Andrew Shepherd
Psychotherapy for depression in primary care. Better evidence please…
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Andrew Shepherd summarises a recent systematic review of the effectiveness of psychotherapy for depression in primary care, which contains a lot of data but leaves him feeling rather deflated.
[read the full story...]ECT for depression in the elderly
Andrew Shepherd reports on a post-hoc analysis of pre-existing trial data, which does little to convince him that ECT is a safe and effective treatment option for older people with severe depression.
[read the full story...]Family experiences of help seeking in first episode psychosis
Andrew Shepherd explores the complex issue of families seeking help for first episode psychosis, investigated by researchers in a recent family narrative study, which concludes that help seeking attempts are often derailed by complex family responses to illness.
[read the full story...]Stigma in bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder: time for a cultural shift.
Andrew Shepherd summarises a critical realist analysis that looks at experiences of stigma in people with bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. He concludes that a profound social change in public and professional attitudes is necessary before mental health stigma can be effectively eradicated.
[read the full story...]CBT versus psychodynamic psychotherapy for social anxiety disorder: long live the dodo or time for a change in research emphasis?
Andrew Shepherd appraises a study of the long-term outcomes of psychodynamic therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy in social anxiety disorder, which finds both therapies are efficacious in treating social anxiety disorder in the short- and long-term.
[read the full story...]Prison Officers as frontline mental health staff? Results of a prison-based ethnography
Andrew Shepherd summarises an ethnography from the United States, which explores the relationships between Prison Officers in Correctional Institutions and Prisoners with mental health problems.
[read the full story...]Mentalization based treatment for borderline personality disorder: a pragmatic trial but with statistical uncertainty
Andrew Shepherd summarises a matched control study that explores the effectiveness of day hospital Mentalization-Based Treatment for patients with severe Borderline Personality Disorder.
[read the full story...]Antidepressants, safety warnings and suicide risk in young people
Andrew Shepherd reviews the recent controversial BMJ study that suggests the FDA black box warning about antidepressant use in young people, may have inadvertently caused an increase in suicidal behaviour. He finds it’s not quite that clear cut.
[read the full story...]Childhood abuse and adverse life events interact synergistically to produce a high risk for psychotic experiences
This recent study concludes that childhood abuse creates an enduring vulnerability to psychosis that is realised in the event of exposure to further stressors and risk factors, such as separation, bereavement, or being involved in an accident or physical attack.
[read the full story...]Outcome and methodological comparisons in psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy meta-analyses
Andrew Shepherd summarises a recent JAMA Psychiatry study looking at the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for adult psychiatric disorders (and uses words like hubristic and existential quite a lot!)
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