Antidepressants, cognition, and emotional blunting: what’s the evidence?

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Angharad de Cates reviews a recent Danish trial, which finds that escitalopram reduced participants’ reinforcement sensitivity compared to those on placebo. This lower reinforcement sensitivity may be similar to the emotional blunting effect often reported by patients during SSRI treatment.

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Antidepressant withdrawal or depression relapse? International guidelines on antidepressant discontinuation are unclear

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Adele Framer summarises a systematic review which finds that major guidelines on antidepressant discontinuation only give clinicians vague guidance on distinguishing withdrawal from relapse.

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Burning mouth syndrome treatments – network meta-analysis

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This review of all treatments for the relief of pain associated with burning mouth syndrome (BMS) as compared with no intervention or placebo included 44 RCTs. There was moderate certainty evidence that clonazepam is likely to reduce the pain of BMS compared with placebo.

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Youth mental health interventions: umbrella review presents efficacy and acceptability data

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In his debut blog, Nick Meader tackles a huge umbrella review of youth mental health interventions, which presents the efficacy and acceptability of 72 different approaches to help children and young people.

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Maintenance or discontinuation of antidepressants for depression? Findings from the ANTLER trial

For every 6 people stopping their medication there was one additional relapse compared to those who maintained their antidepressant treatment, suggesting that stopping medication has an increased risk of relapse.

Raphael Rifkin-Zybutz and Sameer Jauhar summarise the recently published ANTLER trial, which explores whether antidepressant maintenance can reduce the risk of relapse in depression.

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Psychotherapy and antidepressant tapering can help people at risk of depression relapse, but more evidence needed before we can provide personalised treatment

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Jessica Scaife reviews a individual patient data meta-analysis exploring the continuation of antidepressants versus sequential psychological interventions to prevent relapse in depression.

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The benefits and harms of antidepressants for youth depression and anxiety #ActiveIngredientsMH

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Mark Horowitz and Joanna Moncrieff consider a new #ActiveIngredientsMH review published today in The Lancet Psychiatry, which looks at the knowns and unknowns of antidepressant treatment in young people with depression and anxiety: efficacy, predictors, and mechanisms of action.

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Expertise from outside the Academy: tapering off antidepressants

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Mark Horowitz considers a recent article written by Adele Framer, Founder of SurvivingAntidepressants.org, which describes how best to help people who are tapering off antidepressants.

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Turn on, or tune out? Is psilocybin assisted therapy close to becoming a first-line treatment for depression?

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James Rucker and Sameer Jauhar summarise a recent RCT on the effectiveness of psilocybin assisted therapy versus escitalopram assisted therapy for major depressive disorder.

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New evidence on treatments for symptoms of depression in dementia

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Andrew Sommerlad appraises a recent review on the efficacy of interventions for depression in people with dementia, which identified several non-drug treatments that can have a meaningful effect on depressive symptoms in dementia.

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