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Excess mortality in severe mental illness (defined here as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders, and bipolar affective disorders) is well described, but little is known about this inequality in ethnic minorities. We aimed to estimate excess mortality for people with severe mental illness for five ethnic groups (white British, black Caribbean, black African, south Asian, and Irish) and to assess the association of ethnicity with mortality risk.

Aims and methodTo assess the compliance of contemporary online media output with guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicidal acts. A search engine was used to identify online media reports of suicide from UK sources over the course of 1 month. Each article was assessed against guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicide produced by the Samaritans, a UK mental health charity.ResultsWe identified 229 articles, of which 199 failed to comply with at least one of the Samaritans' guidelines. Failure to mention support sources, excessive detail about the method used and undue speculation about the trigger for suicide were the most commonly breached guidelines. Significant differences were found between the quality of local and national media sources, with local media sources being broadly more compliant with guidelines.Clinical implicationsThis study highlights the urgent need for the implementation of responsible reporting guidelines in online media articles as a component of suicide prevention efforts.

It has long been held that schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders have a predominately poor course and outcome. We have synthesized information on mortality, clinical and social outcomes from the ÆSOP-10 multicenter study, a 10-year follow-up of a large epidemiologically characterized cohort of 557 people with first-episode psychosis. Symptomatic remission and recovery were more common than previously believed. Distinguishing between symptom and social recovery is important given the disparity between these; even when symptomatic recovery occurs social inclusion may remain elusive. Multiple factors were associated with an increased risk of mortality, but unnatural death was reduced by 90 when there was full family involvement at first contact compared with those without family involvement. These results suggest that researchers, clinicians and those affected by psychosis should countenance a much more optimistic view of symptomatic outcome than was assumed when these conditions were first described.

Across academic medicine, including psychiatry, women are under-represented in senior positions. Various reasons have been put forward, for example the lack of high-ranking female role models or mentors and a reduced rate of career progression for women compared with men. Mentoring has been shown to be a popular and feasible intervention which can improve the success of those perceived as disadvantaged groups (in this case women) by having an important impact on personal development, career guidance and research productivity.

The magnetic response of the radical pair generated by the hydrogen abstraction of the photoexcited benzil triplet from sodium dodecyl sulphate is studied. It is found that radical decay curves, with or without magnetic field, are affected on addition of small amphiphiles such as 1,4-dioxane. The results have been interpreted on the basis of the ability of the latter to change the micellar aggregation number and intramicellar viscosity.

BackgroundThe long-term risk of suicide after a first episode of psychosis is unknown, because previous studies have often been based on prevalence cohorts, have been biased to more severely ill, hospitalised patients, have extrapolated from a short follow-up time, and have made a distinction between schizophrenia and other psychoses. The aim of this study was to determine the epidemiology of suicide in a clinically representative, retrospective inception cohort of patients with a first episode of psychosis.