Tag: JAMA Psychiatry

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

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Reading of the Week: Depression, Pills & Adherence – the Sirey et al. Study on Improving Depression Treatment

October 19, 2017 /

From the Editor

The patient is depressed. The doctor has prescribed medications. But the patient doesn’t take them.

As a clinician, this scenario is too familiar with results that are too familiar – the patient doesn’t get better. What can we do to improve adherence?

In this week’s selection, we look at a new paper by Weil Cornell Medicine’s Jo Anne Sirey et al., considering this question. The authors do a randomized controlled trial with “a brief psychosocial intervention designed to improve adherence to pharmacotherapy for patients with depression.” So, is this intervention a game-changer? The authors find a five-fold increase in adherence during the first 6 weeks of care – but not much change in overall depressive symptoms.

153745515Pretty pill bottle: But how can we get patients to take the pills?

In this Reading, we review the paper.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Can Lithium in Drinking Water Help Prevent Dementia? The Kessing et al. Paper from JAMA Psychiatry

August 31, 2017 /

From the Editor

Since the extraordinary work of John Cade some seven decades ago, lithium has been used as a medication to help people with bipolar. But the history of lithium use is longer – for many years, people have understood that it has medicinal value, and bottled water containing lithium was popular at the turn of the twentieth century (long before Dr. Cade started medical school).

We know that lithium affects the brain in many ways (for example, it slows apoptosis, or programmed cell death); we also that know that dementia can work on those same pathways, but in a negative way (it may sped up apoptosis). In this week’s selection, the authors wonder if lithium can prevent dementia. It’s a big question – and the authors tap a big national database. They find a non-linear correlation between lithium in drinking water and dementia.

Tap water: A potential prevention for dementia if it has lithium in it?

So – does this paper represent something of a breakthrough? We look at the paper and an editorial to answer that question.

DG Continue reading

Reading of the Week: ECT and Inpatients – An Underused Tool?

July 20, 2017 /

From the Editor

It’s a powerful tool that helps people with refractory depression and other illnesses.

It’s a treatment that carries a heavy stigma, and is used less today than even a decade ago.

Both statements describe electroconvulsive therapy (or ECT) – perhaps the most controversial intervention in psychiatry. And while it has been studied for decades, little work has been done considering the impact of ECT on inpatient readmissions. In this week’s Reading, we look at a new JAMA Psychiatry paper that studies ECT and readmissions.

Spoiler alert: the study authors found it decreased readmits.

Electroconvulsive therapy at Winwick Hospital in 1957: relevant then as now?

The paper begs a larger question: is an important tool in the treatment of those with mental illness being underutilized as newer (and less effective) treatments are chosen?

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: Better Treatment, Safer Roads? The New JAMA Psychiatry Paper on ADHD & Driving

June 8, 2017 /

From the Editor

How can we reduce the number of car accidents?

We often speak about treating mental illness in terms of reducing personal suffering. Recent selections have looked at the economic cost of mental illness. But what are the implications to public health?

This week, we look at a new JAMA Psychiatry paper; this national cohort study involved more than 2.3 million people with ADHD, and considered motor vehicle crashes (as measured by emergency department visits) and whether or not they were taking medications.

Yes, he has a plaid shirt, but should he be taking his prescription meds?

Spoiler alert: The authors find “medication use for the disorder was associated with a significantly reduced risk” of vehicle accidents.

We also look at an editorial that finds “clinical pearls” in this paper.

DG Continue reading

Reading of the Week: Effective Therapy for Anxious & Depressed Youth in a Peds Clinic? The New Weersing Study

May 18, 2017 /

From the Editor

“Anxiety and depression in youth are widely prevalent, highly impairing, and woefully undertreated.”

So writes San Diego State University’s V. Robin Weersing and her co-authors in a new JAMA Psychiatry paper. In this study, they compare a pediatric clinic-based brief behavioural treatment to referral to outpatient services for depression and anxiety. It’s a novel approach – and one with significant advantages (housing treatment in a primary care setting, to name just one).

So does this work? Spoiler alert: the brief behavioural treatment (BBT) comes out on top.

Anxiety treatment in the peds office: would Norman Rockwell approve?

As an accompanying Editorial notes: “The efficacy of BBT is particularly telling given the low response rate to treatment as usual in the control condition (57% vs 28%), especially for Hispanic populations (76% vs 7%).”

Please note: there will be no Reading next week because of the APA Annual Meeting. (I hope to see you in California.)

DG

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Reading of the Week: Can We Reduce Suicide in the Emergency Department Population? Also, Drugs & Crime

May 11, 2017 /

From the Editor

He presents to the Emergency Department a few days after a suicide attempt. What can we do to help keep this man safe today – and moving forward?

Emergency Departments: noisy, busy, and an opportunity for suicide prevention?

It’s a scenario that repeats itself at EDs across the country with regularity. This week, in our first selection, we consider a new JAMA Psychiatry paper that has just been published looking at suicide prevention in the ED population. The authors claim “this study is the largest suicide intervention trial ever conducted in the United States,” and they show that, with an intervention, they can reduce suicides and suicide attempts.

And, in the other selection, we look at a short New York Times essay in which economist Austin Frakt argues that substance programs pay for themselves in crime reduction.

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

Reading of the Week: The Future of Psychiatry – Part II of II

December 8, 2016 /

From the Editor

Is mental health becoming too technical (and forgetting patients as a result)?

The future of us clinicians?

This is the second Reading in a two-part series considering the future of mental health – not in terms of distant developments like biomarkers and genetically-tailored drugs – but rather by looking at measurement-based care and the evolution of the field.

Last week, measurement-based care.

This week, the end of the art of care?

This week, we look at an editorial The British Journal of Psychiatry that warns against physicians becoming “well treated skilled workers.”

And, continuing the consideration of ‘the future,’ we also consider a new paper that has received much attention. Can a web-based intervention help with insomnia? Spoiler alert – as The New York Times reported last week, “more than half of chronic insomniacs who used an automated online therapy program reported improvement within weeks and were sleeping normally a year later.”

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