6,256 research outputs found
Primary group size, social support, gender and future mental health status in a prospective study of people living in private households throughout Great Britain
Background. Structural characteristics of social networks such as primary group size have received
less attention than measures of perceived social support. Previous research suggests that associations
between social network size and later common mental disorder status may differ according to
sex and initial mental state.
Method. Adults participating in the 2000 British National Household Survey of psychiatric
morbidity were randomly selected for follow-up 18 months later. The revised Clinical Interview
Schedule (CIS-R) and the Interview Measure of Social Relations (IMSR) were administered at
baseline and follow-up. Primary group size was defined as the total number of close relatives and
friends. A four-level scale of common mental disorder was modelled with ordinal logistic regression,
based on weighted data (n=2413).
Findings. After adjusting for confounders, a primary group size of three or less at time 1 predicted
worse mental health at time 2. This effect was greatest in men who were initially non-cases at
baseline (averaged odds 4.5) and in women who were initially cases at baseline (average odds 2.9).
Primary group size at time 2 was significantly predicted by level of common mental disorder at time
1 in women but not in men. Thus, confounding by baseline disorder does not explain risk of
developing poor mental health in socially isolated men.
Conclusion. This study replicates the strong effects of primary group size on future mental health
that emerge when men and women are studied separately and when subjects are categorized
according to baseline mental health status
Scalable designs for quantum computing with rare-earth-ion-doped crystals
Due to inhomogeneous broadening, the absorption lines of rare-earth-ion
dopands in crystals are many order of magnitudes wider than the homogeneous
linewidths. Several ways have been proposed to use ions with different
inhomogeneous shifts as qubit registers, and to perform gate operations between
such registers by means of the static dipole coupling between the ions.
In this paper we show that in order to implement high-fidelity quantum gate
operations by means of the static dipole interaction, we require the
participating ions to be strongly coupled, and that the density of such
strongly coupled registers in general scales poorly with register size.
Although this is critical to previous proposals which rely on a high density of
functional registers, we describe architectures and preparation strategies that
will allow scalable quantum computers based on rare-earth-ion doped crystals.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
The population impact of common mental disorders and long-term physical conditions on disability and hospital admission
Background: Long-term physical conditions (LTCs) consume the largest share of healthcare budgets. Although common mental disorders (CMDs) and LTCs often co-occur, the potential impact of improved mental health treatment on severe disability and hospital admissions for physical health problems remains unknown.
Method: A cross-sectional study of 7403 adults aged 16ā95 years living in private households in England was performed. LTCs were ascertained by prompted self-report. CMDs were ascertained by structured clinical interview. Disability was assessed using questions about problems with activities of daily living. Population impact and potential preventive gain were estimated using population-attributable fraction (PAF), and conservative estimates were obtained using ātreated non-casesā as the reference group.
Results: Of the respondents, 20.7% reported at least one LTC. The prevalence of CMDs increased with the number of LTCs, but over two-thirds (71.2%) of CMD cases in people with LTCs were untreated. Statistically significant PAFs were found for CMDs and recent hospital admission [13.5%, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 6.6ā20.0] and severe disability (31.3%, 95% CI 27.1ā35.2) after adjusting for LTCs and other confounders. Only the latter remained significant when using the most conservative estimate of PAF (21.8%, 95% CI 14.0ā28.9), and this was reduced only slightly when considering only participants with LTCs (18.5%, 95% CI 7.9ā27.9).
Conclusions: Better treatments for CMDs in people with LTCs could achieve almost the same population health gain in terms of reducing severe disability as those targeted at the entire population. Interventions to reduce the prevalence of CMDs among people with LTCs should be part of routine medical care
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