Large Scale Study of Comorbity of Substance Abuse and Mental Illness: Don't Clump SAP and MH9/27/2012 (An item from ISHN Member information service) A large scale study of the co-occurrence of substance use disorders and mental health disorders in Australia found that patients with a substance abuse problem were likely to have a MH problem but this correlation was not true in reverse. There was a total of 10,211,596 (4,671,243 males (45.75 per cent) and 5,540,353 females (54.25 per cent)) admissions. Over the six years, between 9.4 per cent and 12.6 per cent of the patients with MHDs were diagnosed as having SUDs. Of the patients diagnosed with SUDs, between 42.5 per cent and 57.4 per cent also had a diagnosis of MHDs. Overall, the comorbidity for both MHDs and SUDs was between 8.4 per cent and 11.3 per cent. The odds ratio for either SUDs or MHDs compared to the general population was between 13.0 to 20.8.The authors suggest that "the findings imply that different efforts towards the prevention, care and management of comorbidity may be warranted." This would likely be true even more for school-based and school-linked programs where the two conditions are much less likely to have reached a clinical stage and where convergence is also less likely. This underlines the case for not merging MH and SAP strategies related to schools while still seeking synergies wherever possible. Read More.. PS A similar analysis of US data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 10.8% had MH problems, 5.1% had SA problems and only 2.1% has co-ocurring problems
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(An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #6, 2012 of The Journal of Social Psychology examines the connections between behavioural intention to implement personal health practices and affect and cognition. Behavioural intention of personal health action plans are an important component and goal for school-based health education curricula. The authors report that: "Cognitive evaluations, affective evaluations and behavioral intentions were measured for each of 32 health-related behaviors. The timeframes of the cognitive/affective measures and the behavioral intention measure were varied between current and future timeframes creating four different conditions. Within-participants correlations between affect and intentions and cognition and intentions were calculated to determine the contribution of each factor to behavioral intention formation in the different timeframes. Results did not support the hypothesis that a shift from a reliance on affect to a reliance on cognition would occur as temporal distance increased. Within-participants analyses revealed a decrease in the contribution of cognition to behavioral intention formation when forming attitudes in the future condition". Read more..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #3, 2012 of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors introduces a new concept in the prevention kif alcohol abuse in controlled trial for college students. The authors report that The Expectancy Challenge Alcohol Literacy Curriculum (ECALC) is a single session group-delivered program designed to modify alcohol expectancy processes and reduce alcohol use among children and young adults. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ECALC in reducing risky alcohol use among heavy drinking college men. Four fraternities at a large state university were randomly assigned to receive either the single session ECALC or a control presentation (2 fraternity houses per condition, n = 250). Alcohol expectancies were assessed before and immediately after program presentation. Results demonstrated significant changes on 5 of the 7 subscales of the Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol Scale (CEOA) among students who received the ECALC when compared with control participants. Read more..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) Earlier this month, we noted a debate about the usefulness of RCT's in real world conditions that was initiated by a leading authors of systematic reviews, Sarah Stewart-Brown. Two articles in Issue #6, 2012 of the American Psychologist continue these revolutionary thoughts. One article questions the wisdom of basing scholarship and knowledge development on an ever-increasing number of research reviews, that examine different interventions in different contexts and often clumped together in inappropriate ways. The second article suggests that rather than trying to reframe systems in the light of accumulated evidence from research, we seek to identify "disruptive innovations" such as micro-clinics in retail chain drug stores, $2 generic eyeglasses and automatic teller machines that fit into real world situations and offer practical convenience to the intended users. Read more..
The following is an excerpt from the WHO Europe 2020 Health Policy and Strategic Plan (page 43) family background to the community within which they live and society at large. As a result, a broader multiagency strategy is required, to which people themselves can contribute. A broad range of stakeholders can be mobilized to support programmes that promote health, including generational activities. For young people, these can include policies to improve the social and economic status of children living in disadvantaged circumstances (90,91,94,105–108); whole school approaches to school-based activities to develop and protect children’s social and emotional well-being, including school-based health literacy programmes; peer-to-peer education; and the development of youth organizations. Integrating work on mental and sexual health into these programmes and activities is particularly important. (An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in the September 2012 Issue of Educational Policy discusses how school systems both respond to new small demands while resisting large scale reforms. The article is actually a review of the 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail, which examines while many efforts to reform school systems have failed. The authors note that: "Someone Has to Fail offers a reinterpretation of the complexities of education reform, one that is full of useful counterpoints to many of the most common claims made by today’s business-minded reformers. Thus, the work is well worth reading. However, we still wish that Labaree had more deeply explored the contexts within which his education “consumers” were making their system-shaping decisions. Such an effort would have offered a more compellingly critical assessment of the importance of curriculum and the struggles over knowledge and culture. It would have brought the experiences and movements of the marginalized closer to the center of its account. And in the process, it might have engendered a somewhat less gloomy perspective regarding the roles that schools might still play in efforts to create a more just society." Read more..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) All of the articles in Issue #3, 2012 of Irish Educational Studies address the theme of a special issue on physical education. The articles include a research review and two other articles on the role of the generalist primary school teacher and the teaching of PE as well as critical look at school self-evaluation as a means to review progress in whole school PA programs. Read More..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) A study reported in the August 2012 Issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine noted that active school transportation accounted for almost one/third of the moderate physical activity of students in a school in Bristol England. The authors report that" Physical activity levels during journeys to and from school were highly similar, and contributed 22.2 minutes (33.7%) of total daily MVPA. In addition, MVPA on the journey did not differ between boys and girls, but because girls have lower levels of daily physical activity than boys, the journey contributed a greater proportion of their daily MVPA (35.6% vs 31.3%). Read more..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) Two articles in Issue #4, 2012 of Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health offer insights into the role that schools can play in emergency preparedness and response. One article reports on the recent disaster in Japan, with the authors noting that Children and adolescents younger than 19 years accounted for 6.5% of the deaths, and there were 229 survivors younger than 18 years who lost both their parents in the disaster and 1295 who lost one of their parents. The long-term psychological effects on children and adolescents remain uncertain``.In ghe second article, the authors note that trained school teachers were among an effective group of temporary mental health workers. A total of 299 adults participated in the crisis intervention program, with follow-up assessments being made 4 to 6 weeks later. At the follow-up assessment, 1% of the victims had a problem and they were then referred for further medical assessment. This indicates that the intervention program in the first 2 weeks after the tsunami disaster with referrals to medical services may have helped stabilize the victims. Read more..
(An item from ISHN Member information service) A study of the effect of teacher training of regular elementary teachers is reported in the September 2012 of Preventing Chronic Disease. Three hours of training motivated the teachers to increase the average time spent in activity with students from 2.4 minutes to 9.5 minutes and is presented as one way of achieving the goal of having children be active at least 60 minutes per day. We have identified this article as one in a series that calculates the time gained for children in activity from such regular classes, PE classes, walking to school and after school activities. Read more
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