Tag: Treatment

Book: 30 Days 30 Ways To Overcome Depression

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Book Title: 30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Depression

Author: Bev Aisbett.

Year: 2019.

Publisher: HarperCollins, London, UK.

Synopsis:

From bestselling author Bev Aisbett comes a proven, practical and simple workbook to help people manage their depression, with a month’s worth of daily strategies and exercises for work and for home.

When you’re suffering from depression, sometimes it’s as much as you can do to get out of bed, let alone read a book. But this just isn’t any other book. This is a practical day-by-day workbook, with clear, simple daily building blocks and exercises designed to help pull you out of the inertia of depression. It’s a highly approachable, concise and above all practical way to help manage depression.

Featuring all-new material from experienced counsellor and bestselling author of the self-help classics Living with IT and Taming the Black Dog, Bev Aisbett has based this book on many of the exercises she has been teaching and writing about for the past twenty years to help people manage their depression.

Book: Lost Connections

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Book Title: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.

Author: Johann Hari.

Year: 2018.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 50 Bedford Square, London, UK.

Synopsis:

A radically new way of thinking about mental health. What really causes depression and anxiety – and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking anti-depressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true – and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.

Across the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. Hari’s journey took him from a mind-blowing series of experiments in Baltimore, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin. Once he had uncovered nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions – ones that work.

Analysis of Voluntary vs Involuntary Admissions

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Research Paper Title

Voluntary admissions for patients with schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background

Voluntary admission rates of schizophrenia vary widely across studies.

In order to make the topic be informed by evidence, it is important to have accurate estimates.

This meta-analysis examined the worldwide prevalence of voluntary admissions for patients with schizophrenia.

Methods

PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science and Medline databases were systematically searched, from their commencement date until 19th November 2018.

Meta-analysis of included studies was performed using the random-effects model.

Results

Thirty-five studies with 134,100 schizophrenia patients were included.

The overall voluntary admission rate of schizophrenia was 61.9 % (95 %CI: 52.3 %-70.7 %), while the involuntary rate was 43.0 % (95 %CI: 34.8 %-51.7 %).

Subgroup analyses revealed that patients in Europe had significantly higher voluntary admission rates, while their North American counterparts were more likely admitted involuntarily.

Papers published prior to 2008 reported higher involuntary admission rates.

Meta-regression analyses showed that higher male percentage and higher study quality were significantly associated with higher voluntary admission rate.

Conclusions

Although the worldwide prevalence of voluntary admissions was higher than that of involuntary admissions, the latter was common for schizophrenia.

With the continuing liberalisation of mental health laws broadening community-based psychiatric services, the rate of voluntary psychiatric admissions is expected to further increase over time.

Reference

Yang, Y., Li, W., Lok, K.I., Zhang, Q., Hong, L., Ungvari, G.S., Bressington, D.T., Cheung, T. & Xiang, Y.T. (2019) Voluntary admissions for patients with schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Asian Journal of Psychiatry. 48:101902. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2019.101902. [Epub ahead of print].

New Channel 4 TV Series on Mental Health – Losing It: Our Mental Health Emergency

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Introduction

As attitudes to mental health change during a surge in the number of people asking for help or harming themselves, this series joins the frontline care services in Nottinghamshire

Outline Series 01

Channel 4 begins broadcasting a new series on mental health on Tuesday 21 January 2020 at 10 pm.

Titled Losing It: Our Mental; Health Emergency, the series gains access to Nottinghamshire Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest mental health trusts.

With demand rising and resources stretched like never before, this series explores the unprecedented pressure on mental health services and the seemingly impossible decisions that clinicians have to make every day.

The series places viewers at the heart of the complex decision-making process, giving a unique insight into the pressures and challenges mental health trusts and patients must deal with daily.

Told with a frank first person perspective, this series gives a very personal view of mental illness in 2019; the tragedy, humour and complex challenges.

Outline Series 01, Episode 01

Two weeks after becoming a mum, Laura is sectioned having tried to drive into a brick wall.

And is 11-year-old Briena really suicidal, or is the underlying diagnosis more complicated?

About Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Nottinghamshire Healthcare provides integrated healthcare services, including mental health, intellectual disability and physical health services.

Over 9000 dedicated staff provide these services in a variety of settings, ranging from the community through to acute wards, as well as secure settings.

The Trust manages two medium secure units, Arnold Lodge in Leicester and Wathwood Hospital in Rotherham, and the high secure Rampton Hospital near Retford.

It also provides healthcare in prisons across the East Midlands.

Its budget for 2019/20 is £465m.

Why Do It?

The Trust made the decision to take part in the series in April 2019 to try and further reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.

The production company, Story Films, has an impressive track record in making sensitive films that deal with difficult topics.

