HealthTap: Invited to add their widget... I asked a question...

No doubt it was a bulk email, but I received an invitation from HealthTap to add their widget here on W2tQ. The widget provides the means to access their service, that of putting questions to medical experts.

I have minimized the side bar content, stripping out buttons and other media paraphernalia and yet suitably intrigued I asked a question - ;-)

Q. Is there a conceptual framework that can help

 assure holistic (physical - mental, social) and integrated care 

that is also person-centered? 

Fourteen hours later news of an answer duly arrived by email:

Holistic Medicine
I believe that Holistic Medicine, when properly practiced, assures all of that. For the principles delineated by the American Holistic Medical Association see http://www.holisticmedicine.org/content.asp?pl=2&sl=22&contentid=22

Also see http://www.abihm.org/general-public


I greatly appreciate Dr. Randy S. Baker's response and the above links. This is helpful in several respects despite not exactly being the answer I was hoping for.

The answer is itself holistic in a sense in wrapping the question up in an organisational wrapper. That's a safe response, with medicine in there for wholistic measure. Who ever said medicine is reductionist! Judging from his profile holistic medicine is Dr Baker's forte.

Also interesting in the answer is the way the hook in the question was deemed to be the reference to 'holistic' and not the conceptual framework element.

Another point in Dr Baker's reply that reflects on Hodges' model and the health news media in England (UK) next week* is the bit about when properly practiced.

The adoption of Hodges' model is no guarantee of 

person-centered, 

integrated, 

holistic care.

Although the term conceptual framework (Hodge's model !) is not given in the answer: assure is.

What ever conceptual framework (care model, care philosophy...) is adopted to deliver health care, they must contribute towards the assurance of high quality care - that which ultimately positively engages the patient, carer, family and communities.

My question still remains and is usefully extended, passed to the above organisations.

So does the AHMA and the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine have a conceptual framework that helps support their holistic objectives and assurance of care? I will contact them to see if I can obtain a further response.

Thanks again to Dr Baker and HealthTap.

* The Francis Inquiry Report is anticipated on Wednesday.

Papers, case formulation and hyperbole

I am enjoying a three night break in Keswick where it is dry, windy and chilly. Invigorating for all that.

In between taking in the hills and the atmospherics of the skies I am working on completing the revision to the - scope of nursing - paper. There is still a paragraph to lose to reduce the length for the target journal.

The case formulation and h2cm paper is taking shape too - 5,000 words. I am sure the ongoing advice and thoughts of my co-author on the scope effort is making a difference. As a result the case formulation paper will be in final draft form soon. Then I'll seek some feedback from a CBT therapist before trying to locate a journalistic home. Here's a snippet from the draft:

... If the talking therapies are specialised forms of conversation then we should also be able see case formulation as being on a continuum, derived from narratives that can include extreme case formulation, and hyperbole (Norrick, 2004). The specific therapies discussed here [cognitive behavioural therapy and cognitive analytical therapy] are concerned with overstatement and exaggeration in thought not just speech. Things may be said in everyday speech that are rhetorical and not necessarily indicative of deeply held core, dysfunctional beliefs. ...

Norrick, N.R. (2004). Hyperbole, extreme case formulation. Journal of Pragmatics 36. 1727–1739.

I receive regular reminders about a part time PhD application that remains incomplete. So I will address this too (and check other opportunities) over the next few days.

Post on a new laptop and a socio-technical-existential addiction to follow ....

Dialectics in therapy, case formulation, h2cm and a tree

Kuyken et al. (2009) propose three dialectics that are useful in an evaluation of their model for case conceptualization, these are:

Released today - 28th Jan 2013

nomothetic – idiopathic; 
simple – complex; 
and subjective – objective.

This act of identifying polarities can be described as a diagrammatic formulation in itself.

These dialectics and many others can be readily incorporated into h2cm: for example;

socio – technical,
macro – micro.
...

Kuyken, W., Padesky, C., Dudley, R. (2009). Collaborative case conceptualization. New York, The Guilford Press.

Two new books ... to review and a new IPONS website

There are two books in the post for review here which I look forward to receiving. Originally I only enquired about the following:

Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives for Advanced Nursing Practice, Fifth Edition 

The book will continue to address a need to identify philosophical and a theoretical basis for h2cm.

A phone call from the publisher's rep. Clare McMillan had noted the informatics content here on Welcome to the QUAD W2tQ and would I also be interested in another book?

Yes please, certainly... I appreciate the recognition too.


Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge, Second Edition is also to follow and not without a challenge as Clare pointed out. This foundation on informatics is focused on the North American experience. So it is a perspective from Wigan Pier to follow.

Of related interest and with further refinements to follow apparently, the International Philosophy of Nursing Society has a new website.

In orbit*: Where a model of global health care should be

What platform are you using 

to monitor and positively impact 
the minutiae of care 

and the whole picture?

* and in mind.

On 25 May, NASA's Phoenix lander was 10 kilometres above the surface of Mars and less than three minutes from landing when it was captured passing in front of Heimdall crater by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080604/full/453712a/box/1.html
Published online 4 June 2008 | Nature 453, 712-713 (2008) Eric Hand

Additional link:
Phoenix: A tribute

RCN 2nd live chat Friday 25th January Emergency Care on Twitter

EMERGENCY CARE is the topic of the RCN’s second live chat on Twitter, taking place this Friday.


Is the hospital model of delivering care still fit for purpose? Is the pressure on emergency care services reaching breaking point? What does the future hold?
Join @theRCN for a live discussion on Friday between 12.45 and 1.15pm, using #RCNchat


The RCN (theRCN) on Twitter
Instantly connect to what's most important to you.
Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebritie...

(My source: Stu Young; Facebook - Royal College of Nursing Students)

Update on new papers: 1. Case formulation & 2. Scope of Nursing

At present, with the support of a co-author, I am editing a paper on Hodges' model and the scope of nursing. The text some 6000 words was submitted to a journal last April and rejected, but as ever feedback is golden and the comments are being used to revise. The referees have set a challenge as amongst several points I tease out where the inherent theoretical perspectives lie in Hodges' model and how their identification within h2cm helps to define the scope of nursing.

Another paper in final draft - 4400 words - concerns the model and case formulation. At last I've arrived at this topic. Hodges' model is basically a simple drawing with care concepts superimposed. Cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] and cognitive analytical therapy [CAT] make use of case formulation and CAT utilizes what are called sequential diagrammatic formulations.

The old website pages were written rather on the fly. They almost comprise a 'to-do-list' of thoughts and findings to revisit and check. Of two old pages one dealt with possible ideas and sources that might inform the structure of Hodges' model; the other page theory.

On the latter page I learned of SDRs - the sequential diagrammatic reformulations used in CAT and related this to the care domains of h2cm -

It feels good to be able to address this theme at long last.

In just over a week I'm looking f/w to a three day break in the Lakes. Weather permitting some  walking and a few runs, a bike ride, writing and Drupal - which I have put down of late...

ERCIM News No. 92 Special theme: "Smart Energy Systems"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 92 has just been published at
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en92

Special Theme: "Smart Energy Systems"
Guest editors: Carl Binding, IBM Research Lab, Switzerland and Han La Poutré, CWI and Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Modern, industrialized, society is heavily dependent on ubiquitous, cheap energy, which we expect to be readily available, not to be polluting, and to be convenient to use.
Since the invention of the steam engine by James Watt, this paradigm has lead towards tremendous improvement of life quality in the developed world, and developing countries eagerly aspire to similar energy standards.
However, the price of this hunger for energy is increasing. Fossil fuel resources such as oil or gas are becoming harder to explore, even leading to environmental disasters as with the Gulf of Mexico oil-platform, recently. Exploration of shale gas (“fracking”) causes negative environmental impact, beyond the well-known CO2 problematics. Besides the sheer availability of fossil energy, associated CO2 emissions have caused wide-spread concerns about impacts on climate and on human health (fine particle emissions).
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en92/special

Keynote:  "Smart Energy Systems – A European Perspective" by Ariane Sutor
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en92/keynote

This issue for download in pdf:
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN92/EN92-web.pdf

Includes: Research and Innovation
A Projector as Mobile Visualization device on an Assistive Robot (p.48)
by Paul Panek, Christian Beck, Georg Edelmayer, Peter Mayer and Wolfgang L. Zagler 

Next issue: No. 93, January 2012 - Special Theme: "Mobile Computing"
(see call at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/call)

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Peter Kunz
ERCIM News central editor
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERCIM "Alain Bensoussan" Fellowship Programme
ERCIM offers fellowships for PhD holders from all over the world. The next round is now open!
Next deadline for applications is exceptionally 28 February 2013
http://fellowship.ercim.eu/


Additional links [by PJ]:
UNDP: Sustainable Energy
The Communication Initiative Network - Natural Resource Management
UNESCO: Renewable and Alternative Energies

Peter Gärdenfors - "Actions and events modelled in conceptual spaces"

The Barcelona Cognition, Brain and Technology summer school. Barcelona, Spain

Friday, 14 September, 2012 - 09:30 to 11:00

Recording of the speaker's talk at the Barcelona Brain and Technology Summer School, September 2012.
"Actions and events are central to a semantics of natural language. I present a cognitively based model of these notions. After giving a general presentation of the theory of conceptual spaces, I suggest how the analysis of perceptual concepts can be extended to actions and events. First, I argue that action space can be analyzed in the same way as e.g. color space or shape space. The hypothesis is that the categorization of actions depends, to a large extent, on the perception of forces. In line with this, I describe an action as a pattern of forces. An action category is identified as a convex region of action space. I review some indirect evidence for this representation. Second, I represent an event as an interaction between a force vector and a result vector. Typically an agent performs an action – i.e., exerts a force – that changes the properties of the patient. Such a model of events is suitable for an analysis of the semantics of verbs. I compare the model to other related attempts from cognitive semantics."

Additional links:
http://www.ht.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=21232&p=PeterGardenfors
Conceptual Spaces At Work - Conference May 2012

Related posts on W2tQ

‘Attentive Writers’: Healthcare, Authorship, and Authority - Call for Papers

 Medical Humanities Research Centre, University of Glasgow, 23-25 August 2013

http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/conferences/attentivewriters/

http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/conferences/attentivewriters/

From nurses, physicians and surgeons to administrators, caregivers, technicians, veterinarians and voluntary sector workers, this conference adopts the term ‘attentive writers’ as evocative of the multitude of both non-professional and professional caregivers – clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers – whose attention to illness might take narrative form. The study of physician-writers was one of the earliest developments in the related fields of Literature and Medicine and the Medical Humanities, with canonical figures such as Conan Doyle, Goldsmith, Keats, Smollett, and William Carlos Williams, receiving much-deserved critical attention. Echoing Rita Charon’s concept of ’attentiveness’, this conference brings this established field of enquiry regarding ‘the physician as writer’ into dialogue with recent calls for a more inclusive approach to the Medical Humanities (i.e. ‘Health Humanities’) and questions the authoritative place of the Western – traditionally male – physician in our explorations of the humanities/health interface.

The relationship between healthcare, authorship and authority will be addressed through three inter-related strands of thematic enquiry: (1) an historical and literary examination of ‘attentive writers’; (2) a more devolved interrogation of the field of Narrative Medicine; and (3) an examination of ‘attentive writing’ as creative practice.

Current Confirmed Plenary Speakers: Professor Rita Charon; Professor Paul Crawford; Further TBA Papers might address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Nurse-writers, physician-writers, surgeon-writers, veterinarian-writers, etc. of any culture, historical period or literary epoch, and/or nurses, physicians, surgeons, and vets as literary subjects
• Non-clinical healthcare workers (adminstrators, janitors, technicians, etc.) as writers and/or literary subjects
• The literature of caregiving
• Gender and medical authority
• Historical development of medical and literary professionalism
• The afterlife of Foucault’s ‘medical gaze’
• Hybrid discourses and genres (the case history, illness narratives, etc.)
• Narrative Medicine (and, particularly, does it challenge or reinforce the notion of physician as sole author/authority) and related developments in professionalism and education
• The philosophy of attentiveness in healthcare and creative writing
• ‘Attentive writing’ as creative practice; including ‘process oriented’ writing practices and those primarily concerned with the creation of aesthetically valuable outcomes.

