Search results

Lengthy and complex routes to specialist care may negatively affect clinical profiles of trauma survivors accessing mental health services. The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics and referral pathways of a cohort of clients accepted by a specialist trauma service in England; and investigate the associations between referral pathways and clients’ clinical profiles, namely, pre-treatment levels of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, stress and post-traumatic growth.

Data on 117 consecutive, accepted referrals were extracted from clients’ clinical records. Information on demographics, trauma histories, clinical presentations and referral pathways was synthesised through summary statistics. Correlational analyses were conducted to test associations with pre-treatment scores.

Clients accessing the service were highly complex and mostly experienced prolonged, interpersonal trauma. Pathways to the service varied, but 50% of the sample had at least four “steps” in their referral histories and seven previous clinical contacts. The average time between trauma and specialist referral was 16.34 years. The number of referral steps positively, significatively and moderately correlated with anxiety and stress at pre-treatment.

Limitations include issues around collecting past referral information, the small sample size for clients with available pre-treatment data and the lack of post-treatment scores.

This evaluation provides an informative overview of the characteristics and referral pathways of clients accessing a specialist trauma service. It also offers preliminary insights on the relationship between clients’ routes into the service and their clinical profiles. Practice, commissioning and research implications are discussed.

This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to investigate the mental health problems during COVID-19 and the role of nutrition in minimizing mental and health-related issues during COVID-19.

A literature search was done electronically on April–May 2022 in the databases Google Scholar, PubMed and Cochrane Library, reviewing all the articles published in English. There were no limitations for the study (such as study design, region or any time frame). The quality assessment was done. The beginning database search picked out a total of 654 articles, 47 in PubMed, 575 in Google Scholar, 22 in Cochrane Library and 10 records from other sources. A total of 565 (duplicates found 89) were found after removing the duplicated articles, after reading the title and abstracts were further decreased to 88 full-text articles. These 88 studies went for full-text analysis, which excluded 56 studies and generated a final 32 articles for systemic analysis. The quality of the included study for the systematic review was assessed in two ways: one is evidence-based and another one on the JBI checklist.

People in social isolation and home quarantine suffer from severe anxiety, stress, depression, loneliness, anger and panic attack. During COVID-19, the vital role of diet and nutrients in mental health has been acknowledged and helps mitigate COVID-19 infection. Many studies showed stress and anxiety due to increased unhealthy eating and lifestyle practices.

This review will explain the interlink between diet and mental health because what we eat and think is interconnected with the gut–brain axis. The dietary elements and psychobiotic help in improving the immune system and psychological distress during the pandemic. This paper describes the role of different nutrients, psychobiotics and phytochemicals, to minimize mental and health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper also contains a balanced diet plan to withstand COVID-19.

This paper aims to explore current inconsistencies within the theoretical framework of current posttraumatic growth (PTG) literature in support of the suggestion for an alternative novel phenomenon labelled “post-adversarial appreciation”.

This re-conceptualisation has developed from the findings of empirical research conducted by the authors and their understanding of PTG.

Significant inconsistencies persist across the PTG literature in relation to the parameters required for PTG to manifest. It appears that PTG or an alternative concept labelled adversarial growth does take place following adverse/traumatic events, but that a separate phenomenon may better explain positive improvements in perceived personal appreciation during such events. This phenomenon is theorised by the authors as “post-adversarial appreciation”.

This paper suggests the existence of a novel phenomenon that may address many of the inconsistencies and present within the current PTG literature. This highlights a significant need for further research within the field of trauma and adversity in relation to positive outcomes which may result from such negative experiences.

The study explored how information institutions can support the resilience of parents of adolescents affected by the Russia–Ukraine war. Ukrainian parents are facing major challenges of supporting their teenagers through a difficult developmental phase while also “buffering” their war-related hardships. By supporting parents, information institutions can also support children.

Fifteen parents were interviewed about mental health challenges and resources that are helpful and/or missing from their support systems. Recordings of participant narratives were analyzed using the qualitative thematic analysis technique.

The findings indicate that both teens and parents rely on internal resilience skills, family, friends and community resources to support themselves. However, a number of additional resources could be offered by information institutions, including content for (1) teens on developing skills in communication, interpersonal relationships, problem solving and academic pursuits; (2) parents on child development and opportunities in their host countries; both groups on (3) both groups on mental health first aid and safe spaces to meet peers. The study recommendations will be of interest to information professionals working with families, especially families affected by disasters.

The study relied on a small convenience sample of participants.

Study recommendations would be of interest to information professionals who develop and provide services to families affected by natural and manmade disasters.

Study recommendations improve understanding of the (potential) role of information institutions and libraries in strengthening family and community resilience.

The study offers a rare insight into experiences of war-affect families and provides evidence-driven recommendations for information institutions to support family and community resilience.

The purpose of this rapid review was to present current evidence on relations between resilience and self-efficacy among healthcare practitioners in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

Literature searches were conducted in February/2022 in the online database MEDLINE EBSCO and not date/time limited. Eligibility criteria were as follows: population – healthcare practitioners, interest – relations between resilience and self-efficacy and context – COVID-19.

Six eligible studies from Italy, China, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan and Spain, published between 2020 and 2021 were included in the review. All studies used quantitative methods. The relations between resilience and self-efficacy were identified in contexts of resilience programs, measuring mental health of frontline nurses, measuring nurses' and nursing students' perception of psychological preparedness for pandemic management, perception of COVID-19 severity and mediating roles of self-efficacy and resilience between stress and both physical and mental quality of life. Findings indicated limited research on this topic and a need for more research.

