Tag: Amsalem

Reading of the Week: African Nova Scotian Youth & Stigma; Also, Engaging Health Care Workers (Psych Services) and Therapy & Psychiatry (Psych Times)

September 22, 2022 /

From the Editor

Many with mental disorders don’t engage in psychiatric care or, if they do, it is after significant delays – problematic for obvious reasons. Some groups are less likely to engage, including young Black individuals with psychosis.

Why the hesitation? What are the concerns of these patients and their larger communities? In the first selection, a paper just published by the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Ingrid Waldron (of McMaster University) and her co-authors take a qualitative interpretive narrative approach, to engage African Nova Scotians – including those in a first episode psychosis program – attempting to answer these questions and more. Among their key findings: “barriers include a lack of trust in health care services and a dearth of African Nova Scotian service providers.” We discuss the paper and its implications.

In this week’s second selection, Dr. Doron Amsalem (of Columbia University) and his co-authors aim to improve health care workers treatment seeking; in a paper for Psychiatric Services, they describe an RCT for a brief video intervention, finding positive results. They write: “This easily administered intervention could increase the likelihood of care seeking by proactively encouraging health care workers with mental health challenges to pursue treatment.”

Finally, in the third selection, Mark L. Ruffalo (of the University of Central Florida College of Medicine) and Dr. Daniel Morehead (of the Tufts Medical Center) consider psychotherapy and psychiatry. In an essay for Psychiatric Times, they argue that this is “the great divorce that never happened.” They write: “For decades, critics and leading psychiatrists have worried that psychotherapy among psychiatrists will one day die out and be forgotten. Yet for decades, reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: Helping Healthcare Workers Seek Help; Also, Smoking Cessation for Inpatients & Priebe on Why Patients Should Be Called Patients

May 20, 2021 /

From the Editor

How do we connect with them?

With the worst of the third wave now behind us, we are beginning to look forward. But for some, the problems of the pandemic aren’t fading. They will continue to struggle with mental health problems.

Healthcare workers are particularly at risk. They are also, collectively, a group that is difficult to engage. In the first selection, we look at a new paper from The British Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Doron Amsalem (of Columbia University) and his co-authors do a video intervention to increase treatment seeking. The resulting RCT is impressive. The authors write: “The high proportion of healthcare workers surveyed in this study who reported symptoms of probable generalised anxiety, depression and/or PTSD emphasises the need for intervention aimed at increasing treatment-seeking among US healthcare workers. A three-minute online social contact-based video intervention effectively increased self-reported treatment-seeking intentions among healthcare workers.”

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In the second selection, Richard A. Brown (of the University of Texas at Austin) and his co-authors look at a new approach to an old problem: high smoking rates among people with severe mental illness. Focusing on inpatient hospitalizations, they design an intervention built on motivational interviewing. We consider their JAMA Psychiatry paper.

Is the term patient antiquated? Should we use other terms, like client or service user? In a BJPsych Bulletin paper, Dr. Stefan Priebe (of Queen Mary University of London) argues that we serve patients – and that words matter. “Mental healthcare is based on shared values and scientific evidence. Both require precise thinking, and precise thinking requires an exact and consistent terminology.”

DG

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