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This paper draws parallels between the market trend in the English NHS and Polanyi's (1957) The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press: Boston (originally published in 1944 in the United States as The Great Transformation, Rinehart: and Co: New York, and in 1945 in England as Origins of our time, Gollancz: London) account of how the rise of markets provokes a self-protective counter-reaction that tries to re-embed economic relations in social relations. We report findings from a qualitative study of NHS contracting, which examines the recent move to harder-edged contracts with greater use of financial penalties and incentives. In practice, use of these techniques tended to be confined to nationally-mandated sections of the contract rather than emerging from local bilateral agreements, and when things went wrong the parties relied more on cooperative behaviour than on the provisions of the contract to find solutions. Making the current contracting system work depended more on existing relational networks than on the incentive structures created by recent 'marketisation' initiatives, but the inability of the market to evolve as expected has encouraged policy makers to publish plans for further radical reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of UK mental health practitioners' experiences of working with the contested condition, dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). Our interviews focused on the issues of treatability, risk assessment and decision-making in multi-disciplinary teams. We discuss the approach of values-based medicine (VBM) as a useful framework for interpreting the data: respondents cited both explicit values (based on occupational training) and implicit values (based on personal beliefs and subjective perceptions). There was evidence of conflicting values -- within individuals, between occupational groups, and between individuals in occupational groups -- which led to widespread uncertainty and caution about whether and how those with 'dangerous' personality disorders could be treated. These disputes were resolved by a 'slide to pragmatism', whereby practitioners, reluctantly acknowledging their own empowerment in the process, sought to make whichever choice was least risky for their own professional reputation, and most pragmatic, given the resources available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst 'biographical disruption' remains important for explaining how people rebuild biography following the onset of chronic illness, it does not self-evidently explain the problem of managing a fluctuating chronic condition such as non-specific low back pain. Chronic illness rarely leads to long-term improvement; the trajectory is not always linear, and sudden or gradual improvements alongside deterioration are commonly experienced. In the case of low back pain, self-management often involves utilisation of non-pharmaceutical approaches, personal resources for accommodating pain and disability, as well as managing symptoms with clinical treatments to relieve pain. Such a multifaceted approach -- not only concerned with the reduction of symptoms -- shifts focus beyond the 'disease' state and a single point of disruption, drawing attention to the use of 'health maintenance actions' to facilitate a proactive response to illness management. We propose this new approach as an alternative way of understanding the experience of patients with fluctuating health conditions such as low back pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an international move towards home treatment of acute mental health difficulties. This has been based upon trial data which do little to develop understanding of how or why this approach is as effective as it seems to be. In order to explore this question the study interviewed patients who had recently used the services of a crisis resolution home treatment (CRHT) team in the English East Midlands. Triangulated parallel qualitative analyses of 33 semi-structured interviews conducted by service users trained in research techniques demonstrated that successful CRHT reflected practitioners' ability to provide clients with a sense of feeling safe, accepted and understood. Unhelpful outcomes followed when participants did not experience such unconditionally supportive relationships. These findings further endorse the primacy of relational factors in mental health practice. They are discussed in relation to the Dodo Bird verdict upon psychological therapies and systemic difficulties acknowledging an inconvenient truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study, designed as a pilot, aimed to explore lay perceptions of air quality from participants who were selected to represent three different social categories: age; health status; and geographical location. We compared responses from younger with older participants who held memories of about air quality prior to the Clean Air Act (1956). We also explored possible differences in perception due to health status by including some participants who identified themselves as having asthma. Finally, we compared possible differences in perception between two economically and geographically distinct areas of Greater Nottingham in England. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 22 participants recruited through schools, church groups and residential homes. Our findings suggest that no air (apart from the seaside) is perceived as automatically safe and therefore healthy. We found that perceptions of 'good' air seem to vary with age and health whereas experiences of air quality are associated with socio-economic status. Perceptions of air are shown to be suffused with historical significance, as well as embodying projections embedded from within the local environment and material context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]