of results and expectations alone, while the specific pressures experienced by women in high-performance environments add further layers of vulnerability. These findings suggest that support programs built around a generic image of the athlete may miss the groups who need help most.

Co-author Professor Ivanka Prichard of Flinders University frames the practical implication of the work in striking terms. Supporting young athletes beyond sport, she argues, is not a distraction from victory but the vital foundation for developing healthier, stronger and more resilient competitors. The study adds an intriguing nuance to this argument: young athletes who pursue their sport for personal enjoyment and love of the game, rather than in response to external pressure from coaches, parents or institutions, appear more likely to persist through setbacks and to be psychologically healthier. Their commitment and enthusiasm, in other words, function as protective factors, but only when the surrounding life structure allows those motivations to survive the grind of elite training.

The urgency of the findings is sharpened by the status that the International Olympic Committee has assigned to this age group. The IOC has designated young adults and teenagers in elite sport as a neglected population, a label that reflects a gap between the scale of investment in junior performance pathways and the attention paid to the wellbeing of the young people moving through them. The Flinders study argues that this gap needs to be closed with deliberate support to maintain and build long-term wellbeing and resilience, rather than leaving athletes to navigate the transition window on their own or relying on support that evaporates the moment performance dips.

From a methodological standpoint, the study contributes an occupational lens to a literature that has often approached athlete mental health through clinical or performance frameworks. Survey research of this kind allows researchers to map how young athletes actually spend their days and how those patterns relate to measures of mental health and wellbeing, rather than treating the athlete purely as a performer whose non-sporting life is incidental. The occupational therapy perspective reframes everyday activities such as studying, working a part-time job, resting or socialising as meaningful occupations that sustain identity and psychological resources. Seen this way, the dual-career demands documented in the study are not obstacles to athletic achievement but potential scaffolding for it, providing alternative sources of self-worth, social contact and future security that buffer the inevitable highs and lows of competitive sport.

The broader message of the research is one that resonates well beyond the locker room. As major sporting events turn the world’s attention toward extraordinary feats of performance, the study reminds audiences that the athletes delivering those feats are young people in the midst of forming adult identities, and that true athletic excellence and long-term wellbeing require a balanced life. The elite pathway, as Wilson describes it, is packed with soaring highs and brutal lows, and the real secret to sustainable success may lie in the life an athlete builds outside of sport. For sporting bodies, coaches and families, the implication is clear: protecting time for education, work, friendship and rest is not a concession to softness but an investment in both the person and the performance. The study, titled Balancing act: An occupational lens on the process of becoming an elite athlete, was conducted by Jamie Wilson, Ivanka Prichard, Jasmine Petersen of Flinders and Adelaide University, and Brad Stenner of Adelaide University, and was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy.

Subject of Research: Occupational balance and mental health in young elite athletes during the dual-career transition window

Article Title: Sporting glory starts with life outside sport, new study finds

Article References: Sporting glory starts with life outside sport, new study finds. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: young athletes, mental health, occupational balance, dual career, elite sport, occupational therapy, wellbeing, Flinders University, International Olympic Committee, transition window, athlete burnout, sport psychology

The research drew on the Registry of Senior Australians national cohort, covering the period from 2013 to 2018, and examined emergency department admissions and unplanned hospital admissions among long-term care residents. In total, 205,079 residents were included in the analysis. Of these, 8,961 residents, or 4.4 percent, lived in government-owned facilities, 105,144 residents, or 51.3 percent, lived in not-for-profit homes, and 90,974 residents, or 44.4 percent, lived in homes owned by for-profit companies. This distribution itself illustrates a structural feature of Australian aged care: government-owned homes now represent only a small fraction of the sector, while commercial operators account for nearly half of all residents studied.

