Culture

Schools, local councils and professionals need better guidance and training to work with migrant families from Eastern Europe and their children, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Patients who were sexually active before suffering a heart attack were one and a half times more likely to recapture their sex lives if they received guidance on the topic before leaving the hospital, a new study finds.

While it's no surprise that sexual activity tends to decline slightly for both men and women during the year following a heart attack, or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), researchers found that many patients who said they did not get medical counsel prior to hospital discharge either unnecessarily delayed or refrained from sex.

Findings are to be announced today (May 9) on why ex-armed forces personnel end up in prison.

Dr James Treadwell from the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester will present his research before his peers at a research seminar.

The evidence underlying the current widely-held view that foreign aid for health in a recipient country leads to a displacement or diversion of government funds from that country's health sector is unreliable and should not be used to guide policy, according to experts writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new review of survey results says that higher levels of income inequality in the United States lead to more deaths in the country over a period of years. The findings suggest that income inequality at any one point doesn't make a difference but it leads to increasing mortality rates 5 years later, and its influence peaks after 7 years, before fading again after 12 years. If that sounds odd, yeah. Welcome to sociology.

Below are highlights of orthopaedic research studies appearing in the May 2, 2012 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), as well as the issue's full Table of Contents.

Study Quantifies the High Cost of Hand and Wrist Injuries (Patients Available for Interviews)

A key change in Brazilian law simplifying the sale of repossessed cars has enabled low-income borrowers in the country to get credit more easily and buy newer, more expensive cars, a new study shows.

The study from the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty examines car loans from one of Brazil's leading banks before and after a 2004 law that enabled banks to sell repossessed cars quickly without going through a lengthy court process.

PHILADELPHIA, May 8, 2012 – New data released today at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association show that patients with unipolar, non-psychotic Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) receiving transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with NeuroStar TMS Therapy® achieved significant improvements in both depression symptoms and in quality of life measurements. Overall, 58 percent of patients achieved a positive response to NeuroStar TMS therapy, with 37 percent of patients achieving remission from their depression.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—As the country emerges from the Great Recession, a substantial number of U.S. families are underwater—and not just with their mortgages.

According to a new University of Michigan report, about one out of every five U.S. households owe more on credit cards, medical bills, student loans and other noncollateralized debts than they have in savings and other liquid assets.

Wondering why your toddler is acting up? University of Alberta researcher Christina Rinaldi says it may be time to take a look at your parental style—and your partner's.

Americans spend, on average, only about two hours each week participating in sports and fitness activities, according to researchers at Penn State and the University of Maryland who examined U.S. government data from the American Time Use Study.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults aged 18 to 64 get about four hours of physical activity each week by exercising moderately for 2.5 hours per week and engaging in a vigorous activity, such as running and muscle strengthening, for an hour and fifteen minutes per week.

Antidepressive drugs reduce the mortality rate of schizophrenic patients, while treatment with bensodiazepines greatly increases it, especially as regards suicide. Giving several antipsychotics simultaneously, however, seems to have no effect at all. This according to a new study examining different drug combinations administered to patients with schizophrenia.

"We weren't aware that the beneficial effects of antidepressives were so powerful," says Jari Tiihonen, professor of clinical psychiatry at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Neuroscience in Stockholm, Sweden.

To calculate physicians' fees under Medicare – which in turn influence some state and private payers' decisions on how they will pay doctors -- the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) relies on the recommendations of an American Medical Association advisory panel. A study led by Miriam Laugesen, PhD at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, found that the Medicare and Medicaid agency closely followed the committee's recommendations on the fees physicians are paid, which are based on an assessment of time and effort associated with various physicians' services.

Television viewing and unhealthy eating habits in U.S. adolescents appear to be linked in a national survey of students in the fifth to 10 th grades, according to a report published in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The study is part of the Nutrition and the Health of Children and Adolescents theme issue.

Among adults with depression and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, or both, a collaborative care intervention incorporating a team-centered care approach is associated with improvements in depression-free days and quality-adjusted life-years, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication.