Data from the largest and most comprehensive survey of causes of illness worldwide has been published in the Lancet. This paper represents the latest analysis of the data set collected in the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010) and focuses on the global burden of illness due to mental [read the full story…]
Periapical abscess is sequelae of the death of the dental pulp often as a result of dental caries or trauma. It is normally managed in dental practice with root canal treatment or extraction. However, if left untreated it can lead in some circumstances lead to the destruction of bone and the spread of infection to [read the full story…]
Despite public campaigns to combat stigma around mental illness, people with mental health problems still face ongoing discrimination. And while some sections of the media focus on mental illness in cases of violence, a rise in the number of people who are more of a risk to themselves goes unnoticed. We still find it difficult [read the full story…]
The economic, social and psychological benefits of being work have been well documented in the literature, but in 2010/11 in England, only 6.6% of adults with learning disabilities were reported to be in paid employment and the majority of these people were working part-time. A number of people however, will say they are working, when [read the full story…]
The NHS is thought of as a model health care system. It has experienced several reforms over the last 20 years, including greatly increased amounts of spending. So how have these changes affected the burden of disease due to mental health problems over this period, and how does the UK’s record in this area stack [read the full story…]
When Kraepelin first described the symptoms of the disorder we now call schizophrenia, he drew particular attention towards the deterioration of cognitive function he observed in his patients and named their condition “dementia praecox”. To this day, cognitive deficits are still regarded as one of the key features of schizophrenia (and related diagnoses), and it [read the full story…]
Schizophrenia according to the NICE guidelines, is a relatively common illness and in the majority of cases takes a chronic course, requiring continued management and careful attention. In the treatment and management of schizophrenia, antipsychotic medications – like olanzapine, quetiapine or clozapine – are the first line intervention. Antipsychotics can be loosely divided into “first-generation” (“typical”) and [read the full story…]
The NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre have published their annual report on drug misuse in adults and children, which this year includes a focus on young adults. Headlines from the report include a 58% rise in hospital admissions for drug poisoning in the last 11 years, and a 23% fall in admissions for drug-related mental [read the full story…]
The Measuring National Well-being programme was set up in 2010 with a focused aim, to ‘develop and publish an accepted and trusted set of National Statistics which help people understand and monitor well-being’. The idea here is that we need to add meaningful economic, social and environmental measures to sit alongside the traditional Gross Domestic [read the full story…]
The Scottish Government have published their annual summary of prescribing statistics for mental health drugs. The report shows increases in the prescribing rates for all groups of drugs over the last 12 months. The prescribing costs of some groups of drugs have also risen (ADHD, dementia, depression) although other groups have seen a decline (insomnia [read the full story…]
