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The current review aims to focus on how risk and protective factors for self-harm in secure mental health hospitals are captured in the literature.

Fifty-seven articles were included in a systematic review, drawn from an initial 1,119 articles, post duplicate removal. Databases included Psycinfo, Psycarticles, Psycnet, Web of Science and EBSCO host. A thematic analysis was used, which included a meta-ethnographic approach for considering qualitative papers.

There was a clear focus on risk factors, with eight identified (in order of occurrence): raised emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation; poor mental health; traumatic experiences; personality disorder diagnosis and associated traits; increased use of outward aggression – dual harm; constraints of a secure environment and lack of control; previous self-harm and suicide attempts; and hopelessness. Protective factors featured less, resulting in only three themes emerging (in order of occurrence): positive social support and communication; positive coping skills; and hope/positive outlook.

This includes a proposal to move focus away from “risk” factors, to incorporate “needs”, in terms of individual and environmental factors. There is also a need for more attention to focus on developing high quality research in this area.

The research captures an area where a synthesis of research has not been comprehensively undertaken, particularly with regards to capturing protective as well as risk factors.

Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development.

Staff and service users involved in the co-production of the benchmarking tool were engaged in a series of focus groups and participatory inquiry approaches enacted in the course of scheduled network meetings. Data thus collected was subject to thematic analysis.

Four distinct themes were identified which were titled: Taking time, taking care; The value not the label; An instrument of the network; and All people working together. These are discussed in relation to recent theorising of co-production.

Effectively, this study represents a case study of developments within one region. As such, the findings may have limited transferability to other contexts.

Staff and service users can work together effectively to the benefit of each other and overall forensic services. The benchmarking tool provides a readymade mechanism to appraise quality improvements.

Despite a prevailing culture of competition in wider health-care policy, cooperation leads to enhanced quality.

The benchmarking tool is a unique development of a longstanding involvement network, demonstrating the positive implications for enacting co-production within secure services.

In 2019, the world was hit by a life threatening severe acute respiratory syndrome causing a global pandemic; Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In the UK, a nationwide “lockdown” of public isolation and reduced social contact followed. The experience of COVID-19 and the lockdown for forensic secure mental health patients is yet to be understood. This study aims to explore this phenomenon from the patients’ perspective.

A qualitative approach was taken. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six patients from a low secure unit in the UK, between November 2020 and March 2021.

Interpretive phenomenological analysis generated three superordinate themes from the data, providing insight into patients’ experience: “treading water”; how they managed: “learning to swim”; and what was helpful during this time: “in the same boat”.

Further consideration should be given to creating a sense of safety in wards, along with ways to continue to address the power imbalance. Interestingly, social connection may be cultivated from within the hospital setting and would benefit from further research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore secure patients’ experience of COVID-19 from the patients’ perspective, within a population often neglected within recovery research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the experience of secure care from the patients’ perspective.

A systematic review of qualitative literature was conducted. The data was sourced from the electronic databases: PsychINFO, CINAHL, Medline and the Web of Science Core Collection using pre-defined search terms. A total of 17 studies, conducted in various countries worldwide and covering high, medium and low secure inpatient settings, were included for review. The analysis involved integrating findings from across the literature and was guided by thematic synthesis.

A total of eight themes were generated from the data, three of which provided an understanding of the experience of forensic secure care, and the remaining five themes provided an understanding of the factors which may influence the experience of secure care.

Developing understanding of patient experience can lead to service improvements, potentially impacting patients’ motivation and engagement and thus reducing admission times, potential recalls and recidivism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review to date to exclusively explore the broad topic of the patient experience of secure mental health care.

Inequalities can have a cumulative effect that leads to the presentation and subsequent progression of mental health difficulties. The detrimental effects can be compounded in the healthcare environment if staff lack an awareness of patients’' inequalities, and therefore, educating staff is of particular importance. The development of awareness training requires a deep understanding of staff perceptions of patient inequalities in a secure mental health care setting and the impact that this can have on mental illness.

The study was carried out using a qualitative design, where staff were asked to complete a 22-question survey from which the output is analysed using thematic analysis. In total, 100 patient-facing staff members working in a secure mental health facility completed the survey.

The results highlight that staff employed in a secure mental health care setting have an understanding of patient inequalities and how these can impact on patients in both the short and longer terms. The results highlighted the importance of awareness by staff and how an increase can have a significant benefit on the quality of the care provided within secure mental health facilities.

There is an increasing awareness of the impact of inequalities on mental health and how this can influence a patient’s journey. This study involving staff employed in a secure care mental health facility highlights the role of staff awareness of inequalities and also underlines the importance of understanding the key role of staff awareness in mental ill health.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the lives of the deaf community, and the implementation of restrictions on face-to-face meetings resulted in the trial introduction of video remote interpreting (VRI) in a secure psychiatric setting. This study aims to use a qualitative research paradigm to explore user experiences to inform potential future technological developments in this area.

Twelve deaf patients and three interpreters took part in structured face-to-face interviews and discussed their experiences of the use of VRI, with the results being assessed using thematic analysis.

Seven main themes were identified: resource availability, ease of use, technical issues, misunderstandings, medium secure-specific issues, preferences and human factors. All participants agreed that they did not like the VRI technology in the health-care environment in its current format, and their main concern was the difficulty in understanding the information being communicated. It was considered that this had the potential to incur potentially serious medico-legal and safety implications for both staff and patients alike.

