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While research has consistently identified an association between cannabis use and psychosis, few studies have examined this relationship in a polydrug context (i.e. combining cannabis with other illicit substances). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The present study sought to examine the association between recreational drug use (cannabis only vs polydrug) and psychotic disorders. Analysis was conducted on a large, representative survey of young Danish people aged 24 (n=4,718). Participants completed self-report measures of lifetime drug use and this information was linked to the Danish psychiatric registry system.

Multivariate binary logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between drug use (no drug use, cannabis only, cannabis and other drug) and ICD-10 psychotic disorders, while controlling for gender and parental history of psychosis. Compared with no drug use, the use of cannabis only did not increase the risk of psychosis while the odds ratio for cannabis and other drug were statistically significant.

Psychosis risk may be associated with the cumulative effect of polydrug use.

Cannabis use may be a proxy for other drug use in research studies.

This study is innovative as it uses linked self-report and administrative data for a large sample. Administrative data were used to as an objective mental health status indicator.

This paper aims to highlight emerging research relating to the need to recognise and address trauma in mental health service users.

The author searched for papers on trauma-informed care, published in the past two years.

One paper reports ideas of service users and family members for trauma-informed mental health services. A second paper describes an online survey seeking agreement between staff and service users of early intervention services for psychosis about practices of trauma-informed care. Both papers feature themes about safety and staff having training and support for asking about and responding to trauma. A third paper reports on specific therapies for trauma with people who experience psychosis. It found some evidence for talking therapies but noted that people with a psychosis diagnosis are rarely offered such therapies.

These papers highlight an emerging consensus about essential components of trauma-informed care and the need for staff training and support to realise it. The exclusion of people with a psychosis diagnosis from specific trauma therapies might begin to be addressed if services were more able to recognise trauma. There is some evidence that talking therapies for childhood trauma can be helpful for people who have a psychosis diagnosis. However, evidence reviews should be broadened to include a range of distressing experiences recognised to follow childhood trauma irrespective of whether the person has a psychosis diagnosis.

To determine the health status of women before, during, and after the war, and to explore women’s perceived health needs and current access to healthcare.

Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted in urban and rural areas. A total of 52 women participated in the study (N = 52; Individual Interviews, n = 12; Focus Group Participants, n = 40).

Women’s health concerns and healthcare needs overlap between the rural and urban communities. The women reported the needs for empowerment in the forms of social support groups for health, specialists for women’s health, education, resources, prevention, financial support to look for medical services, and mental health issues.

Since these focus groups and interviews were conducted, the women have continued to meet. The strength of these meetings is represented in the forms of preparing a meal, eating, and socializing in unity. The social support experienced in these gatherings allows the women to openly express their issues, fears, concerns, joys, and successes. The CBPR approach is an important necessity when working with vulnerable populations. There were some inherent limitations due to economic issues to support the gatherings, transportation, and health-related complications that may have prevented women from attending.

Disparate health outcomes and biologic–environmental interactions are represented in female survivors of war. Their issues began or were exacerbated during war and continue today. In the future, we seek to identify and establish a culturally and gender-specific intervention for health access, prevention, maintenance, and improvements.

This article focuses on group work with children using a board game format. Combining the principles of group work and board games helps to engage and motivate children and adolescents to address and work through their difficulties. Lifegames are a series of six therapeutic board games developed for group work with children and adolescents who encounter adversity in their life as a consequence of bereavement, family break up, poor relationships, bullying, chronic illness or obesity. The games facilitate the understanding and disclosure of the complex feelings experienced by children and young people when they are confronted with traumatic life events. The games encourage and assist the participants to obtain and maintain behavioural change. Lifegames are a means to assist professionals in their group work with children and adolescents.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a better understanding of Holistic Debriefing processes from a learning perspective.

During a terror attack in which 69 people were killed and 66 were wounded, a Search and Rescue crew experienced “fear of death” while giving life-saving help to victims of the attack. Afterwards, the crew conducted a Holistic Debriefing. The crew participated in interviews to share their experience of this type of debriefing.

The findings from the Holistic Debriefing sessions suggest that the debriefing process was experienced as positive in terms of social support, emotions and meaning. These experiences are further explained from a learning perspective.

This research was conducted on a small group of individuals experiencing an extreme situation, and findings may not readily generalize to other populations or situations.

Holistic Debriefing has been adopted by an increasing number of squadrons in the Norwegian Air Force.

Holistic Debriefing has been implemented at the Norwegian Air Force Academy, and may be relevant for other units involved in similar operations.

