Analysis of research on the effect of negative stereotypes on older people’s abilities has concluded these stereotypes are a major problem for the demographic.
A research team at the University’s School of Psychology carried out a review and meta-analysis of Aged-Based Stereotype Threat (ABST).
They statistically analysed international evidence from 37 research studies, both published and unpublished. They concluded that older adults’ memory and cognitive performance is negatively affected in situations that signal or remind them of negative age stereotypes. These effects affect both men and women.
The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research council (ESRC), was carried out by Ruth Lamont, working with Dr Hannah Swift and Professor Dominic Abrams. It further found that older people’s cognitive performance suffers more when the threat is induced by stereotypes rather than by facts.
This latest research studied how pain and anxietycan be reduced under local anaesthetic varicose vein surgery. This sort of surgery is also called “keyhole” orendovenous surgery for varicose veins.
Reducing pain of varicose vein surgery – Research from The Whiteley Clinic and University of Surrey
The research showed that both:
one-to-one talking with a specific nurse
using a stress ball
both significantly reduced the pain and anxiety of the varicose vein surgery.Interesting, watching a DVD during the surgery reduced the anxiety, but not the pain of varicose vein surgery. Listening to music had no effect.
This study is part of the continuing research program that makes treatment at The Whiteley Clinic unique.This projectwas funded by The Whiteley Clinic andwas performed at our Whiteley Clinic, Guildford.The researcher, Briony Hudson,was supervised by Prof Jane Ogden at The University of Surrey and Prof Mark Whiteley. Her workhas been submitted to the University of Surrey and shewas awarded her PhD in Autumn 2014.The workis going to be published:
Hudson BF, Ogden J, Whiteley MS. Randomised Controlled Trial to Compare the Effect of Simple Distraction Interventions on Pain and Anxiety Experienced During Conscious Surgery. European Journal of Pain. 2015.
A new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) illuminates important trends — many positive — in Americans’ behavioral health, both nationally and on a state-by-state basis.
SAMHSA’s new report, the “National Behavioral Health Barometer” (Barometer), provides data about key aspects of behavioral healthcare issues affecting American communities including rates of serious mental illness, suicidal thoughts, substance use, underage drinking, and the percentages of those who seek treatment for these disorders. The Barometer shows this data at the national level, and for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The Barometer indicates that the behavioral health of our nation is improving in some areas, particularly among adolescents. For example, past month use of both illicit drugs and cigarettes has fallen for youth ages 12-17 from 2009 to 2013 (from 10.1 percent to 8.8 percent for illicit drugs and 9.0 percent to 5.6 percent for cigarettes). Past month binge drinking among children ages 12-17 has also fallen from 2009 to 2013 (from 8.9 percent to 6.2 percent).
The Barometer also shows more people are getting the help they need in some crucial areas. The number of people receiving treatment for a substance use problem has increased six percent from 2009 to 2013. It also shows that the level of adults experiencing serious mental illness who received treatment rose from 62.9 percent in 2012 to 68.5 percent in 2013.
The data in the Barometer is drawn from various federal surveys and provides both a snapshot of the current status of behavioral health nationally and by state, and trend data on some of these key behavioral health issues over time. The findings will be enormously helpful to decision makers at all levels who are seeking to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.
“The Barometer provides new insight into what is happening on the ground in states across the country,” said SAMHSA’s Administrator, Pamela S. Hyde. “It provides vital information on the progress being made in each state as well as the challenges before them. States and local communities use this data to determine the most effective ways of addressing their behavioral healthcare needs.”
The Barometer also provides analyses by gender, age group and race/ethnicity, where possible, to further help public health authorities more effectively identify and address behavioral health issues occurring within their communities, and to serve as a basis for tracking and addressing behavioral health disparities.
For the first time, the Barometer provides analyses broken down by poverty level (above or below) and health insurance status. This data can help provide researchers, policy makers, public health authorities and others a better understanding of how income and insurance coverage affect access and utilization of behavioral healthcare services.
For more information, contact the SAMHSA Press Office at 240-276-2130.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation. SAMHSA’s mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.
To better understand the current use of physical activity as medicine among Family Health Teams (FHTs) in Ontario, researchers at the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo and the Centre for Family Medicine Family Health Team conducted an environmental scan of 102 FHTs. They published their findings today in the journalApplied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.
Family Health Teams (FHTs) are part of a shift towards a multidisciplinary primary care model that addresses the healthcare needs of a community by allowing different healthcare professionals to work collaboratively under one roof. Currently, FHTs serve a relatively small percentage of Ontarians; however, their multi-disciplinary structure may create an ideal environment to enable physical activity promotion as most Canadians receive healthcare though the primary care system. Physical activity has well-established health benefits; however, the best way to engage Canadians in an active lifestyle remains largely unknown.
Before this environmental scan, the number and types of physical activity promotion services, and the types of professionals providing physical activity counselling in Ontario FHTs was not known .
The researchers found that almost 60% of responding FHTs in Ontario offered a physical activity service. However, the types, durations and targeted populations of the services varied depending on the individual FHT. Physical activity services were often restricted to people with specific conditions or needs rather than available to all individuals.
