The Sydney International ADHD Centre works together with Evermind to provide:
Psychiatric assessment for adult patients (16 and over) for diagnosis, diagnostic clarification, and second opinion regarding diagnosis, treatment, and management. Evermind’s services include psychopharmacological treatment review, and recommendation for treatment-resistant patients.
Evermind has international expertise in a range of mental health issues, including Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar Affective Disorder, Psychosis (including Schizophrenic Disorders), Adult ADHD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic and Phobic Disorders, Adjustment Disorders, Acute Stress Disorders. And Treatment-resistant mental disorders.
Consults can be face-face or via Video-conference. A referral from a GP is required
Time, Space, Energy, and Cost. Telepsychiatry is a field of Telehealth that can be defined as: “consultation between a patient and a psychiatrist conducted by video-conference” (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists – RANZCP).
Telepsychiatry overcome the barriers of Time, Space, Energy and Cost and provides equity, accessibility and quality. Telepsychiatry has been supported worldwide by a number of international public, private and non-governmental organisations, including the RANZCP.
Diagnosis in Psychiatry is usually made based on the patient’s history and mental state examination. Both can reliably be done through videoconference. A number of studies have shown that Telepsychiatry can be as effective as face-to-face consultation as well as provide good outcomes.
Telepsychiatry greatly improves access to psychiatric services for people, who could not attend a face-to-face appointment for one reason or another, including living in rural/remote areas, a pandemic, etc. About one-third of the Australian population (8 million people) live in rural/remote areas and as such would have more difficult to access health services, mainly mental health services.
About 5 years ago we anticipated the spread use of Telepsychiatry and now we predict it will
go Worldwide. Evermind offers videoconference consultations for diagnosis and treatment of mental
disorders and second opinion regarding diagnosis and treatment.
You may be one of the patients who do not respond to treatments that are effective for 70-80% of the cases. This may be due to problems at the brain receptors (where the drug is supposed to act) or the drug metabolism.
After absorption in the small intestine, the drugs travel to the liver where they are broken down into more water-soluble products that can be eliminated by the urine. A fraction of the parent-drug escapes this breakdown, reaches the blood stream and is distributed to all the cells in the body; and wherever there is a receptor to which the drug can chemically bond, the drug will exert its action, i.e., will activate or inhibit this receptor.
When people, for genetic reasons, have too much (rapid metaboliser) or too little (poor metaboliser) liver enzymes that metabolise that specific drug (e.g., antidepressant), we can have a problem – lack of efficacy or unexpected side effects for that dosage, respectively.
Both compromise the outcome. Drug response can be further complicated by other factors such as transportation from the blood into the brain, and number and sensitivity of the brain receptors where the drug will act on, etc.
Although pharmacogenetics is in its infancy, we already have some knowledge that can help some patients with a treatment resistant condition.
