The necessity to support displaced persons (IDPs) and to provide social assistance and pension payments has put the welfare system in Ukraine under extreme stress. The invasion has resulted in massive employment losses. According to ILO, around 44 percent of jobs may be lost , while according to the... national statistics the wage income comprised 60 percent of total disposable income.
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Over 3500 teachers and school psychologists has joined in a month an online course "I understand" on psychological and emotional support that is aimed at helping teachers to stabilize their emotional state in times of war and constant stress and providing practical tools to support schoolchildren an...d their parents. Course is launched by NGO “Osvitoria” in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and supported by UNICEF Ukraine.
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Un an après le début de la pandémie, la COVID-19 a changé le monde et continue de peser sur notre quotidien. La pandémie a mis en évidence les lacunes des systèmes de santé tandis que le personnel de santé a été exposé au virus de façon
disproportionnée. Tout au long de l’année pas...sée, les infirmières ont affiché leur volonté et leur souplesse
en s’adaptant à de nouvelles méthodes de travail. Des millions d’infections à la COVID-19 ont été signalées parmi les agents de santé dans le monde et, hélas, le Conseil International des Infirmières (CII) a enregistré près de 3 000 décès qui lui sont
imputables parmi les infirmières dans 60 pays. Il est probable que le chiffre réel soit beaucoup plus élevé, le nombre d’infections et de décès parmi les agents de santé restant impossible à évaluer avec précision dans la mesure où de nombreux systèmes et pays n’ont pas assuré le suivi de cette question capitale.
Sur le long terme, les effets de la COVID-19, dont la « COVID longue » et le syndrome de stress posttraumatique différé, pourraient avoir d’importants effets délétères, en particulier sur le personnel infirmie
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Overview
Early Adolescent Skills for Emotions (EASE) is an evidence-based group psychological intervention to help 10–15-year-olds affected by internalizing problems (e.g. stress and symptoms of anxiety, depression) in communities exposed to adversity. Published by the World He...alth Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), EASE aims to support adolescents and their caregivers with skills to reduce distress. The intervention consists of 7 group sessions for adolescents and 3 additional group sessions for their caregivers. It is based on adapted aspects from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and has been designed to be suitable for delivery by trained and supervised non-specialist helpers.
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Background
The core clinical symptoms of addiction include an enhanced incentive for drug taking (craving), impaired self-control (impulsivity and compulsivity), emotional dysregulation (negative mood) and increased stress reactivity. Symptoms related to impaired self-control involve reduced activi...ty in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), adjacent prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and other brain areas. Behavioral training such as mindfulness meditation can increase the function of control networks including those leading to improved emotion regulation and thus may be a promising approach for the treatment of addiction.
Methods
In a series of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), we tested whether increased ACC/mPFC activity is related to better self-control abilities in executive functions, emotion regulation and stress response in healthy and addicted populations. After a brief mindfulness training (Integrative Body-Mind Training, IBMT), we used the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Profile of Mood States (POMS) to measure emotion regulation, salivary cortisol for the stress response and fMRI for brain functional and DTI structural changes. Relaxation training was used to serve as an active control.
Results
In both smokers and nonsmokers, improved self-control abilities in emotion regulation and stress reduction were found after training and these changes were related to increased ACC/mPFC activity following training. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers showed reduced ACC/mPFC activity in the self-control network before training, and these deficits were ameliorated after training.
Conclusions
These results indicate that promoting emotion regulation and improving ACC/mPFC brain activity can help for addiction prevention and treatment.
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Keeping active can help people stay at a healthy weight, avoid many chronic health problems, and reduce stress and boost mood.
Despite all its benefits, about one in three people globally gets too little, if any, physical activity.
Introduces the GATHER approach to counseling, a patient-centered approach that improves patient satisfaction
Has a chapter offering basic biomedical information on cancer, as requested by health workers
Includes information about management of side effects
Encourages health workers to take care o...f themselves and acknowledges the stressful nature of their work.
