Symptoms and Subjective Quality of Life in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Longitudinal Study

PMCID: PMC3621668This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Implementing family involvement in the treatment of patients with psychosis: a systematic review of facilitating and hindering factors

This paper presents independent research and was partially funded by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (NIHR CLAHRC) North Thames at Bart's Health NHS Trust

Friends and Symptom Dimensions in Patients with Psychosis: A Pooled Analysis

PMCID: PMC3503760This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet in a population of South of Italy: factors involved and proposal of an educational field-based survey tool

We developed and validated a tool assessing the adherence to the Mediterranean diet based on current nutritional recommendations for health promotion (MEDI-Quest). Four-hundred-and-eleven clinically healthy subjects completed both the MEDI-Quest-score and the validated MedDietScore (MDS). A good accordance between MEDI-Quest and MDS was observed (R = 0.638), as well as for the percentage of individuals having similar scores with both methods for each food group. Regarding socio-cultural-factors, higher adherence was observed in people with older-age (OR = 1.030, p < .0001), more qualifier-employment (OR = 1.136, p < .005), higher-income (OR = 1.925, p < .0001), interest in reading-food-labels (OR = 2.057, p < .0001), and having frequent physical activity (OR = 1.608, p < .05). In conclusion, our findings show that (1) the MEDI-Quest score well correlate with MDS, and (2) the adherence to the Mediterranean diet is not particularly high due to less cultural roots. It could be necessary to improve people's knowledge about food and nutrition, taking into consideration believes embedded in their family, tradition and religion

Carer involvement in the transition from inpatient to community mental healthcare: Experiences of stakeholders

Introduction: The involvement of informal carers (family and friends) in the care of people with severe mental illness (SMI) contributes to positive clinical outcomes, such as relapse prevention and symptom reduction. To date, the care pathway between inpatient and community care is not clearly defined impeding the smooth transition for patients, whilst carers are still barely involved in shared decision-making processes

How to involve carers in the acute care: An online training for clinicians across four sites in England

Involving carers in the care of people with severe mental illness is known to bring positive treatment and psychosocial outcomes. However, evidence-based procedures to guide clinicians on how to involve carers in the acute care are lacking. Objectives: To provide an online training to clinicians working in the acute care regarding the organisation of a standardised meeting with the service user and their carer within the first week of hospitalisation, and explore their views after its implementation

Social networks of patients with psychosis: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Social networks are important for mental health outcomes as they can mobilise resources and help individuals to cope with social stressors. Individuals with psychosis may have specific difficulties in establishing and maintaining social relationships which impacts on their well-being and quality of life. There has been a growing interest in developing social network interventions for patients with psychotic disorders. A systematic literature review was conducted to investigate the size of social networks of patients with psychotic disorders, as well as their friendship networks. METHODS: A systematic electronic search was carried out in MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsychINFO databases using a combination of search terms relating to 'social network', 'friendship' and 'psychotic disorder'. RESULTS: The search identified 23 relevant papers. Out of them, 20 reported patient social network size. Four papers reported the mean number of friends in addition to whole network size, while three further papers focused exclusively on the number of friends. Findings varied substantially across the studies, with a weighted mean size of 11.7 individuals for whole social networks and 3.4 individuals for friendship networks. On average, 43.1 % of the whole social network was composed of family members, while friends accounted for 26.5 %. CONCLUSIONS: Studies assessing whole social network size and friendship networks of people with psychosis are difficult to compare as different concepts and methods of assessment were applied. The extent of the overlap between different social roles assessed in the networks was not always clear. Greater conceptual and methodological clarity is needed in order to help the development of effective strategies to increase social resources of patients with psychosis

Subjective quality of life in war-affected populations

PMCID: PMC3716711This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Alterations in proton leak, oxidative status and uncoupling protein 3 content in skeletal muscle subsarcolemmal and intermyofibrillar mitochondria in old rats.

BACKGROUND: We considered of interest to evaluate how aging affects mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle. METHODS: We measured mitochondrial oxidative capacity and proton leak, together with lipid oxidative damage, superoxide dismutase specific activity and uncoupling protein 3 content, in subsarcolemmal and intermyofibrillar mitochondria from adult (six months) and old (two years) rats. Body composition, resting metabolic rate and plasma non esterified fatty acid levels were also assessed. RESULTS: Old rats displayed significantly higher body energy and lipids, while body proteins were significantly lower, compared to adult rats. In addition, plasma non esterified fatty acid levels were significantly higher, while resting metabolic rates were found to be significantly lower, in old rats compared to adult ones. Significantly lower oxidative capacities in whole tissue homogenates and in intermyofibrillar and subsarcolemmal mitochondria were found in old rats compared to adult ones. Subsarcolemmal and intermyofibrillar mitochondria from old rats exhibited a significantly lower proton leak rate, while oxidative damage was found to be significantly higher only in subsarcolemmal mitochondria. Mitochondrial superoxide dismutase specific activity was not significantly affected in old rats, while significantly higher content of uncoupling protein 3 was found in both mitochondrial populations from old rats compared to adult ones, although the magnitude of the increase was lower in subsarcolemmal than in intermyofibrillar mitochondria. CONCLUSIONS: The decrease in oxidative capacity and proton leak in intermyofibrillar and subsarcolemmal mitochondria could induce a decline in energy expenditure and thus contribute to the reduced resting metabolic rate found in old rats, while oxidative damage is present only in subsarcolemmal mitochondria