Poverty and mental health: the work of the female sanitary inspectors in Bradford (c. 1901–1912)

This is the final version of the article. Available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.Although there are many excellent studies of the work of pioneer women public health officers, few accounts dwell on mental health issues or discuss any relationship that such staff might have understood to exist between poverty and mental health in the early twentieth century. This is a remarkable omission considering that social and feminist historians have highlighted the problems created by the way early practitioners sought to manage poverty and arguably the poor. Drawing on records created by Female Sanitary Inspectors (FSIs) in Bradford, this study chronicles distressing economic and social conditions but also reveals encounters between the staff and people experiencing mental health problems and mental health crises. The ways in which the FSIs chose to both make and deny links between the abject poverty witnessed in the slum districts and cases of mental disorder forms an important strand to the analysis that follows. Interestingly, it is the well-being of the staff that emerges as a persistent and even over-riding concern.This work was generously supported by Wellcome Trust Grant 074999. This was a personal fellowship entitled 'The Medical Officer of Health and the Organisation of Health Visiting as a Comprehensive Community Health Service, 1906-1974'

Mental and substance use disorders from early adolescence to young adulthood among indigenous young people: Final diagnostic results from an 8-year panel study

Objective: Our objective was to investigate change in prevalence rates for mental and substance abuse disorders between early adolescence and young adulthood in a cohort of indigenous adolescents who participated in an 8-year panel study.Method: The data are from a lagged, sequential study of 671 indigenous adolescents (Wave 1) from a single culture in the Northern Midwest USA and Canada. At Wave 1 (mean age 11.3 years, Wave 4 (mean age 14.3 years), Wave 6 (mean age 16.2 years), and at Wave 8 (mean age 18.3 years) the tribally enrolled adolescents completed a computer-assisted personal interview that included DISC-R assessment for 11 diagnoses. Our yearly retention rates by diagnostic wave were: Wave 2, 94.7 %; Wave 4, 87.7 %; Wave 6, 88.0 %; Wave 8, 78.5 %.Results: The findings show a dramatic increase in lifetime prevalence rates for substance use disorders. By young adulthood, over half had met criteria of substance abuse or dependence disorder. Also at young adulthood, 58.2 % had met lifetime criteria of a single substance use or mental disorder and 37.2 % for two or more substance use or mental disorders. The results are compared to other indigenous diagnostic studies and to the general population.Conclusions: A mental health crisis exists within the indigenous populations that participated in this study. Innovations within current mental health service systems are needed to address the unmet demand of adolescents and families.Peer reviewedSociolog

Creating 2D occupancy plots using plot2DO

Chromatin organization and epigenetic marks play a critical role in stem cell pluripotency and differentiation. Chromatin digestion by micrococcal nuclease (MNase) followed by high-throughput sequencing (MNase-seq) is the most widely used genome-wide method for studying nucleosome organization, that is, the first level of DNA packaging into chromatin. Combined with chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), MNase-ChIP-seq represents a high-resolution method for investigating both chromatin organization and the distribution of epigenetic marks and histone variants. The plot2DO package presented here is a flexible tool for evaluating the quality of MNase-seq and MNase-ChIP-seq data, and for visualizing the distribution of nucleosomes near the functional regions of the genome. The plot2DO package is open-source software, and it is freely available from https://github.com/rchereji/plot2DO under the MIT license.Fil: Beati, Maria Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Chereji, Răzvan V.. National Institutes of Health; Estados Unido

How Important are Insurers in Compensating Claims for Personal Injury in the U.K.?*

To what extent does the institution of insurance influence a system of compensation for personal injury? On the one hand, some academics have suggested that insurance has been no more than a “makeweight” argument in the development of tort liability. On the other hand, others have claimed that insurance has had a substantial effect, even if this is often hidden or not discussed openly. This article lends support to one side of the debate by describing the enormous importance of insurers to personal injury litigation in the United Kingdom. It argues that all cases, in their wider context, have been affected by the practices of insurance companies. This is the case even though insurance is rarely mentioned by judges and largely ignored by textbooks on tort law. Insurers provide the lifeblood of the system.The article examines statistics relating to the number of tort claims brought each year and it notes the extent of insurer involvement. As the paymasters of the system, insurers not only compensate claimants but also fund the cost of legal representation, often for both sides. Insurers have reduced their use of defence lawyers and the extent that they institute formal legal proceedings. However, it is their bureaucracy which determines whether, when and for how much claims are settled, and it is their offices, rather than courts of law, that are the key places for tort in practice. The scope for compensating those injured very much depends upon the incidence of insurance protection, and the amount of damages paid can only be understood against the insurance background. Finally, the article considers the influence of insurers upon potential changes in the law. The importance of insurers ought not to be underestimated; without insurance, the system of compensation for personal injury would have collapsed long ago. The Geneva Papers (2006) 31, 323–339. doi:10.1057/palgrave.gpp.2510073