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The article focuses on the publication of various policy papers and research findings related to education and government initiatives in England, United Kingdom (UK). Topics include data protection and audit by the Department for Education; an evaluation of the school leader mental health and wellbeing service; school buildings and capital funding; pupil absence statistics; and the parliamentary progress of the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill.

The article offers insight to policy papers published in the United Kingdom. Topics include "The Government's Response to the Health and Social Care Committee Report: Children and Young People's Mental Health;" "Physical Education, Physical Activity and Sport in Schools;" and "Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]: Progress of the Bill."

Health care payments continue to evolve and shift away from fee‐for‐service payment systems that typically reward volume and move to value‐based payment (VBP) models that incentivize high‐quality, cost‐effective care. While this is happening more for physical health services, there's more uncertainty about the role of behavioral health. A new white paper aims to tackle that question with information about existing models that have been implemented along with recommendations for federal and state policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization or day treatment programs can provide more intensive levels of care with multiple types of therapy, more frequent sessions with mental health professionals, and clinically informed care coordination and case management. This observation on residential treatment is included in a new white paper released this month by the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare (NABH). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing that the transition to the 988 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers an opportunity to grow crisis response services along a continuum, the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) last month released a series of 10 technical assistance collaborative papers providing important resources for stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insight to the policy papers on education published in Great Britain. Topics discussed include "Mental Health Act Reform: Children and Young People;" "Technical Education in England – T Levels;" and "Religious Education in Modern Britain," and "Duties to Report Child Abuse in England."

Boldly proclaiming to Congress that it's time to redesign the U.S. mental and behavioral health system, Senate lawmakers last month released a white paper outlining a national strategy to integrate mental health care, enhance delivery within local communities and improve how federal funds and other resources are planned for and allocated to increase the nation's investment through better mental and behavioral health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents review of Opportunity for All White Paper by National Children's Bureau. Topics include NCB supports for a world-class education system that empowers every child to fulfill their potential; the government must address the structural barriers and discrimination that are at the heart of our nation's inequalities; and intention to introduce legislation to establish a compulsory register for children who are electively home educated, reconfirmed in the white paper.

In this article, the author focuses on Pam, a 31-year veteran of the National Guard, working with posttraumatic stress disorder. It mentions that chance to explore her feelings on paper is dramatically improving her mental health. It also mentions that posttraumatic stress disorder is due to early childhood sexual trauma.

Purpose: Knowledge management (KM) implementation is the ideal solution for enhancing employee's abilities like mental health and performance. This study aims at testing the impact of KM mechanism on personnel's mental health at the Iran University of Medical Sciences. Design/methodology/approach: The study is a descriptive, correlational and applied one. The library and field studies have been used to collect data through the questionnaire. The proposed model and the data have been analyzed using Smart PLS software. A questionnaire has been conducted by an arbitrary sampling method. Findings: The results have shown that the main factors of KM have a direct, meaningful positive impact on innovation. Besides, the critical parameters of KM success, strategy and process have a significant and direct positive effect on the tendency for knowledge-sharing behavior. Further, the direct relationship of the trend for knowledge-sharing behavior with the mental health of employees has positively been confirmed. The results have also indicated that psychological empowerment has a positive and significant effect on the mental health of employees. Research limitations/implications: This study has investigated the four parameters (i.e. key factors for KM success, KM strategy, KM processes and psychological empowerment) impacting the knowledge-sharing intention, conduct of the people and the mental health of the employees. Scholars can investigate other personal and organizational parameters such as probable backgrounds of the knowledge-sharing intention, conduct and the mental health of the employees. Practical implications: These findings will be essential in the understanding of the interplay among various signals in theory and the understanding of patients' choices in the electronic health (e-health) community in practice. The results have implications for existing health management and e-health literature. The present paper will help policymakers, healthcare executives and project managers to effectively set their operations and make them maintainable, prevent unpredicted obstacles and better allocate their resources. Overall, the result of this paper will guide researchers who are working in the field of e-health. Originality/value: The findings can develop robust knowledge-sharing platforms and offer insightful suggestions for management practitioners in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The aim of this initiative was to assess whether a novel training program - Understanding Stigma and Strengthening Cognitive Behavioral Interpersonal Skills - could improve primary health care providers' confidence in the quality of mental health care they provide in the Caribbean setting by using the Plan-Do-Study-Act rapid cycle for learning improvement. Methods. We conducted a prospective observational study of the impact of this training program. The training was refined during three cycles: first, the relevance of the program for practice improvement in the Caribbean was assessed. Second, pilot training of 15 local providers was conducted to adapt the program to the culture and context. Third, the course was launched in fall 2021 with 96 primary care providers. Pre- and post-program outcomes were assessed by surveys, including providers' confidence in the quality of the mental health care they provided, changes in stigma among the providers and their use of and comfort with the tools. This paper describes an evaluation of the results of cycle 3, the official launch. Results. A total of 81 participants completed the program. The program improved primary care providers' confidence in the quality of mental health care that they provided to people with lived experience of mental health disorders, and it reduced providers' stigmatization of people with mental health disorders. Conclusions. The program's quality improvement model achieved its goals in enhancing health care providers' confidence in the quality of the mental health care they provided in the Caribbean context; the program provides effective tools to support the work and it helped to empower and engage clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on paper published by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) on children and COVID-19 transmission. It mentions COVID-19 infection rates had increased among school-age children since September 2020 and evidence of the negative educational and mental health impact of children missing school. It also mentions way to enable social distancing in schools through the use of rotas for older secondary school pupils.

