Psychiatric court reports and diversion outcomes in a remand prison over three years.

Objectives: There has been a notable increase in requests for psychiatric reports from District Courts for persons remanded to Ireland's main remand prison, Cloverhill. We aimed to identify if reports were prepared for persons with severe mental illness and if they led to therapeutic benefits such as diversion to healthcare. Measures of equitability between Cloverhill and other District Courts were explored.

New ways of working: COVID-19 as a catalyst for change in acute mental health services.

Background: A need arose to divert patients with psychiatric complaints from the emergency department to alternative settings for psychiatric consultations to reduce footfall during COVID-19. We assessed the effectiveness of alternative referral pathway in reducing COVID-19 infection in our service and its effect on service quality: response time and number of patients leaving before the review. We evaluated the satisfaction of patients, general practitioners (GPs) and mental health service staff with the pathway.

SafePsych: improving patient safety by delivering high-impact simulation training on rare and complex scenarios in psychiatry.

Introduction: Despite an evidence base demonstrating simulation to be an effective medical education tool, it is not commonly used in postgraduate psychiatry training as it is in other medical specialties.

Objective: This paper outlines the development and effectiveness of a hybrid-virtual simulation-based workshop designed to improve patient care by improving clinical skills of non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) in detecting and managing rare and complex psychiatric emergencies.

Methods: Three clinical vignettes based on near-miss psychiatric cases were developed by a multidisciplinary team of physicians and nurses in psychiatry and experts in simulation-based medical education.

Mentalization-Based Treatment in a Naturalistic Setting in Ireland: A Cohort Study.

Objective: This study evaluated the real-world effectiveness of mentalization-based treatment by assessing the clinical status of patients before and after completing the treatment program, which was nested within a general adult community mental health service, and by comparing these patients with a treatment-as-usual group.

Methods: In this retrospective longitudinal naturalistic study, patients with a primary diagnosis of borderline personality disorder received either mentalization-based treatment (N=34) or treatment as usual (N=51). Data were collected from clinical charts and hospital databases.

The clinical characteristics and correlates of lithium toxicity in a tertiary referral centre.

Introduction: Lithium is a medication indicated for the treatment of bipolar disorder and treatment-resistant depression, with a narrow therapeutic index. Overdose, either acute or chronic can result in neurological symptoms, requiring dialysis and admission to intensive care in some cases. Lithium toxicity is avoidable with careful monitoring.

Maternal deprivation is associated with sex-dependent alterations in nociceptive behavior and neuroinflammatory mediators in the rat following peripheral nerve injury.

Unlabelled: Early-life stress is associated with an increased risk of developing affective disorders and chronic pain conditions. This study examined the effect of maternal deprivation (MD) on nociceptive responding prior to and following peripheral nerve injury (L5-L6 spinal nerve ligation [SNL]). Because neuroimmune signaling plays an important role in pain and affective disorders, associated alterations in glial and cytokine expression were assessed in key brain regions associated with emotional and nociceptive responding, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.