Donepezil, nursing home placement and Alzheimer’s Disease

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Caroline Struthers reports on the findings of a follow-up paper of the DOMINO-AD trial, which compares Donepezil and Memantine for Moderate to Severe Alzheimer’s Disease, and looks at the effects these two drugs have on nursing home placement.

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CBT plus mother-child interaction for anxiety disorder

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Paul Ramchandani considers an RCT of treatment for childhood anxiety disorder in the context of maternal anxiety disorder, which finds that mother-child interaction might be of value for childhood anxiety disorder.

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Cigarette smoking may enhance vulnerability for cannabis dependence

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Andrew Jones considers the findings of a longitudinal study of young cannabis users in the UK, which highlights an association between cigarette smoking and cannabis dependence.

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Childhood sleep disturbance and risk of psychotic experiences

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Joanne Wallace explores the relationship between nightmares/night terrors at age 12 with psychotic experiences at age 18, which has been confirmed by a recent UK birth cohort study.

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Rise of the machine learning algorithm: the future of diagnosing schizophrenia?

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Samei Huda reviews a meta-analysis of multivariate pattern recognition studies, which aims to detect neuroimaging biomarkers for schizophrenia.

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Smoking and chronic mental illness: what’s the best way to quit or cut down?

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Meg Fluharty considers the findings of a BMJ State of the Art review, which looks at the evidence for smoking cessation in people with chronic mental illness such as schizophrenia, unipolar depression, bipolar depression, anxiety disorders and PTSD.

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How can we reduce mental health stigma and discrimination?

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David Steele summarises a recent systematic review that found small to medium long-term effects from anti-stigma interventions with very little research coming from low income countries.

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IPT and CBT best for depression in children and young people, says network meta-analysis

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Laura Hemming summarises a recent network meta-analysis of psychotherapies for depression in children and young people, which finds that Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) were significantly more efficacious than other psychotherapies at post-treatment and follow-up.

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Pivotal response treatment is promising for children with autism

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Rosalyn Nelson presents the findings of a small RCT of Pivotal Response Treatment groups for parents of children with autism, which has promising results in terms of encouraging children to communicate.

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