Lead author Dr Miia Rahja of Flinders University explained that the study was designed to compare different nursing home ownership models while also accounting for a factor that is often overlooked in such analyses: geographic location. The researchers found that residents of government-owned aged care homes had fewer hospital-related events overall, and that the differences between ownership types were most pronounced in Australia’s inner-regional areas. Residents in government-owned homes had a lower risk of emergency department presentation than residents in not-for-profit homes, and similar patterns were observed for unplanned hospitalizations and for the number of days residents spent in hospital, with the associations holding across various regions of the country.

The technical significance of the study lies in its population-based retrospective cohort design, which allowed the researchers to observe outcomes across an entire national population of aged care residents rather than a selected sample. By linking ownership data with hospitalization records, the team could quantify differences in acute health service use that are clinically meaningful: every emergency department presentation and every unplanned admission represents a disruption to an older person’s care, an exposure to hospital-acquired risks, and a cost to the health system. Days spent in hospital are particularly consequential for frail older adults, because transitions out of familiar care environments are associated with functional decline, delirium, and medication errors.

The findings come at a time when ownership patterns in Australia’s aged care sector are changing in ways that make the research especially timely. Several large providers have acquired aged care homes that were previously operated by not-for-profit organisations, a consolidation process that has reduced the total number of providers in the sector from 663 in 2023 to 642 in 2024. While consolidation can bring economies of scale, the study’s results suggest that the consequences of transferring facilities from mission-driven to commercially oriented ownership deserve close scrutiny, because the ownership model itself appears to be associated with how often residents end up in hospital.

Senior author Professor Maria Inacio, who heads the Registry of Senior Australians Research Centre, known as ROSA, and the Flinders Ageing Alliance at Flinders University, emphasized that ongoing monitoring of aged care home ownership is vital because ownership has significant potential impact and consequences on residents’ outcomes. She noted that the findings from the study agree with the investigations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety regarding the influence of aged care home ownership on the quality and outcomes of individuals living in these facilities. The Royal Commission, which delivered its final report after extensive public hearings and evidence gathering, had already flagged concerns about how financial structures and profit motives shape the day-to-day care that older Australians receive.

The new study does not stand alone. Prior research has shown that for-profit providers are less likely to be compliant with sector requirements, such as mandatory care minutes, which set minimum staffing time that must be delivered to each resident. Compliance with such requirements is a direct measure of whether a facility is meeting its obligations under the regulatory framework, and lower compliance among commercial operators has been a recurring theme in sector audits and academic evaluations. Taken together with the hospitalization findings, this body of evidence points to a consistent pattern in which ownership incentives correlate with the intensity and quality of care delivered at the bedside.

Dr Rahja stated that the work confirms the need for financial, quality, and social accountability monitoring of aged care home integration, given the significant influence that ownership has on resident outcomes. This recommendation carries practical weight for policymakers. Australia’s aged care system is funded substantially through government subsidies, and hospitalizations of aged care residents generate additional costs that flow through state and territory health systems. If ownership type is associated with different rates of acute care use, then monitoring frameworks that track only financial solvency or basic quality indicators may be missing a crucial dimension of sector performance. Integrating ownership data into routine outcome surveillance would allow regulators to detect deteriorating patterns before they translate into avoidable hospitalizations.

The study, titled ‘The association of long-term care facility ownership and location on residents’ mortality and hospitalisations: A population-based retrospective cohort study in Australia’, was authored by Miia Rahja, Ling Davies, Robert Jorissen, Maria Crotty, Craig Whitehead, Keith Evans, Megan Corlis, Carly Meyer, Gillian Caughey and Maria Inacio, and was published in BMJ Open on 21 September 2026. The research method was data and statistical analysis, and the subject of the research was people, specifically the large cohort of older Australians whose hospitalization histories were tracked across the study period. The publication carries the DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2026-11791 and appeared in the flagship British Medical Journal group’s open-access general medical journal.

