Rapid Adoption and Implementation of Telehealth Group Psychotherapy During COVID 19: Practical Strategies and Recommendations.

Behavioral health services have been tasked with rapidly adopting and implementing teletherapy during the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic to assure patient and staff safety. Existing teletherapy guidelines were developed prior to the pandemic and do not capture the nuances of rapidly transitioning in-person individual and group-based treatments to a teletherapy format. In this paper, we describe our approach to quickly adapting to a teletherapy technology platform for an intensive outpatient program (IOP) guided by cognitive and behavioral modular principles for adults with serious mental illness. A review of existing guidelines was conducted and the staged approach for teletherapy implementation (Muir et al., 2020) was selected as the most appropriate model for our organizational context. We describe the most pertinent implementation strategies and report our preliminary findings detailing the feasibility of IOPs delivered via telehealth. This model of rapid teletherapy implementation offers practical clinical guidelines for administrators and clinicians seeking to transition traditional in-person behavioral health services to a teletherapy format.

Development of a bipolar disorder biobank: differential phenotyping for subsequent biomarker analyses.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to establish a bipolar disorder biobank to serve as a resource for clinical and biomarker studies of disease risk and treatment response. Here, we describe the aims, design, infrastructure, and research uses of the biobank, along with demographics and clinical features of the first participants enrolled. METHODS: Patients were recruited for the Mayo Clinic Bipolar Biobank beginning in July 2009. The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV was used to confirm bipolar diagnosis. The Bipolar Biobank Clinical Questionnaire and Participant Questionnaire were designed to collect detailed demographic and clinical data, including clinical course of illness measures that would delineate differential phenotypes for subsequent analyses. Blood specimens were obtained from participants, and various aliquots were stored for future research. RESULTS: As of September 2014, 1363 participants have been enrolled in the bipolar biobank. Among these first participants, 69.0 % had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder type I. The group was 60.2 % women and predominantly white (90.6 %), with a mean (SD) age of 42.6 (14.9) years. Clinical phenotypes of the group included history of psychosis (42.3 %), suicide attempt (32.5 %), addiction to alcohol (39.1 %), addiction to nicotine (39.8 %), obesity (42.9 %), antidepressant-induced mania (31.7 %), tardive dyskinesia (3.2 %), and history of drug-related serious rash (5.7 %). CONCLUSIONS: Quantifying phenotypic patterns of illness beyond bipolar subtype can provide more detailed clinical disease characteristics for biomarker research, including genomic-risk studies. Future research can harness clinically useful biomarkers using state-of-the-art research technology to help stage disease burden and better individualize treatment selection for patients with bipolar disorder.

Clinical risk factors and serotonin transporter gene variants associated with antidepressant-induced mania.

INTRODUCTION: Identifying clinical and genetic risk factors associated with antidepressant-induced mania (AIM) may improve individualized treatment strategies for bipolar depression. METHOD: From 2009 to 2012, bipolar depressed patients, confirmed by DSM-IV-TR-structured interview, were screened for AIM. An AIM+ case was defined as a manic/hypomanic episode within 60 days of starting or changing dose of antidepressant, while an AIM- control was defined as an adequate (≥ 60 days) exposure to an antidepressant with no associated manic/hypomanic episode. 591 subjects (205 AIM+ and 386 AIM-) exposed to an antidepressant and a subset of 545 subjects (191 AIM+ and 354 AIM-) treated with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) were used to evaluate the association of AIM with phenotypic clinical risk factors previously published. 295 white subjects (113 AIM+ cases, 182 AIM-controls) were genotyped for 3 SLC6A4 variants: the 5-HTTLPR, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531, and the intron 2 variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR). Tests of association with AIM were performed for each polymorphism and the haplotype. RESULTS: The only clinical risk factors associated with AIM in the overall and the SSRI + SNRI analysis was bipolar I subtype. The S allele of 5-HTTLPR was not significantly associated with AIM; however, a meta-analysis combining this sample with 5 prior studies provided marginal evidence of association (P = .059). The L-A-10 haplotype was associated with a reduced risk of AIM (P = .012). DISCUSSION: Narrowly defined, AIM appears to be at greatest risk for bipolar I patients. Our haplotype analysis of SLC6A4 suggests that future pharmacogenetic studies should not only focus on the SLC6A4 promotor variation but also investigate the role of other variants in the gene.

Serial infusions of low-dose ketamine for major depression.

BACKGROUND: Single infusions of ketamine have been used successfully to achieve improvement in depressed patients. Side effects during the infusions have been common. It is not known whether serial infusions or lower infusion rates result in greater efficacy. METHODS: Ten depressed patients were treated with twice weekly ketamine infusions of ketamine 0.5 mg/kg administered over 100 min until either remission was achieved or four infusions were given. Side effects were assessed with the Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Patients were followed naturalistically at weekly intervals for four weeks after completion of the infusions. RESULTS: Five of 10 patients achieved remission status. There were no significant increases on the BPRS or YMRS. Two of the remitting patients sustained their improvement throughout the four week follow-up period. CONCLUSIONS: Ketamine infusions at a lower rate than previously reported have demonstrated similar efficacy and excellent tolerability and may be more practically available for routine clinical care. Serial ketamine infusions appear to be more effective than a single infusion. Further research to test relapse prevention strategies with continuation ketamine infusions is indicated.

Population-based prevalence of smoking in psychiatric inpatients: a focus on acute suicide risk and major diagnostic groups.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to define the extent of current and lifetime smoking by diagnostic groups and suicide risk as reason for admission in a geographically defined psychiatric inpatient cohort. DESIGN: The study used a population-based retrospective chart review. METHODS: Smoking status and discharge diagnoses for Olmsted County, Minnesota, inpatients aged 18 to 65 admitted for psychiatric hospitalization in 2004 and 2005 were abstracted from the electronic medical record. Diagnostic groups were compared to each other using chi(2) tests and Fisher exact test to analyze smoking status within the inpatient sample with significance defined as P