Sex offender treatment programmes for men with learning disabilities who have perpetrated sex offences or inappropriate sexual behaviour have been show to have beneficial effects for in a number of studies. The authors of this study set out to look at the treatments and compare two groups – offenders against adults and offenders against children. [read the full story…]
Antipsychotics are widely used for the management of behavioural problems in people with learning disability, despite concerns about the lack of a good evidence base for this practice (see Cochrane review) The researchers in this study set out to audit clinical practice of prescribing anti-psychotics against standards of good practice. The authors collected data from [read the full story…]
Many people with bipolar disorder have a range of therapies available to them nowadays, including mood stabilisers (or anticonvulsants), antipsychotics and various psychosocial interventions (including CBT, psychoeducation and family therapy). A research team from the University of Barcelona have published a meta-analysis that investigates the efficacy of drug maintenance treatments for bipolar disorder. They searched from [read the full story…]
A research team from the University of Bologna in Italy have published a new meta-anlaysis that explores the sequential integration of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy in reducing the risk of relapse and recurrence in major depressive disorder. They searched a range of databases for randomised controlled trials that tested the efficacy of the administration of psychotherapy after successful [read the full story…]
The Five Ways to Wellbeing is a set of evidence-based public mental health messages aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole population. They were developed by the New Economics Foundation as the result of a commission by Foresight, the UK government‟s futures think-tank, as part of the Foresight Project on Mental [read the full story…]
Antipsychotic medication is widely used to treat behavioural problems in people with learning disabilities. A Cochrane review of the use of these medications for this purpose found very few randomised controlled trials (a method of clinical research in which people are allocated at random to receive a clinical intervention, a placebo, or no intervention at [read the full story…]
Physical activity has an important role to play in promoting mental health and well-being by preventing mental health problems and improving the quality of life of those experiencing mental health problems and illnesses. For example, evidence shows that physical activity can reduce the risk of depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s. It also shows that physical activity [read the full story…]
Self-guided psychological treatment is where a patient works through a programme of treatment without the aid of a therapist or coach. There are now many Internet-based treatments for depression and anxiety and there have been a number of good quality trials published during the last few years on self-guided psychological treatments for depression. There have [read the full story…]
More than 76 million people worldwide have alcohol problems, and another 15 million have drug problems. Motivational interviewing (MI) is a psychological treatment that aims to help people cut down or stop using drugs and alcohol. The drug abuser and counsellor typically meet between one and four times for about one hour each time. The [read the full story…]
Many people with schizophrenia struggle to adhere to their oral antipsychotic drug regimen. It is thought that depot antipsychotic drugs (a special preparation of the medication, which is given by injection and is slowly released into the body over a number of weeks) may reduce relapse rates by improving adherence. This systematic review searched for randomised controlled [read the full story…]