According to the study, “many different types of allied health professionals were facilitating physical activity services. The diversity in the qualifications is concerning, as it suggests that individuals providing physical activity therapy do not always have qualifications related to physical activity prescription and counselling.”
Cameron Moore, from the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo and co-author of the study said, “It is promising that almost 60% of responding FHTs offered a physical activity service. However, continued efforts are needed to increase the accessibility and standardization of physical activity therapy offered though primary care.“
“In Ontario, Kinesiology is a newly accredited professional designation with a scope of practice that includes physical activity promotion and prescription. We feel that physical activity counsellors who are Registered Kinesiologists with expertise in physical activity prescription and behavior change counselling are ideally suited as primary care providers in FHTs.”
Ten years after the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness reported on the need for better coordination in the global fight against disease, global pharmaceutical supply chains remain fragmented and lack coordination, facing at least 10 fundamental challenges, according to a newly published paper by professors at NYU Wagner and MIT-Zaragoza.
“Heroes may win battles, but it is capable supply chains that win wars [against disease],” write Natalie Privett, assistant professor of management and policy at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and David Gonsalvez, professor of supply chain management at the MIT-Zaragova International Logistics Program, and former global supply chain director with General Motors. Yet, they add, the global health pharmaceutical delivery (GHPD) supply chains are wanting.
The research article, entitled “The top ten global health supply chain issues: Perspectives form the field,” has been published in Operations Research for Health Care, an academic journal. It sheds light on the key areas of weakness and what specifically is needed to strengthen the pharmaceutical supply chains.
Privett and Gonsalvez interviewed and surveyed 22 individuals with various roles in supply chains and asked them to identify the “top ten” challenges as they see them. The areas of concern which were most often cited include: lack of coordination; inventory management; absent demand information; human resource dependency; order management; shortage avoidance; expiration; warehouse management; temperature control; and shipment visibility.
“Lack of coordination in the GHPD supply chain is a root cause issue whose existence aggravates nearly every other issue director or indirectly,” according to the article.
The paper draws attention to both the needs and opportunities in GHPD supply chains in an attempt to “drive future actions, policies, and research which can ultimately improve pharmaceutical delivery in developing regions and save lives.”
A research consortium headed by Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is developing a product that, when coupled with a smartphone, will be able to screen the user’s breath for early detection of life-threatening diseases.
Funded by a grant from the European Commission, the SNIFFPHONE project will link Prof. Haick’s acclaimed breathalyzer screening technology to the smartphone to provide non-invasive, fast and cheap disease detection. It will work by using micro- and nano-sensors that read exhaled breath and then transfer the information through the attached mobile phone to an information-processing system for interpretation. The data is then assessed and disease diagnosis and other details are ascertained.
The technology is supported by a recent €6 million (US$6.8 million) grant to the consortium to expand the “electronic nose” breathalyzer technology that Prof. Haick has been developing since he joined the Technion in 2006. That technology can identify individuals from the general population who have a higher likelihood for contracting a specific disease, and treat them in advance or at an early stage.
The entities participating in the winning consortium include Siemens; universities and research institutes from Germany, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Latvia; and Israeli company NanoVation-GS Israel. NanoVation-GS is a Technion spin-off headed by Dr. Gregory Shuster and Sagi Gliksman, who are both graduates of Prof. Haick’s laboratory. Prof. Haick serves as Chief Scientific Officer.
“The SNIFFPHONE is a winning solution. It will be made tinier and cheaper than disease detection solutions currently, consume little power, and most importantly, it will enable immediate and early diagnosis that is both accurate and non-invasive,” says Prof. Haick. “Early diagnosis can save lives, particularly in life-threatening diseases such as cancer.”
This is the first time that any professional organization has developed age-specific recommended sleep durations based on a rigorous, systematic review of the world scientific literature relating sleep duration to health, performance and safety,”
…
National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Duration Recommendations:
Age
Recommended
May be appropriate
Not recommended
Newborns0-3 months
14 to 17 hours
11 to 13 hours18 to 19 hours
Less than 11 hoursMore than 19 hours
Infants4-11 months
12 to 15 hours
10 to 11 hours16 to 18 hours
Less than 10 hoursMore than 18 hours
Toddlers1-2 years
11 to 14 hours
9 to 10 hours15 to 16 hours
Less than 9 hoursMore than 16 hours
Preschoolers3-5 years
10 to 13 hours
8 to 9 hours14 hours
Less than 8 hoursMore than 14 hours
School-aged Children6-13 years
9 to 11 hours
7 to 8 hours12 hours
Less than 7 hoursMore than 12 hours
Teenagers14-17 years
8 to 10 hours
7 hours11 hours
Less than 7 hoursMore than 11 hours
Young Adults18-25 years
7 to 9 hours
6 hours10 to 11 hours
Less than 6 hoursMore than 11 hours
Adults26-64 years
7 to 9 hours
6 hours10 hours
Less than 6 hoursMore than 10 hours
Older Adults≥ 65 years
7 to 8 hours
5 to 6 hours9 hours
Less than 5 hoursMore than 9 hours
The recommendations are the result of multiple rounds of consensus voting after a comprehensive review of published scientific studies on sleep and health.
