Natasha Clarke publishes her debut Mental Elf blog about a new systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the risk of neuropsychiatric adverse events associated with the smoking cessation drug varenicline.
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Beware underpowered observational studies! Marcus Munafò helps us understand why a recent BMJ study on all cause mortality and age specific alcohol consumption is not as simple as the newspapers would have us believe.
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Estimates suggest that dysphagia affects 8% of all adults with learning disabilities and that 15% require some form of mealtime support.
Here we report on a study that set out to look at the association between the need for support with eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties and the use of primary and secondary healthcare services.
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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.
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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.
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This new study estimates that there are approximately 3 million smokers in the UK with mental illness, and the direct cost of treatment to the NHS in this population was £719 million in 2010. The total smoking-attributable costs for this group are estimated at £2.34 billion.
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People diagnosed with schizophrenia are 7.4 times more likely to be convicted of violent offences, 8.1 times more likely to die prematurely, and 20.7 times more likely to kill themselves.
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Mouth cancers form part of a wider group of upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancers (oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, and oesphagus), which are strongly associated with smoking and alcohol. The aim of this review was to quantify the association between alcohol drinking and UADT cancer mortality The Medline and ISI Web of Science databases were searched [read the full story…]
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…]
Mood disorders include schizoaffective, dysthymia, rapid cycling, unipolar and bipolar disorders. People with mood disorders have a 30 times higher risk of suicide than the general population. Recent Mental Elf blogs have summarised the data on suicide risk and bipolar disorder, and shown that one key treatment is lithium which appears to have a robust evidence [read the full story…]
