Tag: mental health

Reading of the Week: rTMS – the New JAMA Psych Paper; Also, Opioid Overdoses (JAMA Net Open) and Green on Peak Mental Health (NYT)

From the Editor

She’s an accomplished person who had succeeded in business and then writing, all the while raising three children; she also has an amazing smile and lights up the room when talking about her kids. But in my office, sick with depression, she can only focus on her losses and failings; the smile is absent.

Depression is common and disabling. Those who are affected in late-life are particularly challenging to treat. Is there a better way? In the first selection from JAMA Psychiatry, Dr. Daniel Blumberger (of the University of Toronto) and his co-authors consider theta burst stimulation, a newer form of rTMS which has shown promise in earlier work. Their study is a randomized noninferiority trial, directly comparing the two versions of rTMS in elderly patients with depression. The result? “We showed that bilateral TBS was noninferior to standard bilateral rTMS in improving depression, and similarly well tolerated, in a real-world sample of older adults with TRD [treatment resistant depression]…” We review the paper and its clinical implications.

In the second selection, Lori Ann Post (of Northwestern University) and her co-authors draw on CDC data to look at opioid overdoses in the United States with a focus on geography. In a JAMA Network Open research letter, they find: “Overall, opioid-involved overdose deaths rates increased steadily in counties of every urbanicity type, although there were distinct temporal wave patterns by urbanicity.”

And in the third selection, Huw Green (of the University of Cambridge) wonders about mental health and mental illness – and worries that the terms are becoming blurred together. Writing in The New York Times, the psychologist concludes: “When we move away from a focus on psychological problems and toward ‘mental health’ more broadly, clinicians stumble into terrain that extends beyond our expertise. We ought to be appropriately humble.”  

This month, the Reading of the Week enters its ninth year. A quick word of thanks for your ongoing interest.

DG



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Reading of the Week: Which Antipsychotics are Patients Less Likely to Discontinue? The New AJP Paper; Also, Dr. Lawrence on Mental Health (Guardian)

From the Editor

Is new really better?

With several new antipsychotic medications on the market, this question is very relevant clinically. For the patient in your office, should you opt for a new antipsychotic or something older?

In the first selection, Dr. Mark Weiser (of the Stanley Medical Research Institute) and his co-authors draw on a large database – and the experience of tens of thousands of people – to compare antipsychotics. “Among veterans with schizophrenia, those who initiated antipsychotic treatment with clozapine, long-acting injectable second-generation medications, and antipsychotic polypharmacy experienced longer episodes of continuous therapy and lower rates of treatment discontinuation.” We consider this paper, and the clinical implications.

new-2Is new better – or just eye catching?

In the other selection, Dr. Rebecca Lawrence, a practicing psychiatrist, writes for The Guardian. In her essay, she distinguishes between mental health and mental illness, noting that they are not the same thing, and worrying that we are increasingly as a society focused on the former at the expense of the latter. She thinks about her work as a physician: “As a doctor, I can talk with someone and give them pills, but I can’t easily get them any help with losing weight or trying to exercise. I can tell them it would be good for them, but I don’t necessarily have any practical ways to help.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: How Has Mental Health Changed Over COVID? Also, Goldbloom on Practice & the Pandemic (Globe) and a Reader Responds to Psilocybin

From the Editor

Even our language has changed. Last winter, we didn’t think about lockdowns and the term social distancing was confined to sociology textbooks. The world is different.

And in our new reality, we can ask: How has the pandemic affected mental health? While there have been many small surveys (and much speculation), until now we have lacked a major, large scale survey.

This week, we look at a new paper from The Lancet Psychiatry. Matthias Pierce (of the University of Manchester) and his co-authors draw on the UK Household Longitudinal Study – a large, national survey that offers us pandemic and pre-pandemic data. The good news: “Between April and October 2020, the mental health of most UK adults remained resilient or returned to pre-pandemic levels…” but they also found that one in nine people in the UK “had deteriorating or consistently poor mental health.” We consider the big study and discuss resilience with an essay by Dr. Richard A. Friedman (of Cornell University).

covid-pic

In the second selection, we consider an essay by Dr. David Goldbloom (of the University of Toronto) on how the pandemic has changed psychiatry. He focuses on the biggest change: that is, the embrace of virtual care. He begins: “We are all telepsychiatrists now…” He notes the advantages and disadvantages of the transformation. While some providers express ambivalence, he writes: “What counts, ultimately, is what helps our patients.”

