Psychiatrists, GPs and other professionals working in the substance misuse field will benefit from reading these new guidelines from the British Association for Psychopharmacology. The guidelines cover the pharmacological management of alcohol, nicotine, opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants and associated comorbidity with mental health problems and substance use or abuse in pregnancy. They look specifically at comorbidity, [read the full story…]
The NHS Information Centre have published their annual series of reports about alcohol use and misuse. The reports cover a range of issues including drinking habits and behaviours among adults (aged 16 and over) and school children (aged 11 to 15), drinking-related ill health and mortality, affordability of alcohol, alcohol related admissions to hospital and alcohol-related [read the full story…]
Today’s blog comes courtesy of The Lifestyle Elf. If you’re interested in healthy lifestyle research on diet, exercise, smoking, drinking and other public health issues, you can follow my cousin on Twitter, Facebook and via her excellent blog. When you’ve got a problem, where do you look for help, support and information? Here in the [read the full story…]
Some readers will be aware that the Mental Elf is no loner. I have a number of elfin cousins who also run websites that help busy professionals keep up to date with the latest research, policy and guidance in their field. One such site is The Lifestyle Elf, and she has written a blog recently [read the full story…]
This new briefing from the NHS Confederation sets out the policy context around tackling homelessness and addressing the mental health needs of homeless people. It also examines what considerations need to be made when planning, designing and delivering mental health services for homeless people and highlights examples of good practice. Around 70% of people accessing [read the full story…]
Delusional-like experiences (DLE) are quite common in the general population with a median prevalence of around 3.5% (ref 2). Studies show that these experiences often go hand-in-hand with other mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, as well as other chronic physical disorders such as impairments in hearing and vision. It is thought that [read the full story…]
Picture the scene: adolescent boy with an absentee father, trying to fend off a large crowd of men who occupy his house, cost him a lot in food and drink and are all determined to marry his mother. He is young, inexperienced, lacking in confidence and besieged by problems. In short, he needs a mentor. [read the full story…]
The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse has produced a new publication which gives an overview of drug treatment and recovery services in England. ‘Drug treatment in England: The road to recovery’ complements the recently released ‘Why Invest?’ presentation, which shows how investing in local drug treatment and recovery services benefits individuals, strengthens families and [read the full story…]
Cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used illicit drug in the world and reports of driving under the influence of cannabis have risen in recent years. A research team from Dalhousie University in Canada conducted a systematic search and identified observational epidemiology studies of motor vehicle collisions with an appropriate control group. They included studies [read the full story…]
This Cochrane systematic review examined the effectiveness of electronic health record-facilitated interventions on smoking cessation activity by clinicians and on patient smoking cessation outcomes. The review shows these interventions improve the documentation of tobacco use and referral to cessation counselling, but does not demonstrate an improvement in patients actually giving up smoking. While smoking rates [read the full story…]
