Public attitudes towards psychiatry and psychiatric treatment at the beginning of the 21st century: a systematic review and meta-analysis of population surveys

Public attitudes towards psychiatry are crucial determinants of help-seeking for mental illness. It has been argued that psychiatry as a discipline enjoys low esteem among the public, and a “crisis” of psychiatry has been noted. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of population studies examining public attitudes towards various aspects of psychiatric care. Our search in PubMed, Web of Science, PsychINFO and bibliographies yielded 162 papers based on population surveys conducted since 2000 and published no later than 2015. We found that professional help for mental disorders generally enjoys high esteem. While general practitioners are the preferred source of help for depression, mental health professionals are the most trusted helpers for schizophrenia. If respondents have to rank sources of help, they tend to favor mental health professionals, while open questions yield results more favorable to general practitioners. Psychiatrists and psychologists/psychotherapists are equally recommended for the treatment of schizophrenia, while for depression psychologists/psychotherapists are more recommended, at least in Europe and America. Psychotherapy is consistently preferred over medication. Attitudes towards seeking help from psychiatrists or psychologists/psychotherapists as well as towards medication and psychotherapy have markedly improved over the last twenty-five years. Biological concepts of mental illness are associated with stronger approval of psychiatric help, particularly medication. Self-stigma and negative attitudes towards persons with mental illness decrease the likelihood of personally considering psychiatric help. In conclusion, the public readily recommends psychiatric help for the treatment of mental disorders. Psychotherapy is the most popular method of psychiatric treatment. A useful strategy to further improve the public image of psychiatry could be to stress that listening and understanding are at the core of psychiatric care

Standard negation: the curious case of South America

This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of the world. We show that South American languages not only prefer postverbal negation to preverbal negation and negative morphology to syntax, but postverbal morphological negation to any other negation strategy. The predominance of this strategy makes South America distinct from other macro-areas. The study also considers the areal distribution of negation on the South American continent. It shows that negation strategies each have their own concentration area. Postverbal morphological negation, which is the dominant strategy, turns out to be concentrated in the northwest of the continent, with the highest density around the boundaries between Colombia, Peru and Brazil. We suggest that the preference for postverbal morphological negation in South America is likely to be the result of language-internal mechanisms of negation renewal, coupled with language contact.Horizon 2020(H2020)Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No 895548Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Approval of psychotherapy and medication for the treatment of mental disorders over the lifespan. An age period cohort analysis

Aims. Previous cross-sectional studies revealed inconsistent results regarding mental health treatment preferences among the general population. In particular, it is unclear to what extent specific age groups approve psychotherapy or psychotropic medication for the treatment of mental disorders. We explore whether treatment recommendations of either psychotherapy or psychiatric medication change over the lifespan which includes age-related effects due to increasing age of a person, cohort effects that reflect specific opinions during the time a person was born and period effects that reflect societal changes. Methods. Using data from three identical population surveys in Germany from 1990, 2001 and 2011 (combined n =9046), we performed age-period-cohort analyses to determine the pure age, birth cohort and time period effects associated with the specific treatment recommendations for a person with either depression or schizophrenia, using logistic Partial Least-Squares regression models. Results. For both disorders, approval of both psychotherapy and medication for a person with mental illness increases with age. At the same time, younger cohorts showed stronger recommendations particularly for psychotherapy ( OR around 1.07 per decade). The strongest effects could be observed for time period with an increase in recommendation between 1990 and 2001 with odds ratio of 2.36 in depression and 2.97 in schizophrenia, respectively. In general, the treatment option that showed the strongest increase in recommendation was medication for schizophrenia and psychotherapy for depression. Conclusion. Underutilisation of psychotherapy in old age seems not to reflect treatment preferences of older persons. Thus, special treatment approaches need to be offered for this group that seems to be willing for psychotherapy but do not yet use it. Cohort patterns suggest that approval of psychotherapy among older persons will likely further increase in the coming years as these people get older. Finally, strong period effects underpin the importance of changing attitudes in the society. These could reflect reporting changes about psychiatric topics in the media or a general increase in the perception of treatment options. Nevertheless, more treatment offers especially for older people are needed

Less is more: possibility and necessity as centres of gravity in a usage-based classification of core modals in Polish

