Finding Your Self in Group.

The current paper was an invited keynote given at the 2023 Connect Conference of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. The paper addresses the current struggles with love and hate in society and in therapy groups. The author elaborates on how our society has been living through collective traumas, and she focuses on how the pandemic and traumatic social currents have been undermining our collective sense of well-being.

Childhood caries and hospital admissions in England: a reflection on preventive strategies.

Dental caries is a largely preventable disease, yet the extraction of carious teeth is the most common reason for the hospital admission of children in England. This raises concern over the perceived failure of current preventive strategies. Despite a number of national and local preventive strategies, childhood caries remains most prevalent among the lower socioeconomic groups and ethnic minorities, especially in northern England.

Pyrophosphates in toothpaste: a retrospective and reappraisal.

During the last 50 years, an increasing number of toothpastes have been marketed that include pyrophosphates as anti-tartar (calculus) agents. Pyrophosphates are chelating agents with low toxicity and a broad range of applications, such as food additives and in industrial applications. Like other chelating agents, the prime function is to combine with metal elements and, in toothpastes, to inhibit calcium phosphate deposits in the form of dental calculus.

Fluoride in toothpaste - is the expressed total fluoride content meaningful for caries prevention?

In today's global market, there is a very wide range of fluoride toothpastes varying in formulation, fluoride concentration, quality control of ingredients and manufacture, and some products are transported, stored and sold to consumers in countries far removed from where they are made. The competitiveness of the toothpaste market has driven the major manufacturers to offer an increasing and frequently changing variety of formulations to support claims of caries prevention, tooth whitening, sensitivity prevention, gum health and total oral health. However, the focus of this article is to consider how variations in formulation and the fluoride content of toothpastes might affect clinical efficacy for caries prevention.

A Group Analyst's Perspective on the Trump-Clinton Election and Aftermath.

Utilizing a group psychoanalytic perspective, the author examines group dynamics surrounding and generated from the Trump-Clinton election and the aftermath with particular attention to the emotional interactional relationship between the leader and the nation. Group dynamics are explored from a psychological, social, political, and historic context.

A Modern Psychoanalytic Perspective on Group Therapy.

Modern group analysis derives from a maturational developmental theory. Its technique is attuned to the self/other developmental capacities of the individual and group. Rather than rely exclusively on interpretations and explanations, the modern group analyst focuses on emotional communication, exploration, and maturational interventions.

How should we manage caries in deciduous teeth?

Unlabelled: Recent research from the North of England has focused attention on the effectiveness of routine conservation of carious deciduous teeth. This has led to a debate within the profession stimulated by the belief that falling levels of restorative care equate to a failure of clinical care. The results from two major clinical studies suggest that the majority of carious deciduous teeth exfoliate without the child attending his/her dentist with pain and infection if left unrestored.

Measuring the school impact on child obesity.

This article explores the impact that schools have on their pupils' obesity and so identify those where targeted input is most needed. A modelling process was developed using data that had been collected over 2 years on a socio-economically and ethnically representative sample of 2367 school pupils aged 5 and 9 years old attending 35 Leeds primary schools. The three steps in the model involved calculating the "Observed" level of obesity for each school using mean body mass index standard deviation (BMI SDS); adjusting this using ethnicity and census-derived deprivation data to calculate the "Expected" level; and calculating the "Value Added" by each school from differences in obesity at school entry and transfer.

Treating idealized hope and hopelessness.

Hope is understood as being derived from a sense of well-being or a good-object feeling. From object relational and self-psychology perspectives, the author examines variations of hope, from hopelessness through idealized and malignant idealized hope to mature hope. Looking at idealized hope from both progressive and regressive positions, the author studies a case that has a dominant feature of regressive or malignant idealized hope.