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The experiences of autistic medical students in relation to seeking and receiving online support: a phenomenological study
No full textBackground Previous studies have reported that autistic medical students experienced specific challenges throughout their medical studies, including isolation, bullying, and discrimination from their institutions – alongside receiving minimal support. Despite this, it has been argued that many autistic characteristics are well aligned with practising medicine, bringing key benefits to patient care. ‘ Autistic Medical Students’ (AMS) is an online international support group, containing over 200 members – a sub-group of Autistic Doctors International. This study aims to explore the experiences of AMS membership and if membership has any wider impacts on medical studies or wellbeing. Within this, it aims to explore the experiences that led to seeking this support.Methods This was a qualitative study. Five participants from AMS were recruited. Semi-structured, 1:1 interviews were conducted via Zoom. These were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis.Results Group experiential themes included: medical culture, belonging, safety, ability to thrive, internalised optimism for the future, and real modelling. Participants experienced systemic ableism and weaponised professionalism, which led to a sense of helplessness for their futures. AMS had a positive impact on participants. They experienced a sense of belonging, alongside an improved ability to both recognise their own needs and implement accommodations. They also felt better able to advocate for support. ‘Real modelling’ from peers and autistic doctors motivated participants in their wider medical studies. Of particular benefit was that AMS uniquely encompassed both being autistic and a medical student, making its specific support invaluable.Discussion Findings were in keeping with previous research. Autistic peer-to-peer communication enabled development of social relationships and self-identity. Autistic medical students and doctors exhibit traits that make them assets to medicine. This study highlights the need for knowledge, acceptance and representation of autism within medical education – to enable autistic medical students to thrive.</p
[Book Review] Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics, by TesserLynn M.Stanford
No full textRethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics, by TesserLynn M.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024. 309 pp. $30.00 paper. ISBN: 9781503638891.</p
SPIRIT (2025) checklist for OUTSIDE 2: Outdoor swimming as a nature-based intervention for depression
No full textThis document is the SPIRT (2025) checklist for the OUTSIDE 2 Randomised Control Trial Protocol. Background on OUTSIDE 2: Outdoor swimming as a nature-based intervention for depressionMany people say outdoor swimming improves their mental health. There has been some research showing outdoor swimming helps people with depression, but not enough to say for certain. In this study, we offered an outdoor swimming course to adults with depression to see if it can help them. This clinical trial and will tell us if outdoor swimming does help to reduce depression symptoms.</p
Contraceptive and sexual health services during the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery: a mixed-methods study in England
No full textBACKGROUND: Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is essential for public health. COVID-19 led to major disruptions in the provision of essential services including SRH services. Within the context of a multi-country project, this study aimed to explore individual and service-level impacts on contraceptive and sexual health services during the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery phase in England. METHODS: A longitudinal, mixed-methods design was implemented, collecting data in two phases, approximately 9 months apart (November 2021 and July 2022). The study comprised in-depth interviews with staff (n = 4) and clients (n = 20) of a sexual health and contraceptive clinical service in the Southeast of England. Over the same timeframe, a quantitative service availability and readiness assessment (SARA) was completed, based on World Health Organization validated tools. RESULTS: Sexual health and contraceptive services continued to operate throughout the pandemic, however measures taken to prevent COVID-19 transmission and staff capacity issues (due to staff redeployment, staff sickness) impacted on patient choice (e.g. how the service could be accessed, methods of contraception available) and patient experience (e.g. delays in accessing healthcare). Despite disruptions, staff described how in-person provision remained available almost continuously for urgent/vulnerable cases. SARA data confirmed service availability, and qualitative data indicate how this was managed. For example, postal home self-sampling for STIs/HIV was expanded and contraceptive counselling by telephone was introduced to reduce clinic visits, and was retained due to popularity. At Time 2, services were running close to normal. CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 disrupted sexual health and contraceptive services in England. Compared to pre-pandemic, more elements of these services were delivered remotely. Readiness to adapt was aided by the pre-pandemic direction-of-travel towards greater use of digital and telemedicine services. Innovations require robust evaluation to ensure optimisation for public health benefit both in the pandemic and post-pandemic context.</p
Understanding the Colonial Global Economy
No full textThis chapter challenges the tendency for social scientists to approach ‘the economy’ as a nationally bounded object, something which operates according to its own rules and can be neatly summarized using measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It argues instead for thinking in terms of the ‘colonial global economy’. This wider, connected, and systematic understanding shows how capitalist modernity was enabled by, and fundamentally arose from, colonial processes of extraction and enslavement. The chapter explains how processes of colonial drain and deindustrialization created a vast pool of underpaid labourers in the Global South whose cheap wages ‘subsidize’ consumption and ease economic policymaking in the Global North. It cautions against social science approaches which purport to centre colonialism in their analyses, but reproduce Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism, doing little more than paying lip service to colonialism.</p
Report from occupied territory: Sápmi and colonial racial capitalism
No full textIn northern Europe, the indigenous Sámi people have been fighting against settler colonial dispossession, extractivism, and forced assimilation for more than five centuries. The Nordic states may have acquired a global reputation for their welfare systems, progressive environmentalism, and respect for human rights, but their wealth and prosperity would not have been possible without the “open veins” and extractive frontiers of Sápmi. Today, the expropriation of Sámi lands and resources not only continues unabated but is increasingly regarded as central to the development of “green” technologies, investments, and raw materials. From fossil-free mining to biofuels and wind power, new extractive frontiers are again created in what was once referred to as “Sweden’s California”, “Norrland’s India”, and “the land of the future” (Framtidslandet). In this “report from occupied territory” (Baldwin 1966), Ida Danewid speaks with Sámi artists and organizers Sofia Jannok, Anders Sunna, and Tor Tourda about the forgotten history of colonial racial capitalism in the Nordics, the ongoing Sámi struggle against (green) extractivism, and the meaning of freedom beyond the logic of property ownership.</p