1,234 research outputs found
On Penny Jordan with Dr Val Derbyshire
No full textIn this podcast, the Categorically Romance Team are joined by Dr. Val Derbyshire and chat the bibliography of Harlequin Presents/Mills & Boon Modern Author Penny Jordan! Penny Jordan also penned names as Caroline Courtney, Melinda Wright, Lydia Hitchcock and Annie Groves
Negotiating support from relationships and resources: a longitudinal study examining the role of personal support networks in the management of severe and enduring mental health problems
Full text linkBackgroundPersonal communities or personal support networks comprise a variety of social ties considered important to individuals in their everyday lives. This set of active and significant ties influence the capacity to manage mental health problems because of the potential to access social support. However, little is known in the context of people’s everyday management of mental health about how relationships with people, places, objects and activities are navigated and negotiated. This study aimed to explore the nature and negotiation of support from personal communities in the everyday management of severe and enduring mental health problems.MethodsA longitudinal qualitative study undertaken in the UK incorporating 79 interviews with 29 participants based on personal network mapping. 29 users of mental health services with a diagnosis of severe and enduring mental illness were interviewed at three time points. Data was analysed using an inductive thematic approach underpinned by the Network Episode Model.ResultsThe presence and maintenance of interpersonal trust was a fundamental condition of the relational work required to develop, undertake and sustain relationships with others. Whilst relationships with spouses, family members and friends were generally viewed positively, the work required to engage human others was contingent, vicarious and overlain with felt and enacted stigma. Developing relationships with others was hindered by a lack of confidence fuelled by the experience of mental illness and a fear of rejection or failure. By contrast, weaker ties and inanimate objects and places offered and provided a sense of reliability and security. Strategies employed by participants in order to garner sufficient support for condition management in the light of these particular challenges are illuminated by the discussion of who and what is relevant and valued in personal support networks.ConclusionsAccess to valued activities, hobbies and things should be considered alongside human relationships in providing a means of ongoing support and resource for the everyday management of life for those experiencing severe and enduring mental health problems
Author survey data reveals changing perceptions of scholarly communication and wider participation in open access.
No full textDan Penny, Head of Insights at Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan, shares findings from the recent Author Insights Survey. The survey data is openly available and offers an extensive look into researcher perceptions and understandings of academic publishing. Few researchers are now unaware of open access. But perceptions of quality still remain a significant barrier to further OA involvement
Penny and Her Marble
Full text linkOne day, Penny finds a marble in Mrs. Goodwin’s lawn. No one is watching, so she takes it and races home. Penny loves how smooth, shiny, and blue the marble is. She hides it in her dresser drawer. Penny see Mrs. Goodwin looking around on her lawn and is worried. Penny can\u27t stop thinking about the marble she took. Penny is so distracted and nervous that nothing is fun anymore. She even dreams about Mrs. Goodwin and the marble! In the morning, Penny decides to return the marble to its spot. When she does, Mrs. Goodwin comes out to tell Penny that she had found the marble in her garden and left it there on the grass hoping that Penny would pick it up. Finally, Penny is back to her normal self again, happy and using her imagination. Penny and Her Marble is the third book in the Penny series by best-selling author, Kevin Henkes. This book is perfect for beginning readers with its short chapters and simple text. Children can read this book in order, as part of the Penny the Mouse series, or they can read it on its own. Illustrations are included on every page spread. The illustrations never take up the entire page, giving readers just a small glimpse into Penny’s world. Parents and teachers reading this book to small children could easily teach them about honesty, applying Penny’s experience with guilt to a child’s experience. Children will learn that it’s always worth it to be honest and good feelings come when people tell the truth
Exploring the potential implementation of a tool to enhance shared decision making (SDM) in mental health services in the United Kingdom: a qualitative exploration of the views
