Latest Articles

The impact of language on people living with long-term conditions: having the rug pulled out from underneath you

In this blog for anyone affected by, or interested in, long-term conditions, Anne Cooper, a person with Type 1 Diabetes, Bob Swindell, a person with Type 2 Diabetes, and Cathy Lloyd, Professor of Health Studies at the Open University, explore the impact language can have on people who live with a long-term condition, including helpful tips for healthcare professionals for choosing helpful and appropriate language.

Living with a long-term condition: five perspectives – part 2

In the second part of a two-part blog for our special series on living with long-term conditions, Brian Devlin, Ceri Dare, Genna White and Olivia Fulton, the four Cochrane UK Consumer Champions, and Emma Doble, Cochrane UK’s Patient and Consumer Coordinator, reflect on making treatment decisions, what they want healthcare professionals to know, and what they would tell their younger selves.

Living with a long-term condition: five perspectives – part 1

In the first part of a two-part blog for our special series on living with long-term conditions, Ceri Dare, Brian Devlin, Olivia Fulton and Genna White, the four Cochrane UK Consumer Champions, and Emma Doble, Cochrane UK’s Patient and Consumer Co-ordinator, reflect on the daily burden of work that comes with living with a long-term condition, how they’ve managed during the pandemic, and sources of information and support they find useful.

Contemplating pregnancy with long-term health conditions

In this blog, written for women, health professionals, policy makers and commissioners, Rachel Plachcinski and Ngawai Moss discuss the lack of evidence for planning pregnancy and maternity care for women with two or more long term health conditions. They explore women’s experiences through their pregnancy journeys: identifying challenges and gaps in understanding, plus what matters to women during pregnancy when living with long term health conditions.

Stopping antidepressants: what is the best way to come off them?

In this blog for patients and doctors, Dr Mark Horowitz, training psychiatrist and Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, looks at the latest Cochrane evidence on how to safely stop antidepressants and explores the implications for patients and doctors having to navigate this area so neglected by medical researchers. Mark’s personal experience of the difficulty in coming off antidepressants led to an interest in the little-understood field of stopping psychiatric medication, and the balance of harms and benefits.

Experiencing Evidently Cochrane blogs: uncertainty, suffering and solidarity

Recently, Cochrane UK undertook some qualitative work to explore what the comments posted on Evidently Cochrane blogs might tell us about what readers get from our blogs. In this blog, the Editors of Evidently Cochrane, Sarah Chapman and Selena Ryan-Vig, and qualitative researcher Fran Toye, talk about the methods they used, the insights they gained, and the subsequent changes made to the blogs to make them more useful to readers.