Tag: King

Reading of the Week: Student Mental Health – the New CJP Paper; Also, Novel Treatment for Alcohol and Kerman & Stergiopoulos on Encampments

December 19, 2024 /

From the Editor

He walked into our emergency department late one night. He told me that he felt overwhelmed – not just by his university studies, but by everything. Even getting out of bed was challenging. Like many, his depression began in late adolescence, just as he was starting his engineering program.

What are the experiences of university students with mental health problems? And what can be done to improve them? Nathan King (of Queen’s University) and his co-authors try to answer these questions in a new paper published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. They surveyed more than 4 000 Queen’s students over a five-year period, and did both qualitative and quantitative analyses. They found 30% reported a lifetime mental disorder and 23% had a history of self-harm, yet only 15% accessed care. They make several recommendations including: “Student-tailored mental health literacy may be a sustainable approach to address the attitudinal and practical barriers identified.” We consider the paper and its implications.

In the second selection, Dr. Markku Lähteenvuo (of the University of Eastern Finland) and his colleagues discuss semaglutide and sister drugs for alcohol use disorder in a JAMA Psychiatry brief report. Drawing on Swedish databases, they compared individuals who took the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1) agonists to those who didn’t. “Among patients with AUD and comorbid obesity/type 2 diabetes, the use of semaglutide and liraglutide were associated with a substantially decreased risk of hospitalization due to AUD.”

In the third selection, an op ed published in the Toronto Star, Nick Kerman and Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos (both of the University of Toronto) consider the Ontario government’s plan to end homeless encampments in Canada’s largest province. They suggest an alternative. “Let’s leverage a housing-first intervention, a proven way to get people the housing and support they need.”

The Reading of the Week is going on holidays for the next weeks (or, at least, I am). The next Reading will be 16 January 2025. All the best in the holiday season.

DG

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Reading of the Week: IPT for Depression in Pregnancy – the New JAMA Psych Paper; Also, Treating Opioid Use (JAMA) and Substance Ed for Docs (Wash Post)

June 22, 2023 /

From the Editor

Prenatal depression affects two: the mother and her fetus. But how to effectively address depressive symptoms?

In the first selection, from JAMA Psychiatry, Benjamin L. Hankin (of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and his co-authors consider a focused psychotherapy for that population. In a RCT involving 234 participants, they find that IPT was helpful. “Brief IPT significantly reduced prenatal depression symptoms and MDD compared with EUC [enhanced usual care] among pregnant individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds recruited from primary OB/GYN clinics.” We look at the paper and its clinical implications.

In the second selection, Caroline King (of the Oregon Health & Science University) and her co-authors consider buprenorphine for opioid use disorder with a focus on adolescent residential treatment. In a JAMA research letter, they report the findings which included every identified facility in the United States. “In contrast to the standard of care, only 1 in 4 US facilities offered buprenorphine and 1 in 8 offered buprenorphine for ongoing treatment.”

And, in the third selection, former AMA president Dr. Patrice A. Harris (of Columbia University) and her co-authors argue that physicians should know more about addiction treatment. In a Washington Post essay, they argue for more robust training. “Opioid use disorder is treatable, and medicines are readily available. But doctors cannot learn to help patients by taking a weekend course alone.”

DG


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Reading of the Week: The New AJP on Alcohol & Subjective Response; Also, Remembering Philip Seeman (Globe) and Sharma on His Godmother

February 4, 2021 /

From the Editor

My patient could recognize the damage done by alcohol. The lost friendships. The failed marriage. The firing of her job of 15 years. And yet, she was still puzzled. “How did I get into this mess?”

In a new American Journal of Psychiatry paper, Andrea King (of the University of Chicago) and her co-authors explore the draw of alcohol with a major new study that measures the subjective response to alcohol challenges at five and ten year follow ups. “Initial stimulant and rewarding effects of alcohol predicted heavy alcohol use, and the magnitude of these positive subjective effects increased over a 10-year period in those who developed alcohol use disorder compared with those who did not develop the disorder.” We discuss this big paper.

ipoct17-alcohol

Dr. Philip Seeman had an extraordinary career with major achievements. Some argue that he should have shared the Nobel prize. He died on 9 January 2021 at his home. The Globe obituary is our second selection. Dr. Seeman was a generous mentor of many young scientists, and a husband, father, and grandfather. And his work was impactful: Dr. Seeman’s interest in dopamine helped change the way we practice today.

And in our final selection, we look at a new essay by Dr. Gaurav Sharma, a resident of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. The disaster of Ontario’s long term care homes has made many headlines. For this young doctor, the problems are close to home, affecting his godmother. He writes about her life and her downward turn. “In my training as a psychiatry resident, a basic principle I’ve learned is that every mental health crisis has its triggers. In Lucy’s case, the crisis that led to her hospitalization was prompted by a precarious housing situation.”

DG

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