André Tomlin shares his own experiences of being diagnosed with postnatal depression and wonders how we can improve screening for other fathers at risk during the perinatal period.
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This Cochrane review of school dental screening included 6 RCTs finding insufficient evidence that it improves dental attendance. although personalised referral letters or additional motivation elements probably have the ability to improve dental attendance over the short term.
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Andrew Sommerlad reviews a new systematic review and meta-analysis and asks: Can two questions identify depression in older people?
This is the second in a new series of Mental Elf blogs produced in partnership with the British Journal of Psychiatry.
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This review of school-based screening for dental disease identified 5 cluster trials finding no evidence to support or refute the clinical benefits or harms of dental screening.
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Linda Gask writes her debut Mental Elf blog on a recent systematic review, which evaluates healthcare team training programs that aim to improve depression in primary care.
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Ian Anderson on a recent diagnostic accuracy meta-analysis, which shows that the Whooley questions for depression are effective at ruling out the condition, but that false positives are common.
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Sally Adams summarises a meta-analysis of specialty substance use disorder services following brief alcohol intervention, which finds a lack of evidence for SBIRTs despite the widespread public health support for this type of programme.
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Samei Huda reviews a meta-analysis of multivariate pattern recognition studies, which aims to detect neuroimaging biomarkers for schizophrenia.
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Rosalyn Nelson reports on a recent systematic review about population screening for dementia, which highlights the negative attitudes of patients, carers and health care professionals towards screening. She asks: what are the risks of ignoring diagnosis?
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Elena Marcus appraises a recent meta-analysis of screening for bipolar spectrum disorders, which concludes that the MDQ and HCL-32 tools are supported by more evidence than the BSDS tool.
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