Publications by authors named "Broeck K"

Background: People with severe mental illness frequently experience difficulties in other life domains, such as physical health conditions, comorbid substance abuse, unstable housing or structural poverty. The interaction between these difficulties creates a complex care need that often goes unmet. In addition, they regularly come into contact with the legal system and police, through penal as well as protective measures.

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Homelessness in psychiatric patients in Flanders, Belgium, has never been investigated. Advocacy groups from patients with lived experience of psychiatric disorders have sounded the alarm on the scarcity of suitable housing options, the strain on psychiatric institutions, and the challenges faced by social service workers. To investigate the extent of the problem a survey on the topic was initiated.

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The role of pharmacists is increasingly expanding to encompass holistic patient-oriented services, including prevention, health advice, and counseling. Despite this, the pharmacist's role in public psychosocial wellbeing remains understudied. Project #CAVAsa, a collaboration between Flemish Pharmacists' Network and Centers for General Wellbeing (CAW), aimed to strengthen the pharmacist's role in psychosocial care.

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Article Synopsis
  • Integrated nature-based interventions in healthcare are emerging as effective strategies to enhance both health and biodiversity, but there is a lack of robust quality assessment for these interventions.
  • A qualitative study involving 22 professionals from seven Belgian healthcare facilities was conducted to refine a preliminary quality framework for evaluating integrated nature-based interventions.
  • Findings highlighted the complexity of these interventions and resulted in nine quality criteria, including one newly identified criterion focused on capacity building, alongside existing ones from prior research.
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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the integration of mental health services into primary care in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, examining what helps and hinders this process for better outcomes in healthcare.
  • - Researchers conducted a mixed-methods study involving interviews with stakeholders and a survey to gather data on the key factors affecting integration, finding both facilitators and barriers.
  • - Key facilitators for integration include strong leadership and positive attitudes, while barriers include a lack of understanding about integration, stigma, poor facility performance, and low prioritization of mental health services.
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With its subsidy retention fund, the city of Ghent targets homeowners, who live in a dwelling of bad quality and do not have the resources to renovate or move out. Being in this no-choice situation, they are locked-in homeowners. Through this innovative policy instrument, Ghent aims to improve the quality of its housing stock targeting households who may not take up other renovation-encouraging instruments.

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Background: Diabetes and psychiatric disorders often co-occur. The prevalence of depression in a person with diabetes is two times higher than that of the general population. During the last decade, the prevalence of diabetes in Vietnam has nearly doubled.

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Introduction: Community pharmacists are accessible primary care providers and therefore in a good position to detect unmet psychosocial needs of their patients and pharmacy visitors.

Description: A collaboration between pharmacists and psychosocial work was set up in Flanders, Belgium. Community pharmacists were trained to discuss psychosocial needs, to inform patients about possible help and refer them to a Center for General Wellbeing if needed.

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The bidirectional relationship between poverty and poor physical and mental health is well-known. All physicians should have sufficient knowledge on poverty as a social determinant and its impact on (mental) health. The knowledge of poverty in physicians is seldom investigated.

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Background: The Flemish and Dutch (mental) health sectors cause greenhouse gas emissions and therefore will have to make an effort to reduce their climate impact.

Aim: To assess whether differences can be found in the climate policies of Flemish and Dutch mental health institutions.

Method: Descriptive research based on a sustainability questionnaire, in which concrete actions, objectives and ambitions in the field of sustainability were questioned at Flemish and Dutch mental health institutions.

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Background: Motivating patients to discontinue long-term benzodiazepine receptor agonist (BZRA) use for insomnia remains an important challenge in primary care because of the medication's unfavourable risk-benefit profile. Previous studies have shown that understanding the complexity of patients' motivation is crucial to the primary care physician for providing effective interventions efficiently. Theoretical frameworks about behaviour change show that motivation is a multi-layered concept that interacts with other concepts, which aligns with a holistic perspective or implementation of the biopsychosocial model.

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Background: Despite numerous attempts to improve interprofessional collaboration and integration (IPCI) in primary care, patients, care providers, researchers, and governments are still looking for tools and guidance to do this more efficiently. To address these issues, we decided to develop a generic toolkit, based on sociocracy and psychological safety principles, to guide care providers in their collaboration within and outside their practice. Finally, we reasoned that, in order to obtain integrated primary care, different strategies should be combined.

