How primary care can contribute to good mental health in adults.

The need for support for good mental health is enormous. General support for good mental health is needed for 100% of the population, and at all stages of life, from early childhood to end of life. Focused support is needed for the 17.6% of adults who have a mental disorder at any time, including those who also have a mental health problem amongst the 30% who report having a long-term condition of some kind. All sectors of society and all parts of the NHS need to play their part. Primary care cannot do this on its own. This paper describes how primary care practitioners can help stimulate such a grand alliance for health, by operating at four different levels - as individual practitioners, as organisations, as geographic clusters of organisations and as policy-makers

Why are convertible bond announcements associated with increasingly negative issuer stock returns? An arbitrage-based explanation

While convertible offerings announced between 1984 and 1999 induce average abnormal stock returns of −1.69%, convertible announcement effects over the period 2000–2008 are more than twice as negative (−4.59%). We hypothesize that this evolution is attributable to a shift in the convertible bond investor base from long-only investors towards convertible arbitrage funds. These funds buy convertibles and short the underlying stocks, causing downward price pressure. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that the differences in announcement returns between the Traditional Investor period (1984–1999) and the Arbitrage period (2000–September 2008) disappear when controlling for arbitrage-induced short selling associated with a range of hedging strategies. Post-issuance stock returns are also in line with the arbitrage explanation. Average announcement effects of convertibles issued during the Global Financial Crisis are even more negative (−9.12%), due to a combination of short-selling price pressure and issuer, issue, and macroeconomic characteristics associated with these offerings

Promoting Mental Health and Preventing Mental Illness in General Practice

This paper calls for the routine integration of mental health promotion and prevention into UK General Practice in order to reduce the burden of mental and physical disorders and the ensuing pressure on General Practice. The proposals & the resulting document (https://ethicscharity.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/rcgp_keymsg_150925_v5.pdf) arise from an expert ‘Think Tank’ convened by the London Journal of Primary Care, Educational Trust for Health Improvement through Cognitive Strategies (ETHICS Foundation) and the Royal College of General Practitioners. It makes 12 recommendations for General Practice: (1) Mental health promotion and prevention are too important to wait. (2) Work with your community to map risk factors, resources and assets. (3) Good health care, medicine and best practice are biopsychosocial rather than purely physical. (4) Integrate mental health promotion and prevention into your daily work. (5) Boost resilience in your community through approaches such as community development. (6) Identify people at increased risk of mental disorder for support and screening. (7) Support early intervention for people of all ages with signs of illness. (8) Maintain your biopsychosocial skills. (9) Ensure good communication, interdisciplinary team working and inter-sectoral working with other staff, teams and agencies. (10) Lead by example, taking action to promote the resilience of the general practice workforce. (11) Ensure mental health is appropriately included in the strategic agenda for your ‘cluster’ of General Practices, at the Clinical Commissioning Groups, and the Health and Wellbeing Board. (12) Be aware of national mental health strategies and localise them, including action to destigmatise mental illness within the context of community development