How does ChatGPT compare to a human therapist for CBT? How often is lithium – arguably the gold standard medication for bipolar disorder – prescribed in Canada? Do young patients do as well as adults with psychotherapy?
In the coming weeks, we will look at papers that attempt to answer these important questions. But today’s Reading is the last one before the Labour Day weekend.
Instead, in a break from our usual format, I offer a few things you may choose to read from a comfortable chair by a lake or, perhaps, in the quiet of a call room if you are working (and a quick thanks to my colleagues for covering my inpatients this long weekend).
This week, there are no detailed descriptions nor commentary. I provide short summaries and an invitation to read one, two, or three of these longer pieces.
“I know all about antidepressants,” the young patient told me in the ED. “I’ve seen TikTok videos.” Social media isn’t just a source of great cat videos, many individuals – especially younger patients – turn to it for health information.
But how reliable is the mental-health information? In a new Digital Health paper, Roxanne Turuba (of the University of British Columbia) and her co-authors report on a summative content analysis of the 1 000 most popular mental health TikTok videos. They found that many featured personal stories and confessionals; less than 4% referenced scientific evidence; about a third offering advice was misleading. “Healthcare practitioners and researchers may consider increasing their presence on the platform to promote the dissemination of evidence-based information to a wider and more youth-targeted population.” We examine the paper and its implications.
Social media: more than cat videos?
In the second selection, Harriet Battle (of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust) and her co-authors consider attitudes toward mental health providers in social media. In a new British Journal of Psychiatry study, they analyzed more than 300 000 tweets spanning over a 16-year period, finding: “positive perceptions of mental health and mental health professionals increased over time. However, ‘psychiatrist’ had a consistently higher proportion of negative perceptions.”
And in the third selection, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy (the former US Surgeon General) writes about social media and adolescents in a New York Times essay. He notes the potential harms of social media for youth. He advocates changes, including warning labels. “We have the expertise, resources and tools to make social media safe for our kids. Now is the time to summon the will to act.”
It’s the phone call that we all dread – the call from the family or the coroner, explaining that your patient has died, likely by suicide.
At some point, we all receive that call.
Obviously, we think about the impact of suicide on families. But what impact does suicide have on us clinicians? In this week’s Reading, we consider the new BJP Bulletin paper on suicide and psychiatrists. Dr. Rachel Gibbons, an English psychiatrist, and her co-authors try to answer this question with a survey. Among their findings: a quarter of psychiatrist has considered a career change after a patient’s suicide.
In this week’s other selection, in a Lancet Psychiatry paper, Dr. Alex Langford, also an English psychiatrist, talks about the impact that suicide has had on his life.
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