A feasibility study of psychological first aid as a supportive intervention among police officers exposed to traumatic events.

Introduction: Police officers are often exposed to traumatic events, which can induce psychological distress and increase the risk of developing post-traumatic stress injuries. To date, little is known about support and prevention of traumatic events in police organizations. Psychological first aid (PFA) has been promoted as a promising solution to prevent psychological distress following exposure to a traumatic event. However, PFA has not yet been adapted to policing reality, let alone to the frequent exposure to traumatic events faced by this population. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of PFA as an early intervention for the prevention of post-traumatic stress injuries among police officers in Quebec, Canada. Specifically, the objectives were to evaluate: (1) the demand. (2) the practicality, and (3) the acceptability of PFA in a police organization. Methods: A feasibility study was conducted to evaluate the implementation of PFA among Quebec's provincial police force. To do so, 36 police officers participated in semi-structured interviews between October 26th, 2021, and July 23rd, 2022. Participants were comprised of responders (n = 26), beneficiaries (n = 4) and managers (n = 6). Interviews were transcribed, coded, and evaluated according to a thematic analysis. Results: Eleven themes emerged from participants' responses. Results suggested that PFA met individual and organizational needs. References were also made regarding the impacts of this intervention. Moreover, participants provided feedback for improving the implementation and sustainability of a PFA program. All three groups of participants shared similar thematic content. Discussion: Findings revealed that implementation of a PFA program in a law enforcement agency was feasible and could be accomplished without major issues. Importantly, PFA had beneficial consequences within the organization. Specifically, PFA destigmatized mental health issues and renewed a sense of hope among police personnel. These findings are in line with previous research.

Anorexia nervosa in adolescents: evolution of weight history and impact of excess premorbid weight.

The purpose of our study is to establish if the proportion of patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa that have a history of excess weight has increased over a 10-year period and to study how different premorbid weight groups vary in terms of clinical characteristics. We performed a single-center, retrospective cohort study of all new patients presenting with anorexia nervosa, restrictive and binge/purge subtypes, in 2004 and 2014 at the Adolescent Medicine Clinic of Sainte-Justine University Health Centre (n = 172). The prevalence of excess premorbid weight was similar in both cohorts (32% in 2004 versus 29.5% in 2014). The historically overweight subgroup had a lower heart rate at intake (64.77 versus 69.75, p = 0.03). Patients with excess premorbid weight lost an average of 1 kg more per month than their historically thinner counterparts (2.6 kg versus 1.6 kg/month, p = 0.0011). The total decrease in BMI was much greater in patients with a history of excess weight (7 BMI points versus 3.8, p = 0.0001).Conclusion: Since overweight and obese patients present with significant weight suppression values, our study stresses the importance of screening for AN in all patients rather than in only the noticeably underweight. What is Known: • More than one third of patients presenting with AN have a history of overweight or obesity, which is comparable to the general population. • A delay between AN onset and diagnosis has been described in overweight adolescents. What is New: • Historically overweight patients presenting with AN demonstrate increased speed of weight loss, greater drop in BMI, and lower heart rate at presentation. • For patients with a history of excess weight considered as having recovered from AN, the average BMI at discharge was within normal limits.

[On the University of Recovery]. / De l'Université du rétablissement.

Objectives Located at the heart of a mental health university institute in Montreal, Canada, the University of Recovery (UR) is a peer-run agency of service users who came together as a private non-profit organization to promote their experiential knowledge in science and public health, and to transform the academic milieu as an inclusive work environment conducive to recovery and full citizenship. UR students can thus have access to scientific conferences and classes on various topics and invite scientists or other professionals to further discuss new discoveries and techniques, and possible ways of improving healthcare from a patients' and service users' perspective. Our conversation with a scientist specialized in obsessive-compulsive disorders triggered this collective reflection on neuroimaging in terms of psychiatric diagnoses, prognoses, recovery opportunities and meta-cognition.Method At the core of the UR as a therapeutic education program is the Projet Citoyen, an adaptation and a transposition in Montreal of the Yale Citizens Project, which has been developed in New Haven, USA, over the past fifteen years. The Projet Citoyen is comprised of four main components: bi-weekly group discussions, individualized peer support, involvement and practicum in the community, and participation in public events and debates. UR students therefore evolve in the academic and scientific milieu, here regarded as a translational community and human laboratory towards social inclusion and full citizenship. UR students can be involved as auxiliaries of medical training to always promote and illustrate recovery opportunities when psychiatric 'dysfunctions' or 'disorders' are the topics of a medical class. In April 2016, UR students invited Dr Marc Lavoie to discuss is work on obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD). The content of this group discussion is herein reported.Results UR students learned, among other things, that neuroimaging can be used to identify patterns of brain reactions to various stimuli and situations, reactions that can be different from one psychiatric condition to another and to the rest of the 'normal' population. For example, bright red, green, or blue shades of color can show an over-activation of the thalamus for persons with OCD. This difference can be indicative of a so-called cognitive impairment, with some people reacting more 'emotionally' to an image than other persons for whom the reaction would imply parts of the brain which are normally rather associated to 'rational' thinking (e.g.: the cerebral cortex). Such a difference, when it appears through a neuroimaging technique like EEG or MRI, does not lead to the enunciation of a particular diagnosis for an individual, but can give some complementary indications to be used in conjunction with other observations and can inform the choice for a therapeutic approach. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, for instance, has been statistically shown to be associated with anatomic changes in the human brain. Through some quite spectacular images of parts and subparts of the brain in action, UR students were able to admire all this beautiful neurodiversity. Then we discussed the concept of neuroplasticity: we now know that many aspects of the brain remain changeable or "plastic" even into adulthood, which contrasts with the previous common consensus that the human brain develops during childhood, then remains at once unchangeable afterward and "static."Conclusion Diverse neurological conditions appear as a result of normal variations in the human genome and in affect, the concepts of neurodiversity and of neuroplasticity go much beyond the prevailing prior conceptual conditioning of neurological differences as being inherently pathological and an irreversible "error of Mother Nature." There may be behaviors that cannot be controlled through rational thought, but rather emerge based on prior conditioning from the environment and other external and/or internal stimuli, and a psychotherapy could then consist of recognizing this conditioning and learning how to think and react differently to a triggering stimulus. The University of Recovery is thus first and foremost a principle of mutuality among its members - the students in recovery - who are allied through self-help as a basis for metacognitive therapeutic education.

Thermal manipulation of the chicken embryo triggers differential gene expression in response to a later heat challenge.

BACKGROUND: Meat type chickens have limited capacities to cope with high environmental temperatures, this sometimes leading to mortality on farms and subsequent economic losses. A strategy to alleviate this problem is to enhance adaptive capacities to face heat exposure using thermal manipulation (TM) during embryogenesis. This strategy was shown to improve thermotolerance during their life span. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of TM (39.5 °C, 12 h/24 vs 37.8 °C from d7 to d16 of embryogenesis) and of a subsequent heat challenge (32 °C for 5 h) applied on d34 on gene expression in the Pectoralis major muscle (PM). A chicken gene expression microarray (8 × 60 K) was used to compare muscle gene expression profiles of Control (C characterized by relatively high body temperatures, Tb) and TM chickens (characterized by a relatively low Tb) reared at 21 °C and at 32 °C (CHC and TMHC, respectively) in a dye-swap design with four comparisons and 8 broilers per treatment. Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was subsequently performed to validate differential expression in each comparison. Gene ontology, clustering and network building strategies were then used to identify pathways affected by TM and heat challenge. RESULTS: Among the genes differentially expressed (DE) in the PM (1.5 % of total probes), 28 were found to be differentially expressed between C and TM, 128 between CHC and C, and 759 between TMHC and TM. No DE gene was found between TMHC and CHC broilers. The majority of DE genes analyzed by RT-qPCR were validated. In the TM/C comparison, DE genes were involved in energy metabolism and mitochondrial function, cell proliferation, vascularization and muscle growth; when comparing heat-exposed chickens to their own controls, TM broilers developed more specific pathways than C, especially involving genes related to metabolism, stress response, vascularization, anti-apoptotic and epigenetic processes. CONCLUSIONS: This study improved the understanding of the long-term effects of TM on PM muscle. TM broilers displaying low Tb may have lower metabolic intensity in the muscle, resulting in decreased metabolic heat production, whereas modifications in vascularization may enhance heat loss. These specific changes could in part explain the better adaptation of TM broilers to heat.