Purpose: Among the research studies related to the relevance between religious belief and mental health, most of them highlight people with religious belief who tend to obtain mental comforting more easily. However, the research studies mentioned above were cross-sectional studies, and they only verified that religious beliefs and mental health are relevant, but they did not prove their cause-and-effect relationship. That is, they do not identify "due to people's religious beliefs, they have healthier mind" or "due to people's healthier minds, they have religious beliefs." Therefore, the study aims to explore the benefit evaluation of religious belief affecting mental health. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses propensity score matching (PSM) and treatment effect (ATT) to carry out the causal inference between religious beliefs and mental health. First, the propensity score (PS) is calculated from the impact factors that affect people's religious belief before establishing counterfactual analysis based on the PS to analyze the effect of religious beliefs to further understand the difference of mental health index between people with religious belief and without it, and confirm the cause-and-effect relationship between them. Findings: Religious beliefs and participation are ubiquitous within and across populations. The associates between religious participation and health are considerably in great magnitude. Most of the research in the past related to religious beliefs and mental health only verified that religious beliefs and mental health are relevant but not proved its cause-and-effect relationship. This paper aimed to explore the causal relationship between religious belief and mental health. The experimental results showed religious belief has treatment effect toward "daily functioning," "feeling affect," "spirituality" and "mental health." On a whole, religious belief can promote mental health. Originality/value: In academic and practical circles, there are a lot of research studies exploring the relationship between religious belief and mental health. However, there is no research investigating the cause-and-effect relationship between religious belief and mental health. It also causes some questioning toward the relevant research studies. Therefore, the outcome of this study not only can clarify the legitimacy, importance, and practicality on the researches in the past but also provide the practical support for psychology and counseling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research implicates inflammation as a potential pathway in the aetiology and pathophysiology of some mental illnesses. A systematic review was conducted to determine the association between parasitic infection and mental illnesses in humans in Africa and reviewed the state of the evidence available. The search focused on publications from Africa documenting the relationship between parasites from two parasite groups, helminths and protozoans, and four classifications of mental illness: mood affective disorders, neurotic and stress-related disorders, schizotypal disorders and unspecified mental illnesses. In the 26 reviewed papers, the prevalence of mental illness was significantly higher in people with parasitic infection compared to those without infection, i.e., 58.2% vs 41.8% (P < 0.001). An overall odds ratio found that the association of having a mental illness when testing positive for a parasitic infection was four times that of people without infection. Whilst the study showed significant associations between parasite infection and mental illness, it also highlights gaps in the present literature on the pathophysiology of mental illness in people exposed to parasite infection. This study highlighted the importance of an integrated intervention for parasitic infection and mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on mental health education to be taught in schools. Topics discussed include white paper "Mental Health Education in New York Schools: Review of Legislative History, Intent and Vision for Implementation" has been issued by Mental Health Association of New York State'; New York state schools teach about alcohol, tobacco and cancer screenings; and the views of Glenn Liebman, MHANYS chief executive officer, on curriculum development.

Can bird‐watching improve mental health? A new study has found that people who have nature‐based experiences report better well‐being and lower psychological distress than those who do not, a North Carolina State University news release stated. Bird‐watching in particular yielded promising results, with higher gains in subjective well‐being and more reduction in distress than more generic nature exposure, such as walks. Because bird‐watching is an easily accessible activity, the results are encouraging for college students, who are among those most likely to suffer from mental health problems, the news release indicated. "Bird‐watching is among the most ubiquitous ways that human beings interact with wildlife globally, and college campuses provide a pocket where there's access to that activity even in more urban setting, said Nils Peterson, corresponding author of the study and a professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University. The paper, "Birdwatching linked to increased psychological well‐being on college campuses: A pilot‐scale experimental study," was published in Environmental Psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the green paper entitled "Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision," jointly published by the British Departments of Education and Health. It mentions that the green paper is aimed to improve the mental health services in the country with a focus among schools and colleges that can be linked to a fund of more than £300 million. It adds that the paper promotes earlier intervention and prevention.

The article focuses on the remarks of Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) president Alison Michalska and Local Government Association's Community Wellbeing Board chairman Cllr Izzi Seccombe regarding the Green Paper on the improvement of children's mental health.

It is just over 40 years since Monte Shapiro retired from the Institute of Psychiatry where, until three years earlier, he had been the head of the psychology service to the Maudsley Hospital and the clinical training course. This focus on distress is evident in Shapiro's writings (see, for example, Shapiro, 1975a). This is true of his writings on personal questionnaires, where we have only a brief preliminary article and a faded typescript to turn to for practical instruction (Shapiro, 1961; Shapiro 1975b). And it isn't surprising, given Shapiro's other interests, that the role proposed for personal questionnaires in his fi nal paper is not their potential use in routine clinical assessment but in reinvigorating research into psychiatric depression (Shapiro, 1989). [Extracted from the article]

The article presents research papers on mental health published in different journals. One of the study looked at 72 patients who had 10-weekly sessions of cognitive behavior therapy by telephone or face-to-face. Another study examines the link of the involvement of primary care patients' involvement in decision making with the improvement in depression.

This article discusses the importance of restoring outdoor play for children. Playing out keeps kids thinner. A public health white paper accepts that the loss of opportunities for spontaneous outdoor play is one of the main causes of childhood obesity. There is a growing evidence that children's mental health and emotional well-being is enhanced by contact with the outdoors, and that the restorative effect appears to be strongest in natural settings. Green outdoor spaces not only foster creative play and improve interactions with adults, they also relieve the symptoms of the disorder. There's more to outdoor play than learning and health. It also speak to a deeper spiritual bond with landscapes and living things that leaves impoverished those who, whether by choice or compulsion, lead their lives indoors. INSET: WE NEED A CAMPAIGN.

Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Ferraro's paper is far from the only study finding that the presence of wild birds - particularly multiple bird species - can lift people's spirits. NATURE AND HEALTH For as long as she can remember, Danielle Ferraro has been captivated by birds. In a subsequent analysis of medical data provided by German authorities for 30,000 residents, Methorst and his colleagues confirmed that the larger the number of bird and plant species in a region, the more content people are. [Extracted from the article]

A recently released white paper by Leidos titled "Mental Health Stigma and the U.S. Security Clearance Review Process" highlights the progress made in reducing mental health stigma in the national security space, while also acknowledging the need for further steps to support cleared professionals and encourage potential applicants. The report emphasizes that mental health issues are not a one-size-fits-all concern and can vary between agencies. It also addresses the lack of transparency in the security clearance process and the need for better understanding among mental health professionals. The whole person concept, which recognizes that no single issue, including mental health, will result in a clearance denial or revocation, is crucial to improving communication and promoting diversity in the national security community. [Extracted from the article]

