Art-making in mental health - a Fijian pilot study.

Objective: A pilot art-making and mental health recovery project addressed consumer and carer mental health and well-being in Suva, Fiji.

Method: Using feedback surveys, the project evaluated initial training, and a 12-month art programme for consumers, carers and staff across several mental health services.

Results: First person and stakeholder group reports from the project reflected broad-scale approval for the novel modality and its potential for continued application in keeping with local cultural values.

Art-based interventions during pregnancy to support women's wellbeing: An integrative review.

Background: The transition to motherhood is a dynamic experience. Antenatal care and education are designed to support women during pregnancy, however childbearing women often report a further need for emotional and social support beyond preparation for birth. Broadening routine antenatal care to included art-based interventions may offer women an opportunity to explore important aspects of the transition to motherhood.

Thermal strategies vary with life history stage.

With both global surface temperatures and the incidence and intensity of extreme temperature events projected to increase, the assessment of species' sensitivity to chronic and acute changes in temperature has become crucial. Sensitivity predictions are based predominantly on adult responses, despite the fact that early life stages may be more vulnerable to thermal challenge. Here, we compared the sensitivity of different life history stages of the intertidal gastropod using thermal death time curves, which incorporate the intensity and duration of heat stress, and used these to calculate upper critical thermal limits (CT) and sensitivity to temperature change ().

Provision of arts therapies for people with severe mental illness.

Purpose Of Review: Arts therapies are still inadequately regulated throughout the world despite a 100-year-long tradition, a vast number of academically trained therapists and importance in treating psychiatric patients. It is essential that more evidence-based studies are undertaken.

Recent Findings: Current international guidelines focus on the efficacy and effectiveness of arts therapies.

Coil-like Enzymatic Biohybrid Structures Fabricated by Rational Design: Controlling Size and Enzyme Activity over Sequential Nanoparticle Bioconjugation and Filtration Steps.

Well-defined enzymatic biohybrid structures (BHS) composed of avidin, biotinylated poly(propyleneimine) glycodendrimers, and biotinylated horseradish peroxidase were fabricated by a sequential polyassociation reaction to adopt directed enzyme prodrug therapy to protein-glycopolymer BHS for potential biomedical applications. To tailor and gain fundamental insight into pivotal properties such as size and molar mass of these BHS, the dependence on the fabrication sequence was probed and thoroughly investigated by several complementary methods (e.g.

Art and mental health in Samoa.

Objectives: To pilot an art and mental health project with Samoan and Australian stakeholders. The aim of this project was to provide a voice through the medium of art for people experiencing mental illness, and to improve the public understanding in Samoa of mental illness and trauma.

Methods: Over 12 months, a series of innovative workshops were held with Samoan and Australian stakeholders, followed by an art exhibition.

Sphere-Like Protein-Glycopolymer Nanostructures Tailored by Polyassociation.

Key parameters allow a reproducible polyassociation between avidin and biotinylated glycopolymers in order to fabricate defined supramolecular nanostructures for future (bio)medical and biotechnological applications. Thus, the polymerization efficiency of biotinylated glycopolymers in the fabrication of biohybrid structures (BHS) was investigated with regard to the influence of (i) the degree of biotinylation of the dendritic glycoarchitectures, (ii) two biotin linkers, (iii) the dendritic scaffold (perfectly branched vs hyperbranched), and (iv) the ligand-receptor stoichiometry. The adjustment of all these parameters opens the way to fabricate defined sizes of the final biohybrid structures as a multifunctional platform ready for their use in different applications.

Biology and ecology of Irukandji jellyfish (Cnidaria: Cubozoa).

Irukandji stings are a leading occupational health and safety issue for marine industries in tropical Australia and an emerging problem elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean. Their mild initial sting frequently results in debilitating illness, involving signs of sympathetic excess including excruciating pain, sweating, nausea and vomiting, hypertension and a feeling of impending doom; some cases also experience acute heart failure and pulmonary oedema. These jellyfish are typically small and nearly invisible, and their infestations are generally mysterious, making them scary to the general public, irresistible to the media, and disastrous for tourism.

Returning to work after an injury.

Background: Workplace injuries are common, cause significant morbidity for workers and have considerable economic impact. General practitioners can play an important role in facilitating early return to work, improving outcomes for all parties.

Objective: This article provides guiding principles for the initial assessment and early treatment phase of injury with a primary focus on the rehabilitation and return to work process.

Identifying the evidence-base for art-based practices and their potential benefit for mental health recovery: a critical review.

Purpose: Art-based practices show promise as a beneficial solution for mental health services because they are in line with the whole person recovery framework currently being adopted, and have high acceptability with consumers. Nevertheless, incorporation of art-based approaches into mental health services has been impeded by claims of an insufficient evidence-base and ongoing debates about the most suitable research practices. This article addresses this gap in the literature by critically reviewing current research on the benefits of art-based practices in mental health rehabilitation settings.