For older Australians and their families, the study underscores that the question of who owns a nursing home is not merely a matter of corporate structure but one that can shape the likelihood of an emergency ambulance trip or an unexpected admission to a hospital ward. As the sector continues to consolidate and as the balance between for-profit, not-for-profit, and government ownership shifts, the researchers argue that transparency about ownership and its consequences must become a permanent feature of aged care oversight. With nearly half of the residents in the national cohort living in for-profit facilities, and with the number of providers shrinking year on year, the stakes of getting this policy balance right extend to hundreds of thousands of older people and the health system that cares for them.

Subject of Research: The association between nursing home ownership type and hospitalization outcomes among older Australians

Article Title: Older Australians face higher risks as more nursing homes are privatized

Article References: Older Australians face higher risks as more nursing homes are privatized. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: aged care, nursing homes, privatization, hospitalization, Australia, BMJ Open, Flinders University, for-profit care, emergency department, health policy, older adults, Registry of Senior Australians

For decades, climate scientists have tended to characterise the last ice age in Australia as a period of relatively simple, less variable rainfall, with the assumption that rainfall patterns became patchier, less reliable and more complex only during the past 12,000 years, the epoch known as the Holocene. That framing has been used to explain changes in human behaviour, flora, fauna and fire regimes, particularly around the transition from the Late Pleistocene into the Holocene. The new analysis suggests that this apparent shift in complexity may not reflect what the climate was actually doing, but rather what the sediment and fossil records are capable of revealing about it.

The study examined 69 natural paleoenvironmental archives from tropical Australia spanning the past 130,000 years. These archives, which include sediments and fossils preserved in lakes, wetlands and other deposits, are among the main pillars of our understanding of how the climate works. Yet the team identified a striking gap in the record: there are no published hydrological records of sub-decadal resolution from the region dating to before 1900 years ago. In other words, the finest-grained evidence about short-term rainfall variability simply does not exist for most of the period in question.

That absence, Dr Wall argues, may have shaped scientific interpretation in a subtle but profound way. Reconstructions from further back in time tend to be of poorer quality, and when lower-resolution records are compared with the higher-resolution archives available for recent millennia, the older past can appear smoother and simpler than it really was. The research team found no support for the previous hypothesis that the Holocene is uniquely hydrologically heterogeneous. Instead, they suggest that the trend of reduced resolution in older records could be mistaken for greater simplicity, creating an illusion of a climate that became more erratic only recently.

“Sediment and fossil records are a main pillar for our understanding of how the climate works – but climate scientists have got something wrong about Australia’s ice age,” says Dr Wall, lead author of the paper. “Experts tend to think of the last ice age as having less complex rainfall patterns than today. Our new research suggests that narrative may have arisen from what the past can’t tell us, rather than what it can.” The distinction is more than academic. Characterising the Holocene as a period of uniquely erratic rainfall has significant implications for interpreting how past human populations and ecosystems responded to climate change, and any interpretation built on that assumption may need to be re-examined.

The terminology of ice ages can be counterintuitive, and Dr Wall is careful to place the findings in their proper temporal frame. “Technically, we’re still in the ice age, just a relatively warm and wet period called an interglacial,” she explains. The Quaternary ice age encompasses both the cold glacial periods and the warmer interludes between them, including the one humanity inhabits now. The last time the Earth was wetter than today was a period from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, known as the Last Interglacial. That interval is of great interest to climate scientists because it is also the last time the Earth was warmer than today, which makes it a valuable analogue for understanding where a warming world might be headed.

One of the most consequential findings of the study concerns how that Last Interglacial compares with the present. When the team looked at the bigger picture across their 130,000-year window, they found that rainfall during the Last Interglacial and rainfall today look pretty indistinguishable. If the warm, wet conditions of that ancient interval produced rainfall patterns similar to those of the modern era, then the variability and complexity we experience today are not a recent novelty of the Holocene. The same kinds of hydrological behaviour were likely operating more than a hundred millennia ago, even if the surviving archives cannot capture their fine detail.

