Global mental health matters

Valentina Iemmi, Research Officer at the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) at the LSE, reports on discussions from a recent conference on mental health in low- and middle-income countries

Strengthening mental health systems in low and middle income countries

LSE Health and Social Care welcomed Professor Graham Thornicroft for one of its Formal Seminars recently. He gave a splendid overview of the main challenges in global mental health and the mental health system response in low and middle income countries

Measurement of the inclusive and differential t/t cross sections at 13 TeV in the all-jets boosted regime with CMS

The t/t production cross section is measured with the CMS detector in the all-jets channel in $pp$ collisions at the centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analysis is based on the study of t/t events in the boosted topology, namely events in which decay products of the quark top have a high Lorentz boost and are thus reconstructed in the detector as a single, wide jet. The data sample used in this analysis corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.53 fb-1. The inclusive cross section is found to be sigma(t/t) = 727 +- 46 (stat.) +115-112 (sys.) +- 20~(lumi.) pb, a value which is consistent with the theoretical predictions. The differential, detector-level cross section is measured as a function of the transverse momentum of the leading jet and compared to the QCD theoretical predictions. Finally, the differential, parton-level cross section is reported, measured as a function of the transverse momentum of the leading parton, extrapolated to the full phase space and compared to the QCD predictions

Philanthropy: a crucial actor in global mental health

Despite the rising burden of disease and costs in low- and middle income-countries, mental disorders attract few resources. With governments often under economic pressure, external actors could offer opportunities to unlock additional resources. This new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science presents novel analyses of philanthropic contributions for mental health in 156 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2015 and identifies challenges and opportunities for increasing their impact for sustainable financing for mental health. This visual blog provides a snapshot of the results and it is also available as an infographic

Determination of any pure spatial qudits from a minimum number of measurements by phase-stepping interferometry

We present a proof-of-principle demonstration of a method to characterize any pure spatial qudit of arbitrary dimension d, which is based on the classic phase-shift interferometry technique. In the proposed scheme a total of only 4d measurement outcomes are needed, implying a significant reduction with respect to the standard schemes for quantum-state tomography which require on the order of d^2. By using this technique, we have experimentally reconstructed a large number of states ranging from d=2 up to 14 with mean fidelity values higher than 0.97. For that purpose the qudits were codified in the discretized transverse-momentum position of single photons, once they are sent through an aperture with d slits. We provide an experimental implementation of the method based in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which allows one to reduce the number of measurement settings to four since the d slits can be measured simultaneously. Furthermore, it can be adapted to consider the reconstruction of the unknown state from the outcome frequencies of 4d−3 fixed projectors independently of the encoding or the nature of the quantum system, allowing one to implement the reconstruction method in a general experiment.Fil: Pears Stefano, Quimey Martín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Rebón, Lorena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Ledesma, Silvia Adriana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Iemmi, Claudio César. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física; Argentin

Self-management for people with severe mental health problems

Self-management may facilitate recovery, helping to support people with severe mental problems at no additional cost. This is the key message from an economic analysis performed alongside a pilot evaluation of the Mental Health Foundation’s self-management course. While the pilot evaluation was funded by the Big Lottery Fund, Wales, the economic evaluation was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research and conducted by PSSRU researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science alongside the Mental Health Foundation (MHF)

Positive behavioural support for adults with intellectual disabilities and behaviours that challenge

Positive behavioural support (PBS) may be a potentially interesting service for adults with intellectual disabilities and behaviours that challenge, improving outcomes and lowering the cost of care in the longer term. This is the main finding of our initial look at the economic case in collaboration with a small local authority in England, with funding from the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research (NIHR SSCR)