Mental Health Staff Perspectives on Personal Recovery: A Narrative Study on Positive Professional Impact of Recovery-Oriented Care

ObjectivesMental health staff play an important role in facilitating personal recovery. We examined how mental health staff perceived personal recovery and the impact of their experience with supporting personal recovery.Research Design and MethodsForty-eight mental health staff wrote a narrative about a service user with severe mental illness that they believed to be in personal recovery and elaborated on the impact of this professional experience. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to illuminate 1) conceptualizations of personal recovery, 2) professional contribution to recovery, and 3) positive impact of recovery-oriented care on staff.ResultsConceptualizations of recovery focused on social connections and positive subjective states, and also symptom remission and illness management. Professional contributions were narrated as encompassing treatment, relationships and conversations as well as time and team collaboration. Impact on the staff included strong positive emotions, professional gains with respect to learning and self-esteem, motivation for and meaning in work as well as belief in recovery.ConclusionsThis latter finding suggests that sharing narratives about service users in personal recovery may increase work pleasure and help reduce burn out in mental health staff

Targeted AntiBiotics for Chronic pulmonary diseases (TARGET ABC):can targeted antibiotic therapy improve the prognosis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa-infected patients with chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis, and asthma? A multicenter, randomized, controlled, open-label trial

BACKGROUND: Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection is seen in chronic pulmonary disease and is associated with exacerbations and poor long-term prognosis. However, evidence-based guidelines for the management and treatment of P. aeruginosa infection in chronic, non-cystic fibrosis (CF) pulmonary disease are lacking. The aim of this study is to investigate whether targeted antibiotic treatment against P. aeruginosa can reduce exacerbations and mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), non-CF bronchiectasis, and asthma. METHODS: This study is an ongoing multicenter, randomized, controlled, open-label trial. A total of 150 patients with COPD, non-CF bronchiectasis or asthma, and P. aeruginosa-positive lower respiratory tract samples will be randomly assigned with a 1:1 ratio to either no antibiotic treatment or anti-pseudomonal antibiotic treatment with intravenous beta-lactam and oral ciprofloxacin for 14 days. The primary outcome, analyzed with two co-primary endpoints, is (i) time to prednisolone and/or antibiotic requiring exacerbation or death, in the primary or secondary health sector, within days 20–365 from study allocation and (ii) days alive and without exacerbation within days 20–365 from the study allocation. DISCUSSION: This trial will determine whether targeted antibiotics can benefit future patients with chronic, non-CF pulmonary disease and P. aeruginosa infection in terms of reduced morbidity and mortality, thus optimizing therapeutic approaches in this large group of chronic patients. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03262142. Registered on August 25, 2017. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13063-022-06720-z

’Stable Schools’ as a concept for animal health and welfare promotion

The concept of Farmer Field Schools was implemented in a group of Danish organic dairy farms in order to support the process of reaching a common goal among the farmers of phasing out antibiotics from their herds. The results from the herds indicate that crucial changes took place during the project period of approximately one year. We suggest that this is due to the combination of the farmer group’s ownership over the common goal in combination with the individual goals of each farmer. This formed a motivation for improvements on all farms. The encouraging process of seeing successful development in colleagues’ farms together with the advice received from the group formed basis for a strong common learning process

Mental Health Staff Perspectives on Personal Recovery: A Narrative Study on Positive Professional Impact of Recovery-Oriented Care

Objectives Mental health staff play an important role in facilitating personal recovery. We examined how mental health staff perceived personal recovery and the impact of their experience with supporting personal recovery. Research Design and Methods Forty-eight mental health staff wrote a narrative about a service user with severe mental illness that they believed to be in personal recovery and elaborated on the impact of this professional experience. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to illuminate 1) conceptualizations of personal recovery, 2) professional contribution to recovery, and 3) positive impact of recovery-oriented care on staff. Results Conceptualizations of recovery focused on social connections and positive subjective states, and also symptom remission and illness management. Professional contributions were narrated as encompassing treatment, relationships and conversations as well as time and team collaboration. Impact on the staff included strong positive emotions, professional gains with respect to learning and self-esteem, motivation for and meaning in work as well as belief in recovery. Conclusions This latter finding suggests that sharing narratives about service users in personal recovery may increase work pleasure and help reduce burn out in mental health staff. &nbsp

Brains striving for coherence: Long-term cumulative plot formation in the default mode network

Many everyday activities, such as engaging in conversation or listening to a story, require us to sustain attention over a prolonged period of time while integrating and synthesizing complex episodic content into a coherent mental model. Humans are remarkably capable of navigating and keeping track of all the parallel social activities of everyday life even when confronted with interruptions or changes in the environment. However, the underlying cognitive and neurocognitive mechanisms of such long-term integration and profiling of information remain a challenge to neuroscience. While brain activity is generally traceable within the short time frame of working memory (milliseconds to seconds), these integrative processes last for minutes, hours or even days. Here we report two experiments on story comprehension. Experiment I establishes a cognitive dissociation between our comprehension of plot and incidental facts in narratives: when episodic material allows for long-term integration in a coherent plot, we recall fewer factual details. However, when plot formation is challenged, we pay more attention to incidental facts. Experiment II investigates the neural underpinnings of plot formation. Results suggest a central role for the brain's default mode network related to comprehension of coherent narratives while incoherent episodes rather activate the frontoparietal control network. Moreover, an analysis of cortical activity as a function of the cumulative integration of narrative material into a coherent story reveals to linear modulations of right hemisphere posterior temporal and parietal regions. Together these findings point to key neural mechanisms involved in the fundamental human capacity for cumulative plot formation

Comparison of the effects of Sertindole and Olanzapine on Cognition (SEROLA):a double-blind randomized 12-week study of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: To assess the cognitive effects of sertindole and olanzapine in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Cognition was the primary outcome of the study. METHOD: This was a 12-week double-blinded randomized clinical controlled trial. Participants were randomized to either 16–24 mg of sertindole or 10–20 mg of olanzapine. RESULTS: The study had a low recruitment rate (N = 9) and was terminated before the expected number of patients was reached. No significant differences between groups were found at study end on any of the 32 cognitive subtests. A simple sign test did not show any of the comparator drugs trending towards being superior on the majority of tests. Mean change on Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) total and PANSS subscales from baseline to end of study were not significantly different between treatment groups. Similar results on cognition and PANSS was seen on completers and last observation carried forward analysis. CONCLUSION: In this study we did not find any significant differences between sertindole or olanzapine on PANSS subscales or neurocognitive tests in a population consisting of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia

A double-blind randomized pilot trial comparing computerized cognitive exercises to Tetris in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

<p><b>Background:</b> The purpose of this trial was to examine the feasibility and efficacy of computerized cognitive exercises from Scientific Brain Training (SBT), compared to the computer game Tetris as an active placebo, in a pilot study of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).</p> <p><b>Method:</b> Eighteen adolescents with ADHD were randomized to treatment or control intervention for 7 weeks. Outcome measures were cognitive test, symptom, and motivation questionnaires.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> SBT and Tetris were feasible as home-based interventions, and participants’ compliance was high, but participants perceived both interventions as not very interesting or helpful. There were no significant group differences on cognitive and ADHD-symptom measures after intervention. Pre–post intra-group measurement showed that the SBT had a significant beneficial effect on sustained attention, while the active placebo had significant beneficial effects on working memory, both with large effect sizes.</p> <p><b>Conclusion:</b> Although no significant differences were found between groups on any measure, there were significant intra-group changes for each group.</p