That conclusion carries an uncomfortable implication for climate forecasting. “Unfortunately, that may mean that a warming climate might be even less predictable than we had assumed,” Dr Wall warns. If past warm periods exhibited rainfall complexity comparable to today’s, then the range of natural hydroclimate behaviour under warming conditions may be broader than models and narratives built on a supposedly simple ice age would suggest. For a continent like Australia, where droughts, floods and fire seasons hinge on rainfall reliability, the predictability of water availability is among the most consequential questions climate science can address.

The methodological lesson the authors draw extends well beyond tropical Australia. “To understand how any region fits into the greater climate system, Quaternary science must be explicit about what can and cannot be determined from the data available,” says Dr Wall. Paleoenvironmental archives are inherently uneven: some periods and places preserve rich, finely layered records, while others yield only coarse snapshots. When scientists compare records of different resolutions without accounting for that difference, they risk mistaking gaps in evidence for gaps in variability. Making those limitations explicit, the study argues, should become standard practice in reconstructions of past hydroclimate.

The research, titled “Hydroclimate complexity across the last glacial cycle in tropical Australia: reassessing the uniqueness of the Holocene”, was conducted by Alexander Wall, Emma Rehn, Haidee Cadd, Vanessa Mailhammer, Will Reynolds, Brian Jones, Zenobia Jacobs, Serayah Steele and Tim Cohen, and has been published in Quaternary Science Reviews. By reassessing 69 archives across a full glacial cycle, the team has opened a new conversation about how complexity is defined and detected in the deep past. The broader message is one of humility toward the archive: the silence of ancient sediments about short-term rainfall swings does not mean those swings were absent, and the climates that shaped Australia’s earliest environments may have been every bit as intricate as the one we live in today.

Subject of Research: Hydroclimate variability and rainfall complexity in tropical Australia across the last glacial cycle

Article Title: Australia’s ancient rainfall patterns more complex than previously believed

Article References: Australia’s ancient rainfall patterns more complex than previously believed. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: paleoclimate, Australia, rainfall, Holocene, Last Interglacial, Quaternary Science Reviews, paleoenvironmental archives, hydroclimate, Flinders University, ice age, water availability, climate reconstruction

The study, published in the journal New Media & Society, was led by Dr Lisette Yip of Flinders’ College of Human Sciences and Culture, working with colleagues Emma Thomas, Hawa Muhammad Farid and Noor Tahir. The team set out to examine the role social media plays in expanding social movements, and specifically to test whether perceptions about the motives of online activists affect the willingness of others to participate. Their conclusion, drawn from three experiments, is blunt: perceptions of insincerity measurably dampen the persuasive power of online collective action, making bystanders less likely to sign petitions or take any other action for a cause.

The question the researchers posed is one that anyone who has scrolled through a politically charged feed will recognise. Social media is an important tool used by supporters of social movements to persuade others to participate, but people who engage in online collective action may be perceived as acting for self-serving reasons. As Dr Yip explains, these perceptions can greatly impact the effectiveness of collective action. If a user suspects that a poster is performing concern rather than feeling it, the post risks being dismissed as virtue signalling, and the opportunity to recruit a new supporter is lost before it ever materialises.

To investigate this, the researchers designed three experiments in which participants encountered social media content urging them to take action for a political cause. Some participants viewed individual posts, while others were shown an immersive social media feed designed to mimic the experience of scrolling through a real platform. Crucially, the activists in these scenarios varied in the motives they expressed. In one condition, the poster indicated acting out of genuine concern for the cause, what the researchers describe as autonomous motivation. In another, the poster indicated acting to avoid guilt and social disapproval, a pattern the researchers call controlled motivation. A baseline condition did not specify a motive at all, allowing the team to measure how unlabelled posts were judged.

The results followed a consistent pattern across the experiments. Participants who viewed posts expressing controlled motivation perceived the user as being less autonomously motivated, and that perception carried real consequences. These participants were less likely to socially identify as supporters of the cause, and less likely to take collective action themselves. In practical terms, the perception of external pressure or self-protection behind a post made viewers less willing to sign a petition or engage in any other behaviour on behalf of the movement. The motive attributed to the messenger, in other words, transferred to the audience’s own sense of whether the cause deserved their commitment.

