Health Sciences

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Navigating nutrition evidence for individualised care

Diet is key to the maintenance of health and crucial in the prevention and management of many diseases. Modified nutrient intake is sometimes essential to prevent deficiency, optimise development and health, or manage symptoms and disease progression. A new Position Paper (Hickson et al 2024) from the Academy of Nutrition Sciences (ANS) provides a state-of-the-art summary of how evidence-based practice, with a particular emphasis on research evaluation, is used to inform nutrition interventions for individuals.

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From a small seed to a giant Iroko tree: A postgraduate training programme in Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the youngest population of any region in the world with 70% under the age of 30 years. This youthful demographic profile can be both a blessing and a challenge. While the youth have the potential to drive economic development, meeting their educational, social, and health needs can over-stretch already limited human and material resources.

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Mapping evidence-based interventions to the care of unaccompanied minor refugees using a group formulation approach

The January BABCP Article of the Month is from Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy (BCP) and is entitled Mapping evidence-based interventions to the care of unaccompanied minor refugees using a group formulation approach by Veronika Dobler, Judith Nestler, Maren Konzelmann and Helen Kennerley  ‘Stop the boats’ slogans dominate current headlines.…

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We Were In The Pits, But At Least There Was Company

In March 2017, a medical doctor ordered his driver to stop on the Third Mainland Bridge, came down from his car and jumped into the Lagos Lagoon. Traditional media platforms and social media buzzed with this tragic news. It was not the usual fare: that cocktail of pernicious poverty, drug use, and wanton criminality; this was a gentleman. It unveiled a severe concern about that taboo subject, mental health. 

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From nightmares to sweet dreams

Daniel Kay, Editor in Chief of Research Directions: Sleep Psychology, reveals how a bad dream experience in childhood led to a fascinating career in sleep science “When I was a child,” recalls Daniel Kay, “I had a recurring nightmare that proved to be one of the most impactful experiences of my life.…

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The commonality of being a researcher

A year after the launch of the Cambridge Prisms series, Publisher Jessica Jones reflects on the journals’ shared values of community, collaboration and equity When we initially discussed the concept of the Cambridge Prisms, and what we hoped they would achieve, we fell into the trap of trying to compare different groups of researchers with diverse expertise and focuses.…

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Not the Emotion, but its Regulation: A Study on Depression and Anxiety in Public Healthcare System

The paper ‘Variables Associated with Emotional Symptom Severity in Primary Care Patients: The Usefulness of a Logistic Regression Equation to Help Clinical Assessment and Treatment Decisions’ by Ángel Aguilera-Martín, Mario Gálvez-Lara, Roger Muñoz-Navarro, César González-Blanch, Paloma Ruiz-Rodríguez, Antonio Cano-Videl and Juan Antonio Moriana, published in The Spanish Journal of Psychology, has been chosen as the Editor’s Choice Article for December 2023.…

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Coprococcus in your gut: the secret of happiness?   

Today it is well established that our physical wellbeing partially depends on the trillions of microbes in our gut, the intestinal microbiome. At same time, there is emerging evidence that these unicellular lifeforms can also influence our mental status and cognitive performance.

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Capitalising on multi-disciplinary insights into depression

Following the launch of Research Directions: Depression by Cambridge University Press, Editor-in-Chief Ian Hickie explains why a question-led and global approach will reveal new insights into mood disorders The launch of Research Directions: Depression represents ‘a chance to co-ordinate a real global effort in the field’, according to Editor-in-Chief Ian Hickie.…

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Always tired? Read how nutrition can influence fatigue

Fatigue is a symptom resulting from the weakening or depletion of one's physical and/or mental resources, ranging from a general state of lethargy to a specific, work-induced burning sensation within one's muscles. It is a highly prevalent feeling but still remains an often-neglected unmet clinical need.

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An Evolutionary Look at Allomaternal Stress-Buffering During Pregnancy

Grandmothers often help the mother-child dyad, but when does this help start? In our lives, we may see many people increase helping behaviors towards a close friend or family member when she has a child to offset her increasing needs. From an evolutionary perspective, these kin and non-kin helpers (or ‘allomothers’) buffer maternal workloads to increase the health and survival of the mother-child dyad. One critical category of allomother that has been studied extensively is grandmothers because of their child-care expertise as well as their often close geographic proximity and emotional connections to the dyad. Much of the research has focused on this allomaternal help at weaning, or more generally, after the child is born. However, given recent evidence that maternal conditions during pregnancy can alter birth outcomes and increase the risk of postnatal morbidities, more evolutionary research is needed to explore prenatal allomaternal effects.

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Uniting in Resilience: How Collective Belief Heals War’s Hidden Wounds

War doesn't merely result in physical devastation. The mental and emotional aftermath, particularly from modern warfare that targets civilians, is profound. Civilians suffer alongside combatants, facing deaths, injuries, chronic disability, multiple displacements with uprooting of whole communities, loss of homes, destruction of essential services, infrastructure and environment. These traumatic experiences lead to a wide range of mental health issues, from depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance abuse to family and collective trauma impeding personal and community recovery.

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From Farm to Mouth: How Food Policy Groups Are Transforming Food Systems in High-Income Countries

Today’s food systems in high-income countries face several challenges, including a lack of resiliency, resulting in an inconsistent food supply and changing food prices, especially during crises. When faced with this type of challenge, high-income countries tend to rely on short term food relief that doesn’t always meet people’s nutritional needs or choices. In addition, limited access to nutrition education and cooking skills programs makes it hard for those most at risk to use what food they do have effectively. To address these challenges, a focus on local or regional food systems is considered one way to boost food system resilience.  

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Encouraging veggies over fries!

What we eat is influenced by a myriad of external factors: our mood, the occasion, friends and family, new food trends, the location, food presentation, to name only a few. We tend to choose our food differently at a wedding reception surrounded by people we are meeting for the first time than at a garden BBQ with family and friends after a rough day at work.

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A Witness to My Inner Struggle

Puzzle was created during a admission It's a self-portrait, but the question is of what? Throughout my life, painting and the canvas have given me the the opportunity to let go and thus art has helped in my recovery.

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Computational neuroscience and clinical perspective: Approaching negative symptomatology

We are honoured that our paper “Longitudinal trajectories in negative symptoms and changes in brain cortical thickness: 10-year follow-up” has been chosen as RCPsych Article of the Month. During recent years, our team has been part of the “Programa de Atención a Fases Iniciales de Psicosis (PAFIP)”. PAFIP is a three-year early intervention initiative designed for individuals who have experienced their first episode of psychosis (FEP). Those who willingly joined this program received comprehensive care from a team of professionals, including psychiatric nursing, psychology, psychiatry, and social work. A decade after the onset of psychotic disorders, the PAFIP team reconnected with the participants for a follow-up evaluation.

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Cover Artwork: Faces

As Pictures Editor, I selected Peter Eddie's art for the August cover because of his intriguing drawings of faces and his enthusiastic use of any surface, here water cups. The rows of faces appear like an audience, looking out on us the viewer and reader of this journal.

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Comparative transcriptomics from intestinal cells of permissive and non-permissive hosts during Ancylostoma ceylanicum infection reveals unique signatures of protection and host specificity

The latest Paper of the Month for Parasitology is Comparative transcriptomics from intestinal cells of permissive and non-permissive hosts during Ancylostoma ceylanicum infection reveals unique signatures of protection and host specificity and is freely available. …

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LONDON IS THE PLACE FOR ME 

My life as I knew it changed in the autumn of 2019. I started a new job in a new city in a new country. To further tip the scale, my aisle-destined engagement began to fail that summer, with unresolved conflicts sporadically rearing their heads in five cities on three continents. That summer, my laptop (and all my precious writing and dissertation) was stolen on a flight from London to Lagos.

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Wairua and Psychiatry: healing partners  

From my Māori world view, wairua or spirituality is our essence. Everything else flows out from there. If we don’t get spiritual wellbeing right, other approaches will have only limited benefit. It seems to me that psychiatry offers treatments that are focused on the brain, addressing physical and psychological wellbeing. I notice that western talking therapies often don’t address spiritual values that are of critical importance to Māori and other Indigenous peoples.

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From Overeating to Brain Aging: How diet and obesity impact the gut-brain interaction

With the ongoing global epidemic of obesity and increasing prevalence of dementia, evaluating the impact of over-eating and different diets on brain structure and function becomes increasingly important. Recent studies suggest that the gut microbiota and metabolic changes can impact with cognitive health. In this paper of the month, we were interested in the impact of obesity and diet on the gut-brain axis.

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Cover Artwork: Head in 4 Parts

As pictures editor, I selected Peter Grundy's art for the February cover because of his striking designs that simply portray complicated issues. Peter Grundy is one of the world's leading information designers. Peter Grundy states his designs and illustrations aim to turn complex information into simple visual stories in a world of modern messiness.

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The double-edged sword of keeping livestock: balancing nutritional benefits with disease risks in poor nations

In many low- and lower-middle-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where mixed crop-livestock farming is widely practiced, livestock keeping provides income, food, nutrition and other benefits for the rural poor. The nutritional benefits of livestock keeping are particularly important since malnutrition continues to cause nearly half of annual global child deaths, and can have lasting effects on the physical growth and cognitive development of millions of surviving children.