This study has provided detailed users’ feedback about the potential future use in this communication tool and can help guide service developers to review the technology design to tailor it towards the users’ needs. While the existing technology is not currently suitable for this deaf population, particularly because of the potential for error, there is potential scope for further research in this area.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to explore the potential use of VRI for a deaf patient population within a secure psychiatric setting, where such technology is unlikely to have otherwise been used.

This study aims to review the literature on non-financial information (NFI) assurance including external assurance of sustainability reports (SRA) and integrated reports (IRA). The objectives are as follows: provide an overview of academic research; understand the nature of NFI assurance engagements by organising the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement; develop a framework for understanding NFI assurance; and provide directions for future research.

The study undertakes a structured literature review of 179 articles published from 1999 to 2023.

The review identified 324 researchers located in 35 different countries who published 179 articles on SRA and IRA. The researchers, their locations, journals, methods, theories and themes are examined. The literature is structured around the definition of an assurance engagement including a tripartite arrangement, subject matter, a suitable criterion, sufficient appropriate evidence and a written assurance report. A framework for understanding NFI assurance is offered. Avenues for future research, structured around the five elements of an assurance engagement, are presented.

Researchers will benefit from an overview of the literature and guidance on areas for future research. Lecturers can use the findings to develop content for their auditing courses. Reporting managers will benefit from a better understanding of this new form of assurance. Regulators can use this study’s insights to better inform the development of laws and corporate governance codes mandating NFI assurance. Standard setters can use these findings to guide the emergence of the new assurance standards. Assurance practitioners may use this research to inform practice.

The findings may prove useful in addressing capture, which deters NFI assurance from enhancing disclosure credibility and fulfilling its transparency and accountability role. This is to the detriment of the wider society.

The consolidation of the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement is unique. The framework devised offers useful insights into the dynamics of assurance generally and NFI assurance more specifically. The study is timely given the new European Union regulations on NFI reporting and assurance and the work of the International Audit and Assurance Standards Board in developing a specialist NFI assurance standard.

This paper aims to analyse trends and determinants of NPAs in India's banks. It has empirically examined the bank-specific determinants of NPAs.

An FE panel estimation of a sample of 44 banks was carried out for the post-crisis time period, from 2010 to 2020 to identify the bank-specific determinants of NPAs. The sample of 44 banks includes 20 PSBs, 19 private banks and 5 foreign banks. Separate FE estimation was also carried out to identify the drivers of NPAs in PSBs.

The determinant of NPAs during the post-crisis period suggests that faulty earning management and deterioration in loan quality have resulted in high NPAs in India's banks. The result is similar for PSBs as well.

The findings of the study suggest that the banks, especially the Public Sector Banks (PSBs) need to revisit their earning management strategies to maximise income and improve their loan quality in order to reduce the incidence of loan failure.

The paper contributes by empirically analysing the determinants of NPAs during the recent decade, between 2010 and 2020. Separate estimations have been carried out to understand whether the drivers of NPAs differ in the case of PSBs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether information asymmetry mediates the relationship between disclosure and cost of equity.

The study is based on a sample of 500 companies listed in Bombay Stock Exchange for a period of six years from 2015 to 2021. Panel data regression is applied to analyze the relationship between voluntary disclosure, cost of equity and information asymmetry. Mediation effect of information asymmetry is tested with the help of Barron and Kenny’s (1986) approach.

Findings suggest that in case of Indian companies, disclosure reduces cost of equity directly and indirectly through mediation of information asymmetry. Indian investors value credible information for better estimation of future returns, supporting the validity of estimation risk and stock market liquidity hypothesis, which proposes an inverse relationship between disclosure and cost of equity.

Managers can use the findings to strategize their disclosure policy and secure funds at lower cost. Shareholders can monitor managerial actions by demanding credible disclosures. Government too can encourage voluntary disclosure by providing special incentives to the firms.

This study is a pioneering research that investigates the mediating influence of information asymmetry between disclosure and cost of equity with reference to the Indian corporate landscape.

Insecure and unresolved attachments have been linked to poorer psychological health and interpersonal functioning for people with intellectual disabilities (IDs), but research in this area is limited, especially for adults. Studies using the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) have been restricted to clinical samples, where insecure and unresolved attachments are typically more prevalent. The purpose of this study is to compare clinical and non-clinical groups of adults with IDs on the AAP, plus measures of psychological health and interpersonal functioning, to investigate whether group differences found in the typically developing population are also present for adults with IDs.

A cross-sectional, between-group design was used. Adults with IDs (clinical group n = 11 and non-clinical group n = 13) completed measures of attachment, psychological distress/positive well-being and interpersonal functioning. Attachment classifications were compared in the clinical versus non-clinical groups. Measures of psychological distress, positive well-being and interpersonal functioning were compared between those with insecure-organised versus unresolved classifications.

No participants were classified as secure, and there were high rates of unresolved attachment. There were no differences between clinical and non-clinical groups with regards to the distribution of insecure-organised (i.e. dismissing or preoccupied) versus unresolved classifications. There were no differences between groups with regards to psychological distress, positive well-being or interpersonal functioning. The authors consider limitations in the method of group differentiation and suggest further research to better understand the development of internal working models of attachment in this population.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of only three to examine attachment state of mind in adults with IDs using the AAP and the first to examine differences between clinical and non-clinical groups.