Physical health inequalities in primary care

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Andy Bell from Centre for Mental Health and the Equally Well UK collaborative, calls for action in response to the Public Health England briefing on severe mental illness and physical health inequalities.

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Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia: GPs’ perspective on management

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Marie Crabbe presents the findings of a mixed-methods systematic review, which looks at General Practitioners’ knowledge, attitudes and experiences of managing behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

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Collaborative care for depression and physical multimorbidity: clinically and cost-effective over the long term

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Gemma Shields summarises the findings of a cluster RCT looking at the long-term clinical and cost-effectiveness of collaborative care (versus usual care) for people with mental-physical multimorbidity.

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Does co-locating welfare advice services improve mental health?

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Katie Evans from Money and Mental Health considers a recent study looking at the impact of co-located welfare advice in healthcare settings, which found significant improvements in financial outcomes, but less convincing results in terms of health benefits.

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A spotlight on student mental health in UK universities

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Nicky Lambert summarises the recent IPPR report on improving student mental health in the UK’s universities, which paints a stark picture that demands urgent attention.

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Off-label antidepressants: limited evidence to support their use

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John Baker reports on Canadian study looking at prescriptions of off-label antidepressants in primary care, which concludes that when antidepressants were used outside of their licence, there was usually not strong evidence supporting the respective indication.

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Depression in later life: who benefits most from antidepressants plus exercise?

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Linda Gask explores an RCT of physical exercise for depression in later life, which considers the best way to customise the intervention for primary care.

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Diet and depression: can we eat our way out of clinical depression? The ‘SMILES’ trial

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Murtada Alsaif chews over the SMILES RCT of dietary improvement for adults with major depression, which reports encouraging results for healthy diet in people with depression.

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Collaborative care may help older adults with subthreshold depression: CASPER trial

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Ben Hannigan summarises the new CASPER trial of collaborative care versus usual care for older adults with subthreshold depression.

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Annual health checks may reduce emergency hospital admissions for preventable conditions

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Pauline Heslop summarises a UK primary care study that shows how emergency hospital admissions for preventable conditions can be reduced in people with learning disabilities who receive annual health checks.

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