The pre-employment medical - nuisance or great opportunity?

Background: Requests for general practitioners to conduct pre-employment medicals are increasing, encouraged by the increasing costs of workplace injuries, insurance claims, premiums and common law claims. In many industries, especially mining and natural gas, legislation demands that a medical be undertaken before the employee is allowed onsite.

Objective: This article describes the nature of a pre-employment medical and the role of the GP in providing a medical.

Fatal and severe box jellyfish stings, including Irukandji stings, in Malaysia, 2000-2010.

Background: Jellyfish are a common cause of injury throughout the world, with fatalities and severe systemic events not uncommon after tropical stings. The internet is a recent innovation to gain information on real-time health issues of travel destinations, including Southeast Asia.

Methods: We applied the model of internet-based retrospective health data aggregation, through the Divers Alert Network Asia-Pacific (DAN AP), together with more conventional methods of literature and media searches, to document the health significance, and clinical spectrum, of box jellyfish stings in Malaysia for the period January 1, 2000 to July 30, 2010.

Collaborative project to co-ordinate care for patients with dementia.

Health leaders from across Suffolk joined together in a collaborative action-learning project to identify ways of offering more productive and personalised care for patients with dementia and their carers. The project revealed a range of factors necessary for success, notably professional collaboration and effective facilitation. The outcome was a range of evidenced-based recommendations to improve care and efficiency, as well as ensuring that the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) agenda was met.

Place, matter and meaning: extending the relationship in psychological therapies.

Discourse in psychotherapeutic practice has typically focussed on technique and the therapeutic relationship. The setting in which psychological therapies occur has attracted little research attention to date. What we have understood as relationship may need to be expanded to include aspects of the material environment as constitutive in the dynamic process of psychotherapy.

The lived experience of art making as a companion to the mental health recovery process.

Purpose: Art making is a common activity provided for consumers in mental health psychosocial rehabilitation services, yet there is little evidence available which examines its role in the recovery process. The current study inquires into mental health consumers' lived experiences of art making within psychosocial rehabilitation services and their views on how art making supports mental health recovery.

Method: This research used qualitative in-depth interviews to explore the role of art making in the mental health recovery journey.

Severe Irukandji-like jellyfish stings in Thai waters.

Over recent years, there have been more widely-reported sightings of chirodropids and carybdeids in Thailand. There has also been an increased awareness and documentation of fatal and severe non-fatal jellyfish stings occurring in Thai waters. Although the victims are usually swimming or wading in shallow water, divers are also at risk.

Fitness to travel - assessment in the elderly and medically impaired.

Background: As more people travel, and with an expanding aged population, the number of older travellers, including those with significant medical or physical impairment will increase significantly.

Objective: This article addresses the assessment of fitness to travel in these groups, particularly with regard to their varying standard of fitness and/or disability. These factors should influence all travel plans.

Health advice obtained by tourists travelling to Magnetic Island: a risk area for 'Irukandji' jellyfish in North Queensland, Australia.

Background: Little is known about the travel health advice obtained by tourists travelling to Magnetic Island, which is a known risk area for the potentially fatal 'Irukandji' jellyfish on the Great Barrier Reef coast of north Queensland, Australia.

Methods: Structured interviews were conducted with 208 ferry passengers (93% response) travelling between Townsville (Latitude 19 degrees S) and Magnetic Island.

Results: Less than half of the international tourists (21, 46%) had obtained travel health advice before coming to north Queensland, although they were significantly more likely to have done so than domestic tourists (p<0.

The Jellyfish hunter--Jack Barnes: a pioneer medical toxinologist in Australia.

Dr Jack Handyside Barnes (1922-1985) was one of the small and elite group of Pacific marine toxinologists whose work was characterised by an uncompromising rugged persona, a focussed resolve to solve challenging problems of human clinical envenomation, and who conducted curiosity-driven research under conditions of scientific isolation. He was a pioneering advocate for the preservation of marine heritage, particularly that of the Great Barrier Reef. A former military commando who later became a general medical practitioner with extensive surgical and obstetric skills, in 1947 he was appointed the Medical Superintendent of Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.

Cardiovascular actions of the venom from the Irukandji (Carukia barnesi) jellyfish: effects in human, rat and guinea-pig tissues in vitro and in pigs in vitro.

1. We have investigated the cardiovascular pharmacology of the crude venom extract (CVE) from the potentially lethal, very small carybdeid jellyfish Carukia barnesi, in rat, guinea-pig and human isolated tissues and anaesthetized piglets. 2.