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Mindfully with Tunmise: Interview with Nigerian broadcaster and mental health advocate

The April edition of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International – features an interview with Tunmise Kuku, a Nigerian radio broadcaster and mental health advocate who has been open about her diagnosis of Type II Bipolar Affective Disorder. Three years ago, she took a deliberate career break to write Living Mindfully: A Journey of Being, a memoir that draws from her experiences and stories. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Exploring whether practitioners working for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services are culturally competent to deal with the needs of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities

The March BABCP Article of the Month is from the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (tCBT) and is entitled “‘It’s been quite a poor show’ – exploring whether practitioners working for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services are culturally competent to deal with the needs of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities” by Afsana Faheem.…

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Cyclospora cayetanensis comprises at least 3 species that cause human cyclosporiasis

Despite its impact on United States (US) food safety since the 1990’s, efforts to understand Cyclospora cayetanensis genetics only really began within the last 7 years. However, we have learned a great deal over that time; genotyping technologies now exist for Cyclospora, and these are being used routinely to complement cyclosporiasis outbreak investigations performed by US public health agencies

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A greener deal for ready meals

Ready meals are a popular choice in the UK, and it is estimated that almost 90% of us eat them. Many ready meals can be classified as ultra-processed foods, which often have multiple added ingredients such as sugar, salt, fat, artificial colours, or preservatives, and consumption of ready meals has been associated with an increased risk of obesity. However, the jury is still out on the nutritional quality of ready meals.

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Ode to the Powerless: Bessie Head’s ‘A Question of Power’ through a Personal Lens

No writer’s life and work has had a more profound impact on me than that of Bessie Head, a woman who was born in a psychiatric hospital in South Africa, raised in foster care and later exiled to Botswana, a country she simultaneously loved and hated. By the time she died in 1986, Head had published several novels, including A Question of Power, which she described as “almost autobiographical” in its account of the life of Elizabeth, a woman in the midst of a psychological crisis against the backdrop of her country’s political struggles. I am afraid of readingthis novel againbecause of how vividly it evokes a memory from my medical school days, of a psychiatric evaluation with a patient exhibiting dissociation symptoms and who was later diagnosed with comorbid schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder.

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‘Everything is connected’

Professor Andrea Azcarate-Peril tells the marathon story of her journey from Argentina, via North Carolina, to becoming Editor-in-Chief of Gut Microbiome, an open access journal co-published by Cambridge University Press and The Nutrition Society

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The health effects of alternative plant-based meats on inflammation

The Paper of the Month for February is 'Assessing the effects of alternative plant-based meats v. animal meats on biomarkers of inflammation: a secondary analysis of the SWAP-MEAT randomized crossover trial' and the blog is written by author Anthony Crimarco, Ph.D. and is published by the Journal of Nutritional Science and is free to access for one month.

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Cover Artwork: Albert

In this edition of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International – Dr Tim McInerny, Pictures Editor, BJPsych International introduces Albert, the artist whose portrait is on the cover of the February 2023 issue of BJPsych International.

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Excess body weight exacerbates the harmful effect of alcohol on cancer risk

Excess body weight and alcohol consumption are both modifiable risk factors for many adverse health outcomes, including cancer. Alcohol is classified as Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and alcohol consumption is associated with a higher incidence of seven cancer types. Excess body weight is also associated with at least 13 cancer types. Although these factors have been known to be linked with cancer for many years, very few studies have investigated the joint association between alcohol consumption and excess body weight with cancer risk.

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Echoes of Shame: A Comparison of the Characteristics and Psychological Sequelae of Recalled Shame Experiences Across the Voice Hearing Continuum

The January BABCP Article of the Month is from Behavioural and Cogntive Psychotherapy (BCP) and is entitled “Echoes of shame: a comparison of the characteristics and psychological sequelae of recalled shame experiences across the voice hearing continuum” by Rachel Brand, Rosalie Altman, Carla Nardelli, Maxine Raffoul, Marcela Matos and Catherine Bortolon Over the last few years, we, among many other researchers, have been involved in the developing field of clinical and research work on trauma-related voice-hearing (hearing voices without the corresponding external stimuli, also known as auditory verbal hallucinations).…

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Higher rates of involuntary psychiatric hospital admission among minoritised ethnic groups are not explained by lack of access to care

