Public mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has presented society with a public health threat greater than any in living memory, leaving us to question almost every aspect of our society. An ever increasing concern is how we protect the global population from mental illness and whether public mental health policies can achieve this. In this article I reflect on the history of mental health service development, and furthermore on how COVID-19 might impact on the delivery of public mental health strategies into the future.

Plans, hopes and ideas for mental health.

Mental health and the failings of the mental health services are in the spotlight as never before. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the often dire situation with regard to child and adolescent mental health. At the same time, there is a renewed interest in the scope for prevention of mental illness and distress, and in population approaches to mental well-being.

End-of-life conversations and care: an asset-based model for community engagement.

Background: Public awareness work regarding palliative and end-of-life care is increasingly promoted within national strategies for palliative care. Different approaches to undertaking this work are being used, often based upon broader educational principles, but little is known about how to undertake such initiatives in a way that equally engages both the health and social care sector and the local communities. An asset-based community engagement approach has been developed that facilitates community-led awareness initiatives concerning end-of-life conversations and care by identifying and connecting existing skills and expertise.

Public Health and the origins of the Mersey Model of Harm Reduction.

In the mid-1980s in Liverpool, and the area surrounding it (Merseyside and Cheshire), harm reduction was adopted on a large scale for the first time in the UK. The harm reduction model was based on a population approach to achieve the public health goal of reducing the harm to health associated with drug use. The particular concern at that time was the risk of HIV infection, but there was also the issue of the health of a group of young people who were under-served by health services.

Elvis to Eminem: quantifying the price of fame through early mortality of European and North American rock and pop stars.

Background: Rock and pop stars are frequently characterised as indulging in high-risk behaviours, with high-profile deaths amongst such musicians creating an impression of premature mortality. However, studies to date have not quantified differences between mortality experienced by such stars and general populations.

Objective: This study measures survival rates of famous musicians (n = 1064) from their point of fame and compares them to matched general populations in North America and Europe.

Measuring paternal discrepancy and its public health consequences.

Paternal discrepancy (PD) occurs when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father. This paper examines published evidence on levels of PD and its public health consequences. Rates vary between studies from 0.