Cognitive impairments are a core feature of psychotic disorders, but their long-term trajectory remains contentious. Previous meta-analyses focused on the first 5 years following psychosis onset. Here, we evaluated the change in cognitive impairments in psychotic disorders with a meta-analysis of studies with follow-ups of 5+ years. Following preregistration, databases were searched for relevant articles until July 2024. Two authors screened the reports for studies reporting on the change in cognitive impairments in global cognition, verbal learning and memory, visual learning and memory, working memory, attention, speed of processing, reasoning and problem-solving, and verbal fluency in individuals with psychotic disorders, with a minimum follow-up of 5 years. Three authors extracted data, and the PRISMA guidelines were followed. Random-effects meta-analyses and moderator analyses were conducted. Twenty-four studies comprising 2,633 patients and 1,019 controls were included in the study. Over an average of 8.46 years, cognitive impairments remained stable in all eight measures: global cognition (g = 0.09; 95% CI = 0.03–0.20), verbal memory (g = 0.05; 95% CI = −0.11, 0.21), visual memory (g = −0.16; 95% CI = −0.35, 0.03), working memory (g = 0.03; 95% CI = −0.09, 0.14), attention (g = 0.22; 95% CI = −0.36, 0.80), speed of processing (g = 0.10; 95% CI = −0.14, 0.35), reasoning and problem-solving (g = 0.16; 95% CI = −0.03, 0.35), and verbal fluency (g = 0.08; 95% CI = −0.03, 0.19). We conclude that cognitive impairments remain stable over time, consistent with the neurodevelopmental view of psychotic disorders.

Aims: There is good qualitative evidence in the literature of the challenges of transition from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to Adult services at aged 18 faced by young people, their families or carers and professionals. Eating disorders typically present in adolescents and persist into early adulthood with an average age of onset at around age 18. This population is therefore often faced with the challenge of transitioning between services during periods of treatment. Some community eating disorder teams in the UK have started to move towards an all-age model, however, inpatient services do not seem to have kept pace with this change.

Methods: A literature search using PubMed was conducted to identify any publications relating to the transition between CAMHS and adult services in eating disorder treatment. An evaluation of the service at Cotswold Spa Hospital was done, and a review of admissions and discharges in the last year. The evaluation aimed to identify, understand and assess the ability to transition from CAMHS to Adult services in an eating disorder inpatient setting.

Results: Cotswold Spa Hospital is a private provider of NHS commissioned inpatient eating disorder treatment. It offers both acute inpatient and day patient eating disorder treatment to CAMHS and adult patients with the same treating team at one site. This allows the potential for young people to transition from CAMHS to Adult services whilst undergoing inpatient or day patient treatment, without the need to move setting during this most crucial part of their recovery. It is one of very few settings in the UK where this is possible at present. There are 8 CAMHS beds and 4 adult beds on different floors of the hospital, and the day unit is in a separate building. In the last year (2024) four patients were admitted aged 17 and continued their treatment at Cotswold hospital beyond their 18th birthday. Without this service it is likely that their care would have been interrupted with an inpatient transfer.

Conclusion: Transition between CAMHS and Adult services at age 18 whilst undergoing inpatient eating disorder treatment presents numerous challenges. Service evaluation identified Cotswold Spa Hospital offers a rare approach which can avoid this disruption to recovery by continuing care in the same setting.

Leptospirosis in NZ has historically been associated with male workers in livestock industries; however, the disease epidemiology is changing. This study identified risk factors amid these shifts. Participants (95 cases:300 controls) were recruited nationwide between 22 July 2019 and 31 January 2022, and controls were frequency-matched by sex (90% male) and rurality (65% rural). Multivariable logistic regression models, adjusted for sex, rurality, age, and season—with one model additionally including occupational sector—identified risk factors including contact with dairy cattle (aOR 2.5; CI: 1.0–6.0), activities with beef cattle (aOR 3.0; 95% CI: 1.1–8.2), cleaning urine/faeces from yard surfaces (aOR 3.9; 95% CI: 1.5–10.3), uncovered cuts/scratches (aOR 4.6; 95% CI: 1.9–11.7), evidence of rodents (aOR 2.2; 95% CI: 1.0–5.0), and work water supply from multiple sources—especially creeks/streams (aOR 7.8; 95% CI: 1.5–45.1) or roof-collected rainwater (aOR 6.6; 95% CI: 1.4–33.7). When adjusted for occupational sector, risk factors remained significant except for contact with dairy cattle, and slaughter without gloves emerged as a risk (aOR 3.3; 95% CI: 0.9–12.9). This study highlights novel behavioural factors, such as uncovered cuts and inconsistent glove use, alongside environmental risks from rodents and natural water sources.

Housing informality has emerged across developing and developed societies amid the global housing crisis. This article presents an intra-national comparative analysis of informal housing interventions in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, two major Chinese cities, to investigate the policies and discourses of urban housing informality and the factors shaping different governance regimes. A critical policy discourse analysis was conducted on official documents addressing subdivided units in Hong Kong and urban villages in Guangzhou between 2010 and 2023. The analysis focuses on policy goals, interventive measures and state-market-society relations, revealing that despite similarities between subdivided units and urban villages, government interventions differ significantly. The Hong Kong government has adopted a regulatory-welfare-mix model, whereas the Guangzhou government has pursued a developmental approach to address the phenomenon. This article contributes to policy studies by comparing informal housing intervention approaches and analysing the within-country divergence of normative goals and policy levers under different sociopolitical contexts.

It is perhaps uncontroversial to claim that behavioral science research is playing an increasingly important role in practice. However, practitioners largely rely on media reports rather than original research articles to learn about the science. Do these media reports contain all the information needed to understand the nuances of the research? To assess this question, we develop a set of rubrics to evaluate the fidelity of the media report to the original research article. As an illustration, we apply these rubrics to a sample of media reports based on several research articles published in one journal and identify common patterns, trends, and pitfalls in media presentations. We find preliminary evidence of low fidelity in presenting participant characteristics, contextual elements, and limitations of the original research. The media also appear to misreport correlational evidence as causal and sometimes miss acknowledging the hypothetical nature of evidence when hypothetical scenarios were used as the sole basis of conclusions. Furthermore, the media often present broad conclusions and personal opinions as directly backed by scientific evidence. To support more discerning consumption of behavioral insights from media sources, we propose a checklist to guide practitioners in evaluating and using information from media sources.

Hong Kong has recently ratified the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (“CISG”). While Article 7(2) of the CISG acknowledges the potential incompleteness of the convention in addressing all issues it aims to govern and emphasizes the preference for seeking general principles within the CISG before resorting to domestic private international law, the extent of this preference remains unclear. This article highlights that while some scholars argue for private international law as a last resort, it is erroneous to suggest that the general principles embodied in the convention also include those exclusively stem from other international conventions. Such an approach would disregard the inherent international nature and proportionality envisioned by Article 7(1) of the CISG.

Do external threats increase American bipartisanship? We subject this question to an experimental test. Leveraging the Biden and Trump administrations’ similar characterization of the China threat, we exposed American respondents to real-world primes about security threats from China, while randomizing the messenger of such primes. We find that the threat primes—regardless of the partisan identity of their messenger—boosted Democrats’ and Republicans’ support for assertive foreign policy in a largely parallel manner, thereby failing to reduce preference polarization. Importantly, there were no measurable changes across multiple indicators of affective polarization. These findings clarify the limits of external threats in uniting Americans, while also challenging recent perspectives that external threats—often colored by elite rhetoric—will further polarize the American public.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union (EU) observed a major centralisation of competence in public health policy – the EU Vaccines Strategy. Yet increased centralisation or integration is not always desirable because the EU lacks a layer of democratic control to ensure transparency and accountability. This feature highlights the need to better understand and assess the EU’s actions during the pandemic. This paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the EU Vaccines Strategy and contributes to the wider debate on the centralisation of power at Union level. The joint procurement of COVID-19 vaccines is considered a success, as it avoided a “vaccine scramble” by the EU Member States. However, the fact that the Member States were obliged to purchase more than they needed and the lack of transparency in the negotiations with companies on the procurement of vaccines have raised questions about the integrity of the Commission’s exercise of executive power.