The Significance of Environmental Attributes as Indicators of the Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Packaging and Food Service Ware.

The environmental impacts of packaging and food service ware (FSW) are increasingly the subject of government policy, public discourse, and industry commitments. While some consideration is given to reducing the impacts of packaging across its entire life cycle, most of the focus is on packaging waste or feedstock substitution. Efforts typically focus on specific packaging characteristics, or material attributes, commonly perceived to be environmentally preferable. This article summarizes an extensive meta-review of existing published literature that was performed to determine whether the material attributes recyclability, recycled content, compostability, and biobased, commonly considered to be environmentally beneficial, correlate with lower net environmental impacts across the full life cycle of the packaging and FSW. Seventy-one unique life cycle assessment (LCA) studies that quantify the environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle of packaging and FSW were analyzed. These studies included over 5000 comparisons for 13 impact categories commonly analyzed in LCA studies. The results from the meta-review identified a number of instances where material attributes do not correlate with environmental benefits for packaging and FSW. Rather, other characteristics such as material choice or mass of the packaging/FSW products can have higher influence in determining life cycle impacts.

Why mental health service delivery needs to align alongside mainstream medical services.

There is significant individual human suffering and economic burden because of untreated mental health and substance use disorders. There is high psychiatric morbidity in primary and secondary medical care. At least one-fifth of patients attending primary care services in western countries pertain to mental health and one-third of patients attending general hospitals have a comorbid mental disorder. Patients with mental disorders have lower life expectancy than the general population due to various medical conditions and reduced access to physical healthcare. There is a suicide every 40 seconds and the vast majority of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental disorder. Despite this, most countries spend less than 2% of their health budgets on mental health. Effective treatments exist for mental disorders, however underfunding, poor integration of services, lack of trained health care professionals and stigma often prevent access to effective treatments. Stigma is a significant barrier to seeking help and receiving treatment. Geographical separation of mental health services from general hospital settings may be perpetuating the stigma of mental illness among the population. In this article, we review the key reasons why mental health services globally need to align with mainstream healthcare services and the longstanding reasons that necessitate the need to make mental health a public health priority.

The COVID-19 pandemic: an opportunity to make mental health a higher public health priority.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first recognised in December 2019. The subsequent pandemic has caused 4.3 million deaths and affected the lives of billions. It has increased psychosocial risk factors for mental illness including fear, social isolation and financial insecurity and is likely to lead to an economic recession. COVID-19 is associated with a high rate of neuropsychiatric sequelae. The long-term effects of the pandemic on mental health remain uncertain but could be marked, with some predicting an increased demand for psychiatric services for years to come. COVID-19 has turned a spotlight on mental health for politicians, policy makers and the public and provides an opportunity to make mental health a higher public health priority. We review longstanding reasons for prioritising mental health and the urgency brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlight strategies to improve mental health and reduce the psychiatric fallout of the pandemic.

An evaluation of automated, internet-based psychiatric history taking.

History taking using a web-based, automated software module (Historian) was compared with standard outpatient initial assessment on a community sample of 27 new psychiatric outpatients. The comprehensiveness and acceptability of the computer interview was evaluated. Historian was found to take psychiatric histories comparable with regard to content and comprehensiveness with those taken by clinicians. Historian was found to be highly acceptable to patients on a wide range of measures. History-taking software may help to prioritise referrals, focus the initial assessment and reduce consultation time in a psychiatric outpatient setting. The availability of a comprehensive history (Historian) is likely to lead to a shorter face-to-face consultation which could then be better focused on diagnosis and treatment. Service users with special needs such as hearing impairment, poor mobility or with no command of the English language (but literate in their native tongue) may benefit from improved access to psychiatric services.

Depression in Parkinson's disease: diagnosis and management.

Parkinson's disease has a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity including depression. This review highlights the epidemiology, aetiology and diagnosis of depression in patients with Parkinson's disease. Recommendations are made on treatment and a closer partnership between neurology and psychiatry.