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted, along with a short biography (no more than 250 words), to arts-attentivewriters at glasgow.ac.uk by 4 March 2013 (note the extended date). Further information for creative writers wishing to make a submission will be announced shortly.

Any queries may also be directed to: megan.coyer at glasgow.ac.uk

Jill Anderson Senior Project Development Officer, Mental Health in Higher Education [My source] 
Join mhhe hub: http://mhhehub.ning.com/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mhhehub 

 <>

It is six years this April of trying to be an 'attentive writer' here on W2tQ, so this sounds a very interesting conference in an apparently fabulous city I have yet to visit. Hodges' model is a great tool to assist in attentiveness and creativity. After the disappointment of the conference in Australia for May I am considering other conference options and writing projects.

'Holistic confrontation' Gadgil et al. - a useful construct for H2CM

The possible explanatory utility of what I've termed holistic bandwidth is an ongoing prompt for me to study Hodges' model as a conceptual space, or series of spaces. In the literature recently I discovered Gadgil et al. who explain what they term holistic confrontation in their paper:

Chi (2008) has characterized three kinds of student misconceptions that increase in their representational complexity from false beliefs to flawed mental models to incorrect ontological categories. This framework suggests that different kinds of cognitive processes and instruction may be differentially effective in facilitating conceptual change for a given level of representational complexity. We hypothesize that as the representational complexity of the misconception increases, so does the amount of transformation needed to rectify it. Specifically, we hypothesize that conceptual change at the mental model level requires knowledge revision to the interrelations between the features of the prior knowledge, which is different from revising individual false beliefs or reassignment of a concept to an ontological category. Furthermore, we propose that instruction that focuses the learner on revising systems of relations of the misconception, what we call “holistic confrontation”, should be more effective in facilitating change of a flawed mental model than instruction that focuses on revising false beliefs or the type of ontological category. p.47.

One of the more specific applications for Hodges' model I see and in need of demonstration is case formulation, or case conceptualization. This could extend from a general counselling, long-term medical condition self-care management level through to collaborative case formulation in formal psychological therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and cognitive analytic therapy.

Gadgil et al. use a diagram test of the circulatory system with two instructional conditions for subjects: compare or explain-diagram. The introduction, method, design and six hypotheses in this paper comprise an interesting approach for due consideration here.

Gadgil, S., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Chi, M. T. H. (2011). Effectiveness of holistic mental model confrontation in driving conceptual change. Learning and Instruction: 22, 1, 47–61.

Health in the Round - A paper Griffiths et al. ...

The quote below from Griffiths et al. highlights what might be described as health in the round. As the authors address: the rapid growth of online social networking for health, health care systems are experiencing an inescapable increase in complexity - they contrast disease-centred health care with patient-centred. In so doing they distinguish the mechanistic tendencies in health care systems with the humanistic. For me reading this section of the paper was a circumnavigation of health and social care domains of Hodges' model:

Good communication between doctors and patients has been widely recognised by professional bodies in North America (AAMC, 1999) and Europe (GMC, 2009) as essential to the delivery of health care and appears to contribute to healing (Street, Makoul, Arora, & Epstein, 2009). Stewart (2001) has argued for a shift away from disease-centred biomedicine to a more holistic patient-centred alternative. This approach encompasses: exploring the patient’s reason for consulting; developing an understanding of their context; finding common ground in problem characterisation and management; supporting health promotion; and enabling the doctor-patient relationship to continue (Stewart et al., 2003). Patient-centred practice reflects (Bensing, 2000) a set of social and political ideas about the nature of the doctor patient relationship (Mead & Bower, 2000), which, it could be argued, forms a complex system (Situngkir, 2004). p.2237.

