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The increasing impact of chronic disease, including cancer and heart disease on mortality signifies a need for the upskilling of health professionals in health behaviour change. Solely providing education and information to patients is generally not sufficient to change behaviour, and for any change to be sustained. The nature of pharmaceutical practice allows pharmacists to have frequent contact with patients in the community. Historically, pharmacists have often effectively engaged with patients to assist with behaviour change initiatives related to smoking cessation, weight loss or medication adherence. Unfortunately, such initiatives do not work for everyone, and more tailored and varied interventions are urgently needed to reduce the effects of chronic disease. In addition, with greater inaccessibility to hospitals and GP's (e.g., appointment wait times), it is imperative that pharmacists are upskilled in providing opportunistic health behaviour change techniques and interventions. Pharmacists need to practice to their full scope consistently and confidently, including the use of behavioural interventions. The following commentary therefore describes and provides recommendations for the upskilling of pharmacists and pharmacy students in opportunistic behaviour change. We outline nine key evidence-based behaviour change techniques, the active-ingredients of a behaviour change intervention, that are relevant to common encounters in professional practice by pharmacists, such as improving adherence to medications/treatments and health promotion initiatives. These include social support (practical and emotional), problem solving, anticipated regret, habit formation, behaviour substitution, restructuring the environment, information about others' approval, pros and cons, and monitoring and providing feedback on behaviour. Recommendations are then provided for how this upskilling can be taught to pharmacists and pharmacy students, as well as how they can use these techniques in their everyday practice.

Safe food-handling knowledge and behaviour are low across the general population. This raises concerns about whether individuals at higher risk of food poisoning have sufficient safe food-handling knowledge and engage in safe food-handling practices. The aim of this study was to explore safe food-handling knowledge, behaviour, and related psychological constructs among individuals at higher risk of food poisoning and compare the results to the general population. Participants (N = 169) completed measures of safe food-handling knowledge, intention, habit strength, perceived risk, self-efficacy, subjective norms, and behaviour. A series of multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to determine differences in these measures between participants at higher risk of food poisoning and the general population. No significant differences in knowledge, intention, habit strength, self-efficacy, subjective norms, and behaviour were found between individuals at higher risk of food poisoning and the general population. However, individuals at higher risk of food poisoning appeared to have stronger risk perceptions across safe food-handling behaviours compared with the general population. This study demonstrated that individuals at higher risk of food poisoning do not have higher safe food-handling knowledge than the general population, and despite having higher risk perceptions around some safe food-handling behaviours, they do not differ in engagement in safe food-handling behaviours or the majority of related psychological constructs. Implications of these findings relate to the need to target other psychological constructs, not just risk perceptions, in order to see safer food-handling behaviours in high-risk populations.

Neurocognitive abilities have frequently been claimed to be involved in the aetiology of psychopathology. Neurocognitive deficits have been reported across many disorders, and theoretical perspectives associate these deficits to the onset and maintenance of the symptomology. Recently, the heterogeneity of symptoms, and comorbidity of disorders, have motivated the development of structural models of psychopathology. Structural models indicate that factors such as internalising, externalising, thought disorder and the p-factor account for a wide variety of symptomology. It is unclear how neurocognitive abilities are best examined within these structures to advance our understanding of psychopathology. In this paper, we use Caspi et al.’s seminal writings as a framework to describe how neurocognitive abilities have been previously associated with categorical disorders and recently associated, and claimed to drive, the factors of psychopathology. We discuss the implications of the p-factor as a substantive construct or statistical artefact, and how this impacts the exploration of neurocognitive abilities and psychopathology. Further, we provide the case for alternative structural approaches, describe an innovative hypothesis of neurocognitive functioning, the multidimensional hypothesis, and explain how this may further our understanding of the heterogeneity of neurocognitive performance and psychopathology at the individual level. Finally, we provide a road forward for the future examination of neurocognitive abilities in psychopathology.

