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…]
There is a growing pool of research that looks into the impact that exercise can have on depression, but this systematic review and meta-analysis claims to be the first summary of trials into the effects of exercise training on depressive symptoms among patients with a chronic illness. The research team from the University of Alabama [read the full story…]
Lithium is a medicine that has been used for over 50 years to treat depression and bipolar disorder. It comes in two forms that are used clinically: lithium carbonate and lithium citrate. A certain level of the drug is needed in the blood stream for it to be effective, but if the level rises too [read the full story…]
Following on from my post yesterday about screening tools for depression in later life, here is a new meta-analysis that explores the efficacy of antidepressants for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients aged ≥ 55 years. The researchers from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy just searched PubMed for [read the full story…]
Depression often occurs in later life and people in poor physical condition tend to be more susceptible than others. Older people in hospital who get depressed have poorer outcomes, so it’s important that we know how to detect depression and manage it in the acute setting. This systematic review conducted by researchers in Swansea set [read the full story…]
Healthcare providers are always on the look out for ways to improve the detection and diagnosis of depression in primary care. It’s a prevalent illness amongst Europeans with 6.9% of people suffering from it in any 12-month period. We know that 50-70% of depressed patients consult their GP during an episode, so improving systems for [read the full story…]
All mental health professionals are well aware that depression and alcohol misuse frequently go hand in hand. One condition often complicates and affects the outcome of the other. NICE guidelines recommend treating the alcohol problems first and then after 3-4 weeks of abstinence focus on treating the comorbid mental illness if it’s still present. This [read the full story…]
Bipolar disorder is a complex health condition and the diagnosis of bipolar depression is a fairly contentious topic. This is because depression occurs in bipolar disorder alongside a wide range of symptoms of mood elevation. Some patients have depressive episodes as well as severely elevated mood during the course of their illness, whereas other patients [read the full story…]
This is an unusual randomised controlled trial conducted by a research team from Arkin Institute for Mental Health in Amsterdam and funded by Eli Lilly. The study measures social functioning as an outcome, as well as the more commonly measured depression symptoms. It aims to find out how much psychotherapy is optimal for depressed people [read the full story…]
A large number of systematic reviews and guidelines have been published in recent years to assist clinicians in prescribing the best antidepressants for treating depression. This new meta-analysis conducted by researchers from Austria and the US, sets out to compare the benefits and harms of second generation antidepressant drugs in the treatment of major depressive [read the full story…]
