Olivia Maynard reports on a recent Cochrane review that investigates talking therapies for reducing alcohol consumption in illicit drug users. The reviewers found no differences in the effectiveness of different psychotherapies (motivational interviewing, brief interventions, CBT) and insufficient evidence to draw any meaningful conclusions.
[read the full story...]
Mark Horowitz summarises the new WHO and UCL Institute of Health Equity (Michael Marmot) report and research paper on social determinants of mental health. He concludes that it’s time to focus on the root causes of mental distress, namely poverty, unemployment, poor education and social isolation.
[read the full story...]
Andrew Jones appraises a recent study of mortality and life expectancy of people with alcohol use disorders in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, which provides some useful insight into the impact of hazardous alcohol use.
[read the full story...]
This new review investigated the effect of alcohol on 23 cancer types. They included 572 case-control and cohort studies and using meta-analysis and a dose–response meta-regression model found relative risks for heavy drinkers compared with nondrinkers and occasional drinkers were 5.13 for oral and pharyngeal cancer, 4.95 for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma, 1.44 for colorectal, 2.65 for laryngeal and 1.61 for breast cancer.
[read the full story...]
Current NICE guidelines state that PTSD should not be dealt with unless alcohol dependence is first treated. Paul Christiansen summarises a systematic review of the comorbidity between PTSD and alcohol misuse and wonders where the guidance leaves patients and professionals.
[read the full story...]
Elena Marcus summarises a double case-cohort study, which investigates the risk of suicide and criminal behaviours in people with bipolar disorder and their siblings, compared with the general population.
[read the full story...]
Olivia Maynard summarises a new BMJ modelling study on the potential benefits of minimum unit pricing (MUP) for alcohol versus a ban on below cost selling (BBCS). The research concludes that MUP would reduce deaths attributable to alcohol by 40 times more than BBCS.
[read the full story...]
This new Cochrane systematic review finds that motivational interviewing has no effect on reducing alcohol-related problems or risky behaviours such as drunk driving in young people.
[read the full story...]
Andrew Jones summarises a recent meta-analysis on the effectiveness of guided and unguided low-intensity Internet interventions for adult alcohol misuse.
[read the full story...]
This recent and well-conducted meta-review concludes that the impact on mortality and suicide of mental disorders is substantial, and probably poorly appreciated as a public health problem. Raphael Underwood’s blog summarises the data for all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders.
[read the full story...]
