From the Editor
Studies show that measurement-based care improves patient outcomes, from better functioning to fewer readmissions. Not surprisingly, expert practice guidelines, including the CANMAT clinical guidelines for depression, recommend their use. Yet – despite years of enthusiasm – most of us don’t use scales or questionnaires to monitor symptoms and outcomes.
In a new systematic literature review, Christian Burr (of the Bern University of Applied Sciences) and his co-authors try to identify effective strategies by analyzing recent studies. In their Psychiatric Services paper, they focused on 16 studies in a systematic literature review. “Effective measurement-based care implementation requires context-sensitive strategies, interprofessional collaboration, and active involvement of patients, service users, and caregivers.” We consider the paper and its implications.
In the second selection from The British Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Scott Monteith (of Michigan State University) and his co-authors write about the evolution of artificial intelligence. They focus on agentic AI (arguably the next big thing), seeing a clear role in education, yes, and in patient care – but they also note problems. “Agentic artificial intelligence systems offer a unique approach to supporting physicians in dealing with the challenges of clinical medicine but also pose validity, privacy, malpractice and security risks.”
And in this week’s final selection, Dr. Paniz Johari, a psychiatrist who works at Northwell Health, writes personally and thoughtfully about the loss of her patient to suicide. In JAMA, she discusses her grief and rumination. “The absence of anything remarkable made it harder to understand and harder to set aside.”
DG
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