Search

Research is urgently needed to help understand the mental health consequences of the covid-19 pandemic on healthcare workers and the public, researchers have argued in a position paper published in the Lancet Psychiatry .1 The paper, funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences, looks at the psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects of covid-19. It warns of major adverse consequences of the pandemic, including increased social isolation and loneliness, which are “strongly associated with anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts across the lifespan.” The authors suggest a number of immediate and longer term actions to mitigate the mental health consequences of this pandemic and any similar future situations, including better monitoring systems and rapidly rolling out evidence based programmes and treatments that can be accessed remotely. These priorities were informed by two surveys of the public and a panel of 24 experts, including people with lived experience of a mental health issue. The surveys, conducted by Ipsos MORI (1099 people) and the mental health research charity MQ (2198 …

The article discusses Maria Dąbrowska’s vast correspondence, which complete, in a way, her „Dzienniki” [Journals] , constituting very valuable biographical material, so far published only in selected fragments. Among many of her sets of letters, the most interesting ones are those exchanged with her husband, Marian Dąbrowski, her partner, Stanisław Stempowski, and later on with his son, Jerzy, as well as with her very close friend and partner, Anna Kowalska. This article discusses the most important sets of letters from and to Dąbrowska, indicating their historical value and biographical significance.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Current Psychology. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01117-0 Technological progress provides health professionals with an excellent opportunity to take advantage of these developments and contribute to the development of efficient ways of diagnosing, monitoring, treating and assisting users. The purpose of this work is to present the results of a study conducted to examine the quantitative equivalence of paper-and-pencil and a voice-based conversational assistant, popularly known as a “chatbot”, as means to administer tests. One hundred and eight undergraduate university students completed both versions of the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. The interval between the first and second administration was set at four days. Validity, internal structure, internal consistency and equivalence of chatbot administration mode were assessed. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the factor structure and provided a two-factor structure. Validity and internal consistency are adequate. These results support the feasibility of using chatbots for loneliness assessment in a sample of undergraduate university students and other populations in future.

Background Loneliness and social isolation are health risk factors that are comparable to obesity and cigarette smoking, with those experiencing it having a 26% greater likelihood of mortality. There are two at risk population groups: young adults (18–25 years) and oldest old (70 years). Through a combination of questionnaires, user-stories and discussions with experts, we learnt that this research applied to Cambridge: Cambridge medical students expressed feelings of loneliness and isolation during medical student placements, where they could be allocated in small groups (often 2 or 3 individuals) to remote areas of Cambridgeshire. Care homes residents reported a feeling of lack of social integration with those outside of their care homes. Aims Our aim was to create an intervention that: Tackled loneliness in students and elderly residents in Cambridge. Established social integration across different generations. Intervention Following a stakeholder engagement and workshop with: medical student representatives, Cambridge university executive board and Cambridge local council care home lead; a pilot pen-pal scheme was launched between care home residents and Cambridge medical students. Measurement of impact and improvement Impact will be measured following a year of letter-writing to assess: A change in score of feeling of loneliness. Understanding another generation. Provisional feedback has been positive, with all 10 pairs in the pilot recommending the scheme to a friend or family, and reporting that they have had ‘interesting and enjoyable conversations’. Conclusion Pen-to-paper is a unique and engaging way to tackle the complex problem of social isolation and loneliness in two at high-risk groups. The intervention has been well received by both groups and we are extending the intervention to residents in warden controlled/sheltered accommodation.

Accepted manuscript version. Published version available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X17000046. This study explores policy makers’, health-care professionals’ and senior volunteers’ perceptions of senior volunteers. Two Norwegian government white papers regarding older adult care and welfare services, which were published over a period of 19 years, were selected for close examination. Furthermore, focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of five senior volunteers and 15 health-care professionals were conducted. The study explores the discursive formations of senior volunteers in the government white papers and how they are negotiated in the senior volunteers’ and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Two dominant discourses were presented in the white papers: a prevention discourse (in which volunteering was presented primarily as a means to prevent volunteers’ loneliness and need for care services) and a sustainability discourse (in which the volunteers were presented as instrumental in future sustainable care services). Both discourses echo a common overarching discourse about a capacity crisis due to the ageing population. The senior volunteers were positioned as partners and active agents in both their own narratives and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Their position as independent and as spokespersons for the less empowered were evident only in the senior volunteers’ own narratives. Only the health-care professionals referenced the prevention discourse and capacity issues. The senior volunteers presented themselves as competent, efficient political actors, and they resisted both the prevention and sustainability discourses. In the senior volunteers’ narratives, social and political participation were interrelated. The study demonstrates that new discursive landscapes must be created to capture the diversity among senior volunteers and their efforts. While senior volunteers must be meaningfully involved in decision making, planning and design, their positions as independent and active agents must also be ensured. Authentic partnerships between senior volunteers and public care services involve a balance between involvement and independence.