Objective Climate change and related issues associated with the interaction of humans with the environment are of great importance in today's context. More and more research is focusing on understanding what can be done to prevent and reverse the effects of environmental problems through individual behaviours. Within psychology, there is a lack of synthesis of what drives pro‐environmental behaviours in various paradigms and how they can be changed. The current study focuses on the application of protection motivation theory to predicting and changing pro‐environmental behaviours using a systematic mapping approach. Methods A systematic screening of 132 databases was performed, resulting in the identification of 22 relevant studies with the total N = 12,827. Results Investigation of the included research revealed a number of gaps in knowledge including: lack of experimental evidence with successful manipulations of protection motivation theory constructs; non‐inclusion of all the aspects of the theory into studies; the absence of examination of the intention–behaviour relationship; the lack of consistency in operationalisation of protection motivation theory constructs; a focus on predominantly western high income societies, and the lack of uniformity in the definition of pro‐environmental behaviours. Conclusion Future research should consider employing experimental designs with proper manipulation checks and longitudinal focus, as well as consistent definitions and operationalisations of relevant concepts, and exploring these constructs across different countries.

In recent years, there has been debate about the optimal conceptualisation of psychopathology. Structural models of psychopathology have been developed to counter issues, including comorbidity and poor diagnostic stability prevalent within the traditional nosological approach. Regardless of the conceptualisation of psychological dysfunction, deficits in neurocognitive abilities have been claimed to be an aetiological feature of psychopathology. Explorations of the association between neurocognition and psychopathology have typically taken a linear approach, overlooking the potential interactive dynamics of neurocognitive abilities. Previously, we proposed a multidimensional hypothesis, where within-person interactions between neurocognitive domains are fundamental to understanding the role of neurocognition within psychopathology. In this study, we used previously collected psychopathology data for 400 participants on psychopathological symptoms, substance use, and performance on eight neurocognitive tasks and compared the predictive accuracy of linear models to artificial neural network models. The artificial neural network models were significantly more accurate than the traditional linear models at predicting actual (a) lower-level and (b) high-level dimensional psychopathology. These results provide support for the multidimensional hypothesis: that the study of non-linear interactions and compensatory neurocognitive profiles are integral to understanding the functional associations between neurocognition and of psychopathology.

Neurocognitive deficits have been consistently associated with a wide range of psychopathology and are proposed to not only be a consequence of the development of psychopathology but also directly involved in its aetiology. However, there is no clear understanding of what neurocognitive processes are particularly important to mental health. In this paper, we explored the association between neurocognitive abilities and the factors derived from structural models of psychopathology. Four hundred participants from a representative community sample completed measures of symptomology and substance use, as well as 8 neurocognitive tasks. We found a correlated-factors model, with internalising and externalising as the higher-order factors, and a single-factor model with only the p-factor, to be good fits for the data. Tasks that measured the speed of processing were significantly associated with internalising, externalising, and the p-factor, and accounted for significant amounts of unique variance in the factors after accounting for the common variance of the other tasks. Tasks that measured working memory, shifting, and inhibition were not significantly associated with psychopathology factors. Our findings suggest that neurocognitive abilities may not be differentially associated with psychopathology factors, but that speed of processing is a common correlate of the factors. We emphasise the importance of examining neurocognitive abilities and psychopathology on the individual level.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the proportions of health-related content in non-program time on Australian television, and how this relates to channel, product category, program genre and whether it is an advertisement or public service announcement (PSA). Design/methodology/approach - Australian prime time television was recorded across three commercial television stations in Sydney. Non-program content (NPC) was coded according to the channel, program genre, length of content and product advertised. In total, 44 hours of programming was recorded. Findings - Not surprisingly, significant differences were found in the percentage of health-related content between advertisements (22 percent) and PSAs (67 percent). Again unsurprisingly there was also a significant relationship between the product category and health-related content (?2=366.601, p=0.000), but also between health-related content and program genre (?2=20.594, p=0.024), particularly situation comedies (31 percent) and sport (15 percent). No difference was found in the percentage of health-related content between the channels. Research limitations/implications - Differences existing in the amount of NPC across program genre suggest that viewers of programs with high rates of health-related content in advertising may have higher exposure to product dependant health information. Originality/value - Health information is examined in a general sample without focus on particular demographics or health topics and the role of program genre is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study that investigates children's understanding of the intent and importance of the advertisements designed to target childhood obesity in Australia. It states that childhood obesity can affect most of the major systems of the body that results in disorders of the orthopaedic, neurological, gastrointestinal and endocrine systems. It mentions that the advertisement is designed to promote the maintenance of good health.