God put a thought into my mind: the charismatic Christian experience of receiving communications from God.

The agentive aspects of communicative religious experiences remain somewhat neglected in the social sciences literature. There is a need for phenomenological descriptions of these experiences and the ways in which they differ from culturally defined psychopathological states. In this semi-structured interview study, eight congregants attending an evangelical church in London were asked to describe their experiences of God communicating with them.

Theodicy and end-of-life care.

This article examines theodicy-the vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We focus on the thought processes that chaplains, social workers, and other professionals may use in their care interventions to address issues of theodicy for patients. Theodical issues may cause anxiety and distress for believers, but they can also potentially be a source of relief and release.

Health care behaviours and beliefs in Hasidic Jewish populations: a systematic review of the literature.

Cultural issues impact on health care, including individuals' health care behaviours and beliefs. Hasidic Jews, with their strict religious observance, emphasis on kabbalah, cultural insularity and spiritual leader, their Rebbe, comprise a distinct cultural group. The reviewed studies reveal that Hasidic Jews may seek spiritual healing and incorporate religion in their explanatory models of illness; illness attracts stigma; psychiatric patients' symptomatology may have religious content; social and cultural factors may challenge health care delivery.

Aging without agency: theorizing the fourth age.

This article looks at the "fourth age" as a manifestation of the fragmentation of "old age". We argue that the fourth age emerges from the institutionalization of the infirmities of old age set against the appearance of a third-age culture that negates past representations of old age. We outline the historical marginalization of old age from early modern society to the contemporary concentration of infirmity within long-term care which makes of old age an undesirable "social imaginary".

A cultural critique of community psychiatry in India.

This article is the first comprehensive cultural critique of India's official community mental health policy and program. Data are based on a literature review of published papers, conference proceedings, analyses of official policy and popular media, interviews with key Indian mental health professionals, and fieldwork in Kanpur district, Uttar Pradesh (2004-2006). The authors demonstrate how three influences have shaped community psychiatry in India: a cultural asymmetry between health professionals and the wider society, psychiatry's search for both professional and social legitimacy, and WHO policies that have provided the overall direction to the development of services.

Internet use and the digital divide in the English longitudinal study of ageing.

This paper examines the digital divide in Internet use in later life. We hypothesise that the differential diffusion of domestic information and communication technologies between pre- and post-Second World War cohorts is primarily responsible for this divide rather than either age-associated structural inequalities or age-related intrinsic features of mental and/or physical infirmity. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing we show that age/cohort differences in Internet use persist after income, education, employment and health status are controlled for.

Befriending carers of people with dementia: randomised controlled trial.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a voluntary sector based befriending scheme in improving psychological wellbeing and quality of life for family carers of people with dementia.

Design: Single blind randomised controlled trial.

Setting: Community settings in East Anglia and London.

Peer-group and price influence students drinking along with planned behaviour.

Aims: To examine the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), as a framework for explaining binge drinking among young adults.

Methods: One hundred and seventy-eight students in a cross-sectional design study completed self-report questionnaires examining attitudes to drinking, intention to drink and drinking behaviour in university. Binge drinking was defined for females (and males) as consuming 'four (males-five) or more pints of beer/glasses of wine/measures of spirits' in a single session.

Illness and treatment cognitions and health related quality of life in end stage renal disease.

Objectives: Patients' beliefs regarding illness and treatment are important to understand responses to chronic disease. The present study aimed (i) to assess the illness representations and treatment disruption beliefs of patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD), (ii) to determine whether beliefs about illness and treatment differ between different renal replacement therapies, and (iii) to examine whether these beliefs are associated with health related quality of life (HQoL).

Method: A cross-sectional sample of 262 ESRD patients, 145 dialysis and 117 kidney transplant recipients completed the illness perceptions questionnaire, the illness effects questionnaire, the treatment effects questionnaire and the short form 36 health survey.

Does befriending by trained lay workers improve psychological well-being and quality of life for carers of people with dementia, and at what cost? A randomised controlled trial.

Objectives: To determine whether a social support intervention (access to an employed befriending facilitator in addition to usual care) is effective compared with usual care alone. Also to document direct and indirect costs, and establish incremental cost-effectiveness.

Design: The Befriending and Costs of Caring (BECCA) trial was a cost-effectiveness randomised controlled trial.

Evaluation of an alternative S100b assay for use in cardiac surgery: relationship with microemboli and neuropsychological outcome.

Introduction: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between S100b release, neuropsychological outcome and cerebral microemboli. Peri-operative assay of the astroglial cell protein S100b has been used as a marker of cerebral damage after cardiac surgery but potential assay cross-reactivity has limited its specificity. The present study uses an alternative enzyme-linked immunoabsorbant assay (ELISA) for serum S100b that has documented sensitivity and specificity data in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

Community and communication in the third age: the impact of internet and cell phone use on attachment to place in later life in England.

Objective: We investigated the following question: Would access to and use of domestic information and communication technology affect people's attachment to place in later life?

Methods: Drawing upon data on ownership of cell phones and use of Internet/e-mail from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we measured the association between access to such technology and self-rated attachment to one's neighborhood.

Result: There was a significant negative association between attachment to place and ownership and use of domestic information and communication technology, particularly the Internet. This association remained after taking account of age/cohort differences, as well as the influence of gender, disability, socioeconomic status of the neighborhood, differences in income and educational status, and length of residence in the area.

