The NICE guideline on common mental disorders (PDF) was published back in May 2011, which means that it only included evidence published up until the end of 2010. This is a fast moving field, so NICE have now put out an evidence update, which focuses on new evidence published from Sept 2010 to Oct 2012. This [read the full story…]
As the British Heart Foundation National Heart Month draws to a close Lifestyle Elf and I were discussing their blog on heart attacks not being reduced in people taking vitamins and antioxidants which led to us to thinking about the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Our colleagues in the Pittsburgh Health Heart Project [read the full story…]
Work-related stress is everywhere these days. Obviously us elves are pretty much immune, but looking at the Bristol Stress and Health at Work Study (Smith 2000) I can see that more than 50% of human respondents reported being extremely, very or moderately stressed at work. You lovely people do suffer from lots of emotional and [read the full story…]
You won’t be surprised to hear that Mrs Elf and I have stopped watching the Oak Tree TV News and we’ve also stopped listening to the Woodland Wire on the wireless. Goodness me, the news is always so depressing! “Blah blah blah, chalara ash dieback, blah blah blah, badger cull”. To be honest, we’d rather [read the full story…]
National and international research consistently shows that the most significant factor in raising educational achievement is the employment and retention of good quality teachers. Teacher recruitment and retention; an historical context In recent history, the UK Government has introduced many initiatives to tackle the problems of teacher recruitment and retention (Menter, 2002), including bursaries for [read the full story…]
Mindfulness has become a popular self-management technique to relieve stress and cope with busy day-to-day lifestyles. This review defines mindfulness as the ability to “non-judgementally observe sensations, thoughts, emotions and the environment, while encouraging openness, curiosity and acceptance”. It looks specifically at a technique called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programmes, which is a training programme [read the full story…]
Rubber dam is recommended for isolating the working field during adhesive dentistry procedures. However, dentists often omit rubber dam, particularly in paediatric dentistry, supposing that it would stress the patient. The aim of this study was to evaluate subjective and objective stress parameters in children and adolescents during dental treatment when using rubber dam compared [read the full story…]
Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is a common and painful oral disease. It is characterised by recurring mucosal ulceration in an otherwise healthy individual. Its prevalence is commonly estimated to be between 5% and 25% with a peak age of onset between 10 and 19 years although they may continue throughout the patient’s life span. An [read the full story…]
Given the emphasis in education on inclusion in mainstream schools and colleges for young people with additional needs, this project set out to enable young people with learning difficulties in three localities to bring about changes in their schools and colleges. The young people themselves chose the areas they wanted to focus on, which were: [read the full story…]
Life stress and in particular key stressful events have long been linked with mental ill health. These researchers in Canada set out to look at the link between life events and psychopathology in people with learning disabilities and in particular, the link with hospital use. The researchers asked key informants to complete a checklist of [read the full story…]
