Background: Reducing weight stigma in healthcare is critical to supporting and improving the health of people living with overweight or obesity and decreasing the risk of adverse patient outcomes. We were invited as stigma researchers to participate in an online workshop alongside community members, healthcare professionals and policymakers to codesign guidance for reducing weight stigma in healthcare. This workshop prompted us to reflect on why and how weight stigma should be addressed in healthcare, and to provide recommendations for healthcare professionals and policymakers to reduce weight stigma in healthcare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(1) : A significant proportion of cancer survivors report experiencing a cognitive 'fog' that affects their ability to think coherently and quickly, and reason with clarity. This has been referred to as cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI). CRCI has extensive impacts on the daily lives of people living with or beyond cancer, including occupational, social, and psychological functioning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany cancer survivors experience cognitive impairments that impact memory, concentration, speed of information processing, and decision making. These impairments, collectively known as cancer-related cognitive impairments (CRCIs), are a key domain of unmet needs and can significantly impact a cancer survivor's identity and quality of life. However, there are no purpose-built, multi-domain, needs assessment tools specifically for CRCI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCancer patients' children are vulnerable to psychosocial and behavioural issues. The mechanisms underlying how children are affected by their parent's diagnosis are unknown, warranting further research. This study investigated how children are affected by their parent's cancer diagnosis and provides a theoretical model conceptualising this experience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Weight bias exhibited by health care students may continue into their future practice, compromising the provision of care that people living with overweight or obesity receive. This highlights the need to comprehensively examine the extent to which weight bias is present among health care students and the factors that may be associated with students' weight bias.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, Australian university students enrolled in health care courses were invited via social media advertisements, snowball and convenience sampling, and by making direct contact with universities to complete an online survey.
Background: Research has demonstrated that healthcare professionals are not immune to weight stigma attitudes, with evidence showing that people living with overweight or obesity may experience direct and indirect stigma and discrimination. This can impact the quality of care provided and impact patients' engagement in healthcare. Despite this, there is a paucity of research examining patient attitudes towards healthcare professionals living with overweight or obesity, which can also hold implications for the patient-practitioner relationship.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople living with obesity experience weight stigma in most social settings. This has a negative impact on their health and quality of life. A primary contributor to weight stigma is the misconception that obesity is caused by factors solely within an individual's control.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The pathology underlying cognitive changes in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) is not well understood. In healthy older adults, gut microbiome composition has been associated with cognitive function. In people with PD, preliminary evidence suggests that cortical spreading of abnormal alpha-synuclein aggregates may be associated with cognitive impairment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Childhood trauma is associated with increased risk of obesity during adulthood, which may be associated with the development of food addiction. This study examined whether food addiction mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and obesity in young adults.
Methods: A sample of 512 young adults, aged 18 to 30 years, living with overweight and obesity (Body Mass Index ≥ 25 kg/m), from the United Kingdom participated in the study.
Background: There is an urgent need to develop new therapies to improve cognitive function in adults following cochlear implant surgery. This study aims to determine if completing at-home computer-based brain training activities improve memory and thinking skills in adults following their first cochlear implant.
Methods: This study will be conducted as a single-blind, head-to-head, randomised controlled trial (RCT).
Obesity (Silver Spring)
November 2021
Objective: Weight-biased attitudes and views held by health care professionals can have a negative impact on the patient-provider relationship and the provision of care, but studies have found mixed results about the extent and nature of bias, which warrants a review of the evidence.
Methods: A systematic review and random-effects meta-analysis were conducted by including studies up to January 12, 2021.
Results: A total of 41 studies met inclusion criteria, with 17 studies providing sufficient data to be meta-analyzed.
Cognitive impairment is acknowledged as a feature of Parkinson's disease (PD), and the most common cognitive declines are in executive function (EF) and memory. Cognitive reserve (CR) may offer some protection against cognitive dysfunction in PD. The present study used two proxies of CR (years of education, premorbid IQ) to examine the relationship between CR and (i) EF (ii) memory in a large PD sample ( = 334).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
January 2021
Living with obesity is related to numerous negative health outcomes, including various cancers, type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Although much is known about the factors associated with obesity, and a range of weight loss interventions have been established, changing health-related behaviours to positively affect obesity outcomes has proven difficult. In this paper, we first draw together major factors that have emerged within the literature on weight loss to describe a new conceptual framework of long-term weight loss maintenance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Studies reporting an association between hearing loss and depression in older adults are conflicting and warrant a systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence.
Research Design And Methods: A search of academic databases (e.g.
This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the efficacy of auditory training and cognitive training to improve cognitive function in adults with hearing loss. A literature search of academic databases (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined whether standard cognitive training, tailored cognitive training, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), standard cognitive training + tDCS, or tailored cognitive training + tDCS improved cognitive function and functional outcomes in participants with PD and mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI). Forty-two participants with PD-MCI were randomized to one of six groups: (1) standard cognitive training, (2) tailored cognitive training, (3) tDCS, (4) standard cognitive training + tDCS, (5) tailored cognitive training + tDCS, or (6) a control group. Interventions lasted 4 weeks, with cognitive and functional outcomes measured at baseline, post-intervention, and follow-up.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cheerleader effect occurs when the same individual appears to be more attractive when seen in a group, compared to alone. As observers over-attend to visual information presented in the left visual field, we investigated whether the spatial arrangement of the faces in a group would influence the magnitude of the cheerleader effect. In Experiment 1, target faces were presented twice in the centre of the display: once alone, and once in a group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many people with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience cognitive decline. It is not known whether cognitive training or noninvasive brain stimulation are effective at alleviating cognitive deficits in PD.
Objective: To examine cognitive training and non-invasive brain stimulation interventions for cognition in PD.
The current study examined the prevalence and subtypes of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in an Australian sample of people with Parkinson's Disease (PD). Seventy participants with PD completed neuropsychological assessments of their cognitive performance, using MDS Task Force Level II diagnostic criteria for PD-MCI. A cut-off score of less than one standard deviation (SD) below normative data determined impaired performance on a neuropsychological test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale -21 (DASS-21) is a frequently used measure of emotional disturbance symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the factor structure of the DASS-21 in PD has yet to be explored.
Objective: To assess whether the scale is measuring these symptoms in PD in the same way as the general population.
This study examined whether activities of daily living (ADL) mediate the relationship between depression and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) in people with Parkinson's disease (PD). A cross-sectional, correlational research design examined data from 174 participants who completed the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 (PDQ-39), and Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale-section 2 (UPDRS-section 2 [ADL]). Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) was used to examine the mediator model.
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