From the Editor
Can a sleep intervention reduce suicidal thoughts in those with depression and insomnia?
When seeing people with depression, we often tend to focus on the Big Problem: that is, the major depressive disorder itself. But should we also consider trying to provide early symptomatic relief, with, say, a sleep medication?
In the first selection, we look at a new paper from The American Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. William V. McCall of the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and his co-authors write about the REST-IT study, a randomized controlled trial of zolpidem-CR for those with MDD and insomnia. “The results do not support the routine prescription of hypnotic medication for mitigating suicidal ideation in all depressed outpatients with insomnia…”
Sleeping Like a Baby: Fewer Suicidal Thoughts?
In the second selection, the University of Western Ontario’s Rebecca Rodrigues and her co-authors consider involuntary psychiatric admissions and ethnic minority groups in the context of early psychosis. Spoiler alert: “African and Caribbean groups were the most likely to experience an involuntary admission…”
And in the third selection, phyisician Jill Halper wonders: is depression like cancer? “My rabbi said that my husband, like a dying cancer patient, had been in hospice care. We just didn’t realize it.”
DG
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