Broader understanding of the relations between resilience and self-efficacy may help healthcare organizations' leaders/managers aiming to support resilience of their employers under challenging circumstances such as future pandemic.

The latest COVID-19 pandemic presented the opportunity to research relations between resilience and self-efficacy and enrich existed research in a new and extraordinary context.

Post-migration stress is an important aspect of refugees’ mental health, but little is known about the relationship with insomnia. The purpose of this study was to investigate the assication between different post-migration stress factors and insomnia among Syrian refugees living in Norway.

The authors analysed survey data from the REFUGE study with 873 Syrian adults who resettled in Norway between 2015 and 2017. Potential participants were randomly selected from The Norwegian Population Register. Insomnia was measured using the Bergen Insomnia Scale. Perceived-discrimination, navigation difficulties, financial strain and loss of social status were measured via the refugee post-migration stress scale. The authors ran logistic regression analyses, controlling for socio-demographics, potentially traumatic experiences and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Overall, 59% (95% CI, 56%–62%) of the sample reported experiencing insomnia. In the fully-adjusted model, only financial strain and navigation difficulties were significantly associated with increased odds of insomnia. Loss of social status was also related to insomnia but only before adjusting for symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Financial strain and navigation difficulties appear to be the most important post-migration stress factors in terms of insomnia among Syrian refugees living in Norway. Ameliorating these difficulties could potentially reduce insomnia among refugees. Since insomnia is a risk factor for the subsequent development of post-traumatic stress and depression, it is important to prevent or improve symptoms of insomnia among Syrian refugees, especially considering the high prevalence found in this study.

This paper aims to examine how character strengths have an important dual role in mental health in both promoting well-being and mental wellness and also in reducing symptoms and suffering. While there are many studies that have touched upon variables that character strengths can enhance for mental well-being or reduce for suffering, the author actually knows very little about how character strengths might relate to or impact mental health.

A large-scale study of 12,050 individuals was conducted to explore the self-perceived character strengths that are most helpful for mental health, for handling physical adversity, for handling social adversity and for fostering psychological well-being.

Some character strengths showed a general effect – showing a strong perceived impact across multiple domains – such as love, perspective, kindness, hope, humor and curiosity. Other character strengths showed a specific effect in that there was a strong perceived impact in one domain, such as perseverance and self-regulation for physical health, spirituality and social intelligence for social health and creativity for mental health. A strength-based approach to understanding and managing emotions was substantially more preferred than cognitive or behavioral approaches. Other findings examined the character strengths most desired to be improved upon for mental health.

The research strategy was cross-sectional, thereby causality cannot be determined. Because of the large sample size, researchers are encouraged to consider examining the findings in intervention studies.

This study indicates that character strengths are highly relevant for mental health, all 24 character strengths are possible pathways to impact mental health (some more than others) and individuals can readily connect ways they can use their character strengths to positively improve their well-being and manage their suffering.

Character strengths and their substantial positive potential provide an avenue for public impact on a large scale.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first known study to directly examine multiple intersections among mental health and character strengths in a large sample.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with risk of suicide and chronic psychological impairment. The continued exposure to stress suffered by health-care workers (HCWs) during the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a mass traumatic event and contribute to higher rates of PTSD in this population. The purpose of this research is to find out the prevalence and factors associated with PTSD among HCW in a general hospital.

The authors devised a survey to assess the prevalence of PTSD among HCWs in a general hospital and its relationship with sex, social support, profession, work experience in health care, time spent caring for COVID-19 patients and place in which the COVID-19-related activities were carried out. PTSD symptoms were assessed using the PCL-5, Portuguese version.

A total of 226 HCWs were included in the study. Provisional diagnosis of PTSD was made based on the PCL-5 responses, considering DSM-5 criteria and the cutoff score of 33. In total, 79 (35.0%) HCWs had a provisional diagnosis of PTSD, and a significant association was found between PTSD and time spent working with COVID-19 patients and between PTSD and place of work, namely, the COVID-19 emergency room and intensive care unit.

The results highlight the need for a reflection on the importance of mental health promotion among HCWs, specially in adverse conditions such as the current pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to explore mental health difficulties, including risk and protective factors, which may impact on symptom severity after exposure to crisis situations (war, terrorism and/or natural disasters), among first responders from uniformed services.

Peer-reviewed journal articles published in English between January 2012 and March 2022 were searched in ProQuest, Wiley, Google Scholar and PubMed databases. In total, 12 articles were obtained from an original screening of 94,058 articles. Full article texts were screened for content and quality by two reviewers, with high agreeability.

Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression were the most common diagnoses. Risk factors identified were pre-deployment factors of overweight, low cognitive ability and social support, existing emotional difficulties, negative childhood experiences and stressful life events; during crisis situations factors of higher frequency and subjective severity of combat, increased rates of combat stress reaction, high levels of concerns for life and family, more stressful mission position, threat of death/severe injury and high rate of killing the enemy; and post-deployment factors, such as low social support and physical health, lack of coping mechanisms and use of avoidance strategies and social stigma. Protective factors increasing resilience and lessening symptom severity were reported as pre-deployment cognitive ability, high social support, stable physical health, effective coping, post-traumatic growth and high levels of perceived adequacy in pre-deployment preparation and training. In addition to main findings, data about author(s), publication type, population, age, type of crisis and evaluation measures were extracted. Key findings and related theories, gaps in literature and recommendations are discussed.

As yet, however, research into the factors that could serve as risk and/or protective factors are not clearly indicated in terms of post-crisis recovery. As per the authors’ knowledge, this study is an initial approach to considering this area.