Tag: Lewis

Reading of the Week: The Best of 2021

January 6, 2022 /

From the Editor

Welcome 2022.

It’s a Reading of the Week tradition that we begin the New Year by reviewing the best of the past year; so, this week, we look back at 2021.

2020 to 2021

As with past annual reviews, I’ve organized papers into different categories – though there is one common thread: all the papers are clinically relevant and practical. And, yes, there is a person of the year. Spoiler alert: he was fond of bow ties and thinking outside the box.

And an observation about 2021: the quality of scholarship was very high. I’ve picked ten papers – but it would have been possible to pick scores more. Psychiatry continues to grow more sophisticated with each passing year.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Should Patients Quit Antidepressants? The New NEJM Paper; Also, the NYT Obit on Dr. Paula Clayton

October 14, 2021 /

From the Editor

“Can I stop my antidepressants now?”

Patients often ask that question after feeling better. Studies have looked at relapse for people with depression who go off their medications, of course, but overwhelmingly such work has focused on patients recruited from specialty care (who are, perhaps, more ill).

In the first selection, we consider a new paper from The New England Journal of Medicine by Gemma Lewis (of University College) et al. The patients have been recruited from English family practices. The study is well designed and thoughtful, adding nicely to the literature. The chief finding? “Those who were assigned to stop their medication had a higher risk of relapse of depression by 52 weeks than those who were assigned to maintain their current therapy.” We consider the big paper and its clinical implications.

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In the second selection, drawing from the pages of The New York Times, reporter Clay Risen writes about the life of Dr. Paula J. Clayton. This psychiatrist, who passed in September, was an accomplished researcher: “Dr. Clayton was part of a generation of clinical psychiatrists who, in the decades after World War II, revolutionized their field by applying medical rigor to the diagnosis of mental illness.” In later years, she was a strong advocate for those with mental illness.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Measurement-based Care – Big Idea, Not-So-Big Reality

January 17, 2019 /

From the Editor

Imagine the excitement if a new antidepressant came to market that boasted that it could achieve the symptom reduction of other antidepressants in about half the time, yet had no significant new side effects.

There is no new antidepressant, but there is a study to mull: In 2015, The American Journal of Psychiatry published a paper on measurement-based care for people with depression, and the patients in the measurement group achieved remission in about half the time compared to people seeing a psychiatrist without the guidance of measurement. Though the paper has limitations, it also suggests the incredible potential of measurement-based care.

The measuring tape isolated on white backgroundThe measuring tape isolated on white background

In the first selection, we consider a new review paper published in JAMA Psychiatry. Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute’s Cara C. Lewis and her co-authors contemplate the potential of measurement-based care – and its reality (greatly underused). They make six points of observation and discussion before going on to propose an agenda.

In the second selection, we look at a paper by the University of Pennsylvania’s David W. Oslin and his co-authors who use survey data to consider the use of measurement-based care in a paper published by Psychiatric Services.

DG

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