Griffiths, F., Cave, J., Boardman, F., Ren, J., Pawlikowska, T., Ball, R., Clarke, A., Cohen, A. (2012). Social networks - The future for health care delivery. Social Science & Medicine. 75: 2233-2241.

Thanks Gerry for pulling some strings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20847151

Today it was Gerry Anderson's funeral. I am a child of that generation Thunderbirds, Joe 90, UFO - great TV.

In 2008 I found myself back in my old home town and an old friend from junior school got in touch. One of John's memories regards my dad who passed away in 2003 was the fact that when John came around in the very early 70s my dad would watch Thunderbirds with us too.

It really was family entertainment. Visionary, innovative, humane in its messages and delivery; and like the web today the stories counted. There was humour and human frailty on display too, a great primer for a future mental health nurse.

http://gerryanderson.wikia.com/wiki/Thunderbirds_Are_Go

There are favourite episodes - that featuring Fireflash, the Sidewinder, Sunprobe and Zero X from the film Thunderbirds Are Go that I saw on first release at the cinema.

I acquired a love of film soundtracks from the marriage of music and the action in Thunderbirds. Fusion existed in the 60s. Even before Star Trek arrived in the UK there was hope and optimism for the future.

Thanks Gerry!

Call - 2nd Compendium of innovative health technologies: medical devices and eHealth solutions 2013

Call for theSecond Compendium of innovative health technologies:
medical devices and eHealth solutions 2013

Health - World Health Organization WHO

Call PDF file at: http://bit.ly/ZHF2Yo
eHealth Submission form: http://bit.ly/VSZxeh
Medical Device submission form: http://bit.ly/10fk0lh

The previous compendium 2012 can be found at: http://bit.ly/11g8YLG

The deadline for submission is 15 March 2013 Medical devices and eHealth solutions have the potential to improve lives. However, too many people worldwide suffer because they don’t have access to the appropriate health technologies. This call highlights the importance of these innovative technologies towards improved health outcomes and the quality of life. WHO aims to raise awareness of the pressing need for appropriate design solutions.
The Compendium series was initiated to encourage a dialogue between stakeholders and stimulate further development and technology dissemination.

For the purpose of this call, the term ‘health technologies’ refers to medical devices and eHealth solutions.

In this context, ‘medical devices’ cover medical equipment and instruments, in vitro diagnostics and imaging devices as well as assistive devices and related health technologies excluding clinical procedures, medicinal products, vaccines, biological therapeutic products, or tissue-engineered medical products. 'eHealth solutions' refer to the use of information and communication technologies including electronic and communication devices and applications (such as telemedicine; mobile applications for surveillance, telehealth, diagnostics, appointment reminders; etc.) in support of health systems and services. All eHealth applications should conform to the existing standards.

Innovative health technologies in this context include: 
- New products or applications;
- Products or applications which have been commercialized for less than 5 years in high-resource settings but have not yet been widely used in low- and middle-resource settings;
- Non-health products or applications that have recently been adapted for a health purpose;
- Products available in low-resource settings for less than 5 years but not yet widely used.

Contributors to the previous compendium series whose technology advanced from ‘under development’ status to launched product are encouraged to submit their updated entry.

Eligibility

The ‘Call for innovative health technologies: medical devices and eHealth solutions for low-resource settings 2013’ is open to manufacturers, institutions, academia, individuals and non-profit organizations that design, manufacture and/or supply any type of innovative health technologies that are suitable for use in low-resource settings and address the global health concerns as outlined in section 4 at: http://bit.ly/ZHF2Yo 

Health problems to be addressed 

 The Call for innovative health technologies for low-resource settings 2013 puts a specific focus on the following technologies:

1. Medical device (including telemedicine solutions) that address one of the following key global health concerns:

- Birth asphyxia and birth trauma
- Cancer
- Cataracts
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Diabetes mellitus
- Diarrheal diseases
- Hearing loss
- Ischemic heart disease
- Lower respiratory infections
- Maternal health - Neonatal infections
- Pneumonia
- Prematurity and low birth weight
- Refractive errors
- Vascular diseases 

