Mark Smith

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Mark is a psychotherapist who works as an IAPT High Intensity clinician for a leading service provider in the East Midlands. He has a great deal of experience working with patients with common mental health issues and is particularly interested in depression, generalised anxiety, addictions, Personality Disorders and the use of outcome measures in psychotherapy and mental health disorders. He holds a PhD and is an accredited BACP therapist and an accredited IPT practitioner.

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Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy for all common mental health disorders?

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For his ninth Mental Elf blog, Mark Smith reports on a Cochrane systematic review of the effectiveness of short term psychodynamic therapies on common mental health disorders.

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Is suicide contagious? Definition and epidemiology of suicide clusters

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Mark Smith summarises a recent narrative synthesis of research looking at the definition and epidemiology of suicide clusters.

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Interpersonal counselling for depression: RCT shows some promise

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Mark Smith summarises an RCT which compares SSRI antidepressants with interpersonal counselling for depression. The trial explores moderators of remission with interpersonal counselling or drug treatment in primary care patients with mild-moderate depression.

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New meta-analysis supports the use of mindfulness for depression, but not anxiety

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This study confirms that mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) are valid for the treatment of current depressive episodes, and it identifies the need for more studies to investigate the possibility that MBIs might also be of value in treating anxiety disorders.

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Does group CBT treatment reduce social anxiety disorder? Possibly, perhaps, maybe not!

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Social Anxiety Disorder used to be called Social Phobia and is generally regarded as the most prevalent form of common anxiety disorder. Estimates of lifetime prevalence vary but according to a US study, 12% of adults in the US will have social anxiety disorder at some point in their lives (Kessler et al, 2005). According [read the full story…]

How can we best prevent suicide in young people? More questions than answers

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Listening to a World Health Organisation podcast recently I learnt that someone dies as a result of suicide every 40 seconds; this equates to a million suicides each year. The podcast contains a myriad of such stark statistics and the contributors’ highlight how it is well established that young people are often at risk, and [read the full story…]

Women who experience domestic violence are almost twice as likely to suffer from depression and vice versa

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In June this year The World Health Organisation (WHO) published a report, which highlighted violence against women as a ‘global health problem of epidemic proportions’. The report detailed the impact of violence on the physical and mental health of women and girls. This can range from broken bones to pregnancy-related complications, mental problems and impaired [read the full story…]

The magnificent 7? Review finds that different “talking therapies” offer similar benefits to people with depression

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Scientific studies comparing treatments for depression and depressive disorders keep the mental elves very busy. Most months we are asked to blog on about 3 newly published reviews on this hot topic. The interest in research on the treatment of depression comes as no surprise, when one considers that depressive disorders affect a staggering one-fifth [read the full story…]

Functional remediation shows promise for enhancing functioning in patients with bipolar disorder

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Bipolar disorder is a term applied to conditions that are characterised by extreme mood swings.  These swings in mood range from periods of overactive excited behaviour (known as mania) to deep depression. Some people also see or hear things that others around them don’t (known as having visual or auditory hallucinations) or have strange, unshared, beliefs (known [read the full story…]