Keeping you up to date with reliable mental health research, policy & guidance
How brain imaging can help us understand mental health problems and their treatment is another service that the mental elf team will hopefully be able to offer. By blogging about interesting new studies we hope to help you pick up a wee bit of how MRI, CT, EEG and MEG adds to our understanding. While [read the full story...]
Human pregnancy is considered to be full-term when it lasts between 37-42 weeks. Anything shorter is considered to be a pre-term birth and anything longer is considered post-term. Longer pregnancies can be a risk to both the mother and infant and so labour tends to be induced if a pregnancy goes on past 42 weeks. [read the full story...]
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is common with a prevalence of between 5 and 8%. It is often thought of as a problem with young people and is most commonly diagnosed in individuals while they are attending school. Unfortunately ADHD can have disruptive effects across the lifetimes of those affected. It can be and is [read the full story...]
Here at Mental Elf HQ, several new pieces of research relating to yoga have come our way. This blog is the first in a series examining the mental health effects of engaging in yoga. Yoga is a form of exercise (largely comprising physical postures and breathing) which originated in India over 5,000 years ago. Many [read the full story...]
NICE have recently started publishing a series of evidence summaries looking at unlicensed and off-label medicines. The second summary in the series looks at the use of prolonged-release melatonin tablets as a treatment for sleep disorders in children and young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Future mental health summaries include ‘Quetiapine for generalised [read the full story...]
The ADHD Voices (Voices On Identity, Childhood, Ethics and Stimulants) report was published yesterday and received a significant amount of press coverage. The outcomes of this work are a 46-page report and 18-minute video, that aim to inspire a fresh public conversation about the ethics of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and stimulant drug treatments [read the full story...]
The relationship between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and substance use in children is hotly debated. ADHD symptoms include inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity and conduct disorders, and there’s considerable interest in finding out which of these predicts early substance use. If we have reliable evidence that answers this question we can make informed decisions about treating ADHD and [read the full story...]
The Scottish Government have published their annual summary of prescribing statistics for mental health drugs. The report shows increases in the prescribing rates for all groups of drugs over the last 12 months. The prescribing costs of some groups of drugs have also risen (ADHD, dementia, depression) although other groups have seen a decline (insomnia [read the full story...]
Drug treatments are commonly used to treat children and young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methylphenidate and amphetamine are two of the most popular, but these are not effective for all patients and sometimes cause problematic side effects. Children and adolescents with ADHD have been shown to have significantly lower plasma and blood [read the full story...]
Back in February, I blogged about a cohort study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which concluded that ADHD drugs are not linked with an increased risk of serious cardiovascular events. The last few years has seen heated debate about the use of central nervous stimulants in children and young people. The lack [read the full story...]