Health economics helps insurers, health care systems and providers make treatment decisions based on the cost of extra “units” of health arising from a specific treatment. By calculating the cost for each year of life or quality-adjusted year of life gained, these groups can decide whether changing treatments or adding in a new treatment beyond the existing standard of care is “worth it.”
However, while the resulting incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) is often presented as an absolute measure upon which to base these decisions, an opinion published by University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, and Adam Atherly, PhD, suggests that the consumers of these data need to be much more aware of the assumptions underlying these calculations.
“Increasingly physicians are being presented with health economic analyses in mainstream medical journals as a means of potentially influencing their prescribing. However, it is only when you understand the multiple assumptions behind these calculations that you can see that they are by no means absolute truths,” Camidge says.
A new discovery shows how a simple intervention—self-affirmation – can open our brains to accept advice that is hard to hear.
“Self-affirmation involves reflecting on core values,” explained Emily Falk, the study’s lead author and director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Has your doctor ever told you to get more exercise? Has your spouse ever suggested you eat healthier? Even though the advice comes from good intentions, most people feel defensive when confronted with suggestions that point out their weaknesses. Reflecting on values that bring us meaning can help people see otherwise threatening messages as valuable and self-relevant. “Our work shows that when people are affirmed, their brains process subsequent messages differently.”
…
Past studies have shown that brain activity in VMPFC during health messages can predict behavior change better than individuals’ own intentions, and this study sheds new light on why. VMPFC is the brain region most commonly activated when participants think about themselves and when they ascribe value to ideas. The new results show that opening the brain in this way is a key pathway to behavior change. “Understanding the brain opens the door to new health interventions that target this same pathway,” Falk noted.
“We were particularly interested in using self-affirmation to help people become more active because sedentary behavior is one of the biggest health threats faced by both Americans and people around the world,” said Falk. Overly sedentary lifestyles are becoming a big problem; in some regions nearly 85 percent of an adult population leads an inactive lifestyle. This can cause multiple health problems, including poor heart health, diabetes, and cancer, just to name three. Increasing activity even small amount can have an important impact on both mental and physical health.
….
Psychologists have used self-affirmation as a technique to improve outcomes ranging from health behaviors in high risk patients to increasing academic performance in at risk youth, suggesting that the findings may be applicable across a wide range of interventions. “Our findings highlight that something as simple as reflecting on core values can fundamentally change the way our brains respond to the kinds of messages we encounter every day,” Falk noted. “Over time, that makes the potential impact huge.”
Pornography is not a victimless crime, it affects all of us through dehumanization of women, children, and men. Sex is distorted, people are viewed as objects. How can this not affect behaviors of the viewers in their everyday life, and thus victimize (or at the very least adversely effect us all? The brain cannot possibly just shut off and on when it comes to what it views.
English: Nations based on their laws involving pornography. Please see the legend for more details. Nederlands: Landen op basis van hun wetten over pornografie. Zie de legenda voor meer details. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Legend at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pornography_laws.svg#Legend
From the abstract at Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (14 January 2015)
The purpose of this review was to determine whether an association exists between sexual risk behaviors and pornography consumption. Consumption of pornography is common, yet research examining its link with sexual risk behaviors is in its infancy. Indicators of sexual risk behavior, including unsafe sex practices and a higher number of sexual partners, have been linked to poor health outcomes. A systematic literature search was performed using Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Knowledge, Pubmed, and CINAHL. Studies were included if they assessed the association between pornography use and indicators of sexual risk behaviors in an adult population. A total of 17 were included in the review, and all were assessed for research standards using the Quality Index Scale. For both Internet pornography and general pornography, links with greater unsafe sex practices and number of sexual partners were identified.Limitations of the literature, including low external validity and poor study design, restrict the generalizability of the findings. Accordingly, replication and more rigorous methods are recommended for future research.
You know when you finish an incredible book, and you spend the next few days or weeks just going over everything? It’s your brain obsession for a while, you process everything and go over details. I love those books. When you just connect for some reason; writing style, the topic, a character, a paragraph. Everyone has these handful of books that stay with them.
This blog presents a sampling of health and medical news and resources for all. Selected articles and resources will hopefully be of general interest but will also encourage further reading through posted references and other links. Currently I am focusing on public health, basic and applied research and very broadly on disease and healthy lifestyle topics.
Several times a month I will post items on international and global health issues. My Peace Corps Liberia experience (1980-81) has formed me as a global citizen in many ways and has challenged me to think of health and other topics in a more holistic manner.
Do you have an informational question in the health/medical area? Email me at jmflahiff@yahoo.com I will reply within 48 hours.
My professional work experience and education includes over 15 years experience as a medical librarian and a Master’s in Library Science. In my most recent position I enjoyed contributing to our library’s blog, performing in depth literature searches, and collaborating with faculty, staff, students, and the general public.
While I will never be be able to keep up with the universe of current health/medical news, I subscribe to the following to glean entries for this blog.
Health and Medical News and Resources 
