Experiences of spirituality of in- and out-patients in mental health facilities: A thematic synthesis of qualitative studies

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.Recent decades have seen a significant rise in interest in spirituality in different mental health contexts. A comprehensive systematic review by Milner, Crawford, Edgley, Hare-Duke, and Slade (2019) shows that a gap exists between professionals and service users in the value they place on spirituality. The aim of this article is to synthesize existing literature on how people with mental health issues experience spirituality as a resource. A systematic literature search was performed in four international databases between January 2019 and October 2022. Nine studies were selected. This synthesis resulted in three themes, longing for connection, the need for vital relationships, and searching for a new meaning.publishedVersio

Psychometric properties of the disease-specific health-related quality of life instrument VascuQoL in a Swedish setting

Background: Traditional outcome measures in peripheral arterial disease (PAD) provide insufficient information regarding patient benefit. It has therefore been suggested to add patient-reported outcome measures. The main aim of this study was to validate the Swedish Vascular Quality of Life questionnaire (VascuQoL) version, a patient-reported PAD-specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instrument. Methods: Two-hundred PAD patients were consecutively recruited from two university hospitals. Out of the 200 subjects, 129 had intermittent claudication and 71 had critical limb ischemia. Mean age was 70 +/- 9 y and 57% of the participants were male. All patients completed SF-36 and VascuQoL at the vascular outpatient clinic, when evaluated for invasive treatment. Risk factors and physiological parameters were registered. Construct validity was tested by correlation analysis versus SF-36 and was also assessed with multitrait/multi-item scaling analysis (MTMI). Sensitivity analysis regarding disease severity identification was performed. Reliability was assessed with Cronbach's alpha and responsiveness by standardized response mean (SRM) calculations. Results: Significant correlations were demonstrated between relevant subscales of VascuQoL and SF-36. MTMI showed acceptable construct validity, but some scaling-errors. VascuQoL significantly (p < 0.001) discriminated claudicants from critical limb ischemia patients. Cronbach's alpha was 0.94 and SRM 1.02 (sum score). Conclusions: The Swedish version of VascuQoL is valid and quantifies central aspects of HRQoL in PAD patients. Sensitivity analysis showed high ability to differentiate between disease severity and SRM illustrated excellent responsiveness. The relative abundance of items however makes use in the everyday clinical setting somewhat difficult

Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy in London

This report estimates the monetised social and economic gains (benefits) of removing of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition for certain household in England. It compares this to the costs of allowing them to be able to apply for welfare benefits and various public services paid for from public funds. This is in the form of a Social Cost Benefit Analysis and was prepared as an independent analysis for the Greater London Authority. The households in scope are households and families with visas statuses including the right to work, some of whom are on visa routes that could lead to long-term settlement in the UK. These includes holders of Tier 1, 2 or 5 visas who come to the UK to work and their dependents; those who are in the UK because of family links; dependents or others who are linked to the primary visa holder and those estimated to come via the Hong Kong British National Overseas scheme. The report estimates that there are approximately 362,000 households, including 106,000 households with children, would potentially be affected by lifting the NRPF condition. Access to public funds would be restricted by existing qualifying conditions limiting access to welfare benefits and other services to households in need of this public assistance. It found that, over ten years, removing the NRPF condition just for households with children and other vulnerable individuals would result in a net gain of £872 million. Removing the condition for all those on these visas would result in a £428 million net gain

Exploring diffrent design spaces - VR as a tool during building design

During the design process of a building different medias are often used to depict the design. Traditional media, especially 2D requires high spatial skill and cognitive demand on the designers. For inexperienced designers, this process can be demanding, be difficult and can cause potential biased designperceptions that are significantly different from the reality. However, studies have also shown that different media and representation facilitates different cognitive reasoning processes about the design. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) is assumed to give another level of understanding and perception of design space from an egocentric perception than 2D plan drawings or bird-eye views, which have been argued to provide opportunities for better pattern and object recognition that is suitable when studying spatial organization in an allocentric reasoning process. This paper investigates, the different design medias and spatial space explorations further, by studying how students used the different representations and medias (e.g. sketches, 3d-models and VR) during their design process. By combining and using both of these two design space representations, (e.g. egocentric and allocentric) in the design process, it gives a possibility to achieve a more developed design outcome. The methods used in this study were observations and un-structured interviews during the design process and a follow up questionnaire at the end of the design project. The result show, by combining and using both VR and traditional design sketching tools that it is possible to support the two design space representations together and give the designer the possibilities to explore, understand, discuss and work with the design in a more elaborate way from both an egocentric and allocentric perspective. The paper also presents in what way VR can contribute to the Evidence Based Design (EBD) criteria and how the students used different design spaces representations for design and spatial reasoning about the healthcare design of the psychiatric facility they were designing

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others’ emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes

Sensitivity to others’ emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers’ pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults’ (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others' emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes

Sensitivity to others' emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers' pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults' (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals

Maternal Pre- and Postnatal Anxiety Symptoms and Infant Attention Disengagement from Emotional Faces

Background: Biases in socio-emotional attention may be early markers of risk for self-regulation difficulties and mental illness. We examined the associations between maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety symptoms and infant attention patterns to faces, with particular focus on attentional biases to threat, across male and female infants. Methods: A general population, Caucasian sample of eight-month old infants (N=362) were tested using eyetracking and an attention disengagement (overlap) paradigm, with happy, fearful, neutral, and phase-scrambled faces and distractors. Maternal self-reported anxiety symptoms were assessed with the Symptom Checklist-90/ anxiety subscale at five time points between gestational week 14 and 6 months postpartum. Results: Probability of disengagement was lowest for fearful faces in the whole sample. Maternal pre- but not postnatal anxiety symptoms associated with higher threat bias in infants, and the relation between maternal anxiety symptoms in early pregnancy and higher threat bias in infants remained significant after controlling for maternal postnatal symptoms. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associated with higher overall probability of disengagement from faces to distractors, but the effects varied by child sex. Limitations: The small number of mothers suffering from very severe symptoms. No control for the comorbidity of depressive symptoms. Conclusions: Maternal prenatal anxiety symptoms associate with infant's heightened attention bias for threat. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associate with infant's overall disengagement probability differently for boys and girls. Boys may show enhanced vigilance for distractors, except when viewing fearful faces, and girls enhanced vigilance for all socio-emotional stimuli. Long-term implications of these findings remain to be explored.</p

A Composite of Multiple Signals Distinguishes Causal Variants in Regions of Positive Selection

The human genome contains hundreds of regions whose patterns of genetic variation indicate recent positive natural selection, yet for most the underlying gene and the advantageous mutation remain unknown. We developed a method, composite of multiple signals (CMS), that combines tests for multiple signals of selection and increases resolution by up to 100-fold. By applying CMS to candidate regions from the International Haplotype Map, we localized population-specific selective signals to 55 kilobases (median), identifying known and novel causal variants. CMS can not just identify individual loci but implicates precise variants selected by evolution.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni