The Psychiatric clinics of North America
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Psychiatr. Clin. North Am. · Mar 2012
Child and adolescent depression: psychotherapeutic, ethical, and related nonpharmacologic considerations for general psychiatrists and others who prescribe.
Depression is a common, recurring disorder affecting millions of youth at some point before they reach mature adulthood. Given the shortage of and uneven distribution of psychiatrists who have completed specialized fellowships in child and adolescent psychiatry, a significant number of depressed youth will receive their pharmacotherapy from general psychiatrists and other prescribers with varying degrees of interest, training, and even willingness to treat children and adolescents. ⋯ Physicians who typically work only with adults will also need familiarity with differing ethical, legal, and regulatory issues and standards applicable to pediatric psychopharmacology. General psychiatrists, pediatricians, family physicians, nurse practitioners, and others contribute greatly to the care of depressed children, adolescents, and their families, and many find this work to be a very rewarding part of their professional practices.
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Given the limitations of evidence for treatment options that are consistently effective for TRD and the possibility that TRD is in fact a form of depression that has a low probability of resolving, how can clinicians help patients with TRD? Perhaps the most important conceptual shift that needs to take place before treatment can be helpful is to accept TRD as a chronic illness, an illness similar to many others, one that can be effectively managed but that is not, at our present level of knowledge, likely to be cured. An undue focus on remission or even a 50% diminution of symptoms sets unrealistic goals for both patients and therapists and may lead to overtreatment and demoralization. The focus should be less on eliminating depressive symptoms and more on making sense of and learning to function better in spite of them. ⋯ Family members are likely to provide this kind of support only if they have been part of the assessment and treatment process. Patients with a wide range of chronic medical illnesses can and do learn to function effectively and to achieve a satisfying quality of life in spite of their illness. There is no reason to think that patients with TRD should not be able to achieve a similar level of illness management, functioning, and quality of life.
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Physical activity seems to be an important component of lifestyle interventions for weight loss and maintenance. Although the effects of physical activity on weight loss may seem to be modest, there seems to be a dose-response relationship between physical activity and weight loss. ⋯ Moreover, independent of the effect of physical activity on body weight, engagement in physical activity that results in improved cardiorespiratory fitness can contribute to reductions in health risk in overweight and obese adults. Thus, progression of overweight and obese patients to an adequate dose of physical activity needs to be incorporated into clinical interventions for weight control.
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Obesity is an epidemic that likely will worsen without substantive changes to the current environment. Although treatment of the individual has conventionally been the focus of the obesity field, prevention using a public health model will be essential for making progress on a population level. There are encouraging signs that communities across the country are acknowledging the complex causes of obesity and making impressive reforms to improve their health and that of their children. Public policy changes long have been used to combat infectious and chronic diseases and will be vital in the attempt to reduce the toll of poor diet, physical inactivity, and obesity.
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The two specialty psychological therapies of CBT and IPT remain the treatments of choice for the full range of BED patients, particularly those with high levels of specific eating disorder psychopathology such as overvaluation of body shape and weight. They produce the greatest degree of remission from binge eating as well as improvement in specific eating disorder psychopathology and associated general psychopathology such as depression. The CBT protocol evaluated in the research summarized above was the original manual from Fairburn and colleagues. ⋯ BWL consistently produces short-term weight loss, the extent of which has varied across different studies. Long-term weight loss has yet to be demonstrated, however. In this regard, the findings with obese patients with BED are not different than those on the treatment of obesity in general, in which there is little robust evidence of enduring weight loss effects of BWL.