Severe psychiatric disorders, including depressive disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and intellectual disability, have devastating impacts on vital life domains such as mental, psychosocial, and cognitive functioning and are correlated with an increased risk of mortality. Accurate symptom monitoring and early diagnosis are essential to optimize treatment and enhance patient outcomes. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a potential diagnostic and monitoring tool for mental health and cognitive disorders, as EEG signals are ideal inputs for machine learning models. In this paper, we propose a novel machine learning model for mental disorder detection based on EEG signals. electroencephalography (EEG) signals for the detection of three major mental health conditions, namely intellectual disability (ID), schizophrenia (SZ), and bipolar disorder (BD); and (ii) to introduce two novel conditional local binary pattern-based feature extractors for precise classification of these three classes. We collected a novel electroencephalography (EEG) signal dataset from 69 individuals, including a control group and participants diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual disability. To extract informative features from the dataset, we developed two novel conditional feature extraction functions that improve upon traditional local binary pattern (LBP) functions by utilizing maximum and minimum distance vectors to generate patterns. We refer to these functions as quantum LBP (QLBP). Additionally, we employed wavelet packet decomposition to construct a multileveled feature extraction model. We evaluated several feature selection techniques, including neighborhood component analysis (NCA), Chi2, maximum relevance minimum redundancy (MRMR), and ReliefF, to select the most informative features. Finally, we employed iterative hard majority voting (IHMV) to obtain the final predicted results. Using our multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) signal dataset, we calculated channel-by-channel results and voted results for the classification of intellectual disability (ID), schizophrenia (SZ), and bipolar disorder (BD) classes. Our proposed model, employing the k-nearest neighbors (kNN) classifier with the leave-one subject out cross-validation (LOSO CV) strategy, achieved high accuracy rates of 97.47 %, 94.36 %, and 93.49 % for the ID, SZ, and BD classes, respectively. Employing the leave-one subject out cross-validation (LOSO CV) technique, our proposed model achieved classification accuracy rates of over 90 % for all cases, thereby providing strong evidence for the effectiveness of the proposed quantum local binary pattern (QLBP) feature extraction method. • Two quantum-inspired LBP variations were proposed. • Three EEG datasets about mental three mental diseases were collected. • Quantum LBPs-based hand-crafted classification model was presented. • Our model reached over 90 % accuracies with LOSO CV on the collected datasets. • Our proposal tested on a public dataset and attained satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the release of a white paper by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the U.S. The paper, entitled "Substance Abuse and Suicide Prevention: Evidence and Implications," focuses on knowledge and emphasizes the importance of continued research.

The article reports that the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has released three overview papers detailing approaches to treating individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. The overview papers were titled "Services Integration," "Systems Integration," and "The Epidemiology of Co-Occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Disorders."

Four of these studies also looked at childcare as a separate element of unpaid labour, but only one of these reported a link between increased childcare and poorer mental health (none reported a similar link in men). Women bear the brunt of unpaid labour - and it may be affecting their mental health The paper included studies that measured mental health outcomes in terms of either participants' symptoms or formal diagnoses, though studies with stress as their main outcome were excluded (although stress is linked to poor mental health, it is not considered a diagnosis in and of itself.). [Extracted from the article]

