How can digital technology help close the mortality gap for people with severe mental illness?

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Lina Gega from the Closing the Gap Network explores a recent review of digital technology for health promotion, which looks at opportunities to address excess mortality in people living with severe mental illness.

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Dental visits and head and neck cancer

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This review of a link between past dental visits/check-ups and the incidence cancers of head and neck includes 38 studies the majority of which are case-controlled studies. The findings suggest that those are irregular of never attenders are more likely to have head and neck cancer.

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Can we screen-and-treat victims of terror attacks?

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Nia Oxbourgh summarises a recent study of the outcomes of mental health screening (the screen and treat programme) for UK nationals affected by the 2015-2016 terrorist attacks in Tunisia, Paris and Brussels.

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Poorer cardiovascular screening, diagnosis and management if you have a mental illness

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Joanne Wallace summarises a systematic review that highlights disparities in the management of cardiovascular risk factors in people with mental illness.

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Should we screen new Dads for depression? #DadsMHday

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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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School dental screening

The review found that adding family-based interventions to school-based interventions may reduce the onset of smoking by 4-25%.

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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Two-question screening for depression in older adults

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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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Training alone doesn’t improve outcomes for depression in primary care

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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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Whooley questions have high sensitivity and modest specificity in the detection of depression

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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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