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Background: Health expectancies, taking into account both quality and quantity of life, have generally been based on disability and physical functioning.Aims: To compare mental health expectancies at age 25 and 55 based on common mental disorders both across countries and between males and females.Method: Mental health expectancies were calculated by combining mortality data from population life tables and the age-specific prevalence of selected common mental disorders obtained from the European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders (ESEMeD).Results: For the male population aged 25 (all countries combined) life expectancy was 52 years and life expectancy spent with a common mental disorder was 1.8 years (95% CI 0.7-2.9), 3.4% of overall life expectancy. In comparison, for the female population life expectancy at age 25 was higher (57.9 years) as was life expectancy spent with a common mental disorder (5.1 years, 95% CI 3.6-6.6) and as a proportion of overall life expectancy, 8.8%. By age 55 life expectancy spent with a common mental disorder had reduced to 0.7 years (males) and 2.3 years (females).Conclusions: Age and gender differences underpin our understanding of years spent with common mental disorders in adulthood. Greater age does not mean living relatively more years with common mental disorder. However, the female population spends more years with common mental disorders and a greater proportion of their longer life expectancy with them (and with each studied separate mental disorder). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Relatively little is known of the use of systematic review and synthesis methods of non-randomised psychiatric epidemiological studies, which play a vital role in aetiological research, planning and policy-making. Aims To evaluate reviews of psychiatric epidemiological studies of functional mental disorders that employed synthesis methods such as systematic review or meta-analysis, or other forms of quantitative review. Method We searched the literature to identify appropriate reviews published during the period 1996 to April 2009. Selected reviews were evaluated using published review guidelines. Results we found 106 reviews in total, of which 38 (36%) did not mention method of data abstraction from primary studies at all. Many failed to mention study quality, publication bias, bias and confounding. In 73 studies that performed a metaanalysis, 58 (79%) tested for heterogeneity and of these, 47 found significant heterogeneity. Studies that detected heterogeneity made some allowance for this. A major obstacle facing reviewers is the wide variation between primary studies in the use of instruments to measure outcomes and in sampling methods used. Conclusions Many deficiencies found in systematic reviews are potentially remediable, although synthesis of primary study findings in a field characterised by so many sources of heterogeneity will remain challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate associations between diet and non-dietary lifestyle factors and the onset of overactive bladder (OAB) in men.Subjects: Random sample of community-dwelling men aged 40 years plus.Design and Methods: Baseline data on urinary symptoms and diet were collected from 5454 men using a postal questionnaire and a food-frequency questionnaire. Follow-up data on urinary symptoms were collected from 4887 men in a postal survey one year later. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate diet and lifestyle factors associated with onset of OAB in the men without OAB at baseline.Results: There was a highly significant negative association between beer intake at baseline and subsequent OAB onset (P=0.001), with reduced risk at all levels of intake compared with those who seldom/never drank beer. Adjustment for total alcohol intake (g ethanol day(-1)) reduced the significance of the association (P=0.02). None of the food groups studied was associated with OAB onset, with the possible exception of potatoes (P=0.05), which showed an increased risk of onset at the highest level of consumption. Physical activity, smoking and obesity were not significantly associated.Conclusions: While most diet and lifestyle factors were not associated with OAB onset, the evidence from this prospective longitudinal study suggests that beer may have a protective role in the development of OAB. This could be due to a non-alcoholic ingredient as well as the alcohol content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]