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This paper describes the 9-step Collaborative Care Pathway (CCP-9), an innovative approach to delivering recovery-focused community mental health care which has been piloted and implemented in a community-based secondary level service in Ireland over the past 14 years. Care planning is mandated in the Republic of Ireland by the Mental Health Act (2001). Subsequent public policy documents require care planning to have a recovery focus, as outlined in the Quality Framework Document (Mental Health Commission 2023). The CCP-9 is a novel approach to delivering community mental health care in which care planning is embedded as one of a sequence of nine steps in a complete pathway of care from referral to discharge, and which has been adapted over time in line with evolving public policy. The CCP-9 is innovative in explicitly taking a graded approach to assessment, in the emphasis placed on collaborative engagement of service users (SUs) and their families, in the detailed psychosocial assessment undertaken in parallel with diagnostic assessment and in the degree of multidisciplinary team (MDT) involvement. The CCP-9 is coordinated by a key worker, involves prospective identification of personal needs and goals by the SU and enhanced MDT involvement in review of assessments, case formulation, care planning and feedback to SUs and families. The CCP-9 emphasises sharing information, documentation and mental health education with SUs and family members throughout the process, as a necessary support for shared decision-making in developing and implementing the care plan. Challenges to the sustainability of the CCP-9 includes the significant time investment to complete the assessment, care planning and feedback.
The prevalence of religious beliefs and practices is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective, but previous research has suggested that religious traditions may provide cooperative benefits and improve well-being. Seemingly in contrast to this claim are worldwide secularization trends in which people disaffiliate from religions and abandon belief in God. Theorists have suggested that diminished pressures on cooperation and well-being no longer motivate individuals to seek religious benefits and pay the associated participation costs. We investigate this claim using the National Study of Youth and Religion dataset, which tracks the development of religiosity among US Christians from adolescence to young adulthood (n = 3,370). Using a lagged panel design, we found that material security in Wave 1 (early adolescence) predicts a decrease in belief in God in Wave 4 (young adulthood), although this association is rather small. This result provides some support for the hypothesis that participation in religious traditions is associated with living in an insecure socio-ecology, where religious systems may still confer benefits on their members; yet it is not the only driver of secularization. We conclude with a call for further research using more nuanced measures and larger sample sizes to provide deeper insights into the potentially adaptive nature of cultural systems.
This study aims to explore the perspectives on disinvestment of low-value care and interventions in Malaysia’s healthcare system, with a focus on establishing the criteria for assessing disinvestment candidates, identifying potential barriers, and proposing strategies to improve the acceptance and effective implementation of disinvestment.
Methods
Between March and May 2023, we conducted online, semistructured interviews with seventeen Malaysian healthcare stakeholders with different professional roles at various levels of governance and decision making. Participants were recruited through a mix of purposive and snowballing sampling. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using inductive thematic approach in Atlas.ti.
Results
We identified four major themes: disinvestment as a catalyst for efficient resource allocation; disinvestment as a justifiable way of cutting budgets; challenges and barriers in implementation; and strategies for value-based assessment and effective implementation. Stakeholders viewed disinvestment both optimistically and skeptically in terms of its implementation but were unanimous in including equity as a key component in decision making. Practical challenges and uncertainty among healthcare professionals emerged as significant barriers to implementing disinvestment initiatives in Malaysia.
Conclusions
Malaysian stakeholders viewed disinvestment as both an opportunity to improve resource allocation and a source of concern due to potential negative consequences and system readiness. This study identified strategies to support value-based assessment and implementation, underscoring the need for accountability and collaboration. Although current disinvestment efforts in Malaysia remain limited and undocumented, the thematic framework developed offers transferable insights and a structured lens for assessing readiness. These stakeholder-derived themes can guide other countries in designing transparent, equitable, and context-sensitive disinvestment processes.
A standardized framework for evaluating Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) deployments is currently lacking. This study aimed to identify evaluation practices and elucidate stakeholder perspectives on evaluating EMT deployments.
Methods
Qualitative interviews were conducted with seventeen participants from all World Health Organization regions, including EMT members, researchers, funders, EMT deploying organizations, and host governments. Thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke’s 6-step process was applied to generate data-driven codes and themes.
