Background: Anxiety and depression in people with epilepsy are common and associated with poor outcomes; yet, they often go untreated due to poor mental health specialist access. Collaborative care is an integrated care model with a strong evidence base in primary care and medical settings, but it has not been evaluated in neurology clinics. Evaluating implementation outcomes when translating evidence-based interventions to new clinical settings to inform future scaling and incorporation into real-world practice is important.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Anxiety and depression are highly prevalent and impactful in epilepsy. American Academy of Neurology quality measures emphasize anxiety and depression screening and quality of life (QOL) measurement, yet usual epilepsy care QOL and anxiety/depression outcomes are poorly characterized. The main objective was to assess 6-month QOL, anxiety and depression during routine care among adults with epilepsy and baseline anxiety or depression symptoms; these were prespecified secondary outcomes within a pragmatic randomized trial of remote assessment methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study demonstrates the application of Rh solid-state NMR (SSNMR) spectroscopy to inorganic and organometallic coordination compounds, in combination with relativistic density functional theory (DFT) calculations of Rh chemical shift tensors and their analysis with natural bond orbital (NBO) and natural localized molecular orbital (NLMO) protocols, to develop correlations between Rh chemical shift tensors, molecular structure, and Rh-ligand bonding. Rh is one of the least receptive NMR nuclides, and consequently, there are very few reports in the literature. We introduce robust Rh SSNMR protocols for stationary samples, which use the broadband adiabatic inversion-cross polarization (BRAIN-CP) pulse sequence and wideband uniform-rate smooth-truncation (WURST) pulses for excitation, refocusing, and polarization transfer, and demonstrate the acquisition of Rh SSNMR spectra of unprecedented signal-to-noise and uniformity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCross-polarization (CP) is a technique commonly used for the signal enhancement of NMR spectra; however, applications to quadrupolar nuclei have heretofore been limited due to a number of problems, including poor spin-locking efficiency, inconvenient relaxation times, and reduced CP efficiencies over broad spectral bandwidths─this is unfortunate, since they constitute 73% of NMR-active nuclei in the periodic table. The Broadband Adiabatic Inversion CP (BRAIN-CP) pulse sequence has proven useful for the signal enhancement of wideline and ultra-wideline (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: While antidepressants are recommended to manage anxiety or depression in epilepsy, limited effectiveness data exist in real-world epilepsy samples, and prior work indicated frequent positive screens despite antidepressant prescription. In response, this study evaluates factors associated with positive anxiety or depression screen during ongoing antidepressant prescription.
Methods: Clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were collected among consecutive adult epilepsy clinic patients completing validated anxiety and depression instruments.
Objective: To close gaps between research and clinical practice, tools are needed for efficient pragmatic trial recruitment and patient-reported outcome collection. The objective was to assess feasibility and process measures for patient-reported outcome collection in a randomized trial comparing electronic health record (EHR) patient portal questionnaires to telephone interview among adults with epilepsy and anxiety or depression symptoms.
Materials And Methods: Recruitment for the randomized trial began at an epilepsy clinic visit, with EHR-embedded validated anxiety and depression instruments, followed by automated EHR-based research screening consent and eligibility assessment.
