Effectiveness of group reminiscence therapy for depressive symptoms in male veterans: 6-month follow-up
The purpose of this study was to use group reminiscence therapy (GRT) as a nursing intervention to evaluate the post-test, 3-month and 6-month effects on depressive symptoms for institutionalised male veterans after a 4-week intervention. A quasi-experimental design and purposive sampling was conducted at a veteran's nursing home in Northern Taiwan. A total of 21 male veterans were studied to measure the effect of GRT. Eleven participants were in the experimental group and 10 in the control group. The experimental group activity was held twice weekly for 4 weeks. The Taiwan Geriatric Depression Scale was used to assess depressive symptoms and geriatric depression among male veterans. The generalised estimating equation was used for data analysis. The male veterans in this study had a mean age of 82 years (SD = 5.8); 47.62% were between 70 and 79 years old, 61.90% were illiterate and 90.48% were without a partner. After 4 weeks of GRT, the experimental group significantly improved their depressive symptoms and geriatric depression in the post-test, 3-month and 6-month follow-up data compared with the control group. These activities can reduce their depressive symptoms following the intervention. A 4-week, eight-session GRT can effectively reduce depressive symptoms among institutionalised male veterans for a 6-month period.
Abstract: Novel and automated means of opioid use and relapse risk detection are needed. Unstructured electronic medical record data, including written progress notes, can be mined for clinically relevant information, including the presence of substance use and relapse-critical markers of risk and recovery from opioid use disorder (OUD). In this study, we used natural language processing (NLP) to automate the extraction of opioid relapses, and the timing of these occurrences, from veteran patients' electronic medical record. We then demonstrated the utility of our NLP tool via analysis of pre-/post-COVID-19 opioid relapse trends among veterans with OUD. For this demonstration, we analyzed data from 107,606 veterans OUD enrolled in Veterans Health Administration, comparing a pandemic-exposed cohort (n = 53,803; January 2019-March 2021) to a matched prepandemic cohort (n = 53,803; October 2017-December 2019). The recall of our NLP tool was 75% and our precision was 94%, demonstrating moderate sensitivity and excellent specificity. Using the NLP tool, we found that the odds of opioid relapse postpandemic onset were proportionally higher compared to prepandemic trends, despite patients having fewer mental health encounters from which to derive instances of relapse postpandemic onset. In this research application of the tool, and as hypothesized, we found that opioid relapse risk was elevated postpandemic. The application of NLP Methods: to identify and monitor relapse risk holds promise for future surveillance, risk prevention, and clinical outcome research.