The WISQARS Leading Causes of Death website is a mine of information for researchers and bloggers alike. I searched it to find out what the leading causes of death are for people (all races, both sexes) in the US aged 10-24 years. The top three in 2010 were: Unintentional injury (e.g. road traffic accidents, poisoning, [read the full story…]
Introduction This report was written to identify the various consequences of reducing access to contraceptive and sexual health services in the UK, a resulting consequence of changes to commissioning in the UK. The implications are not just for short-term health care costs, but for medium and long-term financial aspects of all public sector departments, [read the full story…]
Schizophrenia according to the NICE guidelines, is a relatively common illness and in the majority of cases takes a chronic course, requiring continued management and careful attention. In the treatment and management of schizophrenia, antipsychotic medications – like olanzapine, quetiapine or clozapine – are the first line intervention. Antipsychotics can be loosely divided into “first-generation” (“typical”) and [read the full story…]
People with learning disabilities are living longer. The Royal College of Nursing website suggests that over the course of the last century, life expectancy for this group has increased significantly, with mean life expectancy estimated to be 74, 67 and 58 for those with mild, moderate and severe learning disabilities respectively. The researchers in 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…]
The authors of this study were interested in looking at support to adults with autism spectrum disorder in staffed housing services. Their focus was on looking at whether diagnostic congregation, or grouping people with similar diagnoses, was prevalent in services and if so, whether it had any impact on outcomes. They worked with 157 adults [read the full story…]
Short breaks offer a way for people with disabilities and their family carers to take a break from each other. For the person supported, they offer an opportunity to be away from home and for family carers an opportunity to recharge depleted batteries. In 2003, Mencap surveyed seventy six families from across England and Northern [read the full story…]
Avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions for ‘ambulatory care sensitive conditions’ (ACSCs), reduces costs and should provide good outcomes for patients. ACSCs are defined as those where ‘effective management’ at the primary care level should avoid admission to hospital. Many of the conditions identified as ACSCs, for example convulsions and epilepsy are more common among people with [read the full story…]
Depression and anxiety are common conditions in adolescence that can lead to persistent and life-long mood and anxiety disorders for some people. One theory is that prenatal maternal stress can contribute to depression in young people (the so called fetal programming hypothesis). The notion here is that pregnant women who experience stress may send messages to their foetus [read the full story…]
Our friends at Norah Fry in Bristol who are responsible for carrying out the work on the confidential inquiry into premature death in people with learning disabilities have asked us to let you know that the final report of the study will shortly be available and that there will be two opportunities to hear some [read the full story…]
