Publications by authors named "Ballard E"

Background: The deteriorating mental health of children and young people in the United Kingdom poses a challenge that services and policy makers have found difficult to tackle. Kailo responds to this issue with a community-based participatory and systemically informed strategy, perceiving mental health and well-being as a dynamic state shaped by the interplay of broader health determinants. The initiative works to explore, define and implement locally relevant solutions to challenges shaping the mental health and well-being of young people.

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The Clubhouse model of psychosocial rehabilitation has supported the recovery of people with serious mental illness for over 75 years, but many of the roughly 350 Clubhouses are not well-integrated into the larger health care system, limiting their reach. This article examines Clubhouses' and psychiatric providers' interactions and experiences to understand the nature of and barriers to partnerships. The directors of Clubhouses affiliated with Clubhouse International were surveyed, examining their attitudes and practices around collaboration with psychiatric providers.

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Background: Peru is facing a double burden of malnutrition (DBM), characterized by the co-existence of undernutrition and overnutrition. Double-duty actions that concurrently target common drivers of undernutrition and overnutrition, while ensuring no unintended side effects, are recommended to effectively address the DBM. To understand these complex common mechanisms and design context-specific double-duty actions, there is a need for participatory systems approaches.

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This study investigated the role of temperament in oral language development in over 200 Mandarin and Cantonese speakers in the pre-birth longitudinal cohort study. Mothers assessed infant temperament at nine months using a five-factor Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised Very Short Form. They also reported on children's vocabulary and word combinations at age two using adapted MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory short forms.

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The seamless transition through stages of pluripotency relies on a balance between transcription factor networks and epigenetic mechanisms. Here, we reveal the crucial role of the transgene activation suppressor (TASOR), a component of the human silencing hub (HUSH) complex, in maintaining cell viability during the transition from naive to primed pluripotency. TASOR loss in naive pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) triggers replication stress, disrupts H3K9me3 heterochromatin, and impairs silencing of LINE-1 (L1) transposable elements, with more severe effects in primed PSCs.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A major challenge identified is the poor adhesion of human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) to animal PSCs, which hinders the creation of effective chimeras.
  • * To address this, researchers developed a synthetic biology technique that uses nanobody-antigen pairs to boost cell adhesion, leading to better integration of human PSCs in mouse embryos and improving understanding of cell interactions during early development.
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Psychiatric genetic counseling (GC) has been associated with patient-reported increases in empowerment (perceived control, emotional regulation, and hope). We sought to evaluate the extent to which patients' psychological state at the time of GC is related to changes in empowerment. Participants with a history of major depressive disorder and/or bipolar disorder that had been refractory to treatment underwent psychiatric GC remotely from 2022 to 2023.

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Background: Antimicrobial stewardship programmes are a critical tool for addressing the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance.

Aim: To determine changes in patterns of antimicrobial use in Queensland public hospitals following introduction of the National Safety and Quality Health Service antimicrobial stewardship standard.

Methods: A retrospective pre/post intervention study was conducted across Queensland public hospitals at the ecological level using Queensland Health's MedTRx database.

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Background: Despite electroconvulsive therapy being one of the most effective treatments in psychiatry, few studies report trends in the provision of electroconvulsive therapy over time. This study aims to investigate the use of electroconvulsive therapy between 2009 and 2020 in an Australian public tertiary mental health facility, and to describe the electroconvulsive therapy patient population and change in courses of treatment.

Methods: Routinely collected data for 677 patients who received 1669 electroconvulsive therapy courses of treatment at an Australian public tertiary mental health facility between 2009 and 2020 were examined.

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Background: Participants who received ketamine at the NIMH were among the first to receive ketamine for depression in controlled clinical trials, providing a unique opportunity to assess long-term outcomes. This analysis evaluated the relationship between participating in a ketamine clinical trial and subsequent ketamine/esketamine use after leaving the research setting.

Methods: Participants seen within the NIMH Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch from 2002 to 2022 (n = 1000) were contacted for follow-up assessment.

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Objective: The 'Deadly RED' project primarily aimed to improve culturally competent care to reduce the number of First Nations patients presenting to a Queensland ED who 'Take own leave' (TOL). The secondary aim was to evaluate the implementation project.

Methods: A pre/post-test quasi experimental study design using mixed methods was co-designed with adherence to Indigenous research considerations.

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Introduction: Management guidelines for low back pain (LBP) recommend exclusion of serious pathology, followed by simple analgesics, superficial heat therapy, early mobilisation and patient education. An audit in a large metropolitan hospital emergency department (ED) revealed high rates of non-recommended medication prescription for LBP (65% of patients prescribed opioids, 17% prescribed benzodiazepines), high inpatient admission rates (20% of ED LBP patients), delayed patient mobilisation (on average 6 hours) and inadequate patient education (48% of patients). This study aims to improve medication prescription for LBP in this ED by implementing an intervention shown previously to improve guideline-based management of LBP in other Australian EDs.

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BACKGROUND: Tourette syndrome is characterized by chronic motor and vocal tics. There is preliminary evidence of benefit from cannabis products containing Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and that coadministration of cannabidiol (CBD) improves the side-effect profile and safety. METHODS: In this double-blind, crossover trial, participants with severe Tourette syndrome were randomly assigned to a 6-week treatment period with escalating doses of an oral oil containing 5 mg/ml of THC and 5 mg/ml of CBD, followed by a 6-week course of placebo, or vice versa, separated by a 4-week washout period.

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Trauma and stressor-related symptoms have been frequently reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few studies compare post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) between patients and non-infected controls. Using data from an ongoing natural history study of COVID-19, this study compared PTSS between patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the first year of the pandemic and controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • Many neurodevelopmental disorders are connected to mutations in genes responsible for ribosome biogenesis, and the exact impact of reduced ribosome production on brain development is not fully understood.
  • Research using human cerebral organoids has unveiled a mechanism where decreased ribosome levels affect the timing of cell fate specification during key early developmental stages.
  • Boosting mTOR activity through genetic or drug interventions shows promise in mitigating developmental issues related to ribosome deficits, suggesting new treatment avenues for certain brain disorders.
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