"Having Support at Work 'Is Different' and Important": A Qualitative Study of Virtual Peer Discussion Groups With Medical School Faculty.

Purpose: In response to the need to support health care professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, an innovative, peer-led discussion group program for medical school faculty, called CIRCLE (Colleague Involved in Reaching Colleagues through Listening and Empathy), was developed at Rutgers Health. This article describes results of a qualitative analysis of the participants' experiences, explores virtual communication platform use during this peer support program, and identifies the program's beneficial elements.

Method: CIRCLE was inaugurated in October 2020 at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School using evidence-informed topics.

Building Financial Wellness: Randomized Controlled Trial of a Financial Education and Support Intervention.

Objective: Many people receiving services for psychiatric disorders live on low incomes, navigate complex financial situations, and have limited economic security. The authors sought to determine whether a financial wellness intervention delivered virtually by peers would increase financial literacy, reduce economic strain, and improve financial competency.

Methods: One hundred participants receiving services for psychiatric disorders were recruited from community programs and via social media and were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either an intervention called Building Financial Wellness (N=51) or services as usual (N=49).

Factor Structure, Reliability, and Construct Validity of the Wellness Inventory.

Objective: Wellness has been associated with various general medical and mental health outcomes; however, few empirically supported measures capture the breadth of the wellness construct. The first author had previously developed the Wellness Inventory through an iterative process with key stakeholders to establish face and content validity and examined the psychometric properties of the Wellness Inventory as a tool for assessing wellness across eight dimensions.

Methods: The authors assessed the Wellness Inventory by using data from self-report online surveys in three samples of data collected from two groups of respondents: students and faculty members in a public university and behavioral health providers (N=3,446; 50% White and 43% female).

Cultivating Connections: An Interprofessional Peer Support Model.

Peer support models have existed for decades in behavioral health care and are being developed for health care professionals to help address high rates of burnout and stress in the health care environment. Such models typically involve individuals from the same profession. With the concurrent increase of interprofessional integrated behavioral health care models, interprofessional peer support seems a viable model.

How Individuals with Mental Health Challenges Coped During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

There is growing awareness of the significant mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on many Americans. Less is known about the effects on individuals who were living with mental health conditions prior to the pandemic's onset. In addition, little research has explored how this group is coping positively with the challenges of COVID-19.

Peer-Run Respite Approaches to Supporting People Experiencing an Emotional Crisis.

Research shows that guests experience peer-run respites as empowering and safe places where they feel more seen, heard, and respected than they do in conventional settings. This column describes the successful and unique processes of peer-run respites that support guests in emotional crisis and facilitate healing. In a discussion informed by their experiences and the literature, the authors examine how peer-run respites differ from conventional psychiatric crisis response services in their basic philosophy: how emotional crisis is understood, the goal of crisis response, how trauma is viewed, the importance of self-determination, power dynamics, and relationality.

Alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine use have distinct associations with COVID-19 pandemic-related experiences: An exploratory Bayesian network analysis across two timepoints.

Background: Substance use trends during the COVID-19 pandemic have been extensively documented. However, relatively less is known about the associations between pandemic-related experiences and substance use.

Method: In July 2020 and January 2021, a broad U.

Breaking through social determinants of health: Results from a feasibility study of Imani Breakthrough, a community developed substance use intervention for Black and Latinx people.

Racial and ethnic disparities in substance use intervention design, implementation, and dissemination have been recognized for years, yet few intervention programs have been designed and conducted by and for people who use substances. Imani Breakthrough is a two-phase 22-week intervention developed by the community, run by facilitators with lived experience and church members, that is implemented in Black and Latinx church settings. This community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach is a concept developed in response to a call for action from the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) with funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to address rising rates of death due to opioid overdose, and other negative consequences of substance misuse.

Activation of β-adrenergic receptor signaling prevents glucocorticoid-induced obesity and adipose tissue dysfunction in male mice.

Elevated serum concentrations of glucocorticoids (GCs) result in excessive lipid accumulation in white adipose tissue (WAT) as well as dysfunction of thermogenic brown adipose tissue (BAT), ultimately leading to the development of obesity and metabolic disease. Here, we hypothesized that activation of the sympathetic nervous system either via cold exposure or the use of a selective β3-adrenergic receptor (β3-AR) agonist alleviates the adverse metabolic effects of chronic GC exposure in rodents. To this end, male 10-wk-old C57BL/6NRj mice were treated with corticosterone via drinking water or placebo for 4 wk while being maintained at 29°C (thermoneutrality), 22°C (room temperature), or 13°C (cold temperature); in a follow-up study mice received a selective β3-AR agonist or placebo with and without corticosterone while being maintained at room temperature.

Co-Production: Journey to Wellness Guide.

As rates of substance use and mental disorders continue to rise, individuals with mental health and substance use challenges and their supporters could benefit from practical, accessible, cost-effective, wellness-focused tools outlining simple daily strategies to promote long-term recovery. The current article describes such a tool, the Journey to Wellness Guide, based on the Wellness Model, and developed through a co-production process. refers to a process of research, service design, and educational materials development where people with lived experience of mental health and/or substance use challenges share decision-making power throughout all stages of production, including the sharing of results.

Peer Health Navigation Experiences Before and After Prison Release Among People With Opioid Use Disorder.