Results
Participants generally agreed on the importance of evaluating EMT deployments and sharing lessons learned to establish best practices. Participants recommended that evaluations be carried out externally for objectivity, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data. They highlighted that voices of local stakeholders are essential but often overlooked. Participants identified evaluation areas which could be used to develop a comprehensive evaluation framework, which included leadership, partner coordination, information management and planning, health operations and technical expertise, operations support and logistics, and finance and administration.
Conclusions
Stakeholders generally recognized the value of establishing a standardized evaluation framework for EMT deployments to enable sharing of best practices and learning for improvement. Further research should prioritize identifying evaluation priorities, with next steps being piloting in both training and deployment settings.
Embryo loss during the implantation period is one of the main factors limiting litter size in sows. This study aimed to investigate whether combined supplementation with sodium butyrate (SB), selenium yeast (SeY) and soy isoflavones (SIF) during early pregnancy could improve embryo implantation and consequently increase litter size. 103 Landrace × Yorkshire sows of parity 6–7 were randomly allocated into: (1) control group (n = 56) fed basal diet, and (2) SB-SeY-SIF treatment group (n = 47) supplemented with 0.05% SB, 50 ppm SeY, and 0.02% SIF in the basal diet from pregnancy days 1–28. Serum and fecal samples were collected on pregnancy day 14 and 28. After farrowing, reproductive performance data were recorded for both groups. SB-SeY-SIF supplementation increased the litter size (17.70 vs. 16.46) and the number of normal neonatal piglets (birth weight > 0.7 kg and without malformations, 14.21 vs. 13.23) (P < 0.05). Further analyses demonstrated that SB-SeY-SIF enhanced serum estradiol (E2) and progesterone (P4) levels, improved total antioxidant capacity and the activities of key antioxidant enzymes including catalase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and thioredoxin reductase, while reduced malondialdehyde levels (P < 0.05). Correlation analyses between reproductive performance and differential gut microbiota, and differential serum and fecal metabolites revealed that potential beneficial bacteria (such as Phascolarctobacterium succinatutens) and metabolites associated with blastocyst development and implantation (such as betaine and Prostaglandin I2) were positively correlated with both litter size and normal neonatal piglet numbers (P < 0.05). During early pregnancy, the beneficial effects of dietary SB-SeY-SIF supplementation on increasing litter size and the number of normal neonatal piglets were associated with enhanced steroid hormone synthesis, improved antioxidant capacity, and pronounced alterations in the gut microbiota and serum metabolic profiles.
The modal and non-modal stability of laminar flow in a rectangular microchannel is investigated by incorporating the effects of Coriolis forces due to rotation, cross-sectional aspect ratio and superhydrophobic wall slip. The full Navier–Stokes equations are linearised into modified Orr–Sommerfeld and Squire equations, which are then formulated as an eigenvalue problem using small disturbances of the Tollmien–Schlichting type. These equations are subsequently solved by the spectral collocation method. The transition to instability in rotating microchannel flows, influenced by aspect ratio and slip conditions, is analysed through eigenvalue spectra and neutral stability curves. For non-modal analysis, we express the solution in matrix exponential form and then, using the singular value decomposition method, calculate the maximum energy growth. The study reveals that the flow becomes unstable in the presence of rotation at a critical Reynolds number of $ Re_c \approx 40$ for a low aspect ratio and $ Re_c \approx 50.4$ for a high aspect ratio. We find that instability is more pronounced in spanwise-rotating flows at higher aspect ratios compared with those at lower aspect ratios. Rotation induces disturbances from both walls along the spanwise direction, forming secondary flow structures near the centreline. Furthermore, we examine the influence of anisotropic slip by separately considering streamwise and spanwise slip as limiting cases. The numerical results demonstrate that while streamwise slip has a stabilising effect on rotating flows at small scales, a sufficiently large spanwise slip length can trigger instability at Reynolds numbers lower than those observed in the no-slip case. Rotation has the potential to enhance non-modal transient energy growth, while streamwise slip can effectively suppress this instability. These findings suggest that the onset of instability and transient energy growth can be effectively regulated by adjusting the aspect ratio and spanwise slip of the channel walls.