The objective of this paper is to describe the current situation of mental health in Ecuador. In Ecuador, although the model of community mental health has been integrated into primary health care services for a decade, its implementation does not seem to have the expected results. It is pertinent to explore the causes of this situation and to propose alternatives, taking into account the contributions of social medicine, collective health and participatory action research as emblematic models in Latin America in the field of mental health. For an effective implementation of community mental health in primary care in Ecuador, the role of universities is central, specifically in projects linked to the community and in pre-professional practices in health sciences careers. These projects allow the promotion of community mental health in the first level of health care from a critical perspective, open to complexity and based on the principle that the community is the main active subject of social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous advancements in disability discourse, the experiences of persons with psychosocial disabilities have been shown to be characterised by marginalisation, victimisation and violations of numerous human rights. In this paper, I explore the problem of stigma on the basis of psychosocial disability as a central underlying factor that contributes to numerous forms of neglect and under-prioritisation. Using recent theoretical frameworks, I begin by examining the manner in which stigma is conceptualised, at individual and societal levels. I then consider the manner in which stigma - which is clearly a violation of the right to dignity and equality - also contributes to the violation of numerous related rights, including the right to health; the right to education; the right to freedom and security of the person; the right to vote; and the right to work. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate the myriad intersecting forms of marginalisation faced by persons with psychosocial disabilities in South Africa, and pay attention to some of the potential avenues through which stigma can be addressed and its associated human rights violations alleviated. I argue that the lack of implementation in respect of South Africa’s National Mental Health Policy Framework as well as the under-prioritisation of mental health as a public concern, themselves, indicate the stigmatisation of psychosocial disability. I suggest that addressing stigma requires attention to the causes of its manifestation, taking into consideration the problems of ignorance, prejudice and discrimination simultaneously. Similarly, however, I contend that a fourth problem, namely, the structures which render stigma possible, must also be taken into account if ‘structural violence’ is to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to describe the application of system dynamics to enhance traditional cost benefit analysis (CBA) in planning a significant expansion of therapy capacity for mental health treatment in the UK. The aim of the initiative is to benefit the health of individuals, reduce costs to society and the exchequer and increase employment. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes a conventional CBA and comments on its merits and limitations. The development and use of a system dynamics model of the situation is then described, together with how this complements and supports the conventional analysis and its outcome. Findings - By focussing analysis on the dynamics of people flows over time, simulation is shown to assist understanding of the issue and its potential benefits. The numbers of patients expected to benefit is shown to depend on the treatment capacity, on the sources of people presenting, the number and type of treatment channels and their parameters, the success of treatment, the provision for patients moving between treatment channels, the dynamics of the labour market and employment opportunities. Originality/value - The paper is totally original and has provided decision support to a large investment on which implementation has begun. The overall methodological conclusion is that dynamic factors are often left out of CBA because they cause too much complexity for decision makers, whereas system dynamics allows these factors to be included without masking the clarity of the case. The paper suggests that CBA and system dynamics are very complementary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that provincial officials in Xintai Mental Health Hospital in Shandong Sheng, China had committed to mental hospitals people who were seeking to attract the attention of higher authorities to their complaints on corruption. Accordingly, some were forced to take psychiatric drugs and all were told they would not be released until they would sign pledges of dropping their complaints. Meanwhile, the officials at Xintai who were involved in the report had denied abuses.

