A submission on the issues raised by the review of New South Wales Mental Health Act 2007

The submission is based upon the issues raised in the Discussion Paper: Issues Arising under the NSW Mental Health Act 2007. Part I of the submission deals with issues relating to the criteria for detention and treatment as addressed in parts 4, 6, 7, 17 and 20 of the Discussion Paper. Part II focuses on other matters such as treatment for conditions other than mental illness, electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery. The proposed revision of the Mental Health Act 2007 (NSW) will be the first re‐drafting of the State’s mental health legislation under the influence of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2 (CRPD) and offers the opportunity for the first major re‐drafting since 1990. The revision provides an opportunity for an extensive modernisation of the mental health laws of New South Wales and a chance to set out innovative measures to better protect the health and rights of people living with mental illness. The authors provide a number of recommendations that will better protect patient rights, whilst providing a framework to better protect people who are vulnerable in certain circumstances. This will be achieved by legislation that is centred around a presumption of decision‐making capacity, facilitates supported decision‐making wherever decision‐making capacity is impaired, and encourages voluntary treatment wherever possible. Where people are unable to make their own decisions, even with support, substituted decision‐ making should be permissible in circumstances where the will and preference of the person is the paramount consideration, with the goal of supporting and enhancing the person’s overall wellbeing. The recommendations also take account of community concerns about the safety of others where people with mental illness are thought to present a risk of violence to persons. Part 2 of the submission deals with issues other than those relating to the criteria for detention and treatment as addressed in parts 4, 6, 7, 17 and 20 of the Discussion Paper. These include electroconvulsive therapy, psychosurgery, treatment for conditions other than mental illness, and seclusion and restraint. The authors are concerned to see that any new legislation will provide a rights‐based approach to mental health care in New South Wales, and in this report, we set out a number of recommendations which we believe will better protect patient rights, focus on supported decision‐making, and facilitate voluntary treatment wherever possible

Perceived Burdensomeness and the Wish for Hastened Death in Persons With Severe and Persistent Mental Illness

Background: In several European countries, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is no longer confined to persons with a terminal prognosis but is also available to those suffering from persistent and unbearable mental illness. To date, scholarly discourse on MAID in this population has been dominated by issues such as decision-making capacity, uncertainty as to when a disease is incurable, stigmatization, isolation, and loneliness. However, the issue of perceived burdensomeness has received little attention. Objective: The study explores the possible impact of perceived burdensomeness on requests for MAID among persons with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). Method: Using the method of ethical argumentation, we discuss the issue of access to MAID for persons with SPMI and perceived burdensomeness. Conclusion: Perceived burdensomeness may be a contributing factor in the wish for hastened death among persons with SPMI. MAID is ethically unsupportable if SPMI causes the individual to make an unrealistic assessment of burdensomeness, indicating a lack of decision-making capacity in the context of that request. However, the possibility that some individuals with SPMI may perceive burdensomeness does not mean that they should be routinely excluded from MAID. For SPMI patients with intact decision-making capacity who feel their life is not worth living, perceived burdensomeness as a component of this intolerable suffering is not a sufficient reason to deny access to MAID

How Do Audiologists Respond to Emotional and Psychological Concerns Raised in the Audiology Setting? Three Case Vignettes

Objectives: Emotional and psychological well-being are essential to overall health, but there is little research showing how to approach emotional and psychological concerns in the audiological setting. This study investigated audiologists’ self-reported clinical behaviors in response to emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms raised by audiology clients. Design: A sample of 83 Australia-based audiologists completed a survey including vignettes presenting older adults with hearing loss and experiencing symptoms consistent with either depression or grief. Content analysis was used to explore: (1) audiologists’ self-reported usual response when clients present with emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms in the audiological setting; (2) audiologists’ ability to identify and describe psychological symptoms; and (3) audiologists’ self-reported clinical behaviors relating to client referral for psychological support. Results: When asked to describe their usual clinical course of action in response to the vignettes, over one half the audiologists described actions that address the clients concerns related to psychological well-being. Where audiologists described how they would provide psychological support, they described modifications to the audiological rehabilitation program including involving significant others in the rehabilitation process, recommending additional support outside of the audiology setting (such as General Practitioner or psychologists), and providing emotional support and counseling. When prompted, the majority of participants recognized the two cases with depression as having a mental health condition; however, 48% of participants indicated the control case as also having a mental health condition. When asked directly, the majority of audiologists indicated that they would refer the three vignettes for specialist support; however, less than one third described referral to a General Practitioner and less than 5% described referral to a mental health professional as their normal course of action in the open response item. Twenty-five different professions/people were reported as potential sources for referral. Conclusion: These findings support the need for further training and/or resources for audiologists to enable them to appropriately detect, describe and refer for emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms raised by clients’ in the audiology setting

DAISY: picking synthetic lethals from cancer genomes.