 2. eHealth solutions may support one of the following areas:

- Decision support systems
- Diagnostic and treatment support
- Electronic health/electronic medical record
- Emergency/humanitarian relief
- Geographic information system
- Healthcare management
- Health workforce training
- Heath information systems
- Health education
- Health surveys
- Management of patient information
- Management of hospital information
- Management of emergencies
- Patient monitoring
- Public health surveillance
- Telehealth/telemedicine
- Treatment compliance 

Selection of technologies

All submissions undergo an evaluation process; technologies will be assessed by an expert panel based on the material and evidence provided by the applicant as well as publicly available information. Note that inclusion in the Compendium does not constitute a warranty for fitness of the technology for a particular purpose nor endorsement of the product by WHO. Entries must demonstrate the technology’s suitability for use in low-resource settings.

Technologies are then selected for inclusion in the Compendium if they meet at least one of the criteria below:

• The technology or the practice is better suited to address a health problem than existing solutions available or improves current health systems and services. Examples of improvements over existing technologies  may include superior effectiveness; enhanced ease of use and maintenance; reduced training requirements; labor saving; improved safety level for user, patient, and/or environment; increased social and cultural acceptability; technical superiority; improved accessibility, better cost-effectiveness and affordability; reduced energy requirements.
• The technology provides an appropriate solution to a health problem not yet addressed by any other technology. 

KMC/2012/KMC
Twitter http://twitter.com/eqpaho


  *      *     *
This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics; Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMC Area]
Washington DC USA “Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is". Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings and interpretations included in the Materials are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Pan American Health Organization PAHO/WHO or its country members”.
PAHO/WHO WebsiteEquity List - Archives - Join/remove: http://listserv.paho.org/Archives/equidad.html Twitter http://twitter.com/eqpaho

c/o HIFA2015 - Meeting Information needs for Mental Health Care

Dear all.

I've been reading the messages about mental health and information needs in low resource settings. I agree that it's still such a disappointment that certain publishers refuse to make these core documents / books (like Where there is no Psychiatrist and Where there is no Child Psychiatrist) open access. Hope 2013 will bring changes......

I know a few free online/download alternatives for the mental health field:

In the Hesperian.org bookstore you find free downloads of a couple of health care guides in different languages including 'Where Women have No Doctor'. This book contains a brief mental health care chapter. Other helpful Hesperian books like 'Disabled Village Children', and the 'famous one' 'Where there is no Doctor'.
Link: http://hesperian.org/books-and-resources

Another is the WHO 'mhGAP Intervention Guide for mental, neurological and substance use disorders in non-specialized health settings'. Free download in English, French and Spanish. This is a 109 pages decision tree manual for depression, psychosis, bipolar disorders, epilepsy, developmental and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents, dementia, alcohol use disorders, drug use disorders, self-harm/suicide and other significant emotional or medically unexplained complaints. It contains also  a chapter on 'general principles of care' and a brief chapter on 'advanced psychological interventions'.
Link: http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/mhGAP_intervention_guide/en/index.html

The international NGO Basic Needs offers downloads of manuals and reports like 'Community Mental Health Practice, Seven Essential Features for Scaling Up in Low and Middle Income Countries', 'Essential Skills for mental health care',  'Mental Health Care, An Introductory Manual for Training General Health Personnel' amongst others.
Link for books: http://www.basicneeds.org/html/Publications_BasicNeeds_Books.htm
Link for manuals: http://www.basicneeds.org/html/Publications_BasicNeeds_Manuals.htm

For mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings the WHO/World Vision/War Trauma Foundation publication is very helpful: 'Psychological First Aid: Guide for field workers', 60 pages and lots of illustrations.
Link for the PDF:
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789241548205_eng.pdf

Or the WHO/IASC 'Guidelines for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings', 205 pages and free downloads available in 7 languages. The manual is distributed on CDrom as well.
Link: http://www.who.int/mental_health/emergencies/9781424334445/en/index.html