In this paper we present the results of an empirical study into the cognitive reality of existing classifications of modality using Polish data. We analyzed random samples of 250 independent observations for the 7 most frequent modal words (móc, można, musieć, należy, powinien, trzeba, wolno), extracted from the Polish national corpus. Observations were annotated for modal type according to a number of classifications, including van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), as well as for morphological, syntactic and semantic properties using the Behavioral Profiling approach (Divjak and Gries 2006). Multiple correspondence analysis and (polytomous) regression models were used to determine how well modal type and usage align. These corpus-based findings were validated experimentally. In a forced choice task, naive native speakers were exposed to definitions and prototypical examples of modal types or functions, then labeled a number of authentic corpus sentences accordingly. In the sorting task, naive native speakers sorted authentic corpus sentences into semantically coherent groups. We discuss the results of our empirical study as well as the issues involved in building usage-based accounts on traditional linguistic classifications

Comparison of Leishmania typing results obtained from 16 European clinical laboratories in 2014

Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease which is endemic in 98 countries worldwide [1]. It is caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania, which are transmitted by female sand flies of the genera Lutzomyia and Phlebotomus. Many infected individuals never develop symptoms, but those who do can exhibit various disease manifestations [2]. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) or kala-azar is the severe form, whereby parasites infect internal organs and the bone marrow, a lethal condition if left untreated. Other disease types are restricted to the skin (cutaneous leishmaniasis, CL) or the mucosae of the nose and mouth (mucosal leishmaniasis, ML). Finally, a particular cutaneous disease sometimes develops in cured VL patients: post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL). Typically, VL is caused by two species: Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum. The latter can also cause CL, as can all other pathogenic species. Some particular species (e.g. L. braziliensis and L. aethiopica) can lead to overt ML. As many as 20 different Leishmania species are able to infect humans, and globally there are over 1 million new disease cases per annum [1,3]. Leishmaniasis is endemic in southern Europe, and in other European countries cases are diagnosed in travellers who have visited affected areas both within the continent and beyond. Although treatment in practice is often guided only by clinical presentation and patient history, in some cases determination of the aetiological subgenus, species complex or species is recommended for providing optimal treatment [2,4,5]. For example, a patient returning from South America with CL might be infected with Leishmania braziliensis, which necessitates systemic drug therapy and counselling about the risk of developing mucosal leishmaniasis in the future. The same patient could also be infected with Leishmania mexicana, which is managed by less intensive treatment and which is not associated with mucosal disease [6]. Determining the infecting species and its probable source permits selection of the correct drug, route of administration (intralesional, oral systemic, or parenteral) and duration [7]. Unfortunately, for CL it is impossible to predict the species responsible for an ulcerating lesion clinically, and the morphology of amastigotes does not differ between species. When the geographical origin of infection is known, for instance when a patient in an endemic region is treated at a local hospital, the species can be guessed often from the known local epidemiology, as species distribution follows a geographical pattern [8]. However, especially in infectious disease clinics that treat patients who have stayed in various endemic countries, the geographic origin of infections may be unknown. For instance, people residing in Europe who have travelled outside Europe may come from, or have also visited, Leishmania-endemic areas within Europe, especially the Mediterranean basin. Even when the location of infection is known, several species can co- circulate in a given endemic area, in which case the species can only be determined by laboratory tests. Culture and subsequent isoenzyme analysis is time consuming and available in very few specialised centres, so it is impractical as a front-line diagnostic test in clinical laboratories. Hence, well-performed reliable molecular methods are necessary for species identification. Several Leishmania typing methods have been published (reviewed in [9]), and as a result each laboratory uses its own preferred assay. The most popular assays nowadays are those that can be applied directly to clinical samples, thereby circumventing the need for parasite isolation and culture. However, few tests have been standardised, and no commercial kits are currently available. As a result, clinical and epidemiological studies make use of various techniques, and in patient management other methods are often deployed. In this study we compare the typing performance in 16 clinical laboratories across Europe, which use a variety of methods for species discrimination

Induction of lymphangiogenesis in and around axillary lymph node metastases of patients with breast cancer

We studied the presence of lymphangiogenesis in lymph node (LN) metastases of breast cancer. Lymph vessels were present in 52 of 61 (85.2%) metastatically involved LNs vs 26 of 104 (25.0%) uninvolved LNs (P<0.001). Furthermore, median intra- and perinodal lymphatic endothelial cell proliferation fractions were higher in metastatically involved LNs (P<0.001). This is the first report demonstrating lymphangiogenesis in LN metastases of cancer in general and breast cancer in particular