Although prior conventional wisdom strongly recommended complete discontinuation of medications increasing the seizure threshold before electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), more recent literature suggests that anticonvulsants should be considered a relative rather than an absolute contraindication to proceeding with therapy. Most literature regarding the use of use antiepileptic drugs in ECT focuses on antiepileptic mood stabilizers with which most psychiatrists are familiar. However, there is considerably less information available about the use of newer antiepileptics in conjunction with ECT, which may be prescribed to a patient with epilepsy or off-label for psychiatric reasons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Recent epilepsy quality measure recommendations for depression and anxiety screening endorse ultra-brief screeners, the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 (GAD-2). Thus, it is important to assess how symptom detection may be affected using ultra-brief screeners compared with slightly longer, well-validated instruments: Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory-Epilepsy (NDDI-E) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). The objective was to compare symptom detection by brief versus ultra-brief depression and anxiety screeners in a large real-world epilepsy clinic sample.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Anxiety and depression symptoms in epilepsy are common, impactful and under-recognized and undertreated. While prior survey data suggests equipoise among epileptologists for managing anxiety and/or depression via prescribing in the epilepsy clinic versus psychiatry referral, patient preferences are unknown and should potentially influence practice habits among epileptologists. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to determine patient preference for anxiety and/or depression prescribing by neurologists versus psychiatry referral among an adult epilepsy clinic sample of symptomatic patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry
November 2021
Objective: Anxiety and depression in epilepsy are prevalent, associated with poor outcomes, underrecognized, undertreated, and thus a key area of need for treatment research. The objective of this study was to assess factors associated with research participation among epilepsy clinic patients who screened positive for anxiety or depression. This was accomplished by characterizing clinical and psychiatric factors among patients seen in an epilepsy clinic and evaluating which factors were associated with consent for potential research participation, via a combined clinical and research screening model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle is known about the medical conditions and medication use of individuals who are homeless and have mental health problems. This study used secondary data (N = 933) from a mental health clinic serving homeless adults. Primary outcomes were the number and types of self-reported medical conditions and medications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly effective treatment for certain psychiatric disorders with relatively few serious adverse effects or complications. Tardive seizures are one of these rare but potentially fatal complications. Recognizing and treating tardive seizures is essential to prevent prolonged postictal confusion, progression to status epilepticus and associated soft tissue injury, anoxia, aspiration, and death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Our prior work has shown that there is improvement in self-reported sleep in persons receiving placebo in hypnotic clinical trials. We examined the components of the "placebo response" in a hypnotic clinical trial.
Methods: This was an exploratory analysis of a randomized, double-blind clinical trial of eszopiclone versus placebo in the treatment of persons with depression and insomnia who were also receiving fluoxetine at a clinic of a teaching hospital.
Objective: : To examine the determinants of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) immediately after a clinical trial of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for major depression and then again after 24 weeks of a continuation pharmacotherapy in a clinical trial comparing nortriptyline (NT) plus lithium (Li) versus venlafaxine (VEN) plus Li.
Method: : During acute ECT, 184 patients randomized to treatment with moderate-dosage bilateral (BL) ECT or high-dosage right unilateral (RUL) ECT completed the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 (SF-36) as a measure of HRQOL before and immediately after ECT. They were also randomized to concurrent treatment with placebo, NT, or VEN.
Background: Although transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be an effective acute antidepressant treatment, few studies systematically examine persistence of benefit.
Objective: We assessed the durability of antidepressant effect after acute response to TMS in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) using protocol-specified maintenance antidepressant monotherapy.
Methods: Three hundred one patients were randomly assigned to active or sham TMS in a 6-week, controlled trial.
We present a novel positioning technique to assist in the gentle and safe management of the postictal agitated patient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudy Objectives: Insomnia is associated with poor health related quality of life (HRQOL) in depressed patients. Prior clinical trials of hypnotic treatment of insomnia in depressed patients have shown improvement in HRQOL, but in these studies HRQOL was relegated to a secondary outcome, and objective measures of sleep were not undertaken.
Design: Double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Insomnia-pharmacology clinical trials routinely exclude primary sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD), with a single night of polysomnography (PSG). Given the expense of PSG, we examined whether a thorough clinical screening, combined with actigraphy, would successfully identify OSA and PLMD as part of baseline screening for a clinical trial of insomnia treatment in depressed patients. Of the 73 patients with a complete baseline dataset, 12 screened positive for OSA/PLMD (AHI > 15, or PLMAI > 15), while 61 "passed" the PSG screen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPostictal agitation after electroconvulsive therapy is a common and serious condition and when severe, requires prompt intervention to safeguard the patient and medical staff from the potential for mayhem and physical harm. We present a case report on the successful use of dexmedetomidine, an alpha2 agonist, in the postictal management of severe agitation in a 34-year-old morbidly obese woman, after prior modes of intervention had failed to deliver ideal conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 52-year-old woman with a long-standing history of treatment-resistant depression failed multiple courses of electroconvulsive therapy and various trials of antidepressant medications. As a result, the patient was deemed a good candidate for vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy and underwent VNS insertion in May 2006. However, in December 2007, she began to experience recurrent falls and was referred to a cardiologist for a syncope evaluation.
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