Helge Hasselmann reviews a new systematic review of ketamine for depression, which highlights the need for an RCT to provide reliable data on the safety, tolerability and best route of administration.
[read the full story...]Can shared decision-making reduce health inequalities?
Ian Cummins reviews a recent systematic review of interventions designed to support SDM and asks: can shared decision-making reduce health inequalities?
[read the full story...]Placebo for depression: are some sugar pills better than others?
Joe Judge revels in a new network meta-analysis looking at placebo for depression published in BMC Medicine, which has been supplemented by a series of commentaries and blogs. Thought-provoking stuff!
[read the full story...]Face-to-face psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents: Cochrane review calls for better primary research
Lisa Burscheidt summarises a recent Cochrane review of psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents, which concludes that psychological therapies should be considered as a treatment, but better primary studies are needed to help steer pain management decisions.
[read the full story...]Combining psychotherapy and antidepressants is best for common mental illnesses
Patrick Kennedy-Williams summarises a recent meta-analysis, which finds that combined treatment with psychotherapy and antidepressants is more effective than treatment with antidepressants alone.
[read the full story...]Internet-based interventions for harmful drinking show small beneficial effects
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...]Exercise for severe mental illness: new review finds few benefits
This new systematic review concludes that exercise programmes can lead to an improvement in exercise activity, but have no significant effect on mental health symptoms or body weight in people with severe mental illness.
[read the full story...]Do parent training programmes improve the health of parents?
The findings of this recent Cochrane review support the use of parenting programmes to improve the short-term psychosocial wellbeing of parents.
[read the full story...]Psychotherapy for depression in older adults: promising results, but insufficient good quality research
This recent meta-analysis confirms that psychotherapy has a moderate to high effect on depression in older adults. However, a note of caution is sounded because of publication bias and the low quality of several of the included studies.
[read the full story...]Imaging genomics: can we link genes to brain structure and function?
Linking brain scans with genetic information offers a powerful way to further our understanding of how the brain works, but to do this properly many researchers from around the world need to collaborate. Fortunately, the ENIGMA Consortium are leading the way in this emerging field of imaging genomics.
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