This finding connects to a broader psychological framework in which motivation is understood along a spectrum from autonomous to controlled. Autonomous motivation reflects actions performed because they align with one’s own values and genuine interest, while controlled motivation reflects actions performed because of external pressure, guilt, shame, or the desire to avoid social disapproval. The Flinders experiments suggest that this distinction is not merely internal to the activist. It is read, inferred and judged by audiences, and those judgements shape whether a movement grows or stagnates. A post that signals obligation rather than conviction invites readers to conclude that the cause is one people support only under duress, which is a poor advertisement for joining.

The implications for organisers of social movements are significant. As Dr Yip notes, movements will be more effective at mobilising online support when they are seen to come from autonomous motives. Her advice to activists and to anyone hoping to convince peers to support a cause is to consider the underlying motives conveyed in their messages, and to seek to foster genuine concern among their audiences so that those audiences, too, can become effective advocates. In this view, persuasion online is not simply a matter of broadcasting information widely. It is a matter of modelling the kind of motivation that others will find credible and want to adopt for themselves.

That said, the research does not suggest that motive-driven scepticism renders online activism worthless. The study indicates that social media posts may help raise awareness about social issues regardless of the motives behind them. A post from an externally pressured activist can still inform people that a problem exists. What it cannot do as effectively is convert that awareness into participation. The advocates who are perceived as being externally motivated are less effective than those who are perceived as sincere, which means awareness and mobilisation, though related, are not the same achievement. Movements that measure success by impressions alone may be overestimating their reach into actual engagement.

The findings also speak to a familiar cultural anxiety about online discourse: the accusation of virtue signalling. The title of the paper, ‘Are they virtue-signalling or sincere? The impact of perceived motives on the effectiveness of online collective action’, places that accusation at the centre of the analysis rather than treating it as background noise. The experiments suggest the accusation is not merely rhetorical. When bystanders judge a poster to be signalling virtue rather than expressing conviction, the persuasive chain breaks. Because social movements depend on chains of influence, in which one convinced supporter recruits another, a single perceived insincerity can have outsized effects as it propagates through networks of friends, followers and their followers in turn.

For the study of collective action in the digital era, the work adds an important layer to existing models of why people join movements. Traditional accounts have emphasised factors such as grievance, efficacy, identity and network exposure. This research highlights the inference of motive as a distinct and consequential variable, one that operates in the space between the activist’s message and the bystander’s decision. The method of research was data and statistical analysis of the experimental responses, and the paper appeared in New Media & Society on 5 September 2026. As platforms continue to mediate how causes are promoted and contested, the lesson for activists is clear: audiences are not only reading what is posted, they are reading why, and their willingness to act follows that reading closely.

Subject of Research: How perceived motives of online activists influence bystanders' willingness to participate in collective action

Article Title: Perceptions steer our scrutiny of online activists

Article References: Perceptions steer our scrutiny of online activists. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: social media, collective action, online activism, perceived motives, social movements, Flinders University, New Media and Society, mobilisation, virtue signalling, autonomous motivation, petition signing, digital persuasion

The study, led by Clément Vansteene of Université Paris Cité and Hôpital Sainte-Anne together with colleagues including Flinders University’s Professor Zsolt Demetrovics and Dr Andrea Czakó, is described as one of the most comprehensive reviews of behavioural addictions ever conducted. Rather than running a new experiment, the team performed what researchers call a multiple systematic review analysis, synthesising almost 250 existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These are the highest tiers of evidence in medical research, because they aggregate findings from many independent studies to reveal patterns that no single trial could detect on its own.

