Addressing mental health problems among persons without stable housing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: study protocol for a randomised trial. RESPOND - France.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on population-wide mental health and well-being. Although people experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage may be especially vulnerable, they experience barriers in accessing mental health care. To overcome these barriers, the World Health Organization (WHO) designed two scalable psychosocial interventions, namely the web-based Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (DWM) and the face-to-face Problem Management Plus (PM+), to help people manage stressful situations. Our study aims to test the effectiveness of a stepped-care program using DWM and PM + among individuals experiencing unstable housing in France - a majority of whom are migrant or have sought asylum. METHODS: This is a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of a stepped-care program using DWM and PM + among persons with psychological distress and experiencing unstable housing, in comparison to enhanced care as usual (eCAU). Participants (N = 210) will be randomised to two parallel groups: eCAU or eCAU plus the stepped-care program. The main study outcomes are symptoms of depression and anxiety measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire Anxiety and Depression Scale (PHQ-ADS). DISCUSSION: This randomised controlled trial will contribute to a better understanding of effective community-based scalable strategies that can help address the mental health needs of persons experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, whose needs are high yet who frequently have limited access to mental health care services. TRIAL REGISTRATION: this randomised trial has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under the number NCT05033210.

Bereavement issues and prolonged grief disorder: A global perspective.

The death of a loved one - bereavement - is a universal experience that marks the human mental health condition. Grief - the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to bereavement - is thus experienced by virtually everyone at some point in life, while mourning is a process through which grievers come to terms with the loss envisioning life without the deceased. Although distress subsides over time among most bereaved individuals, a minority will develop a condition recently identified as prolonged grief disorder (PGD). The present review provides a global perspective on bereavement, grief reactions, and PGD. Although the loss of a loved one and grief reactions are in general experienced consistently across different cultures, differences and variations in their expression may exist across cultures. Especially within specific populations that may be more at risk for PGD, possibly due to risk factors associated with the mechanisms of loss (e.g., refugees, migrants, and conflict survivors). The diagnostic criteria for PGD are mostly based on Western grieving populations, and cultural adaptations of PGD treatments are limited. Therefore, cross-cultural development and validation of PGD screening/assessment is critical to support future research on grief reactions and PGD, especially in non-Western contexts, and concerning the potential future global changes and challenges that appear to have a major impact on PGD. More transcultural research on PGD is needed to contextualize and will lead to culture-bound symptom identification of PGD, and the adaptation of current treatment protocols, which may ultimately improve health at the individual level, and health-care systems.

Thirty years of phase I radiochemotherapy trials: Latest development.

Radiochemotherapy is undergoing a complete expansion. Currently, possibilities of treatment combination are skyrocketting, with different anticancer and targeted molecules, different radiotherapy techniques, and dose escalation with each therapy. The development of a modern phase I radiochemotherapy trial becomes more and more complex and should be fully investigated. In the literature, there are no exhaustive reviews describing the necessity of their characteristics. The present article explores historical and current phase I clinical trials involving a combination of radiation therapy and anticancer therapies. Selected trials were identified by searching in PubMed databases. A total of 228 studies were identified in the last three decades, and a portrait of their characteristics is presented. As expected, most frequently studied malignancies were head and neck cancers, followed by non-small cell lung cancer and brain cancer. Toxicity is reported in more than 90% of the studies. Most studies were published since 2010, at the area of targeted therapies, but mainly concerned classical chemotherapies (cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil). The present review highlights some limits. Indeed, methodology seems not optimised and could be based on more accurate methods of dose-escalation. The present portrait of phase I radiochemotherapy trials suggests that radiochemotherapy notion must be reinvented and trials should be adapted to its complexity. Step by step method does not sound like an option anymore. Let us build the future of radiochemotherapy on past evidences.