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Background: Long-term use of benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRAs) remains common despite European guidelines advising that these drugs be used in the lowest possible dose and for the shortest possible duration. Half of all BZRAs are prescribed in family practice. This creates a window of opportunity for discontinuation in primary care.

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Background: Belgium is one of the few countries worldwide where euthanasia on the grounds of unbearable suffering caused by a psychiatric disorder is legally possible. In April 2010 euthanasia was carried out on a 38-year-old Belgian woman with borderline personality disorder and/or autism. After a complaint by the family, three physicians were referred to the Court of Assizes on the charge of "murder by poisoning".

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Background: People with a severe mental illness (pSMI) often have comorbid physical health problems, resulting in a lower life expectancy compared to the global population. In Belgium, it remains unclear how to approach health disparities in pSMI in a community setting. This study explores the perspectives of both care professionals and patients on physical healthcare in Belgian community mental services, aiming to identify good practices, barriers and points of improvement.

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Study Objectives: International guidelines recommend using benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRA) for maximally four weeks. Nevertheless, long-term use for chronic insomnia disorder remains a common practice. This study aimed to test the effectiveness of blended care for discontinuing long-term BZRA use in general practice.

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Objective: To identify strategies and interventions used to improve interprofessional collaboration and integration (IPCI) in primary care.

Design: Scoping review DATA SOURCES: Specific Medical Subject Headings terms were used, and a search strategy was developed for PubMed and afterwards adapted to Medline, Eric and Web of Science.

Study Selection: In the first stage of the selection, two researchers screened the article abstracts to select eligible papers.

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Article Synopsis
  • Mental health issues often go undetected and untreated, primarily due to individuals not recognizing their need for help and having attitudinal barriers.
  • A study in Antwerp surveyed 1208 individuals aged 15-80, revealing that about 10.4% had clinically assessed mental health needs, but only 5.5% sought help.
  • Younger individuals and women reported higher self-perceived unmet needs, while older individuals and men were more likely to have clinically assessed needs; financial barriers significantly hindered access to care.
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Aims And Objectives: Gaining insight in how people living with chronic conditions experience primary healthcare within their informal network.

Background: The primary healthcare system is challenged by the increasing number of people living with chronic conditions. To strengthen chronic care management, literature and policy plans point to a person-centred approach of care (PCC).

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Background: Waiting times are an important barrier to timely obtaining appropriate mental health care in Flanders, but structural data is limited.

Aim: To describe the waiting time problem in Flanders and propose some causal hypotheses and possible interventions.

Method: An exploration of the available waiting time data, supplemented with literature and insights based on the results of some Flemish Centers for Mental Healthcare.

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Survey studies suggest that COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the population's mental well-being. Routine registration data allow a more objective way for investigating such associations, complementary to self-report measures. This study investigates the level of out of hours (OOH) consultations for psychological problems since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Flanders, Belgium.

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Objective: The study of care trajectories of psychiatric patients across hospitals was previously not possible in Belgium as each hospital stores its data autonomously, and government-related registrations do not contain a unique identifier or are incomplete. A new longitudinal database called iPSYcare (Improved Psychiatric Care and Research) was therefore constructed in 2021, and links the electronic medical records of patients in psychiatric units of eight hospitals in the Antwerp Province, Belgium. The database provides a wide range of information on patients, care trajectories and delivered care in the region.

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Burnout is, besides a global, complex phenomenon, a public health issue with negative consequences on personal, organizational, social, and economic levels. This paper outlines the co-design of a novel Nature-based Burnout Coaching intervention, called NABUCO. Due to the complexity of burnout, we propose a One Health approach in healthcare, educational and governmental pilot organizations, to deliver guidelines and protocols for prevention and recovery of burnout.

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To investigate the experience of psychiatrists who completed assessment procedures of euthanasia requests from adults with psychiatric conditions (APC) over the last 12 months. Between November 2018 and April 2019 a cross-sectional survey was sent to a sample of 753 psychiatrists affiliated with Belgian organisations of psychiatrists to gather detailed information on their latest experience with a completed euthanasia assessment procedure, irrespective of its outcome (i.e.

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