Mental health nurses’ attitudes, behaviour, experience and knowledge regarding adults with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder:systematic, integrative literature review

Aims and objectives To establish whether mental health nurses responses to people with borderline personality disorder are problematic and, if so, to inform solutions to support change. Background There is some evidence that people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are unpopular among mental health nurses who respond to them in ways which could be counter-therapeutic. Interventions to improve nurses’ attitudes have had limited success. Design Systematic, integrative literature review. Methods Computerised databases were searched from inception to April 2015 for papers describing primary research focused on mental health nurses’ attitudes, behaviour, experience, and knowledge regarding adults diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Analysis of qualitative studies employed metasynthesis; analysis of quantitative studies was informed by the theory of planned behaviour. Results Forty studies were included. Only one used direct observation of clinical practice. Nurses’ knowledge and experiences vary widely. They find the group very challenging to work with, report having many training needs, and, objectively, their attitudes are poorer than other professionals’ and poorer than towards other diagnostic groups. Nurses say they need a coherent therapeutic framework to guide their practice, and their experience of caregiving seems improved where this exists. Conclusions Mental health nurses’ responses to people with borderline personality disorder are sometimes counter-therapeutic. As interventions to change them have had limited success there is a need for fresh thinking. Observational research to better understand the link between attitudes and clinical practice is required. Evidence-based education about borderline personality disorder is necessary, but developing nurses to lead in the design, implementation and teaching of coherent therapeutic frameworks may have greater benefits. Relevance to clinical practice There should be greater focus on development and implementation of a team-wide approach, with nurses as equal partners, when working with patients with borderline personality disorder

Succession in the aquatic Sarracenia purpurea community: deterministic or driven by contingency?

The development of a community through time, or succession, is generally described as the orderly replacement of species until a deterministic, stable endpoint is reached. However, stochastic factors, coupled with intrinsic biotic factors, such as herbivory or predation, can cause communities within the same habitat to become highly dissimilar in composition. Much research on the succession of terrestrial systems has been conducted, but factors influencing the succession of a terrestrial system may not apply to aquatic systems. To determine whether succession in an aquatic system is deterministic or dominated by contingency of stochastic factors, and the role that higher trophic level interactions and resources have in shaping successional patterns, I followed community development and dynamics of the intermediate and bottom trophic level (protozoans and bacteria) in the model Sarracenia purpurea pitcher plant system throughout an entire growing season. By comparing these dynamics across pitcher plant leaves within the same bog, I was able to determine whether there is a predictable pattern for community assembly in this aquatic community. The results from this study suggest that rather than a sequential replacement of early colonizers with more competitive species through time, competitively superior species establish in newly formed communities simultaneously with less competitive species, which coexist throughout the growing season. Community assembly in this system can also be altered by stochastic events. Resources and predators had a variable effect on the patterns of community change observed during succession. Patterns of community assembly were also dependent on the trophic level examined but, for the bottom trophic level, not on the sampling method use

Move More Mommy: A Web-Based Physical Activity Intervention for Postnatal Women (Pilot Study)

Despite the many benefits of physical activity, postnatal women are not currently meeting Health Canada Guidelines of 150 minutes per week of moderate-vigorous physical activity. This study, Move More Mommy, used a mixed methods design to test the feasibility and acceptability of a web-based intervention combined with a group mediated cognitive behavioural approach, and it’s effectiveness to increase physical activity, self-efficacy, and group cohesion among postnatal women. Participants received an 8-week intervention delivered through 8 group exercise classes and a purpose built website. From baseline to post-intervention, participants significantly increased self-reported physical activity levels and group cohesion. Objectively measured physical activity levels and self-efficacy showed no significant change. Quantitative and qualitative data on feasibility and acceptability showed that this method of delivery is feasible and acceptable among postnatal women and provides preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of a web-based physical activity intervention for postnatal women

Encounters with the military : toward an ethics of feminist critique?

This conversation developed from a panel titled “Interrogating the Militarized Masculine: Reflections on Research, Ethics and Access” held at the May 2013 International Feminist Journal of Politics conference at the University of Sussex, UK

The Dynamics of Sedimentary Chlorophyll α at a High-Energy Beach

Productive sandy beaches are one of the most crucial areas serving our ecosystem today. While often overlooked in scientific research, productive beaches have many essential functions that lead to the preservation and protection of many different species as well as ecological wellness and stability. A key factor that is linked to this productivity is the presence of chlorophyll in the sediments. Piston cores of the sediments at the low-tide mark at Waties Island, South Carolina, were collected across multiple years and subsequently analyzed for chlorophyll concentrations through fluorometry after acetone extraction and acidification. Each core profile was processed to calculate maximum and minimum chlorophyll concentrations, the depths at which they occurred, and the integrated concentration of chlorophyll α. These were all plotted against time to determine patterns in the changes of these different factors with time. Findings suggest that chlorophyll α concentrations do vary with depth seasonally and that their levels are higher overall in the upper layers of sediments

