Online symptom checkers are a way to address patient concerns and potentially offload a burdened healthcare system. However, safety outcomes of self-triage are unknown, so we reviewed triage recommendations and outcomes of our institution's depression symptom checker.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Implications for practice and research:
Providers should encourage antidepressant use with statins for depression that is comorbid with physical conditions.
Research can clarify which population subgroups taking both medications demonstrate improved outcomes.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Clinical practice with young children benefits from knowledge about the prevalence of depressive disorders in childhood and that the well-established sex differences seen for depression in adulthood may not appear until adolescence.
Further research is needed to address possible changes in the prevalence of childhood depressive disorders around the world and following the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether these changes are differentially distributed across individuals and communities.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This trial found greater intensity of psychotherapy leads to better outcomes of both depression and personality status in people with comorbid depression and personality disorder. Open access article - no login required.
This meta-analysis estimates the effects of patient preference on clinical outcome, satisfaction and adherence regarding treatment of depression and anxiety. Open access article - no login required.
...the paper seeks to clarify distinctions between: (i) threat detection and response, (ii) safety and safety seeking, (iii) safeness and (iv) their social and non-social functions and forms. Open access article - no login required
This study aims to examine the associations between social capital derived from online versus in-person networks and mental health indicators among gamers. Open access article - no login required
To determine the treatment effect of resistance training in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression in young people. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This meta-analysis evaluated the relationship between overweight/obesity and depressive disorders in children and adolescents. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
The identified relationship between parental mood disorders and offspring anxiety disorders provides valuable insights that mental health practitioners can integrate into their practice. Understanding these risk factors and underlying mechanisms aids mental health professionals in tailoring treatments and interventions according to the family background and specific needs of their clients.
The current study investigated the association between paternal postnatal depressive symptoms and parenting behaviours. Open access article - no login required.
This item explores adolescents’ use of social media to manage stress and loneliness at a time of restricted social contacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Concludes that there is little uptake of psychological interventions for depression. Strategies currently in development that could change this include single session interventions and task sharing which involves using lay counsellors to deliver the intervention. Digital interventions could improve access to treatment and have shown some positive outcomes.
In this blog I will give a brief overview of this field, and what can be done to further improve the effects of these treatments. I have also presented a more extensive overview in the webinar that you can watch below.
Prevention of new depressive disorders is very much needed because current treatments can only reduce the disease burden of depression to a limited extent.
Research has shown that preventive interventions are effective, especially in indicated prevention, but also selective prevention. However, the impact of these interventions is limited because the uptake is low.
A new generation of randomized community trials are needed to examine suites of innovative preventive interventions.
Several useful points for clinicians emerge from this paper. The first-hand experiences compiled here reveal some common experiences among people living with depression which are not reflected in diagnostic criteria or checklists for lay people. While sleep, weight and appetite disturbances are noted in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as indicative of depression, this paper suggests that the somatic nature of the depressive experience is more pronounced than this. Experiences such as aches and pains, a sense of heaviness, and a body that lacks physical energy may be important markers of depression, and it is therefore unhelpful to view the mind and body as separate. The importance of fatigue has also been stressed by adolescents experiencing depression
This qualitative systematic review shows that antidepressants might not always help depression. For this patient population, it may be important for health professionals to work with patients to explore other treatments for managing their depression. Treatment could include cognitive behavioural therapy, which was shown in a systematic review to be an effective intervention for TRD at short-term, mid-term, and long-term follow-up (Li et al., 2018).