Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing: implications for a CBT framework

Research Aims/Questions: It has been acknowledged that the mental health of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has been 'bedeviled' by the inappropriate application of non-Indigenous models of mental health. Given the poor health outcomes of Indigenous people, another approach to mental health practice is required. In order to enhance Indigenous health and wellbeing it is necessary for non-Indigenous practitioners to find a culturally safe way in which to enter the negotiated space of cross-cultural mental health. This will be facilitated through understanding both the points of similarity and divergence in perspectives of mental health across cultures. The current study aimed to explore urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’s understandings of mental health using a positive psychology framework. Methodology: A qualitative research project was conducted with a sample of 19 Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people. Data was collected via individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes within the data. Conclusion: Four themes emerged as reflecting health and wellbeing – coping skills, knowledge, social support, and connectedness. The theme of connectedness to country, family and kinship, cultural knowledge and social networks emerged as reflecting a unique contribution to Indigenous health and wellbeing. However, the themes of coping skills, knowledge and social support shared cross-cultural meaning. In particular, coping skills identified in the behavioural, emotional and cognitive domains shared many cross-culturally applicable avenues for intervention. Therapeutic interventions in these domains are already well established within cognitive behaviour therapies. It is the cross-cultural understandings within these themes that offer clinicians a culturally safe avenue for supporting Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing

"This town can't be that harmful": risk perception of lead exposure

Introduction: Much of the focus of lead risk health campaigns has been on vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women, thus not communicating the risk of exposure for other adults. This becomes a particular issue for adults who are long-term residents of communities near lead mines as they can be at an increased risk of exposure to lead within their environment. As such, this study investigated the perceived risk of exposure to lead in residents of a lead mining community. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were held with 20 (3 male, 17 female) residents from a community in close proximity to a lead mine and were recruited through the community media and local organizations. Common themes were identified through an interpretative phenomenological analytical framework providing an in depth examination of the lived experiences of participants. Results: Majority of the participants did not perceive a health risk from exposure to lead. Those who reported a specific concern surrounding their exposure to lead had lived within the community for less than five years. However, it was commonly noted that the behaviors to control residents' exposure to lead were easily performed and low cost. Conclusions: These results suggest that residents of a community chronically exposed to lead seem to become complacent about their risk for poor health outcomes the longer they live within the community. These findings have implications for the communication of the risk of exposure to lead for adults who are chronically exposed to lead

Transferring an Analytical Technique from Ecology to the Sport Sciences

Background: Learning transfer is defined as an individual’s capability to apply prior learnt perceptual, motor or conceptual skills to a novel task or performance environment. In the sport sciences, learning transfers have been investigated from an athlete-specific perspective. However, sport scientists should also consider the benefits of cross-disciplinary learning to aid critical thinking and metacognitive skill gained through the interaction with similar quantitative scientific disciplines. Objective: Using team sports performance analysis as an example, this study aimed to demonstrate the utility of a common analytical technique in ecology to the sports sciences; namely, non-metric multidimensional scaling. Methods: To achieve this aim, three novel research examples using this technique are presented, each of which enables the analysis and visualisation of athlete (organism), team (aggregation of organisms) and competition (ecosystem) behaviours. Results: The first example reveals the technical behaviours of Australian Football League Brownlow medallists from the 2001 to 2016 seasons. The second example delineates dissimilarity in higher and lower ranked National Rugby League teams within the 2016 season. Lastly, the third example shows the evolution of game-play in the basketball tournaments between the 2004 to 2016 Olympic Games. Conclusions: In addition to the novel findings of each example, the collective results demonstrate that by embracing cross-disciplinary learning and drawing upon an analytical technique common to ecology, novel solutions to pertinent research questions within sports performance analysis could be addressed in a practically meaningful way. Cross-disciplinary learning may subsequently assist sport scientists in the analysis and visualisation of multivariate datasets

Obesity Treatment/Outcomes Does severe dietary energy restriction increase binge eating in overweight or obese individuals? A systematic review

Summary Severe dietary energy restriction is often used for overweight or obese individuals to achieve rapid weight loss and related health improvements. However, the extent of putative adverse effects on eating behaviour is unknown. We thus systematically searched seven databases for studies that assessed binge eating before and after severe dietary energy restriction (low or very low energy diets) in overweight or obese individuals. Fifteen clinically supervised interventions from 10 publications (nine of which involved only women) were included. Among individuals with clinically relevant pre-treatment binge eating disorder, severe dietary energy restriction significantly decreased binge eating in all four interventions involving this population, at least during the weight loss programme. In contrast, no consistent association between severe dietary energy restriction and the onset of bingeing was found in 11 interventions involving individuals without pretreatment binge eating disorder, with four such interventions showing significant increases, two showing no change, and five showing significant decreases in binge eating. We conclude that clinically supervised severe dietary energy restriction appears safe and beneficial for overweight or obese individuals with pre-treatment binge eating disorder, and does not necessarily trigger binge eating in those without binge eating disorder

Thinking about Eating Food Activates Visual Cortex with Reduced Bilateral Cerebellar Activation in Females with Anorexia Nervosa: An fMRI Study

Background: Women with anorexia nervosa (AN) have aberrant cognitions about food and altered activity in prefrontal cortical and somatosensory regions to food images. However, differential effects on the brain when thinking about eating food between healthy women and those with AN is unknown. Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examined neural activation when 42 women thought about eating the food shown in images: 18 with AN (11 RAN, 7 BPAN) and 24 age-matched controls (HC). Results: Group contrasts between HC and AN revealed reduced activation in AN in the bilateral cerebellar vermis, and increased activation in the right visual cortex. Preliminary comparisons between AN subtypes and healthy controls suggest differences in cortical and limbic regions. Conclusions: These preliminary data suggest that thinking about eating food shown in images increases visual and prefrontal cortical neural responses in females with AN, which may underlie cognitive biases towards food stimuli and ruminations about controlling food intake. Future studies are needed to explicitly test how thinking about eating activates restraint cognitions, specifically in those with restricting vs. binge-purging AN subtypes

Watched over or over-watched? Open street CCTV in Australia

Most developed countries, Australia included, are witnessing increased government and public concerns about crime and security. Amid these anxieties, closed circuit television (CCTV) systems to monitor public spaces are increasingly being touted as a solution to problems of crime and disorder. The city of Perth established Australia’s first open street closed circuit television system in July 1991. Subsequently, there has been significant expansion. At the end of 2002 Australia had 33 “open street” CCTV schemes. Based on site inspections, extensive reviews of documentation and interviews with 22 Australian administrators, this article discusses issues relating to system implementation, management and accountability.We also suggest ways relevant authorities might ensure that current and future schemes are appropriately audited and evaluated. We argue that rigorous independent assessment of both the intended and unintended consequences of open street CCTV is essential to ensure this measure is not deployed inappropriately. Finally, this article suggests any potential crime prevention benefits must be carefully weighed against the potential of CCTV to exacerbate social division and exclusion