Search

Background: Food allergy (FA) is associated with poor health‐related quality of life and high levels of psychological distress. Psychological support is extremely important but not always available. As part of the Global Access to Psychological Services for Food Allergy (GAPS) study, we aimed to assess psychological distress and service use among adults, caregivers and children with FA in a global survey. Methods: Participants (n = 1329 adults with FA; n = 1907 caregivers of children with FA) from >20 countries were recruited through patient organisations, social media advertisements and online survey panels to complete an online survey. Surveys were available in six languages. Results: A total of 67.7% of adults and 77.2% of caregivers reported direct experience, and 51.6% of caregivers said their child had experienced FA‐related psychological distress. The most commonly reported issue was anxiety about having an allergic reaction. Less than 20% had been assessed for FA‐related psychological distress. There were significant differences across countries for levels of distress, screening for distress, seeing a mental health professional and being diagnosed with a FA‐related mental health disorder (all p <.001). The United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil had the highest number of participants reporting distress. The most commonly reported barrier to seeing a mental health professional was cost. Conclusions: FA‐related distress is common across countries, but with substantial country‐to‐country variability. Allergy providers are encouraged to routinely assess families for psychological distress and provide access to appropriate mental health resources. Development and implementation of evidence‐based, patient‐informed accessible, affordable FA interventions in multiple languages is urgently needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The compassionate communities (CC) movement is an emergent health promotion approach to palliative care that views illness, dying, death, and loss as universal experiences, and challenges the notion that disease precludes one from health care attention and interest. It seeks to normalise these phenomena and reorientate care to communities by activating naturally occurring networks and mobilising community resources. A surge of interventions aligned with the ethos of CC has been observed over the last decade. This scoping review seeks to synthesise what is currently known about the design, efficacy, and impact of CC interventions., Methods: Cochrane, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science were systematically searched. Hand searching was performed on three key journals, reference lists and citation lists of included articles, and relevant review articles. Two levels of analysis were conducted. First, a numerical presentation of the characteristics of CC interventions. Second, a thematically orientated narrative analysis of intervention efficacy., Results: A total of 1,882 records were screened; 62 papers were included. Most were implemented by palliative care organisations in Europe, North America, and Australia. Included studies were mapped against Clark et al.'s taxonomy of end-of-life interventions: educational (n=17); service (n=20); clinical (n=3); cultural (n=4); and multi-dimensional (n=18) interventions are discussed. While preliminary findings are positive, claims of efficacy are limited due to methodological paucity in the field., Conclusions: We argue that the field would benefit from more transparent and theoretically driven CC interventions in order to explicate the mechanism(s) for successful intervention implementation.

COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing measures have restricted funerals and memorial events and have limited the face-to-face social networks that grieving people might normally be able to draw upon for emotional support. However, while there is considerable expert informed speculation about the impacts of grief and "COVID bereavement", detailed accounts of experiences of bereavement and bereavement support during the pandemic have the potential to enrich and provide nuance and subtlety to the evidence base. This paper draws on diary accounts of bereavement support volunteers in the UK, who have been providing support for the bereaved through these challenging times. These reveal layers of complexity to the experiences of loss, grief and bereavement during these extraordinary times. However, they also point to a number of additional themes that lend a more positive valence to the suspension of normal social expectations and memorial practices associated with the pandemic, which, we argue should be reflected upon for their potential to address the discontents of contemporary governance of end of life and bereavement., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2021.)