I wrote an initial blog post yesterday on this month's new NICE guideline on "Social anxiety disorder: recognition, assessment and treatment".  In today's post I would like to focus more on the guideline's very interesting treatment recommendations. 

Fascinatingly this NICE guidance comes down fair & square on the side of one-to-one cognitive therapy as the first line treatment for social anxiety disorder.  So the authors write:

1.3.2 Offer adults with social anxiety disorder individual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that has been specifically developed to treat social anxiety disorder (based on the Clark and Wells model or the Heimberg model; see recommendations 1.3.13 and 1.3.14).

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have just published their new evidence-based clinical guideline on "Social anxiety disorder: recognition, assessment and treatment".  They state: "This clinical guideline offers evidence-based advice on the recognition, assessment and treatment of social anxiety disorder in children and young people (from school age to 17 years) and adults (aged 18 years and older).

This month the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published their new evidence-based clinical guideline on "Physical advice: brief advice for adults in primary care".  NICE state "The guidance is for ... anyone ... whose remit includes offering lifestyle advice. Examples include: exercise professionals, GPs, health trainers, health visitors, mental health professionals, midwives, pharmacists, practice nurses, physiotherapists.  It may also be of interest to others with a role in encouraging physical activity and members of the public." 

There has been a ripple of media interest - and rightly so - in the recent Lancet article  "Minimum amount of physical activity for reduced mortality and extended life expectancy: a prospective cohort study."  The article's abstract reads "The health benefits of leisure-time physical activity are well known, but whether less exercise than the recommended 150 min a week can have life expectancy benefits is unclear.  We assessed the health benefits of a range of volumes of physical activity in a Taiwanese population.  In this prospective cohort study, 416,175 individuals (199,265 men and 216,910 women) participated in a standard medical screening programme in Taiwan between 1996 and 2008, with an average follow-up of 8·05 years (SD 4·21).  On the basis of the amount of weekly exercise indicated in a self-administered questio

In January, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published their new evidence-based clinical guideline on the care and treatment of adults with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia).  This guideline updates and replaces their 2004 one (which was itself amended in 2007).  The full 56 page guideline is available as a PDF and in Word format.  It also comes as a 24 page "Quick reference guide" for health professionals, and as a 16 page "Treating generalised anxiety disorder and pan

This is a very brief blog entry to signpost a couple of recent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines on the management of bed-wetting in children & young people (up to age 19), and on the prevention of osteoporosis in adults.  These are both subjects that I'm sometimes asked about, and high quality, up-to-date, evidence-based advice is well worthwhile. 

NICE - the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - recently published guidance on "Depression in adults (update)" and on "Depression with a chronic physical health problem".  The "Depression in adults (update)"  replaces guidance originally published in 2004 and amended in 2007.  The 28 page Quick reference guide provides a helpful overview.  Interestingly NICE here use the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for depression rather than the ICD-10 criteria (used in their earlier publications).  A four step approach is charted - each step is described both by who the intervention is for (e.g.