The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers harmful drinking as the third largest contributor to the Global Burden of Disease, an index of disability, poor health and mortality. The majority of people who suffer from alcohol use disorders do not receive any treatment, due in part to lack of access. One way of increasing the availability [read the full story…]
It can be incredibly difficult to talk about mental health conditions like depression, both for the person going through the illness and the friends and family who are trying to offer support. We know that overcoming this fear and talking through mental health problems can be a real life-saver and this message runs through the [read the full story…]
Anyone who’s spent any time at all on the Mental Elf website, or any of the other National Elf Service sites, knows that we elves love succinct and focused summaries that are easy to read and quick to digest. It’s always a delight to see other groups publishing similar resources, so I’ve decided today to [read the full story…]
Computerised cognitive behavioural therapy is a popular topic for research at the moment. We’ve seen a number of systematic reviews and large scale trials published over recent years, but the vast majority focus on adults with depression, so it’s hard to know how applicable the results are to adolescents. Of course, most young people are [read the full story…]
Existing trials have shown that cognitive behavioural therapy is a promising treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome. The availability of CBT is patchy, so there is an increasing body of research investigating whether internet-based treatment is a viable alternative. A new small randomised controlled trial conducted by researchers from the Netherlands has been published in the [read the full story…]
Researchers from Nottingham University have published a meta-review that aims to evaluate the quality of existing reviews and to enable reliable comparisons of alternative computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (cCBT) packages for treating mild to moderate depression with or without anxiety. The reviewers conducted a systematic search and found 12 systematic reviews from 10 studies covering [read the full story…]
Self-guided psychological treatment is where a patient works through a programme of treatment without the aid of a therapist or coach. There are now many Internet-based treatments for depression and anxiety and there have been a number of good quality trials published during the last few years on self-guided psychological treatments for depression. There have [read the full story…]
Web-based education support for people with health problems is now widespread, but there is comparatively little research that explores the reasons why people do not complete online courses once they are enrolled. This paper presents data from a randomised controlled trial based in Australia, where 370 participants were randomly allocated to: An online bipolar education [read the full story…]
Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa can place considerable strain on families. Parents or partners often care for people with anorexia nervosa and this can be a very distressing experience for them. Carers naturally get very involved, but unfortunately this can sometimes lead to them criticising the sufferer and making the situation worse by contributing [read the full story…]
