Publications by authors named "Andrew Kemp"

Background: The need for effective non-pharmaceutical infection prevention measures such as contact tracing in pandemics remains in care homes, but traditional approaches to contact tracing are not feasible in care homes. The CONTACT intervention introduces Bluetooth-enabled wearable devices (BLE wearables) as a potential solution for automated contact tracing. Using structured reports and reports triggered by positive COVID-19 cases in homes, we fed contact patterns and trends back to homes to support better-informed infection prevention decisions and reduce blanket application of restrictive measures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) often results in significant challenges, yet it may also facilitate Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG). This review explores a critical question: "What are the main factors contributing to PTG following ABI, and what potential barriers to its development are perceived by ABI survivors?" Here we aim to systematically uncover these contributors and barriers to PTG through a meta-synthesis, involving a comprehensive review of previously published qualitative research on this topic. A literature search was conducted across PsycINFO, CINAHL, and MEDLINE up to December 2022 to identify studies for inclusion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To determine the feasibility and acceptability of 'ACTing Minds', a novel single-player adventure video game based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

Design: A single-arm, mixed-methods repeated measures feasibility study.

Setting: Intervention and questionnaires were completed at home by participants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Acquired brain injury (ABI) and other chronic conditions are placing unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems. In the UK, 1.3 million people live with the effects of brain injury, costing the UK economy approximately £15 billion per year.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Rapid and mass transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus amongst vulnerable people led to devastating effects from COVID-19 in care homes. The CONTACT intervention introduced Bluetooth Low Energy 'smart' wearable devices (BLE wearables) as a basis for automated contact tracing in, and feedback on infection risks and patterns to, care homes to try and improve infection prevention and control (IPC). We planned a cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) of CONTACT.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Theoretical perspectives in the affective sciences have increased in variety rather than converging due to differing beliefs about the nature and function of human emotions.
  • A teleological principle is proposed to create a unified approach by viewing human affective phenomena as algorithms that adapt to comfort or monitor these adaptations.
  • This framework aims to organize existing theories and inspire new research in the field, leading to a more integrated understanding of human affectivity through the concept of the Human Affectome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Awareness of climate change can prompt overwhelming emotions that threaten wellbeing such as anger, despair, and anxiety. Neoliberal views of human beings and their mental health strip the individual from their social and material context, driving personal dissatisfaction, social isolation, and ecological destruction. In this piece, we contend that advancements in scholarly research on wellbeing offer valuable insights for addressing the challenges posed by the climate crises while respecting human wellbeing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact worldwide, including in care homes where there have been substantial numbers of cases among a very vulnerable population. A key mechanism for managing exposure to the virus and targeting interventions is contact tracing. Unfortunately, environments such as care homes that were most catastrophically impacted by COVID-19 are also those least amenable to traditional contact tracing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adolescent mental health has become a public health concern as 10-20% of adolescents have experiences with mental health problems. Improving mental health education is critical to reducing stigma and improving access to appropriate care when needed. Here we examine the impact of a mental health literacy programme (Guide Cymru) in young adolescents in the UK.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nature has long demonstrated the capacity to facilitate wellbeing. Interventions involving the natural environment such as surf therapy, are increasingly being used to facilitate aspects of wellbeing in clinical populations. However, explorations of how nature-based interventions such as surf therapy may be used to promote wellbeing in the context of neurorehabilitation are missing from the peer-reviewed literature.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Society faces several major interrelated challenges which have an increasingly profound impact on global health including inequalities, inequities, chronic disease and the climate catastrophe. We argue here that a focus on the determinants of wellbeing across multiple domains offers under-realised potential for promoting the 'whole health' of individuals, communities and nature. Here, we review recent theoretical innovations that have laid the foundations for our own theoretical model of wellbeing - the GENIAL framework - which explicitly links health to wellbeing, broadly defined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Physiotherapy is indicated for treatment of a painful degenerative knee meniscus tear. Predicting the outcome remains uncertain.

Objective: The purpose of this systematic review was to identify which predictive factors are associated with the outcome of physiotherapy for degenerative knee meniscus tear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of cloth face coverings and face masks has become widespread in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents a method of using low cost wirelessly connected carbon dioxide (CO) sensors to measure the effects of properly and improperly worn face masks on the concentration distribution of exhaled breath around the face. Four types of face masks are used in two indoor environment scenarios.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global threat to physical and mental health worldwide. Research has highlighted adverse impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing but has yet to offer insights as to how wellbeing may be protected. Inspired by developments in wellbeing science and guided by our own theoretical framework (the GENIAL model), we examined the role of various potentially protective factors in a sample of 138 participants from the United Kingdom.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a serious public health challenge in all countries. However, repercussions of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections on future global health are still being investigated, including the pandemic's potential effect on the emergence and spread of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Critically ill COVID-19 patients may develop severe complications, which may predispose patients to infection with nosocomial bacterial and/or fungal pathogens, requiring the extensive use of antibiotics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Many autistic people report difficulties making decisions during everyday tasks, such as shopping. To examine the effect of sounds on decision-making, we developed a supermarket task where people watched a film shown from the shopper's perspective and were asked to make decisions between different products. The task was divided into three sections and participants completed each section in a different auditory environment: (1) no sounds, (2) non-social sounds (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Individuals with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) suffer chronic impairment across cognitive, physical and psycho-social domains, and the experience of anxiety, isolation and apathy has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative evaluation was conducted of 14 individuals with ABI who had participated in series of COVID adapted group-based intervention(s) that had been designed to improve wellbeing. Eight themes were identified: Facilitating Safety, Fostering Positive Emotion, Managing and Accepting Difficult Emotions, Promoting Meaning, Finding Purpose and Accomplishment, Facilitating Social Ties, (Re)Connecting to Nature, and Barriers to Efficacy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Threat generalization to novel instances is central to adaptive behavior. Most previous work has investigated threat generalization based on the perceptual similarity between past and novel stimuli. Few studies have explored generalization based on abstract, non-perceptual relations despite their importance for cognitive flexibility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Accumulating research has identified the interactive effects of catechol--methyltransferase () gene Val158Met polymorphism and environmental factors on aggression. However, available evidence was mainly based upon correlational design, which yields mixed findings concerning who (Val vs. Met carriers) are more affected by environmental conditions and has been challenged for the low power of analyses on gene-environment interaction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Notice

Message: fwrite(): Write of 34 bytes failed with errno=28 No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 272

Backtrace:

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_write_close(): Failed to write session data using user defined save handler. (session.save_path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Unknown

Line Number: 0

Backtrace: