BME communities and self-management of long term conditions

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Clarissa Giebel considers a systematic review on user-led self-management of long term conditions for black and minority ethnic (BME) communities and weighs up what the findings mean for BME people living with chronic conditions in the UK.

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New telehealth toolkit for commissioners to support technology enabled care services

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Alison Turner blogs about a new telehealth toolkit from the NHS Commissioning Assembly, which provides a range of resources including checklists, case studies and links to the evidence base.

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New-easy read booklet on type 2 diabetes for people with learning disabilities

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People with learning disabilities may be at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but often struggle with technical language and complicated explanations. Here we look at a new easy read booklet published as part of an ongoing research project into diabetes people with learning disabilities.

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Do mental health websites improve help-seeking in adolescents?

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Maxine Howard summarises the findings of a recent review of online mental health services for young people, which finds little evidence to suggest that websites increase help-seeking in adolescents.

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Co-production is essential to effective commissioning and service development, says London’s diabetes care pathway

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This guide is the result of discussions with health professionals and people with diabetes Types 1 and 2, and surveys investigating the levels of service provision in London. The reason for this work is because people with from diabetes often suffer from mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, phobias, adjustment to their condition, eating [read the full story…]

Empowering mental health service users to become more involved in decisions about their care: the DECIDE RCT

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Laurence Palfreyman highlights an RCT of the DECIDE intervention, which aims to build awareness of the service user’s role in decisions about their care including how they can become more involved and seek information from independent sources.

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Self-management: mapping the strategies used by people with depression

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While it is predicted that depression will achieve the status of the biggest disease burden in the Western World before too long, providing access to evidence-based clinical interventions (medicines and talking treatments) for this growing number of people is a source of concern. Supporting people to take steps to actively self-manage their symptoms and condition [read the full story…]

Review suggests that counselling may have a role in management of temporomandibular disorders

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Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are a group of disorders with symptoms that include pain, clicking, grating in the jaw joint and/or problems chewing or opening the jaw.   It has been estimated that around 75% of the population have at least one sign of TMD.  The aim of this review was to assess the effectiveness of counselling [read the full story…]

Non-drug treatments delivered by family carers can improve neuropsychiatric symptoms in people with dementia

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About three-quarters of people with dementia are affected by neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). This is a broad group of symptoms including depression, sleep problems, apathy, psychosis and aggression. Of course, many people with dementia still live at home and are cared for by their spouse or other primary carer. These neuropsychiatric symptoms can have a major impact [read the full story…]

Cost-effectiveness of self-management for chronic pain in an aging population

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Chronic pain is a major health concern, which increases in prevalence and impact with age. This is important as chronic pain can result in a significant decrease in function and quality of life along with an increase in use of health and social care. Self-management is a potentially inexpensive form of pain management and it [read the full story…]