Tag: Freeman

From the Editor

We ask our patients about cannabis. We inquire about illicit drugs. But are we forgetting tobacco? A new paper in Psychiatric Services helps answer that question – and, perhaps, raises other questions, including about how we could do better. 

In the first selection, Sarah A. White (of Johns Hopkins University) and her co-authors draw on American data to look at smoking cessation medications in a new Psychiatric Services paper. Among more than 55,000 smokers (many of whom have mental illness), they find that: “Cessation pharmacotherapy for smokers remained vastly underprescribed across all groups. At least 83% of smokers with or without mental illness did not receive varenicline, NRT, or bupropion during the 14-year study period.” We consider the paper and its clinical implications.

In the second selection, Huiru Dong (of Harvard University) and her co-authors look at buprenorphine treatment and demographics in the United States. Their JAMA Psychiatry research letter, which was just published, finds a growing gap. “The observed heterogeneity in buprenorphine treatment duration among racial and ethnic groups may reflect disproportionate structural barriers in treatment retention for Opioid Use Disorder.”

In the third selection, Dr. David Freedman (of the University of Toronto) writes about resident lunches for Academic Psychiatry. Dr. Freedman, who is a resident, notes that in-person lunches shifted to virtual ones for more than two years because of the pandemic – something that was necessary but unfortunate. He argues that the gatherings are important. “Yet, as a collective of residents munch on the last bites of their sandwiches, say goodbye, and return to work, I am struck by the camaraderie. Funded resident lunches nurture the professional identities of psychiatry trainees – an essential element of medical education.”

DG