The VEGF pathway and the AKT/mTOR/p70S6K1 signalling pathway in human epithelial ovarian cancer

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A inhibitors exhibit unseen high responses and toxicity in recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer suggesting an important role for the VEGF/VEGFR pathway. We studied the correlation of VEGF signalling and AKT/mTOR signalling. Using a tissue microarray of clinical samples (N=86), tumour cell immunohistochemical staining of AKT/mTOR downstream targets, pS6 and p4E-BP1, together with tumour cell staining of VEGF-A and pVEGFR2 were semi-quantified. A correlation was found between the marker for VEGFR2 activation (pVEGFR2) and a downstream target of AKT/mTOR signalling (pS6) (R=0.29; P=0.002). Additional gene expression analysis in an independent cDNA microarray dataset (N=24) showed a negative correlation (R=−0.73, P<0.0001) between the RPS6 and the VEGFR2 gene, which is consistent as the gene expression and phosphorylation of S6 is inversely regulated. An activated tumour cell VEGFR2/AKT/mTOR pathway was associated with increased incidence of ascites (χ2, P=0.002) and reduced overall survival of cisplatin–taxane-based patients with serous histology (N=32, log-rank test, P=0.04). These data propose that VEGF-A signalling acts on tumour cells as a stimulator of the AKT/mTOR pathway. Although VEGF-A inhibitors are classified as anti-angiogenic drugs, these data suggest that the working mechanism has an important additional modality of targeting the tumour cells directly

Whole genome resequencing of a laboratory-adapted Drosophila melanogaster population sample

As part of a study into the molecular genetics of sexually dimorphic complex traits, we used high-throughput sequencing to obtain data on genomic variation in an outbred laboratory-adapted fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) population. We successfully resequenced the whole genome of 220 hemiclonal females that were heterozygous for the same Berkeley reference line genome (BDGP6/dm6), and a unique haplotype from the outbred base population (LHM). The use of a static and known genetic background enabled us to obtain sequences from whole-genome phased haplotypes. We used a BWA-Picard-GATK pipeline for mapping sequence reads to the dm6 reference genome assembly, at a median depth-of coverage of 31X, and have made the resulting data publicly-available in the NCBI Short Read Archive (Accession number SRP058502). We used Haplotype Caller to discover and genotype 1,726,931 small genomic variants (SNPs and indels, <200bp). Additionally we detected and genotyped 167 large structural variants (1-100Kb in size) using GenomeStrip/2.0. Sequence and genotype data are publicly-available at the corresponding NCBI databases: Short Read Archive, dbSNP and dbVar (BioProject PRJNA282591). We have also released the unfiltered genotype data, and the code and logs for data processing and summary statistics

Worldwide Relationships in the Fern Genus Pteridium (Bracken) Based on Nuclear Genome Markers

PREMISE: Spore-bearing plants are capable of dispersing very long distances. However, it is not known if gene flow can prevent genetic divergence in widely distributed taxa. Here we address this issue, and examine systematic relationships at a global geographic scale for the fern genus Pteridium. METHODS: We sampled plants from 100 localities worldwide, and generated nucleotide data from four nuclear genes and two plastid regions. We also examined 2801 single nucleotide polymorphisms detected by a restriction site-associated DNA approach. RESULTS: We found evidence for two distinct diploid species and two allotetraploids between them. The “northern” species (Pteridium aquilinum) has distinct groups at the continental scale (Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America). The northern European subspecies pinetorum appears to involve admixture among all of these. A sample from the Hawaiian Islands contained elements of both North American and Asian P. aquilinum. The “southern” species, P. esculentum, shows little genetic differentiation between South American and Australian samples. Components of African genotypes are detected on all continents. CONCLUSIONS: We find evidence of distinct continental-scale genetic differentiation in Pteridium. However, on top of this is a clear signal of recent hybridization. Thus, spore-bearing plants are clearly capable of extensive long-distance gene flow; yet appear to have differentiated genetically at the continental scale. Either gene flow in the past was at a reduced level, or vicariance is possible even in the face of long-distance gene flow