Friday, January 09, 2004

A new way of looking at health status
Article in the latest APA Monitor - "For the past eight years, APA's Practice Directorate collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)--a system that classifies the impact of health conditions on people's level of functioning in domains such as communication, self-care, work and school. For example, the ICF allows health-care clinicians, such as psychologists, to describe in a standard way how a health condition has affected a patient's daily functioning. The ICF is positioned to ultimately become the universal system by which the functional aspects of health conditions are described...."  
  

Spotlight on Remission: Achieving an Evidence-Based Goal in Depression and Anxiety Disorders
A new CME unit at Medscape - "Although epidemiological and clinical evidence supports the feasibility — and desirability — of remission as the therapeutic goal in depression and anxiety disorders,a disturbing gap exists between research and practice.In both the primary-care and psychiatric settings, many clinicians have been satisfied with achieving response rather than remission. This situation has been attributed, first, to response being the common primary endpoint in clinical therapeutic trials and, second, to clinicians being reluctant to adopt the principles of evidence-based medicine. Because improved patient outcomes can be obtained through evidence-based medicine, it is critical that practitioners become confident in applying its principles in the treatment of all diseases — including mental health disorders. "med"