The article presents information on the trend in Hollywood films regarding physical fitness. A film from 50 years ago will notice show how different yesterday's Hollywood icons look. It is a trend that scientists have confirmed by studying male and female bodies in soft porn magazines. In a famous paper, David Garner, then at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues showed that while the average weight of ordinary women increased between 1956 and 1978, the average weight of Playboy centrefolds decreased. In 2001 Richard Leit, a psychologist at American University, Washington DC, published a paper looking at how Playgirl centrefolds had changed between 1973 and 1997.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a new non-technological innovation concerning management processes in organization, focussing on occupational health promotion as a part of social responsibility (SR). Employer’s occupational health promotion includes systemic and systematic activities for good employees’ social, physical and mental health; synergy is suggested. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative analysis using SR, dialectical systems theory and human resource management is applied. Findings – A healthy company can be built by occupational health promotion, which must take place socially responsibly and requisitely holistically. Research limitations/implications – Qualitative analysis is applied in desk and field research on Slovenia. Practical implications – The novel socially responsible, requisitely holistic approach to managing employee’s health, exposing personal and corporate SR prevents oversights and resulting failures. Originality/value – Available literature offers no similar concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health professionals in Western countries and the Confederation of Independent States ([CIS], the former Soviet Union) have been examining the social and psychological consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident on the people who lived or are living in the exposed areas. Based on reviews of the literature, papers from international conferences, and communication between researchers in various countries, different perspectives have emerged on classifying distress and disorders and designing treatment programs. The origins of these differences lie in philosophical, historical, and political developments in the West and the CIS. These different approaches often have made it difficult for mental health professionals from the CIS and the West to work together. The goal of this paper is 2-fold: to identify and recognize the main differences in these approaches and to propose specific solutions for bridging the gap. The basic approach of mental health professionals in the CIS is a physiological, nosological one--it focuses on the etiology of the illness. Although their main diagnostic tool is the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, it has undergone adaptations that reflect the Soviet medical and physiological attitude toward psychiatry, These changes have resulted in the abrogation and addition of disorder categories. For example, in the CIS edition of the ICD-9, there is no mention of post traumatic stress disorder as a distinct disorder. In contrast, in the West, the dominant approach is a symptomatic, phenomenologic one. Emphasis is placed on a dynamic understanding of the disorder and treatment is conducted by mental health professionals (psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists). This contrasts with the approach used in the CIS, where psychological distress often is somaticized and treatment undertaken by physicians rather than mental health professionals. The authors of this paper call on researchers to come together and w... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interview with Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa and director of graduate training in experimental psychology, Dr. Cristina Atance. In it, she discusses: positions, Psynapse, and the lunch-time seminar series; increasing collaborating among universities through overcoming some barriers in competitiveness; management of the Childhood Cognition and Learning Laboratory; duties and responsibilities implicated with funding, mentor, influence on personal mentoring, and insights into and styles of research based on mentoring; core research interests of 1) "cognitive development," 2) "theory of mind," and 3) '"future thinking and planning in children"; definition of "theory of mind"; definition of "future thinking and planning in children"; "Maybe my Daddy give me a big piano:" The development of children's use of modals to express uncertainty ; and three most cited papers since 2,000: 1) Episodic future thinking, 2) The emergence of episodic future thinking in humans, and 3) My future self: Young children's ability to anticipate and explain future states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Could earmarking recreational marijuana taxes for investments in mental health offset the potential health consequences of marijuana legalization, while retaining its benefits to communities?, NYU News reported April 1. "If more and more states are passing recreational marijuana laws and adding excise taxes, then it would make sense that at least some of this is earmarked for mental health," says NYU School of Global Public Health's Jonathan Purtle, an associate professor of public health policy and management and the author of a new JAMAHealth Forum paper arguing that the earmarked taxes have the potential to help millions. Right now, most states don't earmark marijuana tax revenue for mental health. Just six states — Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, New York, Oregon, and Washington — mention mental health in their recreational marijuana tax codes, but only in combination with substance use, providing no guarantee that any revenue will be spent on mental health in addition to substance use services. "We found that earmarking a quarter of marijuana tax revenue is not nominal — it's a lot of money, and could help a lot of people," said Purtle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the influence of food on mental health and wellbeing and its importance in the counseling service being provided by psychological therapists. She tackles the need for therapists to have a holistic view of their clients, the tendency for therapists to overlook the influence of diet and nutrition, and research papers on the link between mental health, nutrition and dietary lifestyle.

In this music and healing series column, I will briefly touch on several psychosocial and mental health issues that may be impacting children and educators as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is timely to consider these impacts and begin identifying ways that we as a society can help in the long-term pursuit and support of mental wellness for all. I hope that this short paper will prompt some important conversations and preventive measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government plans to increase the reach of mental health services for children and young people are now underway with the trial of 59 new mental health support teams across 25 trailblazer sites in England. The government announced, in its 2017 Transforming Children and Young People's Mental Health Provision green paper, that Mental Health Support teams would be introduced and has set out aims to roll out these teams to cover a fifth to a quarter of the country by the end of 2022/23. The British Psychological Society has produced a briefing paper on how to maximise the impact of Mental Health Support Teams which will be available to all the teams through the NHS England information hub. [Extracted from the article]

The latest episodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bring further evidence that this conflict cannot be understood solely in political terms. In this paper, we review a significant set of psychological scientific articles that specifically examine this conflict, and we argue that such psychological insights may renew perspectives towards its understanding and, perhaps, resolution. After having set the issue in our introduction, we proceed in three steps, which correspond to the three kinds of insights that we argue could be gained from psychology. First, we consider the perceptions of the conflict by its actors. Second, we consider the dynamics of identity and aggressive behaviour. Third, we consider the effects of violence on mental health. Eventually, a conclusion sums up these insights and opens up the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a model of mental processes (). Despite its demonstrated utility, the methodology has lacked a method for statistical testing until now. In this paper we briefly describe the SIC then develop some basic statistical properties of the measure. These developments lead to a statistical test for rejecting certain classes of models based on the SIC. We verify these tests using simulated data, then demonstrate their use on data from a simple cognitive task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to use private and public bathroom facilities as needed is something that able bodied people take for granted in our society. The necessity to attend to these functions in a discrete and private fashion is something deeply impressed on us from earliest childhood and something that is foundational to our sense of human dignity. But this option is not open to those with severe impairments who are unable to sit independently and unable to express their needs through any formalized communication system. They may have the cognitive capacity to formulate basic cause-effect relationships and the will to exercise the necessary degree of self-control that makes conventional bathroom behavior possible but huge barriers currently exist to prevent them from exercising this ability and this will (Pivato, 2009). The present paper is about the various attempts to remove these barriers and the progress that has been made to date for one individual so affected, my daughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on person-centred psychotherapy. According to him, the classical person-centred approach, which allows the client to take their own time to find their way through the therapeutic process, does not work because of the time constraint. The author also opines on several research papers related to the effectiveness of person-centred therapy.