Objective: Recently incarcerated people with opioid use disorder are at high risk of overdose and adverse outcomes as a result of biopsychosocial risk factors. Peer support models aiming to improve these outcomes have expanded in recent years. This qualitative study aimed to document participants' experiences with peer health navigation before and after prison release, examine participants' perspectives on the role of peer health navigators, and understand participants' views on service improvements.

Posttraumatic stress disorder symptom trajectories in a 16-month COVID-19 pandemic period.

COVID-19 pandemic presents an unheralded opportunity to better understand trajectories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms across a prolonged period of social disruption and stress. We tracked PTSD symptoms among trauma-exposed individuals in the United States and sought to identify population-based variability in PTSD symptom trajectories and understand what, if any, early pandemic experiences predicted membership in one trajectory versus others. As part of a longitudinal study of U.

Growth hormone treatment does not augment the anti-diabetic effects of liraglutide in UCD-T2DM rats.

Introduction: The incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) slows gastric emptying, increases satiety and enhances insulin secretion. GLP-1 receptor agonists, such as liraglutide, are used therapeutically in humans to improve glycaemic control and delay the onset of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). In UCD-T2DM rats, a model of polygenic obesity and insulin resistance, we have previously reported that daily liraglutide administration delayed diabetes onset by >4 months.

Outcomes of Peer-Provided Individual Placement and Support Services in a Mental Health Peer-Run Vocational Program.

Objective: The authors sought to determine whether staff at a peer-run agency could deliver supported employment services with high fidelity to the individual placement and support (IPS) model and whether employment outcomes of peer-delivered IPS plus work-specific health promotion were superior to usual supported employment services.

Methods: Two teams from a vocational program of a large peer-run agency were studied from July 2015 to July 2017. One team received training and supervision in delivering IPS plus employment-focused physical wellness support and mentoring.

Discovery, Characterization, and Structure-Based Optimization of Small-Molecule In Vitro and In Vivo Probes for Human DNA Polymerase Theta.

Human DNA polymerase theta (Polθ), which is essential for microhomology-mediated DNA double strand break repair, has been proposed as an attractive target for the treatment of BRCA deficient and other DNA repair pathway defective cancers. As previously reported, we recently identified the first selective small molecule Polθ in vitro probe, (ART558), which recapitulates the phenotype of Polθ loss, and in vivo probe, (ART812), which is efficacious in a model of PARP inhibitor resistant TNBC in vivo. Here we describe the discovery, biochemical and biophysical characterization of these probes including small molecule ligand co-crystal structures with Polθ.

Financial Hardship, Hope, and Life Satisfaction Among Un/Underemployed Individuals With Psychiatric Diagnoses: A Mediation Analysis.

Background: Individuals with psychiatric diagnoses who are unemployed or underemployed are likely to disproportionately experience financial hardship and, in turn, lower life satisfaction (LS). Understanding the mechanisms though which financial hardship affects LS is essential to inform effective economic empowerment interventions for this population.

Aim: To examine if subjective financial hardship (SFH) mediates the relationship between objective financial hardship (OFH) and LS, and whether hope, and its agency and pathways components, further mediate the effect of SFH on LS among individuals with psychiatric diagnoses seeking employment.

A Welcoming Space to Manage Crisis: The Wellness Respite Program.

The need for behavioral health care prevention, treatment, and recovery supports, including crisis alternatives, has grown and is now receiving federal support through enhanced funding. When a person experiences severe emotional distress, crisis alternatives are a viable option instead of inpatient hospitalization to address the distress and restore balance. Peer respite programs are voluntary, short-term, crisis alternatives for people experiencing mental distress.

Iron chelation increases beige fat differentiation and metabolic activity, preventing and treating obesity.

Beige and brown fat consume glucose and lipids to produce heat, using uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). It is thought that full activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) may increase total daily energy expenditure by 20%. Humans normally have more beige and potentially beige-able fat than brown fat.

Multidimensional wellness for people aging with mental health conditions: A proposed framework.

Objective: This project aimed to develop a synthesized framework of multidimensional wellness for people aging with serious mental health conditions (SMHC) using existing frameworks to serve as a guide for policy and interventions to address the unique needs, experiences, and strengths of the population.

Method: A concept analysis compared a widely used wellness approach (Swarbrick, 1997) for people with SMHC and one for older adults (Fullen, 2019) to synthesize into a practical framework for people aging with SMHC.

Results: Nine dimensions were proposed for conceptualizing the wellness of this population including: (a) Developmental, (b) Intellectual/Cognitive, (c) Physical, (d) Emotional, (e) Social, (f) Occupational, (g) Spiritual, (h) Environmental, and (i) Financial.

Identification and optimization of a novel series of selective PIP5K inhibitors.

Phosphatidyl inositol (4,5)-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P) plays several key roles in human biology and the lipid kinase that produces PI(4,5)P, PIP5K, has been hypothesized to provide a potential therapeutic target of interest in the treatment of cancers. To better understand and explore the role of PIP5K in human cancers there remains an urgent need for potent and specific PIP5K inhibitor molecules. Following a high throughput screen of the AstraZeneca collection, a novel, moderately potent and selective inhibitor of PIP5K, 1, was discovered.