The impact of physical illnesses on non-psychotic psychiatric morbidity: data from the household survey of psychiatric morbidity in Great Britain.

Objectives: Psychiatric morbidity among the physically ill is an important issue, particularly in the light of research documenting the difficulties in accurately diagnosing and effectively treating psychiatric disorders in this group. The objectives of this study were: (1) To compare psychiatric morbidity in 11 physical conditions and a healthy comparison group. (2) To compare psychiatric morbidity between respondents with one of the 11 illnesses to those with more than one physical illness.

Stigmatization of severe mental illness in India: Against the simple industrialization hypothesis.

Background: Major international studies on course and outcome of schizophrenia suggest a better prognosis in the rural world and in low-income nations. Industrialization is thought to result in increased stigma for mental illness, which in turn is thought to worsen prognosis. The lack of an ethnographically derived and cross-culturally valid measure of stigma has hampered investigation.

The long shadow of work - does time since labour market exit affect the association between socioeconomic position and health in a post-working population.

Objective: To test the effect of time since labour market exit (LME) on associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and self-rated health.

Methods: Retirees from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) were divided into three groups on the basis of the length of time since LME. Seven different indicators of SEP were identified: socioeconomic class, income, wealth, education, tenure, area deprivation and subjective social status.

Perceptions of evidence-based medicine: traditional acupuncturists in the UK and resistance to biomedical modes of evaluation.

Acupuncture and other types of 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM) are proving increasingly popular in the UK. As attempts to incorporate acupuncture into allopathic medicine have grown in number, the issue of assessing its effectiveness in ways consistent with the concept of evidence-based medicine has become more urgent. The nature, relevance and applicability of such assessments remain controversial however.

Carers Assessment of Difficulties Index (CADI): psychometric properties for use with carers of people with dementia.

Burden is a commonly recognised phenomenon in family caring. The Carers Assessment of Difficulties Index (CADI) was developed as a clinical tool for assessing the multiple dimensions of carer burden. It has been used with a number of caring cohorts, but its psychometric properties have not been explored specifically with carers of people with dementia.

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction after noncardiac surgery: a systematic review.

This article describes a systematic review on the research into postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) in noncardiac surgery to ascertain the status of the evidence and to examine the methodologies used in studies. The review demonstrated that in the early weeks after major noncardiac surgery, a significant proportion of people show POCD, with the elderly being more at risk. Minimal evidence was found that patients continue to show POCD up to 6 months and beyond.

Comparison of the effects of low childhood socioeconomic position and low adulthood socioeconomic position on self rated health in four European studies.

Background: Socioeconomic inequalities in health are a persistent feature throughout Europe. Researchers and policy makers are increasingly using a lifecourse perspective to explain these inequalities and direct policy. However, there are few, if any, cross national lifecourse comparisons in this area.

Cognitive functioning pre- to post-kidney transplantation--a prospective study.

Background: Kidney transplantation (TX) may ameliorate the neuropsychological (NP) impairments in end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Previous studies have suffered from small sample sizes, lack of standardization of dialysis adequacy, and insufficiently sensitive NP tests.

Methods: Twenty-eight medically stable patients aged 44.

Race, culture and ethnicity in minority research: a critical discussion.

Race and ethnicity are terms commonly used in ethnic minority research. Both these terms present a number of problems in terms of definition and classification. It is argued here that there is a need to move beyond essentialised concepts of race and ethnicity to examine the socio-political processes which relate to their social construction and the ways in which these terms articulate with other categories such as social class and gender and structure social relationships.

An examination of factors influencing the choice of therapy for patients with coronary artery disease.

Background: A diverse range of factors influence clinicians' decisions regarding the allocation of patients to different treatments for coronary artery disease in routine cardiology clinics. These include demographic measures, risk factors, co-morbidities, measures of objective cardiac disease, symptom reports and functional limitations. This study examined which of these factors differentiated patients receiving angioplasty from medication; bypass surgery from medication; and bypass surgery from angioplasty.

Illness representations of coronary artery disease: an empirical examination of the Illness Perceptions Questionnaire (IPQ) in patients undergoing surgery, angioplasty and medication.

Background: This study sought to validate empirically, through factor analysis, the theoretically developed Illness Perceptions Questionnaire (IPQ) measure of illness representations, and investigated how illness representations varied within an illness condition between different treatments.

Methods: Two hundred and fourteen coronary artery disease (CAD) patients, 70 of whom were undergoing medication, 71 to undergo angioplasty and 73 to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG), completed the New Zealand Heart Attack Recovery Project version of the IPQ. The core cognitive illness representation statement responses were subject to principal components analyses (PCA), with oblique rotation.

The role of illness beliefs, treatment beliefs, and perceived severity of symptoms in explaining distress in cancer patients during chemotherapy treatment.

The authors investigated cancer patients' interpretations of their physical symptoms and their illness beliefs with the objective of establishing the importance of these variables in predicting distress during chemotherapy treatment. Past researchers have suggested that causal attributions of physical symptoms and beliefs about illness progression and its consequences may serve as important mediators between number and perceived severity of symptoms and psychological adjustment in cancer patients during the treatment phase. Our aim in this study was to further these findings using the Self-Regulation Model as a theoretical framework.