For psychosocial support of children the NGO HealthNetTPO offers free downloads of their 'Psychosocial Care Package Children' with Modules, Tools and Publications sections. It contains information that describes the rationale, content and step-by-step implementation of the separate components of a comprehensive psychosocial care package (such as a Classroom Based Intervention, Counseling, Clinical Supervision, Screening and Psycho-education).
Link: http://www.healthnettpo.org/en/1311/psychosocial-care-package-children.html

In the field of psychosocial support for children and adults after emergencies or in HIV projects, the IFRC Psychosocial Centre offers free downloads of their manual like 'Psychosocial interventions - A
handbook', 'Community-based psychosocial support - A training kit', 'Children's Resilience Programme' and more.
Link: http://psp.drk.dk/sw40688.asp

This is where I stumbled on in the last few years. Hope it is helpful. Maybe I should write a blog post about it on the in2mentalhealth website, in order to make a comprehensive list which is available on
the internet for a longer period of time. So, if you have any additions please reply in this discussion or mail me with the link!

'Together we know more'.

Roos Korste
psychologist, trainer, blogger and founder of in2mentalhealth:
http://in2mentalhealth.wordpress.com
http://facebook.com/in2mentalhealth
http://twitter.com/in2mh
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rooskorste

Plus:
Thanks for the comprehensive list Roos. Handicap International developed a Policy Paper on : "Mental health in post-crisis and development contexts" which can be found here [PDF, 1.1Mb]:

http://www.handicap-international.us/fileadmin/files/documents/PP03_Mental_health_01.pdf

Do feel free to add this to your list of materials. [ *see note below ]

Kind regards

Antony
Antony Duttine
Rehabilitation Technical Advisor in Global Health

[ *Note from HIFA2015 moderator: Neil Pakenham-Walsh

I would also like to mention the Essential Health Links (EHL) gateway. EHL was set up by myself and Lenny Rhine while I was working at INASP in the late 90s and early 00s. It is now hosted by AED Satellife and Lenny continues to maintain it on a voluntary basis. The Mental Health and Psychiatry section is available here:
http://www.healthnet.org/essential-links/mental-health-and-psychiatry

Essential Health Links has more than 750 websites selected according to criteria such as appropriateness for low-resource settings and free access. "Essential Health Links is offered freely for use as a template by others (e.g. medical school libraries, ministries of health, publishers, libraries, NGOs) to develop customised gateways on their own websites. This approach should reduce the risk of duplication of effort while maximising the usefulness of the gateway for specific target groups."

With thanks, Neil PW ]

Personalised care and gravitas (literally)

The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens
Original Image Credit & Copyright: 
  J. Rhoads (Arizona State U.) et al.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is described as follows:

Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted from a background quasar. The gravitational field of the visible foreground galaxy breaks light from this distant quasar into four distinct images. The quasar must be properly aligned behind the center of a massive galaxy for a mirage like this to be evident. The general effect is known as gravitational lensing, and this specific case is known as the Einstein Cross. ...

Health care problems can weigh very heavy on the individual affected by them and their loved ones. To deliver personalised care we first need to resolve the four care domains (five including the spiritual). If personalised care is to be realised (aligned and integrated) in practice and not just two words in policy (political lensing), then we need to remember personalised care can be an illusion in itself.

Additional post:
Person centred care, wormholes, pesterers, care domains (iii)

Journal Special Issue on the Politics of Recovery and Resilience

 

Hi friends and colleagues: 

 

I'm sending forward the open link to a special issue of Studies in Social Justice on the Politics of Recovery and Resilience in Mental Health Care. Some of you helped Alison Howell ad I through the process of co-editing this special issue (thanks!), and for others this might be of use in you scholarship and teaching. The issue offers a variety of critiques on how the recovery model, participation, and resilience are being taken up in practice, as well as some modes of resistance.  My hope is that this issue will compliment the work that you are all already undertaking. Here's the link:

 

http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/ssj

 

Please feel free to circulate to your networks, thanks for you ongoing work & support and -- 

Happy new year! 

Jijian Voronka

 

My source: MHHE list