International human rights law and the right to mental health

Purpose: Why did the WHO claim that there is “no health without mental health”? In its reform of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), why did the Taiwan government add oral health into the Department of Mental Health? This paper explores normative accounts for the right to health which include physical and mental health as a highest state for everyone. Challenge the government should not excuse for inadequate resource to add oral to Department of mental health. Methods: We apply an analysis of international human rights law and international conventions to justify how mental health is a human right. Results: The right to the highest attainable standard of health is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, as well as the constitution of the World Health Organization. A person’s state of health is conceptualized with a holistic perspective. Mental health, by definition and elements, is critical to an individual’s personal dignity, lifestyle, and living condition. Thus, as the fundamental basis of personal development and functioning, physical and mental health are recognized as a human right in international human rights law. The governments need to take responsibilities to build a mental healthy environment to their people. Conclusions: We found that in practice, governments (including Taiwan) often ignore people’s mental health needs when initiating health or welfare policies, especially if mental health is not regarded as a human right by the government. In fact, some governments refuse to honor mental health as a right although it is a legal obligation under international law. We urge Taiwan’s government to return the structure of the MOHW back to include an independent Department of Mental Health. To influence governmental policies, a change is needed in the research community, because researchers and practitioners in mental health and psychiatry still rarely view mental health from an international human rights perspective as well as for all public not disease oriented. We hope to initiate a review of the basic requirements of the right to mental health in terms of its positive, rather than negative, aspects

Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns among Escherichia coli urinary isolates from community-onset health care-associated urinary tract infection

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is traditionally classified as community-acquired (CA) and hospital-acquired (HA). Community-onset health care-associated (HCA) infection is a new category that has gained increasing attention. The study aimed to compare the disk susceptibility of nonrepetitive Escherichia coli urinary isolates from HCA-UTI (n = 100) with that of E. coli isolates from CA-UTI (n = 85) and HA-UTI (n = 106). We found that the susceptibility pattern of HCA-UTI E. coli isolates was similar to that of HA-UTI E. coli isolates, but significantly different from that of CA-UTI E. coli isolates. In particular, the proportion of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing isolates was significantly higher in HCA-UTI than that in CA-UTI (30.0% vs. 3.5%, p < 0.001). We recommend that when treating HCA-UTI, it is necessary to take urine cultures for susceptibility testing to guide definite antibiotic therapy

The Internal Audit Performance: The Effectiveness of ERM and IT Environments

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors determining the performance of the internal audit (IA) in the context of internal auditors’ work environments. This includes Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) implementation, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the use of auditing software and the internal auditors’ IT (information technology) competence. Although a number of recent studies have reported tremendous changes in the roles of the IA, there is still little research on the influential factors of IA implementation and its effectiveness from a contextual perspective. This paper develops and tests a theoretical framework with samples from Taiwan. Data were analyzed using the structural equation model (SEM). This research confirms that the complete ERM implementation and effectiveness of ERP implementation have significant impacts on the performance of IA. It also highlights the importance of internal auditors’ IT competence in improving the performance of IA

Interleaved EPI based fMRI improved by multiplexed sensitivity encoding (MUSE) and simultaneous multi-band imaging

© 2014 Chang et al. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive and powerful imaging tool for detecting brain activities. The majority of fMRI studies are performed with single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI) due to its high temporal resolution. Recent studies have demonstrated that, by increasing the spatial-resolution of fMRI, previously unidentified neuronal networks can be measured. However, it is challenging to improve the spatial resolution of conventional single-shot EPI based fMRI. Although multi-shot interleaved EPI is superior to single-shot EPI in terms of the improved spatial-resolution, reduced geometric distortions, and sharper point spread function (PSF), interleaved EPI based fMRI has two main limitations: 1) the imaging throughput is lower in interleaved EPI; 2) the magnitude and phase signal variations among EPI segments (due to physiological noise, subject motion, and B0 drift) are translated to significant in-plane aliasing artifact across the field of view (FOV). Here we report a method that integrates multiple approaches to address the technical limitations of interleaved EPI-based fMRI. Firstly, the multiplexed sensitivity-encoding (MUSE) post-processing algorithm is used to suppress in-plane aliasing artifacts resulting from time-domain signal instabilities during dynamic scans. Secondly, a simultaneous multi-band interleaved EPI pulse sequence, with a controlled aliasing scheme incorporated, is implemented to increase the imaging throughput. Thirdly, the MUSE algorithm is then generalized to accommodate fMRI data obtained with our multi-band interleaved EPI pulse sequence, suppressing both in-plane and through-plane aliasing artifacts. The blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal detectability and the scan throughput can be significantly improved for interleaved EPI-based fMRI. Our human fMRI data obtained from 3 Tesla systems demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed methods. It is expected that future fMRI studies requiring high spatial-resolvability and fidelity will largely benefit from the reported techniques.published_or_final_versio