Tag: Alberta

Reading of the Week: Placebo & Mental Disorders – the New JAMA Psych Study; Also, Children Who Lost a Parent to Overdose, and the Latest in the News

June 6, 2024 /

From the Editor 

It’s day three of his hospitalization, and he insists that the medication trial (a low dose of an SSRI) has been transformative. It’s difficult to explain his experience pharmacologically. 

How significant is the placebo response? How much does it vary among mental disorders? These questions aren’t new. In the first selection, Dr. Tom Bschor (of the Technical University of Dresden) and his co-authors tread on a familiar path with a study just published in JAMA Psychiatry. Focusing on nine psychiatric disorders, they examined high-quality RCTs for a systematic review and meta-analysis, finding “significant improvement under placebo treatment for all 9 disorders, but the degree of improvement varied significantly among diagnoses.” We consider the study and its implications.

In the second selection, Christopher M. Jones (of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) and his co-authors used US databases to calculate how many children have lost a parent to drug overdoses. The resulting JAMA Psychiatry study is haunting. “We estimated that more than 320 000 US children lost a parent to drug overdose between 2011 and 2021, providing new insight into the multigenerational impacts of the ongoing overdose crisis in the US.”

Finally, we explore the latest news with recent articles from The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times. Among the topics: the mental health struggles of a cancer patient, the beliefs of Marshall Smith, and whether we are talking too much about mental health.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Resilience after Disaster – Lessons from Japan; Also, Schizophrenia & Spending (CJP) and Dr. Brandeland on Her Father & His Addiction (JAMA)

March 17, 2022 /

From the Editor

My patient was involved in a terrible car accident. Though physically unharmed, she’s never really recovered (mentally). Her co-worker, sitting in the seat beside her, barely took off any time from work.

Why are some people resilient and others aren’t?

In The British Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Taku Saito (of the National Defense Medical College) and his co-authors explore this question, focusing on a natural disaster. Drawing on an impressive database of first responders involved in the 2011 Japanese earthquake rescue/recovery effort, they do a seven-year prospective cohort study. They find: “The majority of first responders… were resilient and developed few or no PTSD symptoms.” Of course, some did develop mental health problems. The risk factors? Older age, personal disaster experiences, and working conditions. We consider the big paper.

In the second selection, Andrew J. Stewart (of the University of Calgary) and his co-authors analyze health spending in a new Canadian Journal of Psychiatry paper. They focus on people with schizophrenia, looking at a 10-year period. “Healthcare spending among patients with schizophrenia continues to increase and may be partially attributable to growing rates of multimorbidity within this population.”

And, in the third selection, Dr. Megan Ann Brandeland (of Stanford University) writes about her father’s death. In JAMA, she discusses his struggles and notes that – early in his career as a physician – a patient had a tragic outcome. “My hope in sharing this story is to encourage more physicians to share their own stories, to reduce the stigma around mental health, trauma, and addiction among physicians, and to honor my father’s life and the goodness he brought to the world.”

Please note that there will be no Reading next week; we will resume on 31 March 2022.

DG

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