Month: September 2018

Reading of the Week: Do Antidepressants Beat Placebo? Does Measurement-based Care Work? Four Papers and Some Thoughts on a Fourth Anniversary

From the Editor

This month, the Reading of the Week – in its present form – turns four.

Today, the Readings are emailed out from sea to sea to sea. It’s a big evolution from the first Readings, started more than six and a half years ago, with me handing out photocopies of papers on the inpatient ward where I worked.

To celebrate our silk anniversary, I’ve picked four major selections from the past four years. I’ve also included some papers that haven’t been discussed – but should have been.

p9180013Silk: good for a fourth wedding anniversary, but a fourth Reading anniversary?

Enjoy.

DG

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Reading of the Week: How to Change Docs? Send Them a Letter. The New JAMA Psychiatry Paper on Prescribing

From the Editor

How do we get doctors to practice better medicine?

Here’s a simple idea: what if we send them a sternly written letter? In this week’s Reading, we consider a paper by Columbia University’s Adam Sacarny and his co-authors who did just that. Targeting primary care physicians who were heavily prescribing quetiapine (or Seroquel), they looked at the effects of letters written by government officials, comparing prescribing habits of these physicians with their peers. The result? In the new JAMA Psychiatry paper, they find that prescriptions of quetiapine dropped markedly.

nudge

A little nudge, better care?

The core of the idea is that a nudge – that is, the behavioural economic idea of a positive reinforcement and/or an indirect suggestion – can change outcomes. In this Reading, we consider doctors and nudges (and behavioural economics). We also look at a recent study on opioid prescribing, also involving letters.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Physician Burnout and Depression – and Patient Safety. New Papers from the AJP and JAMA Internal Medicine

From the Editor

Not so many years ago, no one seemed to discuss physician burnout.

Today, we speak much more about physician health and wellness.

In this week’s Reading, we consider a new American Journal of Psychiatry paper written by Dr. Erick Messias and Victoria Flynn of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. In this highly readable Clinical Case Conference, the authors discuss the case of a mid-career psychiatrist – and then weigh the larger problem of burnout, and its overlap with depression.

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Also, we consider the literature around burnout, and highlight a new JAMA Internal Medicine paper. “The pooled outcomes of the main analysis indicated that physician overall burnout is associated with twice the odds of involvement in patient safety incidents (OR, 1.96…).”

DG

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Reading of the Week: ECT & Dementia – the New Lancet Psychiatry Paper

From the Editor

It’s effective but is it really safe?

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remains controversial 80 years after its first clinical use. At the heart of the controversy: its effects on cognition. Some wonder about the possibility that ECT could be linked to dementia.

Despite the strong concerns expressed over the years, relatively little research has been done on the possible connection between ECT and dementia. This week, we consider a new paper by the University of Copenhagen’s Merete Osler and her co-authors. In this Lancet Psychiatry study, they tap Danish national databases, finding no connection.

old-man-in-sorrow-vincent-van-goghvan Gogh’s Old Man in Sorrow – in need of ECT?

In this Reading, we look at the paper and consider some recent work on ECT.

DG

 

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