Andre Tomlin

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André Tomlin is an Information Scientist with 20 years experience working in evidence-based healthcare. He's worked in the NHS, for Oxford University and since 2002 as Managing Director of Minervation Ltd, a consultancy company who do clever digital stuff for charities, universities and the public sector. Most recently André has been the driving force behind the Mental Elf and the National Elf Service; an innovative digital platform that helps professionals keep up to date with simple, clear and engaging summaries of evidence-based research. André is a Trustee at the Centre for Mental Health and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London Division of Psychiatry. He lives in Bristol, surrounded by dogs, elflings and lots of woodland!

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Cochrane review suggests adding promethazine to haloperidol to rapidly tranquillise psychotic patients with fewer side effects

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The hallucinations and delusions associated with psychosis can be frightening and may sometimes result in aggressive or violent behaviour. Of course, this can be incredibly challenging for the patient, but it can also be a real test for mental health staff who have to try and minimise the harm that patients do to themselves and others. Haloperidol [read the full story…]

Mind publish report to help mental health commissioners improve crisis care services

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Mind have published a number of resources aimed at improving mental health crisis care, which they say is ‘under-resourced, understaffed and overstreched’. The charity have used Freedom of Information requests to obtain data from mental health trusts, have conducted a survey of nearly 1,000 patients and are also involved in a research project with colleges [read the full story…]

NHS publish annual statistical report on drug misuse in England

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The NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre have published their annual report on drug misuse in adults and children, which this year includes a focus on young adults. Headlines from the report include a 58% rise in hospital admissions for drug poisoning in the last 11 years, and a 23% fall in admissions for drug-related mental [read the full story…]

Growing evidence for talking treatments to help pathological gamblers

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Pathological gambling is defined by DSM-IV as a disorder of impulse control which includes a preoccupation with gambling, failed attempts to reduce gambling, and restlessness or irritability when prevented from gambling. It is likely to be reclassified as an addictive disorder in DSM-V. Gambling is something that most adults dabble in from time to time. [read the full story…]

More potassium, calcium and magnesium in the diet, reduces the risk of vascular dementia

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Dementia is a huge issue. As our population ages, the incidence of the disease is on the increase and attempts to prevent and treat the condition with drugs have not been as successful as we hoped. A lot of effort has gone into investigating ways in which lifestyle factors such as diet can impact on [read the full story…]

Uncertainty over what works best to prevent relapse of childhood depression

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Much of the research about depression in children and adolescents focuses on how to treat the illness during the acute phase. This review from the Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Review Group is more concerned with the ways in which interventions can be used to prevent relapse or recurrence of depressive disorders. The review looks specifically at two [read the full story…]

Measuring National Well-being: first annual report from the Office for National Statistics

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The Measuring National Well-being programme was set up in 2010 with a focused aim, to ‘develop and publish an accepted and trusted set of National Statistics which help people understand and monitor well-being’. The idea here is that we need to add meaningful economic, social and environmental measures to sit alongside the traditional Gross Domestic [read the full story…]

NICE recommends an integrated approach for the care of people with drug use disorders

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NICE have published a new quality standard aimed at supporting the recovery for adults with drug use disorders, including opioids, cannabis, stimulants and other drugs. This set of documents on drug use disorders now sits beside the existing NICE quality standards on dementia, depression in adults, alcohol dependence and service user experiences of adult mental [read the full story…]

New Cochrane review says that vitamin E should not be used to treat dementia

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It was relatively recently that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the scientific community was popping vitamin E supplements in the hope that this antioxidant would help protect them from the damaging effects of free radicals. Us elves get our vitamin E from the vegetables, fruits and whole grains that make up our naturally healthy diet. Many single [read the full story…]

Borderline personality disorder improves with dialectical behaviour therapy and general psychiatric management

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Talking treatments are a key component of the therapy offered to people with borderline personality disorder and there are now a number of studies that point to the importance of these interventions for this complex and hard to manage condition. A new randomised controlled trial conducted by a research team from the Centre for Addiction [read the full story…]