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Article
Publication date: 3 June 2022

Gavin Foster, John Robertson, Sophia Pallis and Jose Segal

To improve outcomes for people with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, the Eastern Health Mental Health Service implemented an integrated treatment model…

Abstract

Purpose

To improve outcomes for people with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, the Eastern Health Mental Health Service implemented an integrated treatment model known as the dual diagnosis clinician shared care model. This study aims to provide evidence for a relatively unexplored model in clinical mental health services within the state of Victoria, Australia.

Design/methodology/approach

Dual diagnosis clinicians were placed into community mental health clinics in a shared-care, modified case management role, to provide primary and secondary consultations to select consumers and/or their carers, as well as to provide capacity-building training to the mental health staff facing real world clinical challenges in dual diagnosis service delivery.

Findings

Since the commencement of this service, more than 800 consumers of the adult mental health service have been supported to concurrently address their harmful substance use, while receiving recovery-focused community mental health care. Preliminary findings include previously unknown figures on the prevalence for co-occurring substance use at the point of referral and a demonstrated preference by consumers for treatment of both disorders at the same time by the same service (in-house treatment).

Originality/value

The establishment of a dedicated, integrated dual diagnosis team has significantly increased the capacity of a community-based clinical mental health service to engage with and treat consumers with dual diagnosis disorders. This model is beginning to produce evidence challenging traditional siloed approaches to mental health and alcohol and drug treatment.

Details

Advances in Dual Diagnosis, vol. 15 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-0972

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 August 2009

Vassiliki A. Koutsonikola, Sophia G. Petridou, Athena I. Vakali and Georgios I. Papadimitriou

Web users' clustering is an important mining task since it contributes in identifying usage patterns, a beneficial task for a wide range of applications that rely on the web. The…

Abstract

Purpose

Web users' clustering is an important mining task since it contributes in identifying usage patterns, a beneficial task for a wide range of applications that rely on the web. The purpose of this paper is to examine the usage of Kullback‐Leibler (KL) divergence, an information theoretic distance, as an alternative option for measuring distances in web users clustering.

Design/methodology/approach

KL‐divergence is compared with other well‐known distance measures and clustering results are evaluated using a criterion function, validity indices, and graphical representations. Furthermore, the impact of noise (i.e. occasional or mistaken page visits) is evaluated, since it is imperative to assess whether a clustering process exhibits tolerance in noisy environments such as the web.

Findings

The proposed KL clustering approach is of similar performance when compared with other distance measures under both synthetic and real data workloads. Moreover, imposing extra noise on real data, the approach shows minimum deterioration among most of the other conventional distance measures.

Practical implications

The experimental results show that a probabilistic measure such as KL‐divergence has proven to be quite efficient in noisy environments and thus constitute a good alternative, the web users clustering problem.

Originality/value

This work is inspired by the usage of divergence in clustering of biological data and it is introduced by the authors in the area of web clustering. According to the experimental results presented in this paper, KL‐divergence can be considered as a good alternative for measuring distances in noisy environments such as the web.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 February 2021

Louise Livingstone

The paper aims to rediscover the subtle heart and discuss its importance in relation to conversations regarding sustainability.

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to rediscover the subtle heart and discuss its importance in relation to conversations regarding sustainability.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the imaginal approach of the author’s doctoral research, this paper is informed by the discourse of transpersonal psychology, attempting to open a space through which it becomes possible to perceive the heart differently.

Findings

This paper discusses the idea that knowledge as generated through the heart has been rendered subservient to knowledge generated through the mind/brain through a dominant/medical narrative (Bound Alberti, 2012). This means that the heart’s wisdom and the heart’s benevolent qualities cannot gain traction at the level at which decisions are made in society.

Research limitations/implications

While the heart is not unproblematic, and can carry notions of moral superiority, this paper is written as an appeal to create safe enough spaces to bring the heart back into conversation at the level of political discourse.

Practical implications

This paper suggests that it is the approach of the heart, the qualities and characteristics that the heart embodies, and the different way of being in the world that the heart makes possible, which could play an important role in guiding us towards a more sustainable world. When taken seriously, the heart offers a way of engaging with, and thinking about, ideas of relationship, wholeness and interconnection – all of which have been identified as important by numerous scholars in relation to engaging with global challenges (de Witt, 2016).

Social implications

This paper suggests that it is the approach of the heart and the different way of being in the world that the heart makes possible, which could play an important role in guiding humanity towards a more sustainable world.

Originality/value

Since the late 1900s, scholars have been calling for creative thinking in relation to engaging with the myriad of issues facing our planet, and this paper is written as a response to that call – creating a platform for the heart to speak and making a case for its importance in conversations relating to sustainability.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 23 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

Keywords

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