Evaluation of the Reading Well Books on Prescription Shelf Help scheme for young people

Executive Summary It is estimated that 2,773,460 people under 17 are in need of child and adolescent mental health services provided by the GP or schools. It is also known that half of all anxiety disorders - the most common mental health condition - are experienced before the age of 12 years old. Young people face many risk factors for poor mental health but not all young people with mental health conditions seek support or receive the support or services they need. The current environment of austerity means that there is decreasing resourcing of the third sector and increasing pressure on CAMHS. ‘Shelf Help’ is the name that has been used to market the Reading Well for young people scheme. It is a reading list for those who experience mental health problems between 13-18yrs old, or are friends with, live with, or care for people who do and is. Shelf Help is delivered in partnership with the Society of Chief Librarians as part of the Chief Librarian’s Universal Health Offer. Reading Well for young people is endorsed by health professionals and supported by public libraries and provides advice of specific topics such as anxiety, depression, stress, OCD, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders, autism and aspergers as well as general topics to do with adolescence. This research report documents the impact of introducing ‘Shelf Help’ – the Reading Well for young people scheme - into a secondary school environment in partnership with a local charity, which supports the mental wellbeing of young people. Adult stakeholders were interviewed during a scoping phase (n=12) to determine how to discretely monitor the usage and impact of the Reading Well for young people at The Priory School and Phase, in Hitchin. Multiple copies of the reading list were given to the School and Phase, and young people were left to interact with the books for 3 months (Dec 2016 – February 2017. The engagement with the books was monitored at each site. Young people and key adult stakeholders were consented to take part in focus groups and interviews (during March 2017). Qualitative analysis of interviews focus groups used to determine the impact of engaging with the Reading Well for young people books. 33 participants provided qualitative data for the project, 18 young people and 15 adults. 26 participants (8 adults and 18 young people) took part in focus groups and interviews to determine engagement with and impact with the scheme. Innovative and successful approaches to getting young people to engage with Shelf Help books were devised e.g. Creating a wellbeing corner in the library, selecting a’ book of the week’, promoting the scheme to the whole school to create inclusivity and talking points, making Shelf Help the focus of wellbeing events, a staff reading challenge, opportunity to write short reviews for other library users. Books were recommended to service users of Phase which included young people and parents. 128 Reading Well for young people books were borrowed from the library by 67 people during the 3 months, a further 35 titles were borrowed by 18 users at Phase. Borrowers ranged from year 7 to year 11 as well as adults. Several titles were renewed and many were continually on loan for the duration of the project. Interestingly, many people used the wellbeing corner to browse and read books during break-times, without taking out loans. Many positive impacts of reading the Shelf Help books were identified. Four key themes emerged in the qualitative research analysis: Improved awareness, knowledge and understanding of mental health conditions. Improved emotional and mental wellbeing, specifically relating to confidence, self-esteem, hope, isolation and emotional intelligence Changes in behaviour and improved relationships Normalising and destigmatizing mental health discussions. Through piloting Shelf Help in a secondary school and charity setting there were several areas of learning going forwards. The books can be accessed by people with low, moderate or severe mental health conditions, thus suggestions to develop a supportive environment include: Ensuring appropriate training in mental first aid to key staff involved in the shelf help scheme – this may include staff who would not normally have this training. Provide time and access for staff to read through the list of books and familiarise themselves with the content prior to rolling out to the whole organisation. Providing activities, or book groups that would allow young people to discuss the books they have been reading within a facilitated environment, especially where some books may make young people feel sad or upset. Ensure the use of the Shelf Help leaflet as much as possible, specifically as it has contact number for support organisations that can be contacted, often 24/7. In conclusion, all participants found the Reading Well for young people scheme highly acceptable and the inclusive approach has supported an increase in discussion about mental health in each organisation that piloted ‘Shelf Help’. Further research should now be conducted to further understand the impact of the Reading Well for young people scheme on wellbeing and resilience

Commodity Prices, Interest Rate Spreads and the Exchange Rate: Useful Monetary Policy Indicators or Redundant Information?

We employ actual data from both private and public sector forecasters to conduct a simple, yet stringent test of the potential usefulness of indicator variables for the conduct of monetary policy. That is, we examine whether commodity prices, interest rate spreads and exchange rates can explain incipient errors in the economic forecasts developed by the Fed's staff and the ASA-NBER panel. Our results suggest that these variables do not contain additional information beyond that which policymakers have already incorporated in their forecasts. Hence, monitoring these variables further will not significantly enhance the accuracy of their forecasts, as the information in these variables is largely redundant.Exchange Rates; Fed; Interest Rates; Interest; Monetary Policy; Monetary; Policy

Guest editorial : Social prescribing

Journal guest editorial article

Observation of surface states on heavily indium doped SnTe(111), a superconducting topological crystalline insulator

