Mealtimes are important occasions for many people with learning disabilities, offering opportunities for social interaction as well as nourishment, they can also carry significant health risks. There has been a good deal of research on dysphagia. or difficulty in swallowing, but the authors of this study were keen to explore the range of difficulties that [read the full story…]
I’ve blogged before about the association between stroke and depression. It seems logical that people who have strokes are at risk of depression afterwards, but studies have also shown a more concrete relationship between the two conditions. This new meta-analysis conducted by a research team from Soochow University in China looks at prospective studies to [read the full story…]
Driving down suicidal behaviour in young people has long been a major target for public health professionals. This new study from researchers in Denmark will help inform this important work. The case control study used data from the Danish national register (403,431 in total) to assess the risk of suicide attempts after contact with a [read the full story…]
People who take psychiatric drugs are well aware of the daily trade-off between the benefits and the harms of their medication. This is a key consideration for pregnant women with depression, who don’t just have to consider the side effects that may strike them, but also the impact they may have on their unborn child. [read the full story…]
The prescribing of benzodiazepines and ‘Z drugs’ in general practice in England has stayed pretty consistent or increased slightly over the last 5 years, despite safety warnings about the risks of these drugs. I blogged about this back in May last year when the Department of Health highlighted two new studies by National Addiction Centre [read the full story…]
People with depression frequently have trouble sleeping and this restlessness often first appears at the onset of the depressive disorder and continues until well after the depression has been successfully treated. This new meta-analysis conducted by a research team from the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, investigates if insomnia can be viewed as [read the full story…]
In 2004 the US Food and Drug Administration published a “black box” warning that highlighted an increased risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts in young people who were taking antidepressants. This warning was updated in 2007. A new analysis of 41 randomised controlled trials has been published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, which suggests [read the full story…]
Parents who have a child with autism are understandably often very keen to find out the risk of subsequent children also having the condition. Until now, research studies estimated the risk to be between 3-10%, but this evidence was regarded as quite unreliable. This cohort study conducted by researchers in California is the largest prospective [read the full story…]
We know that it can take many years for people with bipolar disorder to be accurately diagnosed, following an initial episode of mental illness. This cohort study carried out by researchers from Denmark, the US and Wales, set out to study to what extent psychiatric disorders with postpartum onset (following childbirth) are early manifestations of [read the full story…]
Based on the ‘Health Inequalities and People with Learning Disabilities in the UK’ report this document looks at ways to put the evidence base into practice to improve health outcomes for people with learning disabilities. The report looks at what is known about the social determinants of poorer health in people with learning disabilities, increased [read the full story…]