The RCPsych Article of the Month for January is ‘Ethnic inequalities in involuntary admission under the Mental Health Act: an exploration of mediation effects of clinical care prior to the first admission’ and the blog is written by authors Daniela Fonseca Freitas, Susan Walker, Patrick Nyikavaranda, Johnny Downs, Rashmi Patel, Mizanur Khondoker, Kamaldeep Bhui and Richard D. Hayes. The article is published in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

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Conspiracy beliefs in the Spanish-speaking context

The paper “Validation of the Spanish Version of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale” by Angelo Fasce, Diego Avendaño, Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan, and Álex Escolà-Gascón published in The Spanish Journal of Psychology has been chosen as the Editor’s Choice Article for December 2022.…

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‘I’m unlikeable, boring, weird, foolish, inferior, inadequate’: How To Address The Persistent Negative Self-evaluations That Are Central To Social Anxiety Disorder With Cognitive Therapy

The December BABCP Article of the Month is from the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (tCBT) and is entitled “‘I’m unlikeable, boring, weird, foolish, inferior, inadequate’: how to address the persistent negative self-evaluations that are central to social anxiety disorder with cognitive therapy” by Emma Warnock-Parkes, Jennifer Wild, Graham Thew, Alice Kerr, Nick Grey and David M.

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Cultivating new paradigms in mental health

On a global basis, mental health is an issue almost unimaginable in its scale. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently estimated that some 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide, and that every 40 seconds someone commits suicide with causes including mental health afflictions, such as depression. Indeed, the WHO says that, among those aged 15 to 29, suicide is a ‘leading cause of death’ – and that the majority of these are in low- or middle-income countries.

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Expanding the use of a revolutionary therapy in childhood wasting

The development of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) and the advent of the community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) model of care revolutionized the management of severe acute malnutrition in children living in low- and middle-income countries. In addition to improved recovery rates and decreased mortality rates, the CMAM model democratized care for children in remote settings by bringing care to the village and household level. This approach has been further expanded to include children with moderate acute malnutrition as well. Scaling up coverage of care and optimizing treatment protocols remain high on the global nutrition agenda.

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How can the CBT community better meet the needs of older people?

The November BABCP Article of the Month is from the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (tCBT) and is entitled “Embedding the silver thread in all-age psychological services: training and supervising younger therapists to deliver CBT for anxiety or depression to older people with multi-morbidity” by Georgina Charlesworth Older people respond better to psychological therapy than working age adults – a consistent evidence-based conclusion from analyses of large datasets and national surveys.…

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Cover Artwork: ‘Medusa’ by Sarah Kogan

In the November edition of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International – Dr Tim McInerny, Pictures Editor, BJPsych International introduces Sarah Kogan, the artist whose portrait is on the cover of the November edition of BJPsych International. 

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What is the reluctance! (“It couldn’t possibly be ADHD”) (Is it ADHD?)

We know that the prevalence rates of physical and mental disorders are higher in people with intellectual disabilities than in the general population. ADHD is one of those neurodevelopmental disorders where clinicians appear reluctant to make the diagnosis in people with ID. Of course, diagnosing ADHD-ID can be difficult for many reasons such as other diagnoses overshadowing the core signs of ADHD. Despite clearly observing and documenting symptoms of ADHD (without calling it ADHD), we are slow to consider the diagnosis. We always wonder why health professionals are very reluctant to consider the diagnosis of ADHD in people with ID that has led us to write the article.

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Structural racism impacts African Americans’ ability to eat a healthy diet. What can we do as nutrition researchers and practitioners?

Nutrition researchers and public health practitioners have become increasingly focused on structural racism following protests against racial injustice in 2020 and the disparities in covid-19 mortality experienced by marginalized groups. Structural racism consists of overlapping systems of discrimination in society such as in policing, housing, and employment. These systems also affect marginalized groups’ ability to access healthful food. For example, African Americans are more likely to live in areas with higher densities of fast-food restaurants and may not have access to full-service grocery stores. Differences in financial resources may also impact their ability to pay for healthy food. Providing nutrition education alone can be insensitive in the face of these obstacles.

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GOOD ART IS (NOT) PRETTY ART

The October edition of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International – features a short blog by Motswana visual artist, Sedireng Mothibatsela, who writes about a crucial moment in her artistic development which coincides with her parent’s separation. It is a moving piece about how visual arts intersects with trauma and healing. I can recall the afternoon that changed how I create. I was 12 years old and in my last year of primary school and the looming high school years ahead presented many questions about how I wanted to proceed with my art. I had painted a watercolour still life and I was bored with it. Although my art received praise from my family and peers, my handling of watercolour was juvenile at best. I needed more; technically and conceptually. It was then that I began to question the art making process. Like most young artists in primary school we were simply taught that “good art is pretty art.”

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