Turán observed that logarithmic partial sums $\sum_{n\le x}{f(n)}/{n}$ of completely multiplicative functions (in the particular case of the Liouville function $f(n)=\lambda(n)$) tend to be positive. We develop a general approach to prove two results aiming to explain this phenomena.
Firstly, we show that there exist constants $C, x_0\ge 1,$ such that for any completely multiplicative function f satisfying $-1\le f(n)\le 1$, we have
This improves a previous bound due to Granville and Soundararajan. Secondly, we show that if f is a typical (random) completely multiplicative function $f:\mathbb{N}\to \{-1,1\}$, the probability that $\sum_{n\le x}{f(n)}/{n}$ is negative for a given large x, is $O(\exp(-\exp({\log x\cdot \log\log\log x}/{C\log \log x}))).$ This improves on recent work of Angelo and Xu.
Although often associated with ageing, disability is becoming increasingly prevalent among young adults. While disability can pose a substantial psychological burden for young adults on critical pathways to establish the foundations for their future, the mental health risks faced by this population remain underexplored.
Aims
This study aimed to (1) assess the association between disability – including its presence, severity and type – and the risk of depressive and anxiety disorders, and (2) examine whether this association varies across sociodemographic factors, health behaviours and comorbidities in a young adult population.
Methods
We conducted a population-based cohort study using linked data from the National Disability Registry and the National Health Insurance Database of South Korea. A total of 6,058,290 individuals aged 20–39 years who underwent health check-ups between 2009 and 2012 were followed through 2022. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for depressive and anxiety disorders.
Results
Individuals with disabilities had significantly higher risks of depressive (aHR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.55–1.60) and anxiety disorders (aHR: 1.50, 95% CI: 1.42–1.59). Increased risks were consistently observed across various disability types with the highest risk observed for mental health-related disabilities in depression (aHR: 4.98, 95% CI 4.62–5.37) and epilepsy-related disabilities in anxiety disorders (aHR: 12.05, 95% CI 8.73–16.63). Subgroup analyses revealed stronger associations among individuals in their 20s, low-income groups, non-smokers and those abstaining from alcohol, compared to their respective counterparts.
Conclusions
Young adults with disabilities, a population that has been relatively overlooked in policy discussions, warrant greater policy attention in relation to their mental health.
How do bankers treat green firms? Using unique loan application and banker preference data from a mid-sized bank, we find that customer managers, serving as front-line bankers, give more favorable recommendations to green firms, especially when they hold green values themselves. However, a minority of environmentally skeptical loan officers, aware through internal training that customer managers generally have greener preferences, counter this by downgrading positive evaluations of green firms. Despite not knowing the customer manager’s identity, these officers use their discretion to mitigate what they perceive as green biases, demonstrating the significant moderating role of superiors within the bank’s hierarchy.
The diversity and stability of the gut microbiota, along with various microbial and host–microbe interactions, are crucial factors in maintaining a healthy state. In this study, a total of 12 healthy 1–2 years old cats of similar weight were recruited and divided into two groups according to the experimental design and breed: the British shorthair (BS) group and the nulla luctus felis (NLF) group. After 21 days of the same diet, we analyzed and compared the gut microbiota of BS and NLF. Our results showed that the values of the serum biochemical indicators of the BS and NLF selected for this experiment were within the normal range. The Venn diagram showed that the two groups had 310 common operational taxonomic units. Significant differences in beta diversity (P < 0.05), but not in alpha diversity (P > 0.05), distinguished the two groups. Comparative analysis revealed the NLF group was enriched in Lactobacillus and Bacillus, but depleted in Enterococcus at the genus level (P < 0.05). Furthermore, 59 taxa were established as biomarkers based on a linear discriminant analysis score greater than 3.5. According to PICRUSt2 function analyses, the BS group and NLF group had a ratio of 77.11% and 76.55% for metabolism at level 1, respectively. At level 3, the NLF group significantly increased 15 metabolism pathways, while decreasing 13 metabolism pathways (P < 0.05). Finally, NLF-P1, which was screened from the feces of NLF, exhibited a good antibacterial effect on three strains of pet-associated pathogens, and the evolutionary tree was constructed to show that it may be Lactobacillus paracasei or Lactobacillus casei. In conclusion, there were significant differences in intestinal microbiota composition between BS and NLF, and NLF-P1 has research and application potential.
The end-Triassic mass extinction (ETME) was one of the most severe biotic crises of the Phanerozoic, driven by environmental changes linked to Central Atlantic Magmatic Province volcanism. While the ETME is a well-studied event, its expression in organic-walled phytoplankton, particularly acritarchs, remains relatively unexplored. Palynological analysis of the Prees 2 borehole, NW England (West Midlands), spanning from the upper Rhaetian to the lower Sinemurian, reveals exceptionally diverse aquatic palynomorph assemblages. The aquatic palynological assemblages, in the context of ammonite, miospore and lithostratigraphic data, show how phytoplankton communities responded to stress and subsequent stabilization. In the upper Rhaetian, the dominance of xerophytic coniferous pollen reflects warm, semi-arid palaeoenvironmental conditions, while euryhaline palynomorphs are in a nearshore environment. Subsequent phases show increased terrestrial humidity as evidenced by the palynoflora, coinciding with reduced aquatic diversity in an assemblage adapted to low-oxygen conditions. The base of the Hettangian is marked by sustained Cheirolepidiaceae dominance and a transition from short-spined Micrhystridid occurrences (reflecting low-oxygen conditions) progressing to an increased aquatic morphological diversity phase. This latter phase includes alterations in acritarch assemblages and the proliferation of dinoflagellate cysts, indicating a shift from a proximal shallow-water to a shelf palaeoenvironmental setting. Our findings demonstrate that acritarchs are valuable indicators of palaeoenvironmental change, capturing transient ‘bloom’ phases linked to post-extinction instability and offering new insights into Early Jurassic palaeoecology and recovery following the ETME.
In this article, we generalize Andrews’ partitions separated by parity to overpartitions in two ways. We investigate the generating functions for $16$ overpartition families whose parts are separated by parity, and we prove various q-series identities for these functions. These identities include relations to modular forms, q-hypergeometric series, and mock modular forms.
Specific phobia of vomiting (SPOV) is a persistent, excessive fear of vomiting that is more prevalent in females, often begins in childhood and typically lasts 25 years before treatment is sought. It is a relatively neglected area of research, with most evidence consisting of single case studies. There are implications for the perinatal period, in particular the experience of pregnancy which for many involves symptoms of nausea and vomiting. However, there is a paucity of research on the experience of SPOV during pregnancy and currently no published treatment research. This study aimed to extend the existing literature by applying Veale’s (2009) protocol for SPOV to a pregnant client in her twenties. The intervention consisted of 12 one-hour face-to-face sessions and was effective in significantly reducing anxiety (GAD-7 reduced from 7 to 0), depression (PHQ-9 reduced from 6 to 1), impaired functioning (WSAS reduced from 20 to 4) and vomiting phobia (SPOVI reduced from 40 to 0).
Key learning aims
(1) To understand the impact of SPOV during pregnancy.
(2) To understand how to adapt Veale’s (2009) SPOV treatment protocol for a pregnant client.
(3) To learn how to carry out behavioural experiments and imagery rescripting related to SPOV during pregnancy.
Growing studies have reported an elevated risk of violence in patients with depression, yet the neurobiological underpinnings remain poorly understood. The present study explored the resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) features in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients with violent offenses to identify potential neurological markers for violence prediction and intervention.
Methods
Twenty-nine MDD patients who committed violent offenses (violent depression [VD] group), 27 MDD patients without violent behaviors (nonviolent depression [NVD] group), and 25 healthy controls (HCs) were included. Resting-state EEGs were recorded for at least 5 min. EEG microstates, functional connectivity (FC), and graph theory metrics were analyzed and compared between groups.
Results
First, the VD group had increased microstate A, more microstates A-B transition, but lower microstates B-D and C-D transition. Second, the VD group exhibited two enhanced functional brain networks compared to NVD and HCs, and three weakened functional brain networks compared to HCs, which were primarily distributed in the frontal and frontoparietal networks. Third, the VD group specifically exhibited reduced nodal efficiency (aNe) in the superior parietal lobe and increased aNe in the middle occipital gyrus.
Conclusions
MDD patients with violent offenses exhibited alterations in EEG microstates, FCs in the frontal lobe and frontoparietal network, and disrupted aNe in specific parietal and occipital lobes. These alternations are closely associated with deficits in emotional regulation, executive function, and inhibitory control, which may subserve as potential neurobiomarkers for violence risk assessment in patients with depression.
We prove rigidity and gap theorems for self-dual and even Poincaré-Einstein metrics in dimension four. As a corollary, we give an obstruction to the existence of self-dual Poincaré-Einstein metrics in terms of conformal invariants of the boundary and the topology of the bulk. As a by-product of our proof, we identify a new scalar conformal invariant of three-dimensional Riemannian manifolds.
This article places the nearly forgotten local tour guides at the forefront of the studies of Victorian travel and travel writing on semicolonial China, showing how mediating agents shaped and disrupted cross-cultural writing and history with their relational identities. It contextualizes British and American travel writing on the Five Hundred Genii Temple (in Chinese, the Hualin Temple) from 1849 to 1912 within the intertwined relations between travel writers and guides, in the local socio-spatial condition of Guangzhou (then Canton) and under the travel-to-tourism transition in China. The role played by earlier foreign expatriate guides shifted from introducers to coordinators, leading to travelers’ nuanced local understandings that challenged the temple’s presumed otherness. Later authoritative Cantonese guides manipulated local interactions, reviving stereotypical images among the tourists. The guides appropriated metropolitan baggage of the guided in different ways, cowriting the travel writing and the cross-cultural history it implied. Being mediating agents in the travel as a process of encounter with otherness, the guides significantly altered the encounter while sometimes becoming themselves the focal Other in the writing.
We study a model in which rational agents decide whether or not to commit a crime based on a utility calculation, influenced by a judge who sets a society-wide threshold corresponding to the likelihood of an individual being found guilty and a legislator who sets a society-wide punishment level. We study how the overall crime rate is influenced by the judge’s threshold and the legislator’s punishment level, propose an objective function for the judge and legislator to minimise, and study the optimal threshold and punishment levels for this objective. We then consider the case in which the overall society is subdivided into multiple groups with varying characteristics, introducing a constraint on fairness in treatment between the groups. We study how an optimal threshold and punishment level might be chosen under this fairness constraint, what ramifications the constraints have on outcomes for individuals, and under what circumstances the constrained optimum agrees with the unconstrained optimum.
Our objective was to identify key patterns and discuss the lessons learned from the use of real-world data (RWD) in the cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) of innovative health products (IHPs) as assessed by the French National Authority for Health from January 2016 to May 2023.
Methods
A retrospective analysis was conducted on the use of RWD in the CEAs of IHPs. Our material included HAS assessments of CEAs and manufacturers’ technical reports. The RWD studies were classified into eight categories, and a specific template was constructed to report and discuss their use in terms of predefined methodological aspects.
Results
In all, 88 percent (129/147) of the CEAs integrated RWD studies. Retrospective cohorts were the most frequently used kind of study in the CEAs, while prospective cohorts were mainly used to identify the analyzed population and to externally validate models. We identified opposing temporal trends in the use of cohort studies versus registries. Approximately 8 percent (10/129) of the CEAs could be adjudged as invalidated due to major limitations regarding RWD use (e.g., lack of relative effectiveness).
Conclusions
We learned several lessons from the use of RWD in the HAS assessments of the CEAs of IHPs. Retrospective cohort studies were the most commonly used RWD source to populate CEA parameters of the CEAs regardless of the type of IHP, and their use has increased over time. The implementation of good practices for the use of RWD studies should improve the role of RWD in economic modeling and address uncertainties surrounding CEAs.