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This study aims to evaluate the effect of Alpha-Stim Anxiety, Insomnia and Depression (AID) cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) on anxiety, depression and health-related quality of life for primary care social prescribing service patients with anxiety symptoms.

Open-label patient cohort design with no control group. A total of 33 adult patients (average age 42 years) completed six weeks of Alpha-Stim AID use. Pre- and post-intervention assessment with participant self-report measures: Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and European Quality of Life Five Dimension (EQ-5D-5L).

Reliable improvement and remission rates, respectively, were 53.39% and 33.3% for GAD-7; 46.7% and 29.5% for PHQ-9. There was a significant improvement in GAD-7 and PHQ-9 with large effect sizes. EQ-5D-5L results showed significant improvements in health-related quality of life. Perceived quality of life increased by 0.17 on the health index score, with the intervention adding 1.68 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

Alpha-Stim AID can be delivered through a primary health-care social prescribing service and most patients will use as prescribed and complete treatment course. Alpha-Stim AID CES may be an effective anxiety and depression treatment for people with anxiety symptoms. The widespread roll-out of Alpha-Stim AID in health-care systems should be considered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to respond to the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care (NICE) request for the collection of real-world data to understand better Alpha-Stim AID in relation to people’s treatment uptake, response rates and treatment completion rates (NICE, 2021).

This paper is based on a study aimed at ascertaining whether information and communication technology (ICT) can be used as an integrating link for children with motor disabilities in primary school. The study includes an introductory questionnaire with parents of 16 children and observations in the classrooms of five pupils attending a school in a small town in Sweden. In this article inclusion is exemplified with one of these pupils. The results of this study show agreement with other research that the computer, which often symbolises the whole ICT field, is used as a pedagogical tool for learning at school. However, it is difficult to see whether ICT is used in a way that enhances inclusion, an overall goal for many people with disabilities in today's society. One reason for this is the school's strong focus on learning, another that limited efforts have been put into communication and collaborative work between the pupils.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the approaches to smart specialisation being adopted in different European Union (EU) regions are likely to be heavily shaped by the institutional and governance context, as well as the regional economic specifics. Along with the specific regional economic characteristics, these institutional variations mean that there is no single smart specialisation template or blueprint which can be transplanted onto every region. Rather, regions have to work within their own governance frameworks to find their best solutions.

As evidence of this, the authors analyse the possibilities and challenges faced by four different sets of regional examples in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. Using OECD, EU and other official national documents and publications, the authors are able to explain the ways in which the governance set-ups vary enormously across these different arenas although they do share some certain common features with the other examples on a case-by-case basis.

The policy architecture within which the smart specialisation agenda will be operating is very different in each national or regional case. As such, in addition to the regional economic specifics, the smart specialisation challenges faced by different regions are likely to differ significantly due to governance issues as well as variations in the regional economic conditions. This is because the possibilities for different regional actions depend heavily on the governance relationship between the regional and the local governance remits.

The argument presented here are necessarily in part speculative in that while they are based on a regional systems-of-innovation conceptual framework which links institutions, innovation and regional development, the actual smart specialisation implementation processes are still in their infancy, so that the actual outcomes remain to be seen in the long run.

The analysis here helps to situate smart specialisation discussions in the national-regional institutional and governance context. This also serves to frame how smart specialisation priority-setting processes are likely to be undertaken and helps to consider how such activities may play out in other regions with different institutional settings.

This is one of the few papers that explicitly examine specialisation issues in a governance and institutional setting. In reality, the success or otherwise of smart specialisation agenda will be heavily shaped by how the governance and institutional issues are addressed. Good analysis and data gathering is essential, but good governance for policy design, monitoring and evaluation can potentially also provide a crucial advantage to smart specialisation actions. In contrast, poor governance may undermine good smart specialisation intentions and analyses.

Alpha Metals has announced the appointment of Stan Renals to the position of General Manager, Alpha Singapore.

Although mental health problems increase markedly during adolescent years, therapists often find it difficult to engage with adolescents. The majority of disturbed adolescents do not receive professional mental health care and of those who do fewer still will fully engage with the therapeutic process (Offer et al. 1991; US Surgeon General 1999). Personal Investigator (PI) is a 3D computer game specifically designed to help adolescents overcome mental health problems such as depression and help them engage more easily with professional mental health care services. PI is an implementation of a new computer mediated model for how therapists and adolescents can engage. The model has its theoretical foundations in play therapy and therapeutic storytelling and applies current research on the educational use of computer gaming and interactive narrative systems to these foundations. Previously demonstrated benefits of computer games and interactive narrative systems in education include increased motivation, increased self‐esteem, improved problem solving and discussion skills and improved storytelling skills (Bruckman 1997; Bers 2001; Robertson 2001; Robertson and Oberlander 2002; Bers et al. 2003; Squire 2003). PI aims to take advantage of these benefits in a mental health care setting. PI incorporates a goal‐oriented, strengths based model of psychotherapy called Solution Focused Therapy (SFT). By engaging adolescents, in a client‐centred way, it aims to build stronger therapeutic relationships between therapists and adolescents. PI is the first game to integrate this established psychotherapy approach into an engaging online 3D game. Results of trials of PI with four adolescents, referred to clinics for issues including anxiety and behaviour problems, attempted suicide, and social skills difficulties, are presented.