Supporting people with depression and anxiety: a guide for practice nurses

This guide has been devleoped for GP practice nurses following a three year research study called ProCEED (Proactive care and its evaluation for enduring depression), conducted by Dr Marta Buszewicz and a research team at University College London

"When you haven't got much of a voice": An evaluation of the quality of Independent Mental Health Advocate (IMHA) Services in England

Advocacy serves to promote the voice of service users, represent their interests and enable participation in decision-making. Given the context of increasing numbers of people detained under the Mental Health Act and heightened awareness of the potential for neglect and abuse in human services, statutory advocacy is an important safeguard supporting human rights and democratising the social relationships of care. This article reports findings from a national review of Independent Mental Health Advocate (IMHA) provision in England. A qualitative study used a two-stage design to define quality and assess the experience and impact of IMHA provision in eight study sites. A sample of 289 participants – 75 focus group participants and 214 individuals interviewed – including 90 people eligible for IMHA services, as well as advocates, a range of hospital and community-based mental health professionals, and commissioners. The research team included people with experience of compulsion. Findings indicate that the experience of compulsion can be profoundly disempowering, confirming the need for IMHA. However, access was highly variable and more problematic for people with specific needs relating to ethnicity, age and disability. Uptake of IMHA services was influenced by available resources, attitude and understanding of mental health professionals, as well as the organisation of IMHA provision. Access could be improved through a system of opt-out as opposed to opt-in. Service user satisfaction was most frequently reported in terms of positive experiences of the process of advocacy rather than tangible impacts on care and treatment under the Mental Health Act. IMHA has the potential to significantly shift the dynamic so that service users have more of a voice in their care and treatment. However, a shift is needed from a narrow conception of statutory advocacy as safeguarding rights to one emphasising self-determination and participation in decisions about care and treatment

A women’s worker in court: A more appropriate service for women defendants with mental health issues?

Aims Court liaison services aim to reduce mental illness in prison through early treatment and/or diversion into care of defendants negotiating their court proceedings. However, liaison services may inadvertently contribute to gender inequalities in mental health in the prison system. This is because women often do not access liaison services. This is attributed to services failing to recognise that women have different needs from men. To address this, it is essential that the needs of women in contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) are clearly articulated. However, there is a dearth of research that considers women’s needs at this stage of their journey through the CJS. This paper aims to identify these needs before women enter prison. It does so through an analysis of a pilot Women’s Support Service based at a Magistrates’ Court, a response to concerns that women were not accessing the local liaison service. Characteristics of women defendants attending the service are described, specifically their home environments, general and mental health needs. Their support needs when in contact with the CJS and the links the service must forge with local community organisations to provide this, are also presented. This knowledge will develop/ tailor existing services available to women defendants to improve their access to these and optimise the benefits they can derive from them. Methods Proformas were completed by a women specialist worker for 86 women defendants assessed in 4 months. Information was collected on characteristics including education, domestic violence, accommodation, physical and mental health.. This specialist worker recorded the range of needs identified by defendants at assessment and the services to which women were referred. Results Access to the Women’s Support Service is high, with only 11.3% of women refusing to use the service. Women attending have high levels of physical and mental health issues. Their mental health issues have not being addressed prior to accessing the service. Women often come from single households and environments high in domestic abuse. Women have multiple needs related to benefits, finance, housing, domestic abuse, education and career guidance. These are more frequent than those that explicitly link to mental health. The women’s worker providing the service referred women to 68 services from a wide variety of statutory and voluntary organisations. Conclusions The Women’s Support Service is accessed by a higher number of women, many more than access the local liaison service. It is suggested that this is due to their multiple and gender specific needs being adequately addressed by the former service and the organisations to whom they are referred. Mental health needs may also be secondary to other more basic needs, that makes the generic service provided but the Women’s support Service more appropriate than a liaison service that deals with mental health support alone

Blue remembered skills : mental health awareness training for police officers

The Bradley Report (Bradley, 2009) has raised a number of important questions regarding the treatment of individuals who are experiencing mental health problems and find themselves in the criminal justice system. One of the key recommendations is that professional staff working across criminal justice organisations should receive increased training in this area. This paper explores the experiences of two professionals, a mental health nurse and a social worker, involved in providing training for police officers. It goes on to consider the most effective models of training for police officers