The aging population of European cities raises enormous challenges with regard to employment, pensions, health care and other age-related services. The housing preferences of the aging population are changing rapidly where more and more people want to live independent lives for as long as possible. At the same time governments need to reduce the costs of expensive institutionalized care. A precondition for ‘ageing in place’ is that elderly people perceive their neighbourhoods as familiar and safe places. In the Netherlands, many neighbourhoods with a rapidly ageing population have been subject to urban regeneration policies. Hence, an important question is to what extent these policies affect the housing situation, social support networks and socioeconomic position of elderly people, because these factors strongly assist the ability of elderly people to live independently. We answer this question through the analysis of a small but unique panel data set with 2007 and 2012 measurements from Hoogvliet, a district of Rotterdam. Contrary to claims about large, disrupting impacts of urban regeneration, the results show that – even in times of economic crisis – regeneration in Hoogvliet has enabled ‘ageing in place’. There appears no relationship between the Hoogvliet policies and changes in income of elderly people and their ability to get by financially. Those who have moved home often report regeneration benefits, mostly related to accessing better quality housing in the same area. Finally, we found no clear evidence of decreased social support or increased loneliness through regeneration induced disruption of social networks.

In 2014, the International Psychogeriatric Association (IPA) celebrated the fact that IPA's flagship scientific journalInternational Psychogeriatrics(IPG) has matured, attaining 25 years of existence since its foundation in 1989. The IPG editorial team introduced several new features in the 2014 issues to celebrate this significant quarter century milestone. One of them was the new “paper of the month” category. Following an internal selection process amongst the editorial team, who ranked available accepted papers focusing on their scientific quality and clinical relevance each month, one paper was selected as paper of the month from the categories “original research articles” and “reviews”. This resulted in 12 papers of the month, of which eight were original research articles and four were reviews or meta-analyses. Each paper of the month was accompanied by a short commentary highlighting its importance, written either by an editorial team member, one of the reviewers of the paper, or an external international expert on the topic of the paper. The editorial team aimed to highlight various psychogeriatric topics, so there are papers covering the wide spectrum of cognitive impairment, from risk factors such a hippocampal atrophy (Ferrariniet al., 2014) and traumatic brain injury (Gilbertet al., 2014), via transition between diagnostic categories on the cognitive continuum (Elliset al., 2014) to variations in symptom expression (Rockwoodet al., 2014) and apathy (Theleritiset al., 2014) to exercise interventions for people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Farinaet al., 2014) or antipsychotic use for patients with dementia living in residential care (Kleijeret al., 2014). Other papers reported on topics relevant to the aging process in general, such as neuroplasticity (Valkanovaet al., 2014), loneliness (Yanet al., 2014) or attitudes to aging (Shenkinet al., 2014). Other psychogeriatric topics covered were delirium (Ritchieet al., 2014) and geriatric depression (Steffenset al., 2014). In the international spirit of IPA, authors of the 12 papers come from Australia, Canada China, Greece, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. From those 12 papers an IPG paper of the year 2014 was selected with the help of three independent reviewers: Dr Doh Kwan Kim from South Korea, Dr Gill Livingston from the UK, and Dr Daniel Weintraub from the USA. Our three reviewers ranked all 12 papers of the month independently from each other and the highest ranked paper overall was “The association of traumatic brain injury with rate of progression of cognitive and functional impairment in a population-based cohort of Alzheimer's disease: the Cache County Dementia Progression Study” by Mac Gilbert, Christine Snyder, Chris Corcoran, Maria C. Norton, Constantine G. Lyketsos, and JoAnn T. Tschanz. The reviewers emphasized that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is recognized as an important risk factor for AD which needs more research, and that the study by Gilbertet al.contributes important new knowledge to the area with the specific strength of reporting long-term follow up. In this context, we refer to the excellent commentary on the paper of the year by Dr David Sharp (Sharp, 2014), which was published alongside the paper of the year when it was paper of the month in the October 2014 issue.

The present paper tests a long-overlooked aspect of the association between school management and student mental health. Specifically, the question asked is whether and to what extent quality of information services is associated with students’ feelings of loneliness. Research on this relationship is almost inexistent—most probably because of the rather narrow conceptual framework within which loneliness research has been carried out. The present study attempts to fill this gap by looking at loneliness from a different conceptual angle, that of alienation, and from there to test a couple of hypotheses: (i) the significance of the relationship between quality of information services and student loneliness and (ii) the protective role of quality of informal student networks. Data from 439 undergraduate students from a Moroccan institution of higher education were used for the purpose. Both hypotheses were confirmed. Quality of information services, which a sweeping majority of students (64.2%) rated as unsatisfactory, was negatively associated with feelings of loneliness (β = -.17**, p < .01). To test the protective role of quality of student networks, a moderation analysis was conducted. Quality of student networks proved a significant moderator. Results and implication for educational management and future research directions are discussed.