Finally, a reader responds to our take on The New England Journal of Medicine paper on psilocybin. Dr. Craig P. Stewart (of Western University) writes: “One area I did not see mentioned in the psilocybin paper review was a discussion of confirmation bias, which I believe also should be mentioned to contextualize the results.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: Coming to Canada – Immigration and Mental Illness

From the Editor

Last week, when in Halifax, I went to Pier 21, a museum that now stands where more than a million immigrants entered this country by ship. The exhibits describe the aspirations, the experiences, and the struggles of these people – our people. As a nation of immigrants, here’s an important question to ask: what impact does immigration have on mental health?

Different studies show different things of the immigrant experience. On the one hand, some studies find that immigrants (and refugees) have higher rates of psychosis (including a recent Canadian paper by Anderson et al.); on the other hand, other studies show a “healthy migrant effect” – that is, immigrants have lower rates of mental illness overall.

The August issue of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry has a thoughtful paper that considers immigration and mental illness. The authors tread on familiar ground – there is a rich body of work in this area, but they offer a Canadian perspective by looking at people in Montreal, and they consider mental health utilization and service satisfaction.

Pier 21: A boat, a pier, and the beginning of the new beginning for hundreds of thousands – but are there implications for mental illness?

Spoiler alert: immigrants tended to have lower rates of depression and alcohol dependence than the general population.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Pushing Past the Headlines – Substances & Health Services, and Medically Assisted Death & Cost Savings

From the Editor

It makes sense that those with substance use problems and mental illness consume more health resources – but how much more? As Canadians opt for medical assistance in dying, what will the impact be on health spending?

Readings don’t necessarily follow a theme. But this week, we push past newspaper headlines to consider two topical issues in more detail, tapping the latest in the literature.

Pushing past the headlines

In the first paper, Graham et al. consider health costs and utilization for people with mental health and/or substance use problems. Spoiler alert: these individuals are much more likely to use health services, resulting in higher costs. That’s not exactly a surprise, but Graham et al. provide a detailed analysis in an area that has been understudied.

In the second paper, drawing from Dutch data, Trachtenberg and Manns estimate the savings from medically assisted death.

Both papers are timely. Both reach interesting conclusions.

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Reading of the Week: Depression: Is There an App for That?

Depression is a serious, common, and recurring disorder linked to diminished functioning, quality of life, medical morbidity, and mortality. There has been a 37.5% increase in health life years lost to depression over the past two decades. Depression was the third-leading cause of global burden of disease in 2004 and the leading cause of burden of disease in high- and middle-income countries. It is projected to be the leading cause globally in 2030. While effective treatments for depression are available, they are underused. Barriers to treatment include geography, socioeconomic status, system capacity, treatment costs (direct and indirect), low mental health literacy, cultural beliefs, and stigma. A 2010 study found that 75% of primary care patients with depression in urban areas could identify more than one structural, psychological, cultural, or emotional barrier to accessing behavioral treatments. The rate was substantially higher in rural areas.

So begins a new paper that considers an old problem – the difficulty of patients accessing mental health care.

But this paper is different. It considers a modern approach to access: smartphone and tablet applications (or apps) for depression. And it’s not just the topic that is so modern with this week’s Reading. Consider: the paper was published in a new journal, JMIR mHealth and uHealth, available only on-line, and focused on the very modern topic of mobile health. (This journal is a spin-off of JMIR, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, itself a relatively new journal, which boasts an impact factor of 4.7 in 2013.)

This week’s Reading: “Finding a Depression App: A Review and Content Analysis of the Depression App Marketplace” by Nelson Shen et al. In it, the authors seek to shed light on a poorly studied area. As they note early in the paper, despite the incredible popularity of apps, only one recent systemic review looked at depression apps, and included just 4 papers. And so, Shen et al. consider apps for depression, drawing out common characteristics and purposes.

This is, then, an important topic. The potential here is great: with so many of our patients empowering themselves with apps, those with depression could potentially access good information, screening tools and even treatments such as CBT.

What did Shen et al. find in their paper? It’s best summarized by the old Roman phrase caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Continue reading