Self Help Plus for refugees: we need effective, low-intensity and scalable interventions

41.2% of the refugees screened were found to have symptoms of psychological distress. The risk varied between sexes, nationalities and was suggested to be associated with reduced integration and accentuated by less favourable post migration conditions.

Alexis Low considers a meta-analysis which evaluates Self-Help Plus, a promising WHO intervention that could be scaled up to address the mental health needs of refugees and asylum seekers.

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Every Mind Matters: evaluating the mental health literacy campaign

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In her debut blog, Amy Morgan summarises a qualitative study evaluating the government-funded Every Mind Matters campaign in the UK.

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“I’m always going to be tired”: fatigue in adolescent depression

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Georgia Kemp reflects on a recent qualitative paper that looks at adolescents’ personal accounts of fatigue as a symptom in depression.

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Long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression: not cost-effective compared to treatment as usual

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In her debut blog, Ella Tuominen considers the Tavistock Adult Depression Study (TADS), which evaluated the cost-effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treatment resistant depression compared to treatment as usual.

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Everyday discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic: the toll on mental health

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A group of UCL MSc students summarise a US study on the association of everyday discrimination with depression and suicidal ideation during the pandemic.

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Integrating smoking cessation treatment into routine care for people with mental illness: how will the NHS cope?

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Amelia Talbot summarises a qualitative study on people’s views of integrating smoking cessation treatment into routine care for people with mental illness.

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Psilocybin for ‘treatment-resistant depression’: an island of hope in an ocean of uncertainty?

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In this blog, UCL MSc students consider an RCT published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which suggests that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy may help reduce depression in people with severe and enduring illness, but side effects are common and more research is needed to look into longer term effects.

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Serotonin hypothesis of depression: balance (and imbalance) is in the eye of the beholder

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The 2022 review by Moncrieff et al on the serotonin theory of depression received a great deal of media coverage. In this blog, Rebecca Wilkinson and Sameer Jauhar shed fresh light on this research and what it means for mental health science and practice.

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Parents’ depression can be linked to children’s emotional difficulties

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Lisa Lloyd summarises a new paper in the BJPsych, which focuses on parental depression symptoms in both mothers and fathers, and how they are linked with emotional difficulties in their children.

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Is cognitive behavioural therapy the best we’ve got for depression?

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Camilla Babbage and Maria Loades summarise the largest meta-analysis to date on the effectiveness of CBT for depression.

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