This study is unique when it comes to exploring Holistic Debriefing of rescue personnel in the aftermath of a terror attack. Moreover, Holistic Debriefing is also addressed as a reflection process in order to enhance individual and group learning processes.

Although Danish democracy is not currently facing the same decline in the trust in politicians and government as seen in other countries, it faces some of the same destabilising forces as do other ‘old’ representative democracies. While the various forms of citizen participation introduced in the 1980s and 1990s enhanced politician–citizen tensions, we are currently witnessing a wave of highly innovative, hybrid forms of democracy that both integrate representative and direct forms of democracy and push elected politicians towards an interactive political leadership style. These hybrid forms provide occasion for citizens and politicians to meet and debate pressing political matters. Although we are still in early days and dilemmas remain to be addressed, this development holds considerable potential for democracy in Denmark and elsewhere.

Disaster responders play a crucial role in providing aid to individuals and communities following catastrophic events. Being tasked to protect and preserve life and property, these groups of professionals are constantly exposed to various hazards, which puts them at risk of negative mental health consequences. This chapter describes and discusses these mental health effects and interventions for disaster responders in Southeast Asia. The chapter defines who the disaster responders are in Southeast Asian countries. Drawing from the literature, this chapter enumerates the various positive and negative psychological consequences of disaster response, and the risk and protective factors associated with disaster response work. This chapter also describes the different interventions, such as psychological first aid and psychotherapy, following the Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) (2007) guidelines on conducting mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS), and focusing on the Southeast Asian context. This chapter ends with a discussion of the different challenges of providing MHPSS in Southeast Asia and with some recommendations on how to improve the delivery of these services and the mental health of disaster responders in general.

Based on an extensive literature review, this chapter outlines key developments in global health and research during the last century with focus on the emergence of violence and child maltreatment as international public health priorities. Violence has been known to humans for millennia, but only in the late 1990s was it recognised as a global public health issue. Every year, an estimated 1 billion children are exposed to trauma, loss, abuse and neglect. Child maltreatment takes a social and economic toll on countries. Research initiated in 1985 found child maltreatment to be associated with increased disease, disability and premature death in adult survivors. The global availability of data on child maltreatment is, however, sporadic with low validity and reliability. Few global experts have consulted and involved the survivors of child maltreatment, as the experts by experience, in their attempts to provide a more comprehensive picture of reality. Youth and adult survivors of child maltreatment are often traumatised by the experience, and it is important to use trauma-informed approaches to prevent re-traumatisation. Participatory and inclusive research on child maltreatment is only in its infancy. There is a need for more inclusive research, designed by survivors for survivors, hereby strengthening local capacity building and informing policymakers from the bottom up. This chapter reviews lessons learnt and provides recommendations for how to enhance the participation and inclusion of the experts by experience in research on child maltreatment.

International migration is a global challenge affecting peoples and nations all over the world. In the advanced economies and welfare states of Western Europe, integrating migrants presents political, social as well as economic challenges. Over the past 50 years, Denmark has made a remarkable U-turn on the immigration question. Once the author of one of the most liberal immigration policies in Western Europe, Denmark presently has one of the strictest. This chapter addresses the causes behind the Danish policy U-turn, and how it has affected the social, economic and political integration of immigrants in Denmark. The chapter shows how Danish immigration politics have turned from low to high salience and have undergone radical changes resulting in a tightening of both internal and external immigration policies. It has become far more difficult to obtain residence and citizenship in Denmark. These measures have limited influx although international refugee crises are difficult to control at the borders. Moreover, Danish integration policies have focused increasingly on obligations and incentives, primarily by cutting benefits. The Danish case however shows that reduction of social benefits only has a marginal positive short-term effect on employment but with some negative side effects. When it comes to education, the Danish welfare state has been relatively successful in integrating immigrants and descendants in the educational system.

There have been many studies that demonstrated an association between sexual trauma and psychotic disorders or psychotic symptoms. Limited attention has been paid to gender differences regarding this association. A recent study evidenced that the trauma-psychosis association may be moderated by gender and that the effect may be specific for females. However, there have been many methodological limitations, particularly that low prevalence of psychosis and sexual trauma for males leads to low statistical power, that have made this hypothesis difficult to test. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study sought to estimate the association between sexual trauma and psychosis, and to determine if the association was moderated by gender using data from the Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners in England and Wales (n=3,142).

Bivariate analysis showed that sexual trauma predicted probable psychosis for both females (OR=4.13) and males (OR=4.72). After controlling for confounding variables the odds ratios for males and females did not differ significantly (the shared odds ratio was 2.60) indicating that the association was not moderated by gender.

The relationship between sexual abuse and psychosis may neither be specific to, nor moderated by, gender.