[Correspondence] Mapping and understanding exclusion
On behalf of Mental Health Europe I would like to respond to the Lancet's Editorial (Jan 27, p 282)1 written about our Mapping and Understanding Exclusion report.2 Although we welcome the coverage of our report, we were disappointed to see a reference to the need to uphold the status quo on coercive measures, which might lead to confusion regarding the conclusions of our report. The Lancet's Editorial stated that: “Involuntary treatment and detention are a necessary part of mental health care”.1 This statement is contrary to the core message in our report, which recommended that to reduce coercion in mental health serv...
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Nigel Henderson Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Beware the medicalisation of loneliness
Loneliness was recently described in The Lancet as a public health problem that needs to be solved by the medical community (Feb 3, p 426).1 We believe that the medicalisation of loneliness in this way is damaging, especially at a time when the issue is making its way into public understanding. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Amy K McLennan, Stanley J Ulijaszek Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] mHealth and the legacy of John Snow
On Jan 14, 2018, during a tense final touchdown in a US National Football League playoff game, numerous Apple Watch users received an alert from their device telling them that they were having potentially harmful arrhythmias.1 Smartphones and wearable technology are increasingly used as public health tools because billions of people worldwide are digital users. In 2020, more than 6 billion people will have smartphone subscriptions.2 Clinicians and researchers can use these devices to effortlessly monitor patients' health and behaviour indicators in real time. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Alejandro Santos-Lozano, Carlos Baladr ón, Juan Martín-Hernández, Javier S Morales, Luis Ruilope, Alejandro Lucia Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Post-trial responsibilities beyond post-trial access
What happens at the end of a trial when a patient responds to an investigational medication and benefits considerably? Many people believe that this patient should continue to receive the beneficial drug. This belief underlies the idea of post-trial access —providing investigational interventions post-trial to participants who benefited from them—and was formally introduced by the Declaration of Helsinki in 2000. But even if this patient did not benefit from the investigational medication, doing nothing for them at the end of the trial seems ethic ally problematic. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Hae Lin Cho, Marion Danis, Christine Grady Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Protecting health care in armed conflict: action towards accountability
Driven by a deplorable trend of unlawful attacks on health-care facilities and workers in armed conflicts throughout the world, on May 3, 2016, the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 2286 calling for an end to such attacks.1 The Secretary-General followed with recommendations of concrete measures for implementation.2 However, unlawful attacks on health care have continued or intensified in many conflicts, notably in Syria. We, academic institutions, civil society, and co-sponsoring Member States, convened a side event during the 72nd UN General Assembly to focus global attention on this issue and the imperative ...
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Ildefonso Castro, Christiaan Rebergen, Matthew Rycroft, Iman Nuwayhid, Leonard Rubenstein, Ahmad Tarakji, Naz Modirzadeh, Homer Venters, Samer Jabbour Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Obituary] Robert Day
Public health expert who directed the US Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Born in Framingham, MA, USA, on Oct 22, 1930, he died from lung cancer on Jan 6, 2018, in Seattle, WA, USA, aged 87 years. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Alison Snyder Tags: Obituary Source Type: research
[Perspectives] Do doctors die better than philosophers?
Death has become quite modish, and being constantly aware of one's mortality is now regarded as an essential component of spiritual and psychological health. My book The Way We Die Now was published in 2016, and since then I have given many talks and written several articles on the subject of death. I am often asked whether all of this talking and writing about death has prepared me any better for my own demise. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Seamus O'Mahony Tags: Perspectives Source Type: research
[Perspectives] Guo-Qiang Chen: haematologist who risked all for research success
If determination is a predictor of future achievements in medical research, the likelihood that Professor Guo-Qiang Chen would have a flourishing career should have become apparent when he was still a very junior doctor. To leave the provincial medical school to which he was then contracted and relocate himself to a distant and more research-oriented institution, he had to find the money to take on a major debt. It was, as he himself admits, “a gamble”. Now, some 25 years later, Chen is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chancellor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and Director of its Labor...
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Geoff Watts Tags: Perspectives Source Type: research
[Perspectives] The teenage brain: under construction
There have been times when I've said that if I ended up meeting my teenage self, due to some bizarre time-travel mishap, I'd probably end up trying to strangle the arrogant, bungling, self-absorbed waste of space that he was. I've heard other people echo similar sentiments. It's weird how so many think so little of their adolescent selves, from their older, more mature perspective. How can we change so much and yet remain the same person? And why were we like that, consumed with all the neuroses and priorities that as adolescents were so vital but now just seem ridiculous, or baffling, or even a little sad? (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Dean Burnett Tags: Perspectives Source Type: research
[Perspectives] Syphilis
For early modern physicians syphilis was “the great imitator”, a disease that mystified with the sheer range of its symptoms and the length of time it might take to show itself. Syphilis was first recorded in Europe in the mid-1490s, and the coincidence with Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the New World led contemporary physician s (along with more recent archaeologists and historians) to conclude that his sailors had brought the disease back with them. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Richard Barnett Tags: Perspectives Source Type: research
[World Report] Charles Perkins Centre
Obesity and the diseases that are related to it are at the core field of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre, led by a man whose first area of research was locust behaviour. Stephen Simpson says his own varied background shows why this research body is different. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Chris McCall Tags: World Report Source Type: research
[World Report] Mediators help migrants access health services in Italy
Cultural mediators can help migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees to face what can seem an insurmountable wall of cultural difference. Amanda Sperber reports from Polistena. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Amanda Sperber Tags: World Report Source Type: research
[World Report] Ireland to vote on a referendum to repeal the Eighth
Ireland has set a date for a referendum that could be decisive in women's access to abortion. Anita Makri reports on the arguments on both sides of the debate. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Anita Makri Tags: World Report Source Type: research
[Comment] Offline: “A sea of suffering”
How did it happen that palliative care lost the dignity debate? Palliative care is a discipline dedicated to improving quality of life by preventing and alleviating suffering. There can be few higher callings in medicine. Yet those who advocate “dignity in dying” have successfully claimed that the idea of dignity lies not in palliative care but in assisted dying for the terminally ill. A large majority of the public seems to agree. Those in favour of assisted dying have portrayed palliative care as somehow antithetical to patient auton omy. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Richard Horton Tags: Comment Source Type: research
[Comment] The social sciences, humanities, and health
Humanities and social sciences have had many positive influences on health experiences, care, and expenditure. These include on self-management for diabetes, provision of psychological therapy, handwashing, hospital checklists, the Scottish Government's stroke guidelines, England's tobacco control strategy, the response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa and Zika virus in Brazil, and many more.1 Researchers have shown time and time again the political, practical, economic, and civic value of education and research in disciplines like anthropology, history, and philosophy. (Source: LANCET)
Source: LANCET - April 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Martyn Pickersgill, Sarah Chan, Gill Haddow, Graeme Laurie, Devi Sridhar, Steve Sturdy, Sarah Cunningham-Burley Tags: Comment Source Type: research
