Simple and Practical Mental Health welcomes contributions from all mental health professionals for publication by us. Please share your knowledge and clinical wisdom with other mental health professionals so that we can all better help our patients.
All topics in mental health are of interest. Evaluation, interviewing, diagnosis, biological treatments, psychosocial treatments, etc are all topics we cover. But, We recommend that you email us in advance (mago@simpleandpractical.com) the proposed topic and an outline of what will be covered so that we can tell if you if it seems like something that will fit our mission.
Content
We don’t review any one paper but rather an entire topic. The exceptions on SPME are very rare — if there was a unique, landmark study that changes clinical practice.
What helps us to plan how to write something for SPME is to imagine that a colleague is going to see a patient in 20 minutes and stops us in the hallway to ask for advice. What would we say to them? No fluff. Very direct and prescriptive. “I recommend you do X because of Y.”
Practical: Most importantly, all of the content of any submission must be of practical, clinical use.
Prescriptive: What do YOU do in your patients? Based on what is known today, what do you recommend that the readers should do?
Opinionated: Please don’t hedge. Give us YOUR opinion.
Self-contained: Please give the readers all the information to actually implement your recommendations. For example, if a medication is recommended, please include the details of how exactly to prescribe it.
Opinion and clinical experience: We are eager to know your opinion and your clinical experience. Please just start the sentences with phrases like, “In my opinion…”, “In my clinical experience….”, “My recommendation is…”, “In my patients…”, and so on.
Style
The best instructions I can give is that the article should follow the style of simpleandpractical.com. Please read several of our articles to get an idea of the type of material we are looking for.
1. SIMPLE
The language should be conversational. For example, the words “however” and “therefore” are not allowed.
No statistical terms like p value, confidence interval, effect size, number needed to treat, etc. Simply saying “statistically significant” and giving the percentages of patients who have an outcome are sufficient
2. PRACTICAL
The length can be as much as you need. But, we should only include material that we think clinicians need to know. In the case of this article, clinicians means those who will refer patients for ECT rather than administer the ECT themselves.
Simple: Please write in a simple, direct, conversational style. As if giving advice to a colleague whom you met in the hallway.
Brief: We try to provide the guidance as briefly as possible, recognizing that the poor clinician who is working 40 to 60 hours a week has no time or patience to read extensive material. I should have called it simple, brief, and practical.
Please cut out anything in your article that is not essential for busy clinicians to know or is more detail than what they can possibly remember. For example, it may be useful to know that all three large randomized, double-blind clinical trials that evaluated a particular intervention found that it was efficacious but knowing how many subjects participated in each of those clinical trials is probably not essential. But, sometimes, material that is not considered essential for clinicians to read but may be helpful to them can be included in parentheses with the label “Optional to read”
Things to include
Recommendations: Please recommend what you think are the best books, apps, websites, organizations, and other resources related to your topic. But, only the few that you think are the best rather than a long list.
Vignettes: Please include one or more case vignettes if they might help to clarify the material.
References
Wherever possible, insert references in the text of the article and cite them at the end, arranged alphabetically. For references, please use FULL PubMed format with no change at all. Here is an example:
Laoutidis ZG, Luckhaus C. 5-HT2A receptor antagonists for the treatment of neuroleptic-induced akathisia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2014 May;17(5):823-32. doi: 10.1017/S1461145713001417. Epub 2013 Nov 29. Review. PubMed PMID: 24286228.
How many references and how to choose? Citing a ton of references is not needed and is, in fact, distracting. If there are too many studies on any topic, please just cite one or more of the following:
– The highest quality ones (randomized, controlled trials; largest sample size available)
– Meta-analyses of the studies
– The most recent reviews.
Articles versus the daily emails
The daily emails from SPMH come from articles on the website that are enduring content. So, we first write the content on the website and then send it in parts by email.
Everyone doesn’t get the same email on a particular day. They are fed into a predetermined sequence. When a person joins SPMH, s/he starts getting emails from day 1.
You can see the entire sequence of emails at https://simpleandpractical.com/365
We try to keep each email at about 250 to 350 words so that it can be read in 3 to 5 minutes.
The absolute ideal thing is to write content so that every 250- to 350-word segment is self-contained. A clinical nugget. But, that is often not possible, so we have been doing more multi-part email series on a single topic.
We plan to offer the same material in a more organized fashion as a long document that comes with CME.
So, you could write an article on how to do X and we can cut it up into daily emails.
Important rules
We hope that Authors will understand that we have to have the following “rules”
– Simple and Practical Mental Health reserves the right to edit any submissions, both for scientific content and for language. But, before the article is finally published, the Author will be shown the edits. If we and the Author cannot agree on the edits, either party may withdraw from the material being published on our website.
– For those articles contributed without compensation, the author continues to own the copyright. But, for articles for which we provide compensation, Simple and Practical Medical Education, LLC, would own the copyright. That material may not be reused elsewhere without express written consent from us.
– The decision of the Editor-in-Chief, Rajnish Mago, MD, will be final in any and all matters related to submissions for publication.
Copyright © 2019 to 2021, Simple and Practical Medical Education, LLC. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without express written permission.
Disclaimer: The content on this website is provided as general education for medical professionals. It is not intended or recommended for patients or other laypersons or as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Patients must always consult a qualified health care professional regarding their diagnosis and treatment. Healthcare professionals should always check this website for the most recently updated information.
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