Antidepressants, cognition, and emotional blunting: what’s the evidence?

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Angharad de Cates reviews a recent Danish trial, which finds that escitalopram reduced participants’ reinforcement sensitivity compared to those on placebo. This lower reinforcement sensitivity may be similar to the emotional blunting effect often reported by patients during SSRI treatment.

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Tackling loneliness in people with mental health problems

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Timothy Matthews reflects on a scoping review from last year entitled: A life less lonely – the state of the art in interventions to reduce loneliness in people with mental health problems.

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Staff training to improve patient experiences of mental health inpatient wards

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Danielle Lamb writes her debut elf blog on a recent RCT that investigates how staff training can improve patient experiences of mental health inpatient care.

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Can functional brain imaging of social judgments shed light on the gender imbalance in autism spectrum disorder?

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It is well-documented that there are gender differences in mental health (see for example this Men’s Health Forum publication (PDF) about key mental health issues affecting men). In early development, boys are at a significantly higher risk than girls for meeting diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as other developmental problems (e.g. developmental [read the full story…]