Perinatal mental health difficulties: does the internet have the answer?

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Jane Iles summarises a recent systematic review of digital interventions for perinatal mental health, which highlights a mixed bag of heterogeneous studies in this field.

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Virtual reality as a treatment for persecutory delusions

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Suzanne Dash considers the findings of a promising new small randomised controlled trial, which aims to reduce delusional conviction in people with schizophrenia who experience persecutory delusions.

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Smoking cessation interventions for head and neck cancer patients

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This review of smoking cessation for patients with head and neck cancer included 8 studies ( 3 RCTs) and suggests that those receiving counseling had a 26% higher quit rate than with controls

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Whiplash and neck pain: what’s most cost-effective?

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GPs Tom Rowley and Michael Horsfield write their debut MSK Elf blog on a recent systematic review, which investigates the most cost-effective interventions for the management of whiplash-associated and neck pain-associated disorders.

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Does the placebo effect inflate the effectiveness of psychotherapy?

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Sarah Knowles reviews a recent meta-analysis about the effects of blinding on the outcomes of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for adult depression.

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Cognitive therapies for depression in adults: let’s just stick to the facts

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Ioana Cristea reviews the NIHR-DC Highlight on cognitive therapies for depression, published online today, which summarises three NIHR-funded trials (REEACT, CoBalT and PREVENT) looking at cCBT, CBT and MBCT for depression in adults.

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Which psychotherapies are best for college students with depression?

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Shirley Reynolds laments the lack of recent high quality evidence, as she reviews a recent meta-analysis of psychological treatment of depression in college students.

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Is the NICE guideline for bipolar disorder biased in favour of psychosocial interventions?

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Guy Goodwin reviews a new paper in the Lancet Psychiatry by Jauhar, McKenna and Laws, that calls into question the trustworthiness of the NICE bipolar disorder guidance.

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CBT plus medication for treatment-resistant depression: the CoBalT RCT long-term follow-up

In February 2016 we blogged CoBalT and concluded that CBT plus usual care (including antidepressants) is clinically and cost effective in the long-term for people whose depression has not responded to medication.

Sarah McDonald considers the findings of the CoBalT RCT long-term follow-up, which finds that CBT plus antidepressants are clinically and cost effective for treatment-resistant depression in primary care.

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