Month: January 2018

Reading of the Week: David Goldbloom on Research & Clinical Practice

 From a Contributing Editor, Colleague, and Friend of the Editor

This week’s selection is a brief paper with long implications. For all of us clinicians who turn to the peer-reviewed literature (either directly or through the filter of Reading of The Week) for guidance on how to help our patients, this paper is worth a read.

It is impossible to stay current on the treatment research results that emerge daily, and we look to those randomized controlled trials published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals for evidence of what works for people with the diagnoses that we find ourselves addressing in the office, the clinic, the ER or the inpatient unit. But who are those patients who sign consent forms to take part in these studies, and how much do they resemble the people sitting across from us?

Great clipboard but relevant to clinical work? 

– David Goldbloom, OC, MD, FRCP(C)
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Does Canada Need a Loneliness Strategy?

CBC National recently asked this question.

They note:

Britain recently appointed a cabinet minister to try and find a solution for an increasing number of people who say they’re lonely. About 200,000 seniors in the U.K. say they haven’t had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month.

I was interviewed in the story.

The full clip here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/does-canada-need-a-loneliness-strategy-1.4492553

Reading of the Week: More Demand, Less Physician Care? The New Chiu et al. Paper. Also, CAMH’s Really Big Donation

From the Editor

Canadians understand more about mental health and – with declining stigma – are more interested in services. So are they using more services and how have practice patterns changed with time?

In this week’s Reading, we consider a new paper from The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Chiu et al. try to answer these questions by looking at outpatient family doctor and psychiatrist visits from 2006 to 2014. They also look at ED visits and hospitalizations.

8b16181v-565x422Family docs and mental health: how much care do they deliver (and are all their patients this cute)?

They find that ED visits were up for mental health, as were hospitalizations, but physicians visits went down (all in terms of rates). They write: “The increasing acute care service use coupled with the reduction in outpatient visits suggest, overall, an increase in demand for mental health care that is not being met in ambulatory care settings.”

Also in this week’s Reading, we consider some good news: CAMH received a $100 million gift from an anonymous donor. Good news – but is it all good news for mental health charities?

DG

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Reading of the Week: Mental Health’s Funding Problem – the New Wang Paper; Also, the Life of Jimmie Holland

From the Editor

As we start 2018, additional funding for mental health care is widely discussed.

But what are current funding levels? How have they changed over the past decade? Which provinces are funding more and which are funding less? A new paper just published by The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry attempts to answer these questions. While the paper looks at different aspects of funding, it reaches a surprising conclusion: between 2003 and 2013, “the percentage of mental health costs with respect to total provincial public health care expenditures decreased overall…”

In this Reading, we review that paper and consider the broader implications.

In the second selection, we consider the life and contributions of Dr. Jimmie Holland, who recently passed. Dr. Holland has been called the “mother” of psycho-oncology.

DG

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