Coproduction of quality standards for youth mental health in primary care

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Lisa Burscheidt reports on a mixed methods study that produced user-generated quality standards for youth mental health in primary care.

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Reducing alcohol consumption in illicit drug users: new Cochrane review on psychotherapies

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Olivia Maynard reports on a recent Cochrane review that investigates talking therapies for reducing alcohol consumption in illicit drug users. The reviewers found no differences in the effectiveness of different psychotherapies (motivational interviewing, brief interventions, CBT) and insufficient evidence to draw any meaningful conclusions.

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Helping people with depression return to work

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Meg Fluharty reports on a new Cochrane review of interventions to improve return to work in depressed people. The review finds moderate quality evidence for a range of work-directed and clinical interventions that can help people with depression return to work.

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Psychotherapy for medically unexplained physical symptoms

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent Cochrane systematic review on non-pharmacological interventions for medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS). The review finds that psychotherapies for MUPS led to reduced symptom severity, but were associated with a higher drop-out rate than usual care.

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Psychotherapy for UK military veterans: demographics and clinical outcomes

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Mark Smith reports on a study of psychotherapy for UK military veterans, using an IAPT service, which focuses on the demographic characteristics and clinical outcomes of early service leavers and veterans.

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CBT for insomnia in psychiatric populations: an effective alternative to hypnotics?

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Amy Green appraises a systematic review of CBT for insomnia (CBTi) in people with comorbid mental illness, which concludes that cognitive behaviour therapy could be an effective alternative to hypnotics. However, concerns about the review methodology cast some doubt on the findings.

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Collaborative care for depression: psychological interventions, alone or in combination with medication, offer additional benefits

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of collaborative care for depression, looking to identify factors predicting improvements. The study finds that collaborative care successfully improves both patient outcomes and the process of care for depression.

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Depression and cancer: Lancet papers on prevalence and integrated collaborative care

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Kirsten Lawson highlights a trio of Lancet papers on the prevalence of depression in cancer patients and the efficacy of a new treatment programme called ‘Depression Care for People with Cancer’.

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Reducing benzodiazepine prescribing in primary care

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Liz Hughes summarises two recent studies (1 systematic review and 1 RCT) that both investigate brief interventions for reducing the use of benzodiazepines in primary care.

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Second National Audit of Schizophrenia highlights lack of progress for service users and carers

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André Tomlin summarises the second National Audit of Schizophrenia, which highlights that many people with schizophrenia are still not getting the high quality psychological and medical treatment they deserve.

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