The topological crystalline insulator tin telluride is known to host superconductivity when doped with indium (Sn$_{1-x}$In$_{x}$Te), and for low indium contents ($x=0.04$) it is known that the topological surface states are preserved. Here we present the growth, characterization and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy analysis of samples with much heavier In doping (up to $x\approx0.4$), a regime where the superconducting temperature is increased nearly fourfold. We demonstrate that despite strong p-type doping, Dirac-like surface states persist

Building the economic evidence case for social prescribing

Understanding the economic impact of social prescribing remains an urgent priority for the National Academy of Social Prescribing (NASP). As yet it is unclear how much data exists within the different systems to enable economic analyses of the impact of social prescribing schemes to be conducted. The complexity in understanding the economic impact of social prescribing—and indeed all non-clinical community-based approaches to health—is compounded by the multisector nature of social prescribing. Furthermore, a variety of approaches are being used to test similar but different understandings of both cost and value, including social value, cost, benefit and economic value. There are a growing range of reports and peer-reviewed publications that focus on the impact of social prescribing on health and social care demand, some of which have economic analyses and some which remain as potential data sets for economic analyses. At least one third of all outcomes (if not more) are directly related to the social determinants of health1,2 (SDH) which are not taken into account with economic analysis focused only on health service usage. This range of outcomes experienced by service users2-4 is driving many researchers to conduct economic analyses that attempt to assign value to outcomes beyond the health sector, for instance using social return on investment (SROI) and proxy values. Other researchers have discussed the evolution in economic analyses at length and suggest additional components to existing methodologies, e.g., multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to account for additional complexity of social prescribing5. Further developments are also being trialled such as the Wellbeing-adjusted Life Years (WELLBY) to understand the economic value attached to wellbeing6, as opposed to the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY), which reports the economic value of quality of life. We are entering an era of providing personalised support to people in integrated and multidisciplinary systems with different local population needs. As such, there is a need to evolve the approaches to determining cost and value of social prescribing, and to reach agreements on methodologies that all sectors are willing to accept as sound approaches. Furthermore, as discussed by McDaid and colleagues in 2019 7, there is a need to move beyond the immediate benefits of social prescribing and to explore the longer-term benefits of sustained engagement in non-clinical activities and provision of support to address issues linked to the SDH. This would enable more data to inform the preventative role and economic impact that social prescribing may have, which is currently an evidence gap. This rapid scoping review was commissioned by NASP and additional roundtables were supported by the National Centre for Creative Health and UKRI/AHRC’s ‘Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities’ research programme (led by University College London). It aims to provide an update to the first economic evidence review from NASP and explore economic data and health and social care usage data in more detail. This rapid scoping review aims to ascertain: What the current literature indicates in terms of cost or value of social prescribing schemes or parts of the social prescribing scheme. If there are potential data sets that report the impact of social prescribing on health service usage that could have economic analysis applied to them. Stakeholder opinions on the methodological approaches for creating the current economic evaluation evidence base for social prescribing and potential future developments that are needed. How these findings can inform a larger programme of research that is needed to establish the economic impact and value of social prescribing across all relevant sectors in the community. As this report contains three separate elements to it, each element will be reported with methods and results, and then key themes will be brought together with recommendations

Negative-Energy Spinors and the Fock Space of Lattice Fermions at Finite Chemical Potential

Recently it was suggested that the problem of species doubling with Kogut-Susskind lattice fermions entails, at finite chemical potential, a confusion of particles with antiparticles. What happens instead is that the familiar correspondence of positive-energy spinors to particles, and of negative-energy spinors to antiparticles, ceases to hold for the Kogut-Susskind time derivative. To show this we highlight the role of the spinorial ``energy'' in the Osterwalder-Schrader reconstruction of the Fock space of non-interacting lattice fermions at zero temperature and nonzero chemical potential. We consider Kogut-Susskind fermions and, for comparison, fermions with an asymmetric one-step time derivative.Comment: 14p

Supplemental Description of Myxobolus squamalis (Myxozoa) & Epidemiology of M. squamalis at Two Oregon Hatcheries

Myxobolus squamalis is a Myxozoan parasite of salmonids, which contributes to lowered fitness of hatchery and wild fish in the Pacific Northwest of North America. The only GenBank DNA sequence of M. squamalis is from Oncorhynchus tschawytscha (Chinook), but is not linked to a published morphological description. There is a range of salmonid Myxozoans with similar morphology to M. squamalis and we suspect that some “M. squamalis” observations from different host species might be invalid. We provide a clear re-description of M. squamalis from its type host, O. mykiss (rainbow trout and steelhead). Our results confirm the morphological and morphometric data of the original description, which we supplement with a SSU rRNA gene sequence. Based on this sequence, we developed a PCR assay for specific detection of M. squamalis DNA in environmental water samples. We used the assay to compare parasite levels in the water influent and effluent from two hatcheries that rear different salmon and trout species. Our approach allows for early M. squamalis detection, infection level estimates, and estimates for environmental impacts based upon spore release. Early detection of Myxozoan infections is crucial to hatchery and wild fish management, as there is no documented treatment for infected fish