Tag: Finland

Reading of the Week: Polypharmacy & Health – the New AJP Paper; Also, Melatonin Gummies (JAMA) & Mehler Paperny on Involuntary Care (Globe)

May 4, 2023 /

From the Editor

When it comes to antipsychotics, polypharmacy (the use of more than one antipsychotic) has fallen out of fashion – the psychopharmacological equivalent of bell bottoms. Providers worry about side effects and the long-term physical health implications. Are the concerns overstated? In the first selection, Heidi Taipale (of the University of Eastern Finland) and her coauthors analyze Finnish data for The American Journal of Psychiatry. The study includes almost 62,000 patients with schizophrenia with a median follow up period of more than 14 years, and they find that the use of more than one antipsychotic isn’t linked to poorer health outcomes. “The results show that antipsychotic monotherapy is not associated with a lower risk of hospitalization for severe physical health problems when compared with antipsychotic polypharmacy.” We consider the paper and its clinical implications.

Melatonin is a popular recommendation for sleep, but what’s the quality like? In the second selection from JAMA, Dr. Pieter A. Cohen (of Harvard University) and his co-authors try to answer that question with a focus on melatonin gummy products, looking at 30 brands. “The great majority of melatonin gummy products were inaccurately labeled, with most products exceeding the declared amount of melatonin and CBD.”

Gummy melatonin: colourful but what’s the quality?

In the third selection, in an essay for The Globe and Mail, journalist Anna Mehler Paperny writes about the push for more coercive care by different governments. Drawing on her personal experiences, she notes potential problems. “There is a role for coercive care. It’s arguably necessary for some people, sometimes. But used injudiciously, it can sour people on care and set them up for failure.”

There will be no Reading next week.

DG

Continue reading

Reading of the Week: Is Lithium Underrated? Preventing Rehospitalization with Bipolar – the New JAMA Psychiatry Paper

March 29, 2018 /

From the Editor

From the perspective of the treatment team, a rehospitalization is a failure – a patient returning to the system, unwell again. From the perspective of the patient and her or his family, a rehospitalization can be frightening and humiliating.

How best to keep people with bipolar affective disorder out of hospital? In a new JAMA Psychiatry paper, the University of Eastern Finland’s Markku Lähteenvuo and his co-authors attempt to answer this question – not by using a RCT, but instead by tapping Finnish national databases.

For the record, they find one medication works better than the others: lithium.

800px-central_hospital_of_central_finlandFinland’s Central Hospital: adequate architecture but good data

In this Reading, we consider the new paper by Lähteenvuo et al., and also consider their approach.

DG

Continue reading

Reading of the Week: Is ‘New’ Overrated? Antipsychotics in the Real World

June 22, 2017 /

From the Editor

Is new better?

You may be reading this on an iPhone 7, having driven to work this morning in a 2017 Hybrid Prius. So should your patients be taking a medication that became available four-and-a-half decades ago – when people drove gus-gusling eight-cylinder Oldsmobiles and smartphones didn’t even exist in science fiction novels.

This week, we look at a just-published JAMA Psychiatry paper which promises to look at the “real-world” effectiveness of antipsychotics. The authors tapped Swedish databases to consider outcomes for nearly thirty thousand people with schizophrenia.

Sweden: elaborate welfare state, beautiful historic buildings, and – yes – rich databases

Spoiler alert: new wasn’t better. That is, newer antipsychotics tended to underperform clozapine and depot medications.

We also look at similar “real-world” work drawing from a Finnish database considering treatment of depression.

DG Continue reading

Reading of the Week: Technology & Mental Health – Depression and Internet-based CBT; Also, Finnish e-Therapy

April 27, 2017 /

From the Editor

VR. e-therapies.

New technology is changing the way we think about the delivery of psychiatric services. But new isn’t necessarily better. Can care really be transformed? What does the literature say?computere-therapy: more than clever pictures of computers and stethoscopes?

In a two-part Reading of the Week, we look at technology and psychiatry.

Last week, Virtual Reality.

This week, e-therapies.

This week, we consider a new paper that has just been published. Its looks at self-guided Internet-based CBT showing that for every eight people treated, one benefits (consider this in the context of minimal cost).

And, in the other selection, we look at the Finnish experience with Internet-based CBT.

DG Continue reading