On Tue, 20 Oct 2015 14:09:28 -0400, Christopher Green wrote:
I read this yesterday on the NY Time website and thought about posting about it on TiPS but since no one reads the links I provide I decided to let it go and leave it to someone else to post about it, if they so cared.
But will the insurance companies ever be convinced to cover long term talk therapy?
In the U.S., I believe the answer is either: (1) No, or (2) Yes but the amount paid for such services will be so low that few clinicians (i.e., MDs) will bother. We still have a long way to go before there is parity between mental health treatment and physical health treatment. As the article has pointed out, "talk therapy" or, more appropriately, comprehension cognitive behavioral therapy including family therapy and other supports has been indicated in the past to be effective (the article mentions the "Open Dialogue" program in Finnland which uses a structure similar to that used in this RCT but, paraphrasing Hilary Clinton, this ain't Finnland). What makes this study significant is that it is a placebo (actually, treatment as usual) control randomized controlled trial (RCT). As promising as the results of this study is, there are a couple of critical points to keep in mind: (1) It only deals with people who arehaving a first psychotice episode. Quoting from the abstract: |Conclusions: |Comprehensive care for first-episode psychosis can be |implemented in U.S. community clinics and improves |functional and clinical outcomes. Effects are more pronounced |for those with shorter duration of untreated psychosis. NOTE: Such a program "CAN" be implemented in US community clinics. Just like all those community centers that were supposed to spring into existence in the 1960s when psychiatric hospitals started to dump their partients onto the streets. We're still waiting for those centers. (2) It is unclear how well such a program will work with long-term homeless/unstable housing people with schizophrenia. If implemented correctly, it may do some good. If implemented like most mental programs are implemented, don't expect too much.
Christopher Green shared with you: Talk Therapy Found to Ease Schizophrenia New York Times - John Kane, chairman of the psychiatry department at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, who led a study on the treatment of schizophrenia. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
By the way, the link to the NYT article by Benedict Carey is: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/health/talk-therapy-found-to-ease-schizophrenia.html For fans of NPR, see: http://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450321109/study-suggests-talk-therapy-eases-symptoms-of-schizophrenia And those of you who remember Time magazine, here's a link to their version of the NYT article: http://time.com/4079516/schizophrenia-talk-therapy/ The original research article can be accessed here http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.15050632 . -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@mail-archive.com. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=47070 or send a blank email to leave-47070-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