A better understanding of genetic interactions in cancer might help identify new therapeutic approaches that exploit the concept of synthetic lethality. Ruppin and colleagues have developed a new computational method, DAISY, that predicts such interactions and potentially facilitates the delineation and validation of comprehensive genetic interaction networks

Known unknowns and unknown unknowns in suicide risk assessment: Evidence from meta-analyses of aleatory and epistemic uncertainty

Suicide risk assessment aims to reduce uncertainty in order to focus treatment and supervision on those who are judged to be more likely to die by suicide. In this article we consider recent meta-analytic research that highlights the difference between uncertainty about suicide due to chance factors (aleatory uncertainty) and uncertainty that results from lack of knowledge (epistemic uncertainty).We conclude that much of the uncertainty about suicide is aleatory rather than epistemic, and discuss the implications for clinicians

Erratum: Association between suicidal ideation and suicide: Meta-analyses of odds ratios, sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value (BJPsych Open (2019) 5:2 (e18) DOI: 10.1192/bjo.2018.88)

The publishers regret to announce that the above paper was published with the incorrect article number. The correct citation details are as follows: McHugh CM, Corderoy A, Ryan CJ, Hickie IB, Large MM. Association between suicidal ideation and suicide: Meta-analyses of odds ratios, sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value. BJPsych Open 2019; 5(2): e18. doi:10.1192/bjo.2018.88. This has now been updated in the original article online. The publisher sincerely apologises for this error

Association between suicidal ideation and suicide: Meta-analyses of odds ratios, sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value

Background The expression of suicidal ideation is considered to be an important warning sign for suicide. However, the predictive properties of suicidal ideation as a test of later suicide are unclear.Aims To assess the strength of the association between suicidal ideation and later suicide measured by odds ratio (OR), sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value (PPV).Method We located English-language studies indexed in PubMed that reported the expression or non-expression of suicidal ideation among people who later died by suicide or did not. A random effects meta-analysis was used to assess the pooled OR, sensitivity, specificity and PPV of suicidal ideation for later suicide among groups of people from psychiatric and non-psychiatric settings.Results There was a moderately strong but highly heterogeneous association between suicidal ideation and later suicide (n = 71, OR = 3.41, 95% CI 2.59-4.49, 95% prediction interval 0.42-28.1, I2 = 89.4, Q-value = 661, d.f.(Q) = 70, P ≤0.001). Studies conducted in primary care and other non-psychiatric settings had similar pooled odds to studies of current and former psychiatric patients (OR = 3.86 v. OR = 3.23, P = 0.7). The pooled sensitivity of suicidal ideation for later suicide was 41% (95% CI 35-48) and the pooled specificity was 86% (95% CI 76-92), with high between-study heterogeneity. Studies of suicidal ideation expressed by current and former psychiatric patients had a significantly higher pooled sensitivity (46% v. 22%) and lower pooled specificity (81% v. 96%) than studies conducted in non-psychiatric settings. The PPV among non-psychiatric cohorts (0.3%, 95% CI 0.1%-0.5%) was significantly lower (Q-value = 35.6, P < 0.001) than among psychiatric samples (3.9%, 95% CI 2.2-6.6).Conclusions Estimates of the extent of the association between suicidal ideation and later suicide are limited by unexplained between-study heterogeneity. The utility of suicidal ideation as a test for later suicide is limited by a modest sensitivity and low PPV.Declaration interest M.M.L. and C.J.R. have provided expert evidence in civil, criminal and coronial matters. I.B.H. has been a Commissioner in Australia's National Mental Health Commission since 2012. He is the Co-Director, Health and Policy at the Brain and Mind Centre (BMC) University of Sydney. The BMC operates an early-intervention youth services at Camperdown under contract to Headspace. I.B.H. has previously led community-based and pharmaceutical industry-supported (Wyeth, Eli Lily, Servier, Pfizer, AstraZeneca) projects focused on the identification and better management of anxiety and depression. He is a Board Member of Psychosis Australia Trust and a member of Veterans Mental Health Clinical Reference group. He was a member of the Medical Advisory Panel for Medibank Private until October 2017. He is the Chief Scientific Advisor to, and an equity shareholder in, InnoWell. InnoWell has been formed by the University of Sydney and PricewaterhouseCoopers to administer the $30 M Australian Government Funded Project Synergy. Project Synergy is a 3-year programme for the transformation of mental health services through the use of innovative technologies

CancerGD: A Resource for Identifying and Interpreting Genetic Dependencies in Cancer.

Genes whose function is selectively essential in the presence of cancer-associated genetic aberrations represent promising targets for the development of precision therapeutics. Here, we present CancerGD, a resource that integrates genotypic profiling with large-scale loss-of-function genetic screens in tumor cell lines to identify such genetic dependencies. CancerGD provides tools for searching, visualizing, and interpreting these genetic dependencies through the integration of functional interaction networks. CancerGD includes different screen types (siRNA, shRNA, CRISPR), and we describe a simple format for submitting new datasets

Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices of Australian Audiologists in Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Adults With Hearing Loss

Purpose Emotional and mental health is essential to overall health, but there has been little research on how to approach emotional and mental health in the audiology setting. This study provides a preliminary investigation into the current knowledge, beliefs, and practices of Australian audiologists in addressing the emotional and mental health needs of adults with hearing loss. Method A 22-item survey using open- and closed-ended questions was completed by 95 Australian audiologists using a cross-sectional study design. Results Two thirds of audiologists described being underconfident and lacking the skills required to provide emotional support to people with hearing loss. Barriers to delivering emotional support included feeling out of their depth (56.6%), time/caseload pressures (55.3%), and the perception that the provision of emotional support was not within an audiologist's scope of practice (31.6%). Audiologists described a desire to refer clients to mental health professionals yet highlighted significant barriers, including not knowing who to refer to (54.7%), when to make a referral (49.3%), or how to make a referral (38.6%). Audiologists overwhelmingly (96%) indicated that they would like to develop their knowledge and skills associated with the provision of emotional and mental health support in the audiological setting. Conclusion Knowledge, skills, and time were identified as the key areas that require attention in order to allow audiologists to address the emotional and mental health needs of adults with hearing loss