No full textBackground: as a response to evidence that mental health service users and carers expect greater involvement in decisions about antipsychotic medication choice and prescribing, shared decision-making (SDM) has increasingly come to be viewed as an essential element of person-centred care and practice. However, this aspiration has yet to be realised in practice, as service users and carers continue to feel alienated from healthcare services. Existing understanding of the factors affecting the use of tools to support SDM is limited to inter-individual influences and wider factors affecting potential implementation are underexplored.Aim: to explore the potential use of a tool designed to enhance collaborative antipsychotic prescribing from the perspectives of secondary care mental health service users, carers and professionals.Methods: we conducted a qualitative study (semi-structured interviews and focus groups) using a convenience sample of 33 participants (10 mental health service users, 10 carers and 13 professionals) involved in antipsychotic prescribing in one Trust in the North of England. Participants were asked about the potential implementation of a tool to support SDM within secondary mental health services. Framework analysis incorporating the use of constant comparative method was used to analyse the data.Results: the study identified a divergence in the views of service users and professionals, including a previously undocumented tendency for stakeholder groups to blame each other for potential implementation failure. This dissonance was shaped by meso and macro level influences relating to paternalism, legislative frameworks, accountability and lack of resources. Participants did not identify any macro level (policy or structural) facilitators to the use of the tool highlighting the negative impact of mental health contexts. Our study indicated that inter-individual factors are likely to be most important to implementation, given their potential to transcend meso and macro level barriers.Conclusions: consideration of the meso and macro level influences identified areas for potential intervention, including challenging professionals’ and service users’ perceptions of each other, rebalancing the notion of accountability within services and introducing new means for service user feedback on the quality of SDM. Multi-level strategies for facilitating the implementation of tools to support SDM are also presented.<br/
Implementing an intervention designed to enhance service user involvement in mental health care planning: a qualitative process evaluation
No full textPurpose: Shared decision-making (SDM) and the wider elements of intersecting professional and lay practices are seen as necessary components in the implementation of mental health interventions. A randomised controlled trial of a user- and carer-informed training package in the United Kingdom to enhance SDM in care planning in secondary mental health care settings showed no effect on patient-level outcomes. This paper reports on the parallel process evaluation to establish the influences on implementation at service user, carer, mental health professional and organisational levels. Methods: A longitudinal, qualitative process evaluation incorporating 134 semi-structured interviews with 54 mental health service users, carers and professionals was conducted. Interviews were undertaken at baseline and repeated at 6 and 12 months post-intervention. Interviews were digitally audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Results: The process evaluation demonstrated that despite buy-in from those delivering care planning in mental health services, there was a failure of training to become embedded and normalised in local provision. This was due to a lack of organisational readiness to accept change combined with an underestimation and lack of investment in the amount and range of relational work required to successfully enact the intervention. Conclusions: Future aspirations of SDM enactment need to place the circumstances and everyday practices of stakeholders at the centre of implementation. Such studies should consider the historical and current context of health care relationships and include elements which seek to address these directly.</p
The power of support from companion animals for people living with mental health problems: A systematic review and narrative synthesis of the evidence
No full textBackground: There is increasing recognition of the therapeutic function pets can play in relation to mental health. However, there has been no systematic review of the evidence related to the comprehensive role of companion animals and how pets might contribute to the work associated with managing a long-term mental health condition. The aim of this study was to explore the extent, nature and quality of the evidence implicating the role and utility of pet ownership for people living with a mental health condition. Methods: A systematic search for studies exploring the role of companion animals in the management of mental health conditions was undertaken by searching 9 databases and undertaking a scoping review of grey literature from the earliest record until March 2017. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to be published in English and report on primary data related to the relationship between domestic animal ownership and the management of diagnosable mental health conditions. Synthesis of qualitative and quantitative data was undertaken in parallel using a narrative synthesis informed by an illness work theoretical framework. Results: A total of 17 studies were included in the review. Quantitative evidence relating to the benefits of pet ownership was mixed with included studies demonstrating positive, negative and neutral impacts of pet ownership. Qualitative studies illuminated the intensiveness of connectivity people with companion animals reported, and the multi-faceted ways in which pets contributed to the work associated with managing a mental health condition, particularly in times of crisis. The negative aspects of pet ownership were also highlighted, including the practical and emotional burden of pet ownership and the psychological impact that losing a pet has. Conclusion: This review suggests that pets provide benefits to those with mental health conditions. Further research is required to test the nature and extent of this relationship, incorporating outcomes that cover the range of roles and types of support pets confer in relation to mental health and the means by which these can be incorporated into the mainstay of support for people experiencing a mental health problem.</p
