meaning … The Blockbuster Drug Comes to an End Forbes by Matthew Herper 04/06/2011 Geraldine Ferraro died from the rare blood cancer multiple myeloma on Mar. 26 after an 11-year battle. Breakthrough medicines kept the former congresswoman alive, but by 2007 she was worrying about their cost. The medicine she was taking at the end […]
How evidence-based medicine is failing due to biased trials and selective publication by Susanna Every-Palmer and Jeremy Howick Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. 2014 May 12. [Epub ahead of print] [full text on-line] Evidence-based medicine [EBM] was announced in the early 1990s as a ‘new paradigm’ for improving patient care. Yet there is currently […]
I really have a distaste for grant applications. I did some when I was an NIH Fellow in the bronze age and much later wrote periodic training grants. I get it why one has to fill out all that stuff and look endlessly at the endless guidelines, but getting it doesn’t erase the tedium of […]
Director’s Blog: From Research to Practice N.I.M.H. By Thomas Insel and Pamela Hyde, SAMHSA Administrator May 1, 2014 Conventional wisdom says that there is a long delay between a research finding and putting that finding into practice. Based on treatments for hypertension, that delay is usually described as 17 years. So it is especially worth […]
Any system that results in benefits is intrinsically vulnerable to being abused. It’s just in the nature of things. Systems are created to deal with a group problem, but when benefits are involved, individuals flock to become members of the group, and it grows. Likewise, those financing the system focus on the abuse rather than […]
Acceptance of Insurance by Psychiatrists and the Implications for Access to Mental Health Care by Tara F. Bishop, Matthew J. Press, Salomeh Keyhani, and Harold Alan Pincus JAMA Psychiatry. 2014 71[2]:176-181. Importance There have been recent calls for increased access to mental health services, but access may be limited owing to psychiatrist refusal to accept insurance. Objective To describe […]
Following Emil Kraepelin’s description of Dementia Praecox as a progressive deteriorating disease, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler reported on his experience with these patients at the Burghölzli Sanatorium in his book, Dementia Praecox, or the Group of Schizophrenias, published in 1911. He described a variable not so pessimistic course of illness and posited a particular personality […]
DSM-5 and the Research Domain Criteria: 100 Years After Jaspers’ General Psychopathology by Jose de Leon, M.D. American Journal of Psychiatry. 2014 171:492-494. In 1913, 30-year-old German psychiatrist Karl Jaspers published the first edition of General Psychopathology, in which he summarized current psychiatric knowledge and included his ideas regarding the methodological and scientific issues then […]
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain… The Wasteland [1922] T.S. Eliot Every year, I joke that rather than being a post-World War I lament about the burdens of hope, what Eliot was really writing about was Spring Pollen – […]
Health Reform, Research Pave Way for Collaborative Care for Mental Illness by Bridget M. Kuehn MSJ JAMA, June 19, 2013 309[23]:2425-2426. JAMA: What is collaborative care? Dr. Katon: It involves a care manager, who is a nurse or other collaborative care professional, who sees the patients and provides enhanced education and tracks their outcomes. The […]