“Psychotherapeutic Interventions for Depression: Which Work Best?” AND More on Best 5 Monday Reads

Hello and welcome to another edition of Best 5 Reads. Lets begin!

1) Psychotherapeutic Interventions for Depression: Which Work Best?

In considering how best to disseminate the many psychotherapeutic techniques to practicing clinicians, the author reviews findings and changes to guidelines on depression treatments.

2) Massachusetts, Other States Ratchet Up Legal Action Against Opioid Manufacturers

Groups across the nation are targeting Purdue Pharma and other companies with lawsuits alleging misleading claims about the safety of opioid painkillers.

3) Depression Calculator Tallies Business Costs of Employees’ Mental Illness

A new online resource from the APA Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health offers employers strategies to improve employees’ mental health while reducing associated costs.

4) Multimodal Markers and Biomarkers of Treatment

The use of biomarkers to assist with optimizing treatment decisions for depression has been receiving increasing attention. Here is an overview of the challenges and barriers that must be overcome before therapeutic markers can effectively be utilized in practice.

5) Medication Management for Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder

For 5 years now, we have been teaching clinicians that lamotrigine is a useful drug for patients with borderline personality disorder, based on evidence from two very small studies. Lamotrigine seemed to us, and perhaps to many psychiatrists, to have a pharmacologic profile that could be useful for this patient population.

A study reported in this issue by Crawford et al. persuasively documents the disappointing failure of this seemingly promising mood stabilizer to be helpful. This trial of lamotrigine for the treatment of borderline personality disorder reinforces three important lessons about the state of the pharmacologic treatment of the disorder—namely, that no medication has been shown to be an adequate primary treatment agent, that borderline personality disorder is distinct from bipolar disorder, and that placebo may be an effective treatment when delivered in the context of good clinical management.

Thank you and see you tomrorow for more articles 🙂

Best Regards,

Vikram

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