Irish disability: Postcolonial narratives of stunted development

In his 1941 poem The Great Hunger, a scathing critique of rural idealism in mid-twentieth-century Ireland, Patrick Kavanagh defines his Irish anti-hero by the ???impotent worm on his thigh,??? a ???no-target gun??? that represents his purposeless masculinity as life becomes ???dried in [his] veins.??? Twenty years later, Edna O???Brien???s The Country Girls Trilogy presents the coming-of-age tale of Caithleen Brady, an Irish colleen deemed ???mad in one eye??? by her foreign suitor before having herself sterilized and committing suicide. Both bring to mind Samuel Beckett???s grotesquely disfigured and confined narrators who prefigure Francie Brady, the mentally ill and murderous villain-hero of Patrick McCabe???s 1992 novel The Butcher Boy. In this first decade of the twenty-first century, Jamie O???Neill and Roddy Doyle look back one hundred years to the fight for Irish Independence and pen nationalist soldiers fueled by the bitterness and suffering that attend their disability and disenfranchisement???Doyler Doyle of At Swim, Two Boys walks with a limp and Henry Smart of A Star Called Henry fights British soldiers and abusive Irish clerics with his father???s wooden leg. As this catalogue attests, physical and mental disabilities permeate colonial and postcolonial Ireland in the wake of a surge of Irish nationalism demanding, as W.B. Yeats writes in Cathleen Ni Houlihan, that a true Irishman ???must give [Ireland] all??? to the point of martyrdom. In bringing together disability studies and postcolonial Irish literature, I investigate the creation of a standard national narrative for accepted ability and development, the breakdown of these categories, and the role of national discourse in isolating the ???disabled??? as it simultaneously allies physical and mental disability with moral and intellectual deviancy and corruption. The proliferation of physical impairment, spiritual frustration, and social unrest displayed in modern Irish literature critiques the nationalist banner that promised a cure for Irish cultural and political imprisonment. I argue that rather than championing a middle-class triumph over deviancy and demonstrating the development of Irish stability, postcolonial Irish literature exposes Irish development???religious, national, cultural, and individual???as inevitably stunted by both imperial narratives of Irish disability and the equally oppressive nationalist narratives that came to replace them in the Irish postcolonial imaginary. By reading postcolonial Irish narratives through the framework of disability, I venture beyond a critical reliance on the oppression of colonialism to examine the stunting effects of an Irish Catholic nationalism developed by adherence to a pure ideal that rejects sexual, religious, and cultural difference as disabling to an Irish nation. Rather than simply emphasizing an Irish postcolonial triumph over imperial narratives of Irish disability, my dissertation yields a fresh approach that reveals the inevitable stunting of Irish narratives of progress both by imperial policy and the compounding oppression of normative Irish nationalism that further ???disables??? and marginalizes those deemed physically and mentally unfit for national inclusion

The use of exempla in \u27Fasciculus morum\u27

Among the many pastoral aids compiled for parish priests in the late Middle Ages, Fasciculus morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher\u27s Handbook, is among the more important but is surprisingly little studied. In this thesis I focus direct attention on its use of the preaching exemplum. Although it is not an exempla collection per se, a study of the exempla in the work offers many insights into other such collections. This thesis examines these exempla--the types of characters found in them, their sources, and their function within the context of Fasciculus morum proper. As the literary review which opens Chapter 1 indicates, studies of the work are limited and the first chapters thus set the work in its historical context, introducing problems of authorship, date, and genre. Chapter 2 demonstrates how the author\u27s likely Franciscan origin affected the book\u27s distribution and content and how the development of sermons in the period before Fasciculus morum was written affected the manual. Chapter 3 looks directly at the exempla of Fasciculus morum, developing a working definition of the term, and problems in exempla studies. Earlier scholars have stressed the need to discuss exempla in context. Commentaries on exempla collections are precluded from doing this because the exempla are provided as material for preachers, but the preachers provide the context which defines the way the exempla function. Editors of major exempla collections have tended to discuss such topics as the characters, situations, sources, and other occurences of the exempla. I have included sections covering both of these approaches to exempla, first commenting on the number, distribution, length, and language of the exempla, and their characters and sources, including the large number of classical exempla, and then looking at the purpose and function of the exempla, the way they relate to the material found before and after them in the chapters of Fasciculus morum. The appendices include a full catalogue of all exempla in the work with sources and other indexes to Fasciculus moru

This is How I Sing to You

This is How I Sing to You is a collection of narrative poetry which sheds the notion that such subject matter is easily dismissed. These poems resonate, follow a life and respect the press of time: placing you somewhere near the beginning and allowing you to find your way to what, for now, is the end. In a life, and in these poems, there is losing and finding; gift-giving and truth-telling; staying put and leaving; looking back and moving forward. There is sky and some rain. There are dogs. There is a spider. There is lots of singing

Treatment of osteoporosis in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy using black bear parathyroid hormone

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive disease affecting skeletal and cardiac muscle, as well as bone. Long term disuse and glucocorticoid treatments cause progressive osteoporosis in DMD patients, leading to an increase in fracture incidence. Treatments for osteoporosis in these patients have not been widely explored. Parathyroid hormone (PTH), an anabolic treatment for post-menopausal osteoporosis, could benefit DMD patients by improving skeletal properties and reducing fracture risk. Other PTH analogues are not currently FDA approved to treat osteoporosis, but may have improved osteogenic effects compared to the human analogue. Black bear PTH is especially promising as an osteoporosis treatment for the DMD population. Black bears are unique models of bone maintenance during disuse, since during six months of inactivity (hibernation), they maintain skeletal properties, unlike other hibernators. Additionally, black bear PTH has been correlated to bone formation markers during hibernation, indicating it may be, at least in part, the mechanism by which bears maintain bone during disuse. Employing black bear PTH as a treatment for osteoporosis in DMD patients could greatly improve quality of life for these individuals, and reduce the pain and expense associated with frequent fractures