Psilocybin for ‘treatment-resistant depression’: an island of hope in an ocean of uncertainty?

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In this blog, UCL MSc students consider an RCT published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which suggests that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy may help reduce depression in people with severe and enduring illness, but side effects are common and more research is needed to look into longer term effects.

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Effects of occlusal splint guidance on treatment for bruxism and temporomandibular disorders

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This review assessing the effect of disocclusion guidance on occlusal splints for sleep bruxism (SB) and temporomandibular disorders (TMD) included 15 studies. The included studies provided very low certainty evidence for most of the evaluated outcomes.

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Face-to-face psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents: Cochrane review calls for better primary research

Lisa Burscheidt summarises a recent Cochrane review of psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents, which concludes that psychological therapies should be considered as a treatment, but better primary studies are needed to help steer pain management decisions.

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Adults with learning disabilities directly report more health problems, particularly headaches and pain, than their carers

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Getting information from people with learning disabilities about their health is often done through discussions with professionals and carers. The authors of this study wanted to know more about the health problems people with learning disabilities themselves reported and whether there were differences from what their carers’ reported. They explored this by carrying out a [read the full story…]

Childhood adversity and early-onset mental disorders are independently associated with adult onset chronic physical conditions

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Read this important new research if you work in mental health or public health and have an interest in the relationship between mental disorders and adversity in childhood and chronic physical conditions in later adult life. The cross sectional study was conducted by researchers in New Zealand who set out to investigate whether childhood adversities [read the full story…]

Oral appliances for treating headache in patients with myofascial pain

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The aim of this trial  was to compare the short- and long-term effectiveness of a prefabricated occlusal appliance with that of a stabilization appliance when treating headache in patients with myofascial pain. A group of 66 patients attending two centres for Stomatognathic Physiology in Sweden and Finland 94% of whom suffered concomitantly from headache were [read the full story…]