Mortality in Mental Disorders and Global Disease Burden Implications

IMPORTANCE:

Despite the potential importance of understanding excess mortality among people with mental disorders, no comprehensive meta-analyses have been conducted quantifying mortality across mental disorders.

OBJECTIVE:

To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of mortality among people with mental disorders and examine differences in mortality risks by type of death, diagnosis, and study characteristics.

DATA SOURCES:

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Intensive multidisciplinary treatment of severe somatoform disorder: a prospective evaluation

Chronic severe somatoform disorder (SFD) is resistant to treatment. In a prospective observational study, we evaluated an intensive multidisciplinary treatment focusing on body-related mentalization and acceptance. Patients included in the study were 183 (146 women, 37 men) of 311 eligible patients with chronic severe SFD, referred consecutively to a specialized tertiary care center between 2002 and 2009. Primary outcome measures were somatic symptoms (SCL-90) and health-related quality of life (EuroQol 5-Dimensional [EQ-5D]).

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Bridging a translational gap: using machine learning to improve the prediction of PTSD

Abstract
Background
Predicting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a pre-requisite for targeted prevention. Current research has identified group-level risk-indicators, many of which (e.g., head trauma, receiving opiates) concern but a subset of survivors. Identifying interchangeable sets of risk indicators may increase the efficiency of early risk assessment. The study goal is to use supervised machine learning (ML) to uncover interchangeable, maximally predictive combinations of early risk indicators.

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Neural correlates of inhibition and contextual cue processing related to treatment response in PTSD

Thirty to fifty percent of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients do not respond to treatment. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying treatment response could contribute to improve response rates. PTSD is often associated with decreased inhibition of fear responses in a safe environment. Importantly, the mechanism of effective treatment (psychotherapy) relies on inhibition and so-called contextual cue processing. Therefore, we investigate inhibition and contextual cue processing in the context of treatment.

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Diagnosing and Treating Complex Trauma

The book introduces a layered model for diagnosing and treating complex trauma in four parts. Part One introduces the concept of complex trauma, its historical development and the various theories about trauma. The authors introduce a layered model that describes the symptoms of complex trauma, and conclude with a discussion on the three-phase model.
Part Two describes the diagnostic options available that make use of a layered model of complex trauma.

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Descendants of Holocaust Survivors Have Altered Stress Hormones

A person's experience as a child or teenager can have a profound impact on their future children's lives, new work is showing.

Rachel Yehuda, a researcher in the growing field of epigenetics and the intergenerational effects of trauma, and her colleagues have long studied mass trauma survivors and their offspring. Their latest results reveal that descendants of people who survived the Holocaust have different stress hormone profiles than their peers, perhaps predisposing them to anxiety disorders.

 

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School-Based Psychological Screening in the Aftermath of a Disaster: Are Parents Satisfied and Do Their Children Access Treatment?

This study investigated parents’ satisfactionwith postdisaster school-based screening and whether satisfactionwas related to follow-through with screening recommendations. From among 1,268 there were 224 children, ages 7–18 years (M = 10.97, SD = 2.44 years) screened for emotional distress 4 months after a flood and 130 parents who completed the screening evaluation. Of the 44 children who showed severe emotional distress, less than 50% of their parents reported concerns and only 29.5% had sought assistance. Following screening, 86.7% of these children completed treatment.

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Evaluating the feasibility of complex interventions in mental health services : standardised measure and reporting guidelines.

Abstract
Background
The feasibility of implementation is insufficiently considered in clinical guideline development, leading to human and financial resource wastage.
Aims
To develop (a) an empirically based standardised measure of the feasibility of complex interventions for use within mental health services and (b) reporting guidelines to facilitate feasibility assessment.
Method

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Screening and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in patients with substance use disorders

Roughly, one out of four patients with a substance use disorder (SUD) also meets criteria for PTSD. Both disorders seem to be highly intertwined. Two chapters of this thesis focus on the development of a screening questionnaire to detect PTSD within substance abuse treatment centers. For this purpose, a PTSD screener from the United States army was used, the Primary Care posttraumatic stress disorder screen (PC-PTSD). Based on the results of this study a new screener was assembled and cross-validated: the Jellinek-PTSD screening questionnaire (J-PTSD).

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The validation of a social functioning questionnaire in an African postconflict context

Abstract

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