Prevalence of mental health conditions and relationship with general health in a whole-country population of people with intellectual disabilities compared with the general population

Background: There are no previous whole-country studies on mental health and relationships with general health in intellectual disability populations; study results vary. Aims: To determine the prevalence of mental health conditions and relationships with general health in a total population with and without intellectual disabilities. Method: Ninety-four per cent completed Scotland’s Census 2011. Data on intellectual disabilities, mental health and general health were extracted, and the association between them was investigated. Results: A total of 26 349/5 295 403 (0.5%) had intellectual disabilities. In total, 12.8% children, 23.4% adults and 27.2% older adults had mental health conditions compared with 0.3, 5.3 and 4.5% of the general population. Intellectual disabilities predicted mental health conditions; odds ratio (OR)=7.1 (95% CI 6.8–7.3). General health was substantially poorer and associated with mental health conditions; fair health OR=1.8 (95% CI 1.7–1.9), bad/very bad health OR=4.2 (95% CI 3.9–4.6). Conclusions: These large-scale, whole-country study findings are important, given the previously stated lack of confidence in comparative prevalence results, and the need to plan services accordingly

Raise the Age: Perceptions of Missouri Juvenile Justice Actors

In 2018, the Missouri General Assembly joined the ranks of forty-six other states and D.C. in the Raise the Age movement and raised the upper age of jurisdiction of the juvenile court from 17 to 18 years old. Senate Bill 793 was signed into law by Governor Eric Greitens on June 1, 2018, and was set to go into effect on January 1, 2021. Similar to other state and county level juvenile justice stakeholders, those in Missouri have expressed concerns over the potential fiscal challenges, increases in workload, and issues related to the allocation of resources and programming within the juvenile justice system. This is especially the case considering that over one-third of Missouri’s population reside in rural areas. Furthermore, considering that the Missouri juvenile justice system is often referred to as a model program for its ability to dramatically lower juvenile offenders’ recidivism rates, stakeholders have expressed interest in whether or not raising the upper age of jurisdiction will in fact have an effect on juvenile recidivism rates. Coincidentally, there are two additional factors that prove Missouri and S.B. 793 to be distinctly different from the majority of other states: (1) Missouri’s legislative change applies to all juvenile offenders regardless of offense type, and (2) S.B. 793 explicitly states that “The expanded service of the juvenile court system shall not be effective until sufficient funds are appropriated.” More directly, as the result of a lack of clear direction in the legislation related to funding allocation, several jurisdictions within Missouri are operating under different practices when handling 17-year-olds, with some processing them in their juvenile systems and others still handling them in the adult system or possibly, not at all. Prior to the implementation of S.B. 793, in partnership with the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association (MJJA), the current researchers conducted a preliminary survey of Missouri juvenile justice stakeholders to examine their perceptions of the legislation. The explicit purpose of the survey was twofold: (1) to identify what Missouri juvenile justice professionals saw as concerns surrounding the legislation, and (2) to examine whether or not they felt prepared for the implementation which was to take effect on January 1, 2021. From this research, several key themes emerged which have guided the focus of the proposed study. The results indicated that Missouri stakeholders were concerned with the potential increase in cost to taxpayers, the overall lack of funding and resources, the influx of cases that would be sent to the juvenile court and subsequently increase probation caseloads and/or residential placements, the lack of mental health resources, and the impact or potential for expanded use of diversion

Nurturing quality science learning and teaching: the impact of a reading group

Teachers are key to the delivery of quality science education experiences in Australian classrooms. In achieving this, there is a need for teachers to be better supported in thinking reflexively and critically about their practice. The Centre for [de-identified] at [de-identified] University took action to address this need by forming a reading group to encourage interested teachers of science from primary and secondary schools to meet regularly to discuss relevant journal articles and implications for their practice. This paper explores how forming a community of practice around a reading group impacted on participants’ approaches to science learning and teaching

