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Epidemic trajectories can be substantially impacted by people modifying their behaviours in response to changes in their perceived risk of spreading or contracting the disease. However, most infectious disease models assume a stable population behaviour. We present a flexible new class of models, called behavioural change individual‐level models (BC‐ILMs), that incorporate both individual‐level covariate information and a data‐driven behavioural change effect. Focusing on spatial BC‐ILMs, we consider four “alarm” functions to model the effect of behavioural change as a function of infection prevalence over time. Through simulation studies, we find that if behavioural change is present, using an alarm function, even if specified incorrectly, will result in an improvement in posterior predictive performance over a model that assumes stable population behaviour. The methods are applied to data from the 2001 U.K. foot and mouth disease epidemic. The results show some evidence of a behavioural change effect, although it may not meaningfully impact model fit compared to a simpler spatial ILM in this dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary argues that financial incentives for employees who meet body mass index requirements reinforce healthism, a false and oppressive ideology. Healthism is the view that personal health is the vehicle of well-being and that health is achieved by taking personal responsibility for habit modification. Healthist views about body shape and body weight enforce oppressive norms and can lead to pernicious harms, especially to members of vulnerable groups. Overall, this article argues that persons and organizations ought not to label behaviors that influence body shape and weight in normative terms, such as "ideal" or "healthy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present report from the Rhode Island Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services (MIDAS) Project compares patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in an outpatient practice ( n = 390) and a partial hospital setting ( n = 358) on diagnostic comorbidities, symptoms experienced, suicidality, and occupational impairment. The patients in the partial program were diagnosed with significantly more psychiatric disorders and were more frequently diagnosed with dysthymia, generalized anxiety disorder, alcohol and substance use disorders, adjustment disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Those at the partial hospital had significantly higher levels of suicidal ideation than those in the outpatient practice. The samples did not differ on utilization of disability or suicide attempts. Treatment setting may have implications in the recognition of the disorder in clinical practice, the development and support of etiological theories, identification of core deficits, and evaluation of psychosocial morbidity associated with BPD.