From the Editor
Can we help youth before the onset of full disorders to build skills and avoid deeper problems? Several school-based efforts, offering DBT and mindfulness skills, have been tried without much success. Ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) – provided to patients during their everyday lives and in natural settings, giving unstructured recommendations with structured interventions – is a newer therapy that has gained attention.
But does it work? In a new paper for JAMA Psychiatry, Ulrich Reininghaus (of the University of Heidelberg) and his co-authors describe an RCT focused on youth with low self-esteem who have had past adversity, involving 174 Dutch participants. “A transdiagnostic, blended EMI demonstrated efficacy on the primary outcome of self-esteem and signaled beneficial effects on several secondary outcomes.” We consider the paper and its implications.
In the second selection, Victoria A. Joseph (of Columbia University) and her co-authors look at US suicide rates in Black females. In their American Journal of Psychiatry letter, they analyze suicides over two decades, drawing data on age and region from a national database. They conclude that: “increasing trends in suicide death among Black females born in recent years and underscores the need to increase mental health care access among Black girls and women, and to reduce other forms of structural racism.”
And in the third selection, Dr. Jon Hunter (of the University of Toronto) contemplates endings – including his ending – in a personal and moving paper for CMAJ. He notes the need to clean up his possessions. But what about his practice and the many patients that he has followed for years? “I’d rather not shy away from the uncertainty and loss of the ending, and to try to help one more time.”
DG
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