This topic has been well publicised in recent years and for good reason. We know that there is a huge disparity between the number of people with dementia who are prescribed antipsychotics (180,000 in England each year) and the number who may derive some benefit from the treatment (36,000). We also know that dangerous side [read the full story…]
Alzheimer’s disease affects 1-2% of people aged 65-70 and approximately 20% of those over 80 years. As our population ages, the condition is on the increase and it’s estimated that 2030, an estimated 7.7 million Americans aged 65 and older will have Alzheimer’s disease. We do not yet know exactly how and why Alzheimer’s disease [read the full story…]
Conduct problems in young children are common and costly, so there’s lots of interest in training programmes that can help parents and children cope better. This new review from the Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems Group assesses the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of behavioural and cognitive-behavioural group-based parenting programmes for improving child conduct problems, parental [read the full story…]
The Office for National Statistics is developing ways to measure national well-being. This work got underway in late 2010 with a consultation exercise that led to the publication of an initial report in July 2011. This has now been supplemented by a website that contains a range of publications. The aim is that these new [read the full story…]
Late-onset schizophrenia is relatively common. Onset after the age of 40 years is reported in 23% of patients hospitalised with schizophrenia. The condition is different from early-onset schizophrenia on a number of counts, including the response to antipsychotic drugs. This Cochrane review set out to assess the effects of antipsychotic drugs for elderly people with [read the full story…]
People with depression frequently have trouble sleeping and this restlessness often first appears at the onset of the depressive disorder and continues until well after the depression has been successfully treated. This new meta-analysis conducted by a research team from the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, investigates if insomnia can be viewed as [read the full story…]
Browsing PubMed for systematic reviews on love addiction this morning (as you do) I came across this study by researchers in California. It suggests that half of the US population suffer from some kind of addiction during any given 12 month period and that addictions are often due to lifestyle factors. Readers concerned about the [read the full story…]
Mental Elf readers have been voting for their favourite topics and top of the list at present are psychological therapies and depression. Us elves like to give people what they want, so here’s a review conducted by researchers in the Netherlands that summarises what we know about the effectiveness of different types of psychotherapy in [read the full story…]
Cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used illicit drug in the world and reports of driving under the influence of cannabis have risen in recent years. A research team from Dalhousie University in Canada conducted a systematic search and identified observational epidemiology studies of motor vehicle collisions with an appropriate control group. They included studies [read the full story…]
This Cochrane systematic review examined the effectiveness of electronic health record-facilitated interventions on smoking cessation activity by clinicians and on patient smoking cessation outcomes. The review shows these interventions improve the documentation of tobacco use and referral to cessation counselling, but does not demonstrate an improvement in patients actually giving up smoking. While smoking rates [read the full story…]
