Tag: Marcus

Reading of the Week: Does COVID Affect Outcomes? Also, Depression & Behavioural Economics (JAMA Psych), and Crawford on Virtual Care (Walrus)

From the Editor

As we head into the second wave, are there lessons from the spring?

This week, we have three selections.

In the first, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, Dr. Seung Won Lee (of the Sejong University College of Software Convergence) and co-authors look at mental illness and COVID-19 in South Korea. Doing a cohort study, drawing on national databases, they wonder about diagnosis and clinical outcomes for those with mental illness. “Diagnosis of a mental illness was not associated with increased likelihood of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.” It’s a big finding – but is it relevant on this side of the Pacific?

wave-1

Can we nudge patients with depression to take medications? In the second selection, we look at a new JAMA Psychiatry research letter. Steven C. Marcus (of the University of Pennsylvania) and his co-authors offer financial incentives for medication compliance. They conclude: “In this pilot study, escalating incentives for daily antidepressant adherence significantly improved adherence compared with a control group during the critical first 6 weeks of treatment.”

Finally, in our third selection, we consider an essay by Dr. Allison Crawford (of the University of Toronto) from The Walrus. She writes about the change in mental health care with COVID-19, as virtual care has become the norm. “I take off my shoes so that I can enter softly and with an open heart. My patients can’t see my bare feet.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: Involuntary Psychiatric Admissions – More Common, But Why? Also, the Failure of AI

From the Editor

Some patients are so ill that we take away their basic rights and freedoms, admitting them involuntarily to hospital. But how common is the practice?

In the first selection, we consider a new paper by Michael Lebenbaum et al. that looks at involuntary admissions from 2009 to 2013. They find the percentage is not only high (by international standards) but that it has soared in recent years – from 70.7% in 2009 to 77.1% in 2013.

Hand holding key (with key hole)

We consider a recent essay on AI in the second selection. Google has made international headlines with its program, Duplex, that can call and book appointments. In this piece, the authors note that AI has failed to live up to its potential. “Schedule hair salon appointments? The dream of artificial intelligence was supposed to be grander than this…”

DG

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