Which medication do you choose first when treating anxiety in children? This study used a large commercial claims database to determine which antianxiety medications clinicians are selecting as first-line treatment in pediatric patients.
Stress and stress-related disorders such as depression and anxiety can accelerate neurocognitive aging. Could a mindfulness intervention be a way to enhance memory and clinical outcomes in older patients? Read this intriguing article to see what the authors found.
Prescriptions of antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and sedative-hypnotics have increased in older adults, even among patients with no mental health diagnosis. Read this journal CME article comparing trends in psychiatry versus primary care.
Specific phobia is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder and has both early childhood onset and high comorbidity. Read this study of over 1,000 adolescents to see if persistence of specific phobia can be predicted, thus allowing clinicians to help alleviate future comorbidity.
Benzodiazepine and Z-drug dependence are frequently comorbid with other substance use and psychiatric disorders. Read this brief report to gain a greater understanding of the clinical characteristics and course of substance dependence in this group of patients.
Environmental and genetic risk factors influence whether a person will develop depression as well as what the prognosis will be. This study looked at illness incidence over 10 years to assess the magnitude of risk for offspring of patients treated for anxiety and depression.
The worries that characterize generalized anxiety disorder are so pervasive and excessive that they distort cognition and create a considerable burden of illness. See what the authors of this study found while evaluating the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of vilazodone as an acute treatment for GAD.
Older individuals with chronic illness often suffer considerable anxiety thinking about their illness. Although chronic illness alone represents something patients often can do little to control, they can learn ways to manage how they respond to anxious feelings. Read this Psychotherapy Casebook article to find out more.
Almost half of all people with generalized anxiety disorder seek some type of complementary and alternative therapy. See how massage therapy affected anxiety symptoms in this randomized controlled monotherapy trial.
The antidepressant efficacy of ketamine is clear, but what about its use in other psychiatric disorders? Read about a case of sustained symptom relief following a single ketamine infusion in a patient with treatment-refractory panic disorder, agoraphobia, and generalized anxiety disorder.
Baclofen, a French Exception, Seriously Harms Alcohol Use Disorder Patients Without Benefit
To the Editor: Dr Andrade’s analysis of the Bacloville trial in a recent Clinical and Practical Psychopharmacology column, in which he concluded that “individualized treatment with high-dose baclofen (30-300 mg/d) may be a useful second-line approach in heavy drinkers” and that “baclofen may be particularly useful in patients with liver disease,” deserves comment.1
First, Andrade failed to recall that the first pivotal trial of baclofen, ALPADIR (NCT01738282; 320 patients, as with Bacloville), was negative (see Braillon et al2).
Second, Dr Andrade should have warned readers that Bacloville’s results are most questionable, lacking robustness. Although he cited us,3 he overlooked the evidence we provided indicating that the Bacloville article4 was published without acknowledging major changes to the initial protocol, affecting the primary outcome. Coincidentally (although as skeptics, we do not believe in coincidence), the initial statistical team was changed when data were sold to the French pharmaceutical company applying for the marketing authorization in France. As Ronald H. Coase warned, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
MY ACCOUNT