The article discusses the importance of being happy and ways on how to increase happiness. It is suggested that happiness can be attained by lifestyle changes and economic and political reforms for nations. Reasons why thinking happiness cannot be increase in long-term include adaptation to pleasure and the perception that happiness is inherently relative. Counter-agreements and actual evidence that happiness can and does increase are also tackled in this paper.

Objective. To identify validated information available on the relationship between social capital (SC) and health in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Methods. A systematic search for papers published from January 1990-June 2007 was conducted on the Medline, SciELO, LILACS, and the Cochrane Library databases. All of the research and review articles published by scientific journals that evaluated CS and its relationship to health in LAC were included in the analysis. Results. Fifteen articles were found (11 original research and 4 reviews). The health topics examined by the research articles were: (a) mortality and life expectancy, (b) mental health, (c) injuries, (d) nutritional status, and (e) immunization. The validity of these works, the results, and the principal conclusions were analyzed in depth. Conclusions. Despite limitations inherent to the CS concept and the studies identified, it was confirmed that scientific evidence exists to support the possible association between CS and health in LAC. CS could play a protective role in certain health areas, such as injury prevention and mental health; not withstanding, the relationship between CS and health could vary according to CS subtype and socioeconomic context and culture. It is therefore imperative to continue social epidemiology research that thoroughly investigates the relationship between social determinants and specific aspects of health in LAC context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When comparing sensitivities and specificities from multiple diagnostic tests, particularly in biomedical research, the different test kits under study are applied to groups of subjects with the same disease status for a disease or medical condition under consideration. Although this process gives rise to clustered or correlated test outcomes, the associated inference issues are well recognized and have been widely discussed in the literature. In mental health and psychosocial research, sensitivity and specificity have also been widely used to study the reliability of instruments for diagnosing mental health and psychiatric conditions and assessing certain behavioral patterns. However, unlike biomedical applications, outcomes are often obtained under varying reference standards or different diagnostic criteria, precluding the application of existing methods for comparing multiple diagnostic tests to such a research setting. In this paper, we develop a new approach to address these problems (including that of missing data) by extending recent work on inference using inverse probability weighted estimates. The approach is illustrated with data from two studies in sexual abuse and health research as well as a limited simulation study, with the latter used to study the performance of the proposed procedure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During the last 30 years Paul Grantham's company, SDS Seminars Ltd, has been involved in training over 150,000 mental health professionals. In Paul's own words, 'over that period, everything has changed: the skills that we train, the delivery methodology, the competitive landscape and the number of people who seek this training, both as part of their professional development and as a new direction they want to take'. He was part of a team that did pioneering research on benzodiazepine dependency; he led a community mental health team and started presenting research papers and then training courses for mental health professionals. [Extracted from the article]

In the mid-1960s Ida Macalpine and her son Richard Hunter, both psychiatrists and amateur historians, published a series of papers followed up by a bestselling book, George III and the Mad-Business, which argued that George III was not mad as was once thought. Instead, they claimed that George suffered from the inherited metabolic disease, acute intermittent porphyria, a diagnosis they later amended to the milder, though even rarer disorder, variegate porphyria. In spite of considerable criticism by porphyria experts based on their clinical experience, the claims of Macalpine and Hunter have been widely accepted by historians and were popularised by Alan Bennett's successful 1994 play and subsequent film, The Madness of King George. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]