The methodological logic of the paper is elegant in its simplicity. The researchers used gambling disorder, one of the most extensively studied behavioural addictions and the only non-substance addiction recognised in the DSM-5 alongside gaming disorder, as a benchmark. They then compared gambling disorder with alcohol use disorder and with six commonly discussed behavioural addictions. Across 75 factors linked to addiction, spanning mental health, personality traits, emotional regulation, cognition and brain function, they assessed how closely each condition resembled the benchmark. The result was striking: gaming disorder was found to be 98.9 percent similar to gambling disorder, sharing many of the same risk factors, warning signs and underlying characteristics.

That figure is remarkable because gambling disorder has long served as the scientific prototype of a behavioural addiction. It produces tolerance, withdrawal-like distress, preoccupation, loss of control and continued engagement despite harm, the same core features that define substance use disorders. If gaming disorder matches that profile almost perfectly, the implication is that the neural and psychological machinery of addiction does not require a chemical substance at all. Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and binge eating disorder also showed a high degree of overlap with gambling disorder, placing them close behind gaming in the similarity ranking.

The findings arrive at a moment when the clinical world is already moving in this direction. The World Health Organization included gaming disorder in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases, and binge eating disorder has been formally recognised as an eating disorder in its own right. What this new analysis adds is a comparative evidence base: a systematic demonstration that these conditions are not merely superficially similar to addiction but appear to converge on the same risk architecture, from impulsivity and emotional dysregulation to comorbid mood and anxiety problems.

Professor Demetrovics, Matthew Flinders Professor in Mental Health and Wellbeing and Director of Flinders’ Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, argues that the research highlights a need to look beyond substances when thinking about addiction. People often associate addiction with alcohol or drugs, he says, but the findings show that certain behaviours can share many of the same underlying characteristics. In his words, addiction is not defined by a substance alone; in some cases, behaviours can become compulsive, difficult to control and continue despite causing harm.

That point carries real weight for public health. Behaviours such as gaming, eating, shopping and working are woven into everyday life, which makes it genuinely difficult to tell when a normal pattern has tipped into something unhealthy. A person losing sleep and damaging relationships because they cannot stop gaming, someone repeatedly binge eating despite serious health consequences, a shopper spending beyond their means, or an individual whose sexual behaviour begins to erode their wellbeing may not recognise the pattern as an addiction at all. Demetrovics notes that many people who experience these problems may not identify them as potential addictions, and as a result may not seek help until the effects on their health, relationships, finances or daily life become severe.

Dr Czakó, Senior Research Fellow in Psychology at Flinders, emphasises the implications for individuals, families and health professionals. Many people struggle with behaviours they feel ashamed of, or simply do not recognise as a potential addiction, she says, and understanding that these difficulties may share common underlying mechanisms can help people seek support earlier and help clinicians respond more effectively. The researchers argue that better recognition of behavioural addictions could reduce stigma, improve access to care and allow intervention before significant harm occurs, a framing that shifts the conversation from moral failing to treatable condition.

The study was published in European Psychiatry under the title ‘Concordance between gambling disorder, alcohol use disorder, and other behavioural addictions provides evidence for a comprehensive approach to addictive behaviours: A multiple systematic review analysis’, with a team spanning Université Paris Cité, Hôpital Sainte-Anne, Flinders University, Semmelweis University, the University of Gibraltar and Aga Khan University. Its authors hope the evidence will encourage a comprehensive approach to addictive behaviours, one in which clinicians assess the full spectrum of compulsive patterns rather than treating substance and behavioural problems as separate universes. For the millions of people quietly wrestling with behaviours that feel out of control, the message is that loss of control is a recognised medical phenomenon, and that open conversations, earlier identification and appropriate support are far more achievable when the science acknowledges what they are experiencing.

Subject of Research: Behavioural addictions and their similarity to gambling and substance use disorders

Article Title: From binge eating to gaming: when everyday behaviors become addictions

Article References: From binge eating to gaming: when everyday behaviors become addictions. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: behavioural addiction, gaming disorder, gambling disorder, binge eating disorder, compulsive sexual behaviour, systematic review, European Psychiatry, mental health, loss of control, stigma, Flinders University, addiction research