Formal and informal support systems in a rural town and county : report of the research on mental health in Dannevirke Borough and County : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy at Massey University

The Dannevirke project was designed to provide a view into one rural borough and county in order to discern how that community provided services for those in need of emotional and psychological support. Professional human service providers and a representative sample, of the general population were interviewed to identify the formal and informal supports that were available to the community and to define mental health and mental illness. This project was based on two assumptions: 1) rural and small town life in New Zealand had networks of self-help and support and these networks were different from those found in the urban environment; 2) clinical and professional practitioners adopted unique responses to practice in a rural area. This study demonstrated that a rural community based on the romantic notion of a small homogenous, caring community was simplistic. Intrarural differences in the numerous settlements revealed a more complex fabric. The data did reflect an intricate and caring network of informal supports but it was unclear as to how different (e.g. more supportive) these rural networks were to those in an urban/suburban community. Respondents with low group membership and low visitation from family and friends reported a statistically significant low sense of psychological well-being using the Bradburn Well-Being Scale (1969). The actual roles these networks played in caregiving and prevention needed further inquiry. The pathways to service for people experiencing emotional/psychological problems were traced, including a ten year statistical analysis of inpatient psychiatric care. The general practitioner was identified by the respondents in the community and by other professionals as the primary gatekeeper for services, underlining the medical bias in their definitions of mental illness. Delivery of services by the professionals in the rural area was complicated by distance, minimal interprofessional coordination, shortage of specialist services, and a lack of ongoing professional education in the field of community mental health. Treatment in the community was favoured over sending the clients away for services and the local hospital was a unique resource for short-term respite care. The findings brought forth numerous questions including: What models of practice are effective for mental health care in the rural context? How do geographical distance and isolation affect community mental health practice? Does the urban base of most professional training prepare formal caregivers for life and practice in the rural setting? Specific recommendations for policy development and for further research were discussed

Geriatric Enrichment: Guaranteeing A Place For Aging In the Curriculum.

Two years ago, the School of Social Work embarked upon a new and challenging initiative to create sustainable structural changes that enrich gerontological learning experiences for all our BSW and MSW students, faculty, fieldwork instructors and community practitioners. We envisioned that participation in this initiative would enable us to expand and embed geriatric content in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, to increase our geriatric fieldwork placement opportunities, to evaluate and enhance our teaching and learning resources on aging, and to develop two new aging specific courses. Having reached our third year of operation, we find ourselves reflecting on what have been our successes, what could we have done differently, and where do we go in the future. This article will describe our process of developing a model of curriculum change that will guarantee a place for aging in both our undergraduate and graduate curricula

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead