Hello and welcome to another edition of Best 5 Reads. Lets begin!
1) Choosing the “Right” Antidepressant
Newly released evidence represents the most comprehensive currently available information about the initial choice of antidepressant treatment for acute depression in adults.
2) Severe mental illness and physical health inequalities
This analysis shows that patients with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) in GP care experience poor physical health. It demonstrates that there are physical health inequalities among patients with SMI compared to all patients in THIN. The NICE clinical guideline on psychosis and schizophrenia in adults recommends for primary care to use QOF registers to monitor the physical health of patients with SMI. It recommends that patients with SMI have at least one physical health review annually that includes among others checks on weight or BMI, metabolic status, pulse and blood pressure monitoring. That some of these checks are taking place could partially explain some of the findings in this analysis, for example, higher prevalence of obesity in patients in SMI. However, as the level of health inequality for patients with SMI in this analysis is high, and it includes a number of physical health disorders, being on the QOF register alone in unlikely to explain all the observed findings.
Furthermore, evidence suggests that primary care incentives promoting physical health reviews in people with SMI have improved identification but not treatment of cardiovascular risk factors. Other research indicates that physical health screening for people on the SMI QOF register is of lower quality than for people on physical health registers, such as diabetes.
3) Text Message Reminders Improve Medication Adherence in Bipolar I Disorder
Researchers emphasize the cost-effectiveness of text message reminders in prompting individuals with bipolar I disorder to adhere to medication treatments.
4) Questions and Answers for Clinicians Facing the Opioid Epidemic
Seven common questions about addiction clinicians regularly hear—as well as the answers.
5) Don’t Obsess Over Categorizing Mental Disorders
Without the existence of extreme traits, we would have gone extinct as a species a long time ago. Many mental disorders are the inevitable result of genetic diversity.
Thank you and see you tomorrow for more articles.
Best Regards,
Vikram
PsiHub 