A maverick in the mind: exploring the haunting spectre of tensions in 'maverick' educators fostering unconventional student-learner relationships and empowerment against existing tensions within educational frameworks

Some educators are haunted by the spectre of a 'maverick in the mind'. Wilfully driven and shaped by life experiences they live in a constant tension, often at odds with the apparent constraints of the educational system. They fight perceived enemies in their quest to transform learners. This paper, part of ongoing PhD studies employs aspects of narrative inquiry and life history/life story methodologies to explore some encountered tensions and how they foster unconventional pedagogic practices and stranger mindful imaginings. Bourdieu's 'Habitus' and 'Capital' theories (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) and Goffman's (1959) perspective on roles as acted out, provide theoretical underpinning

Combating Corruption in the Private Sector

Combating private sector corruption is indispensable for economic growth. This paper sought to interrogate the impact of corruption in private sector and explore enabling strategies to retard private sector corruption and allow the economy to grow. The research applied a qualitative approach using an exploratory research design. The research participants were purposively selected from the Chief Executive Officers of private corporations that were conveniently accessed in Harare Metropolitan Province. Data collection methods included unstructured interviews and documentary review. The results established that major causes of corruption in the private sector include effects of colonial heritage, low percentage of women in the labour force, deteriorating cultural factors and endowment of natural resources. It was also found that the impact of private sector corruption negatively manifest itself in the community, it derails investments, foreign direct investment, foreign trade and foreign aid, affects gross domestic product and the economic growth and productivity. The study recommended that strong adherence to corporate governance principles, building strong positive culture and improving corporate integrity, incorporating financial institutions and promulgating effective laws against bribery and corruption in the private will help in reducing private sector corruption. It can be concluded that the fight against corruption should be given top priority as its success has the potential to grow the economy. Keywords: private sector corruption, strategies, economy DOI: 10.7176/JESD/13-20-02 Publication date:October 31st 202

Examining the Challenges and Opportunities for Artisanal Miners in Mt Darwin District, Zimbabwe

The study aimed at examining challenges, opportunities and enabling strategies for the development of artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM) and their communities in Mount Darwin District, Zimbabwe. The study employed a descriptive qualitative design. The 8 research participants were purposively selected from the Mount Darwin prominent artisanal miners and community leaders. The data collection methods included interviews, document review and direct observation. The study found that ASM face challenges such as lack of necessary mining equipment, lack of access to electricity, have poor financial credit facilities, lack expertise, lack of progressive legal framework, lack of relevant institutions and environmental challenges. The research revealed that proper functioning of ASM may lead to economic growth, employment creation, increase in level of production thereby improving the livelihoods. The study recommended the use effective policy formulation and implementation, improving administrative and legal framework issues, creation of mining learning institutions and use of technology. Future researchers should deal with the transformation of artisanal and small-scale miners into companies or cooperatives. Keywords: Artisanal and small-scale miners, challenges and opportunities DOI: 10.7176/JESD/13-20-04 Publication date:October 31st 202

Mind Matters

The great divide of modern thought is whether mind is real or naught. The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied understanding of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and human biology and culture. I begin by first delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirce’s alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as trans-action, then consider the self-transcending nature of the human body-mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpect-edly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting-gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged

Resource selection and data fusion for multimedia international digital libraries: an overview of the MIND project

The inspiration for MIND grew out of the problems which users face when they have remote access to thousands of heterogeneous and distributed multimedia digital libraries. A user must know where to search, how to query different media, and how to combine information from diverse resources. As digital libraries continue to proliferate, in a variety of media and from a variety of sources, the problems of resource selection, query formulation and data fusion become major obstacles to effective search and retrieval. The key goal of MIND is to develop a common system for identifying, searching and combining results from multiple digital libraries. MIND, therefore, is investigating methods for resource description and selection (i.e., gathering and updating information about digital libraries to assist in selecting those which are most likely to contain the information sought), query processing (i.e. modifying the terms contained in a query and transforming the query into the local command language), data fusion (i.e., the merging of different data retrieved from different digital libraries) and information visualisation (in particular, the automatic generation of surrogates and presentation of fused retrieved data)