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MALAWI Food Security Outlook JUNE 2018 to JANUARY 2019
As the postharvest period continues, very poor and poor households in districts in the southern and central region will face Stressed (IPC Phase 2) outcomes from June to September. Most of these districts will transition to Crisis (IPC Pha...se 3) during the lean season from October to January, when food prices are at their highest and local cereal supplies are at their lowest. Drivers of the projected area outcomes include below-average access to income from casual labor opportunities and crop sales because of dryness and erratic rains during the 2017/18 cropping season, and above-average maize prices from November to January.
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BMJ has created a free resource on SARS-CoV-2 and covid-19 to inform diagnosis and treatment, and to promote the wellbeing and safety of staff and patients during this extremely stressful and challenging period.
BMJ’s dedicated covid-19 hub not only draws on the latest peer reviewed research, n...ews and opinion from The BMJ and BMJ’s 70 + specialist journals. It also provides online CPD from BMJ Learning and guidance on the evidence-based management of covid-19 from BMJ Best Practice.
The content is updated daily so that healthcare professionals on the frontline of care can readily keep abreast of the latest developments in thinking and practice
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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in the treatment and care of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This report examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to NCD medicines, and the policies and strategies implemented by countries and health sys...tems to anticipate and mitigate stresses across NCD medicine supply chains. The full range of upstream and downstream impacts are investigated, including: manufacturing; procurement, importation and last mile delivery; patient-level effects through affordability and availability; and the effects on NCD medicine availability by category of disease. The report culminates in recommended actions and interventions for key stakeholders in the NCD pharmaceutical supply chain, including governments, regulatory authorities, manufacturers and the private sector; as well as directions for future research for improving access and supply chain access resilience.
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Climate changes lead to disasters and all of us must be prepared to support others as well as ourselves during such difficult times. Extreme weather events such as floods, wildfires, storms, or heat waves are stressful and the advice offered in the new one-pager reminds the general public of what th...ey can do to support their families, friends, neighbors, and community.
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Climate change is one of the most urgent challenges for people and ecosystems worldwide. The recently published sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stresses the occurrence of widespread adverse impacts of climate change. Increased frequency and inten...sity of extreme weather events, as well as slow-onset processes cause enormous losses and damages to human and natural systems. Marginalized groups and people in vulnerable situations are often disproportionally affected. While the impacts of climate change already become more tangible and threatening, action for addressing them remains insufficient. Adaptation to climate change is, thus, becoming a necessity for governments, companies, and private citizens.
To provide practical and scientifically sound guidance on how to conduct vulnerability assessments, GIZ published its Vulnerability Sourcebook in 2014. The Vulnerability Sourcebook was used in over twenty different GIZ partner countries and provides a step-by-step guidance for designing and implementing a vulnerability assessment. It is also one of the methodological foundations for the ISO 14091:2021 standard on vulnerability, impacts and risk assessment for climate change adaptation.
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The aim of the present paper is to review capacity building in public health nutrition (PHN), the need for which has been stressed for many years by a range of academics, national and international organisations. Although great strides have been made worldwide in the science of nutrition, there rema...in many problems of undernutrition and increasingly of obesity and related chronic diseases. The main emphasis in capacity building has been on the nutrition and health workforce, but the causes of these health problems are multifactorial and require collaboration across sectors in their solution. This means that PHN capacity building has to go beyond basic nutrition and beyond the immediate health workforce to policy makers in other sectors. The present paper provides examples of capacity building activities by various organisations, including universities, industry and international agencies. Examples of web-based courses are given including an introduction to the e-Nutrition Academy. The scope is international but with a special focus on Africa. In conclusion, there remains a great need for capacity building in PHN but the advent of the internet has revolutionised the possibilities.
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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in the treatment and care of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This report examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to NCD medicines, and the policies and strategies implemented by countries and health sys...tems to anticipate and mitigate stresses across NCD medicine supply chains. The full range of upstream and downstream impacts are investigated, including: manufacturing; procurement, importation and last mile delivery; patient-level effects through affordability and availability; and the effects on NCD medicine availability by category of disease. The report culminates in recommended actions and interventions for key stakeholders in the NCD pharmaceutical supply chain, including governments, regulatory authorities, manufacturers and the private sector; as well as directions for future research for improving access and supply chain access resilience.
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The coronavirus outbreak that began in 2019 (COVID-19) threatens to reverse years of hard-won gains in preventing and treating HIV. Fragile health systems are further stressed as health workers navigate an increased client load and demands at work while also being concerned for their own health and ...that of their families. Health facilities have been redesigned to care for patients with COVID-19, posing challenges to other services. Governments and civil society organizations have redirected scarce resources and shifted programming priorities to respond to the pandemic. Several countries have reported intermittent declines in HIV testing and diagnosis, antenatal care visits, collection of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) by people living with HIV, and attendance at clinic appointments. Community-based education and support programmes have had to rapidly adapt to restrictions on movement and public gatherings. Children, adolescents, and women have experienced multiple deprivations due to the adverse impact of the pandemic.
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Individual psychological help for adults impaired by distress in communities exposed to adversity.
The manual describes a scalable psychological intervention called Problem Management Plus (PM+) for adults impaired by distress in communities who are exposed to adversity. Aspects of Cognitive Behavi...oural Therapy (CBT) have been changed to make them feasible in communities that do not have many specialists. To ensure maximum use, the intervention is developed in such a way that it can help people with depression, anxiety and stress, whether or not exposure to adversity has caused these problems. It can be applied to improve aspects of mental health and psychosocial well-being no matter how severe people’s problems are.
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The articles in this compendium elaborate on some of the ideas shared at the symposium. Together, they provide a broad view of the dynamic interactions among physical, sexual and brain development that take place during adolescence. They highlight some of the risks to optimal development – includi...ng toxic stress, which can interfere with the formation of brain connections, and other vulnerabilities unique to the onset of puberty and independence. They also point to the opportunities for developing interventions that can build on earlier investments in child development – consolidating gains and even offsetting the effects of deficits and traumas experienced earlier in childhood.
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Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report, No. 47
The increasing number of refugees, asylum seekers and irregular migrants poses a challenge for mental health services in Europe. This review found that these groups are exposed to risk factors for mental disorders before, during and after migration. ...The prevalence rates of psychotic, mood and substance use disorders in these groups are variable but overall are similar to those in the host populations; however, the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in refugees and asylum seekers are higher.
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Introduction The novel Coronavirus (nCoV) epidemic in 2019 -2020 has recently emerged. The route of transmission is not totally known, although it is known that it can spread from person to person, and local health care systems may be ill-equipped to handle a large-scale outbreak. Furthermore, misco...nceptions and misinformation about the disease often spreads rapidly in such epidemics.
In previous epidemics mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) has been identified as a key priority. MHPSS ensures the well-being of the affected populations, and counter-acts the threats to public health and safety that fear, stigmatization and misconception pose. Access to information, knowledge about the disease and how it spreads, make it easier for the affected to feel supported and calm, and to comply with instructions. Furthermore, psychosocial support to staff and volunteers help the operation as work conditions are extremely stressful.
This briefing note provides background knowledge on the MHPSS aspects related to nCoV and suggests MHPSS activities that can be implemented. The messages can be helpful for those in contact with patients or relatives and feel the strain of working and living during the epidemic. The briefing is aimed both at those working in any capacity with those affected by nCoV and for the MHPSS responders who implement MHPSS activities and interventions for everyone affected.
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People in prisons and other places of detention live in a closed environment and in close proximity with one another – conditions that facilitate transmission of diseases. They also have a greater underlying burden of disease and worse health conditions than the general population, and frequently ...face greater exposure to risks such as smoking, poor hygiene and weak immune defence due to stress, poor nutrition or existing diseases. All these factors make people living in prison more susceptible to infections.
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