Filming took place across Nottinghamshire during the summer of last year and features patients with a wide variety of diagnoses, including young people, families and people in crisis.

Production & Filming Details

  • Production: Story Films.
  • Distributor: Channel 4.
  • Release Date: 21 January 2020 (UK).
  • Running Time: 50 minutes.

The Experience of Sexual Minority Men & Mental Healthcare in Toronto, Canada

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Research Paper Title

Mental health and structural harm: a qualitative study of sexual minority men’s experiences of mental healthcare in Toronto, Canada.

Background

Compared to the general population, sexual minority men report poorer mental health outcomes and higher mental healthcare utilisation.

However, they also report more unmet mental health needs.

Methods

To better understand this phenomenon, the researchers conducted qualitative interviews with 24 sexual minority men to explore the structural factors shaping their encounters with mental healthcare in Toronto, Canada.

Interviews were analysed using grounded theory.

Results

Many participants struggled to access mental healthcare and felt more marginalised and distressed because of two interrelated sets of barriers.

  • The first were general barriers, hurdles to mental healthcare not exclusive to sexual minorities. These included:
    • Financial and logistical obstacles;
    • The prominence of psychiatry and the biomedical model; and
    • Unsatisfactory provider encounters.
  • The second were sexual minority barriers, obstacles explicitly rooted in heterosexism and homophobia sometimes intersecting with other forms of marginality. These included:
    • Experiencing discrimination and distrust; and
    • Limited sexual minority affirming options.

Discussions of general barriers outweighed those of sexual minority barriers, demonstrating the health consequences of structural harms in the absence of overt structural stigma.

Conclusions

Healthcare inaccessibility, income insecurity and the high cost of living are fostering poor mental health among sexual minority men.

Research must consider the upstream policy changes necessary to counteract these harms.

Reference

Gaspar, M., Marshall, Z., Rodrigues, R., Adam, B.D., Brennan, D.J., Hart, T.A. & Grace, D. (2019) Mental health and structural harm: a qualitative study of sexual minority men’s experiences of mental healthcare in Toronto, Canada. Culture, Health, & Sexuality. 1-17. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2019.1692074. [Epub ahead of print].

Comparing the Effectiveness of Prompt Mental Health Care to Treatment as Usual

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Research Paper Title

Effectiveness of Prompt Mental Health Care, the Norwegian Version of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background

The innovative treatment model Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and its Norwegian adaptation, Prompt Mental Health Care (PMHC), have been evaluated by cohort studies only. Albeit yielding promising results, the extent to which these are attributable to the treatment thus remains unsettled.

Therefore the objective of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of the PMHC treatment compared to treatment as usual (TAU) at 6-month follow-up.

Methods

A randomised controlled trial with parallel assignment was performed in two PMHC sites (Sandnes and Kristiansand) and enrolled clients between November 9, 2015 and August 31, 2017. Participants were 681 adults (aged ≥18 years) considered for admission to PMHC due to anxiety and/or mild to moderate depression (Patient Health Questionnaire [PHQ-9]/Generalised Anxiety Disorder scale [GAD-7] scores above cutoff). These were randomly assigned (70:30 ratio; n = 463 to PMHC, n = 218 to TAU) with simple randomisation within each site with no further constraints. The main outcomes were recovery rates and changes in symptoms of depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7) between baseline and follow-up. Primary outcome data were available for 73/67% in PMHC/TAU. Sensitivity analyses based on observed patterns of missingness were also conducted. Secondary outcomes were work participation, functional status, health-related quality of life, and mental well-being.

Results

A reliable recovery rate of 58.5% was observed in the PMHC group and of 31.9% in the TAU group, equalling a between-group effect size of 0.61 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.85, p < 0.001). The differences in degree of improvement between PMHC and TAU yielded an effect size of -0.88 (95% CI -1.23 to -0.43, p < 0.001) for PHQ-9 and -0.60 (95% CI -0.90 to -0.30, p < 0.001) for GAD-7 in favour of PMHC. All sensitivity analyses pointed in the same direction, with small variations in point estimates. Findings were slightly more robust for depressive than anxiety symptoms. PMHC was also more effective than TAU in improving all secondary outcomes, except for work participation (z = 0.415, p = 0.69).

Conclusions

The PMHC treatment was substantially more effective than TAU in alleviating the burden of anxiety and depression. This adaptation of IAPT is considered a viable supplement to existing health services to increase access to effective treatment for adults who suffer from anxiety and mild to moderate depression. A potential effect on work participation needs further examination.

Reference

Knapstad, M., Lervik, L.V., Sæther, S.M.M., Aarø, L.E. & Smith, O.R.F. (2019) Effectiveness of Prompt Mental Health Care, the Norwegian Version of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. 1-16. doi: 10.1159/000504453. [Epub ahead of print].