Mindfulness based group therapy for common mental health disorders

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Mark Smith summarises a recent RCT of mindfulness based group therapy in primary care patients with depression, anxiety and stress and adjustment disorders.

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Depression to blame for violent crime? The curse of the headline writers

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Laurence Palfreyman highlights a population study from researchers at Oxford University, which investigates the links between depression and violent crime. The study finds that people with depression were three times more likely to have been convicted of violent crime than those without depression, but we need to be careful about how we interpret these relative risk figures.

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Limited benefits of cognitive bias modification for adolescents: is it time to move on?

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent randomised controlled trial of cognitive bias modification to treat interpretation bias in adolescents. She argues that this new study adds weight to the ascertion that there are very limited, if any, mental health benefits for CBM interventions.

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Cognitive bias modification for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents

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Shirley Reynolds writes her debut Mental Elf blog on a recent meta-analysis of cognitive bias modification (CBM) for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents. The review suggests that, on the face of it, we should not be investing in future CBM research, but is it that simple?

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Psychotherapies for adult depression: the things we know we know, and those we know we don’t

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Patrick Kennedy-Williams highlights a recent opinion piece by Pim Cuijpers, which summarises what we know and what we don’t know about the efficacy of psychotherapies for adult depression.

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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.

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Cognitive bias modification for anxiety and depression: is practice based on sound evidence?

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Sarah McDonald reviews a recent meta-analysis on the efficacy of cognitive bias modification interventions in anxiety and depression, which finds a dearth of reliable research to support the use of this treatment.

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ECT for depression in the elderly

Depression and anxiety are quite common in people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment.

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.

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Childhood adversity linked to psychotropic drug use in later life

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Andrew Jones summarises a large Finnish population-based cohort study, which finds that childhood adversities strongly predict the use of psychotropic drugs (such as antidepressants and antipsychotics) in adulthood.

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Exercise for depression in adults with rheumatic diseases

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In her first blog for the Musculoskeletal Elf, Pamela Andrews a sports therapist and a PhD candidate at Glasgow Caledonian University discusses a recent systematic reiew of meta-analyses evaluating the effectiveness of exercise for depression in adults with arthritis, fibromyalgia and other rheumatic diseases.

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