Team Preceptorship Model: A Solution for Students' Clinical Experience

There is a shortage of registered nurses in developed countries, and this shortage is due to the aging nursing workforce, demand for healthcare services, and shortage of nursing professors to teach students. In order to increase the number of clinical placements for nursing students, the authors developed and implemented a collaborative preceptorship model between a Canadian University and Public Health Department to facilitate the clinical experiences of Bachelor of Science of Nursing (BScN) students. This paper describes the Team Preceptorship Model which guided the clinical experience of nine students and 14 preceptors. It also highlights the model's evaluation, strengths, and limitations

Simulating crossword lottery tickets

This project studies the process the New Hampshire State Lottery must go through when creating a particular type of crossword scratch ticket. For this scratch ticket, the player uncovers a letter bank, and scratches the letters which appear in the letter bank from the crossword. Prizes are awarded depending upon the number of words in the crossword which are completely scratched away. This project creates two functions using MATLAB. The first function has a crossword configuration and a prize amount as inputs, and generates a specific letter bank corresponding to a desired prize amount. A second function allows a user to input the crossword and a letter bank from a lottery ticket to check the amount of prize money that should be awarded. Further, an analysis is performed which calculates the probabilities of winning particular prize amounts with randomly chosen letter banks. This analysis concludes that the State Lottery is not assigning the letter banks randomly, and thus analyzing the crossword before the letter bank is revealed does not allow the player to gain an advantage. (Author abstract)Cooper, A. (2021). Simulating crossword lottery tickets. Retrieved from http://academicarchive.snhu.ed

Trends and variations in per capita expenditure on adult intellectual disabilities health and social care across Scotland, and by urban/rural class

Background: Following the global financial crisis in 2007/08, the UK implemented an austerity programme which may impact on services. Scotland comprises both densely-populated urban conurbations and highly-dispersed remote rural and island communities. Methods: Expenditure data were extracted from Scottish Government statistics. Per capita expenditure was calculated using adjusted Scotland’s 2011 census data. Results: There was a 3.41% decrease in real term expenditure on adult intellectual disabilities services between 2012/13 and 2014/15 (>£32million). In 2014/15, per capita expenditure on adult intellectual disabilities health care ranged from £1,211-£17,595; social care from £21,147-£83,831; combined health and social care expenditures from £37,703-£85,929. Per capita expenditure on combined health and social care was greater in rural areas; with more on intellectual disabilities social care, though less on health care. Conclusions: Scottish expenditure on adult intellectual disabilities services has not kept abreast of rising living costs. It varies considerably across the country: a post-code lottery

Does self-compassion act as a moderator for risk factors associated with PTSD symptom severity?

Threat based risk factors previously found to be associated with PTSD were investigated in a clinical population of treatment seeking individuals. Building on previous research, within evolutionary psychology, this study conceptualised experiential avoidance, shame and self-critical processes as activators of an individual’s threat based affect system, following a trauma. These processes may play a central role in the sense of ongoing current threat found in PTSD sufferers. The concept of self-compassion was also investigated; this concept has been implicated in regulating threat based processes and moderating threat based responses. This study hypothesised that individuals higher in levels of self-compassion would demonstrate lower levels of PTSD symptomatology and that levels of self-compassion would moderate the effect of each threat based risk factor on PTSD symptom severity. Correlation and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted and all hypotheses were either fully or partially upheld. An interesting and unexpected moderation effect was found between self-criticism and self-compassion. It was expected that self-compassion would fully moderate the relationship between self-criticism and PTSD symptom severity, however, results show that self-compassion only moderated this relationship when the level of self-criticism was low. This suggests that the interaction between self-criticism and self-compassion is more complex than originally thought. Implications of the findings as well as ideas for future research are discussed

The FAn Conjecture for Coxeter groups

We study global fixed points for actions of Coxeter groups on nonpositively curved singular spaces. In particular, we consider property FA_n, an analogue of Serre's property FA for actions on CAT(0) complexes. Property FA_n has implications for irreducible representations and complex of groups decompositions. In this paper, we give a specific condition on Coxeter presentations that implies FA_n and show that this condition is in fact equivalent to FA_n for n=1 and 2. As part of the proof, we compute the Gersten-Stallings angles between special subgroups of Coxeter groups.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 19 November 200