Is it time to abandon care planning in mental health services? A qualitative study exploring the views of professionals, service users and carers
No full textBackground: It has been established that mental health-care planning does not adequately respond to the needs of those accessing services. Understanding the reasons for this and identifying whose needs care plans serve requires an exploration of the perspectives of service users, carers and professionals within the wider organizational context. Objective: To explore the current operationalization of care planning and perceptions of its function within mental health services from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Settings and participants: Participants included 21 mental health professionals, 29 service users and 4 carers from seven Mental Health Trusts in England. All participants had experience of care planning processes within secondary mental health-care services. Methods: Fifty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants and analysed utilizing a qualitative framework approach. Findings: Care plans and care planning were characterized by a failure to meet the complexity of mental health needs, and care planning processes were seen to prioritize organizational agendas and risk prevention which distanced care planning from the everyday lives of service users. Discussion and conclusions: Care planning is recognized, embedded and well established in the practices of mental health professionals and service users. However, it is considered too superficial and mainly irrelevant to users for managing mental health in their everyday lives. Those responsible for the planning and delivery of mental health services should consider ways to increase the relevance of care planning to the everyday lives of service users including separating risk from holistic needs assessment, using support aids and utilizing a peer workforce in this regard
Interactions of Penny-Shaped Cracks in Three-Dimensional Solids
Full text linkThe interaction of arbitrarily distributed penny-shaped cracks in three-dimensional solids is analyzed in this paper. Using oblate spheroidal coordinates and displacement functions, an analytic method is developed in which the opening and the sliding displacements on each crack surface are taken as the basic unknown functions. The basic unknown functions can be expanded in series of Legendre polynomials with unknown coefficients. Based on superposition technique, a set of governing equations for the unknown coefficients are formulated from the traction free conditions on each crack surface. The boundary collocation procedure and the average method for crack-surface tractions are used for solving the governing equations. The solution can be obtained for quite closely located cracks. Numerical examples are given for several crack problems. By comparing the present results with other existing results, one can conclude that the present method provides a direct and efficient approach to deal with three-dimensional solids containing multiple cracks
Managing chronic widespread pain in primary care: a qualitative study of patient perspectives and implications for treatment delivery.
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Clinical guidelines recommend a combination of physical, pharmacological and psychological treatments for chronic widespread pain, but published accounts of treatment acceptability are lacking.METHODS: Semi-structured interviews (n = 44) nested within a randomised controlled trial comparing the clinical and cost effectiveness of prescribed exercise, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and combined exercise and CBT to treatment as usual for adults with chronic widespread pain.RESULTS: Three main themes emerged from the data: i) the illness context (how people experience chronic pain and associated health services); ii) the identity context (how people react to their symptoms and accommodate these within themselves) and iii) the intervention context (the extent and manner by which the trial interventions models aligned with these responses). Referral to a prescribed exercise programme resonated most closely with participants' tendency to attribute pain to a structural or mechanical defect. Psychological therapy brought with it connotations of social judgement, deviance and stigma. Experience of psychological therapy often exceeded expectation. Participants who engaged in cognitive reflection and behavioural adaptation reported an upward identity shift independent of increased physical exercise behaviour.CONCLUSIONS: A logical rationale for a health intervention is in itself insufficient to ensure uptake and participation. Potential differences in treatment meaning emphasise the importance of acknowledging different phases of illness acceptance and of providing the most appropriate treatment option for the stage of reconciliation. Health service providers must not only understand people's own perceptions of chronic widespread pain but also the broader spheres of influence in which this pain is experienced.<br/
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