Employees with mental health problems often struggle to remain in employment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees face multiple additional stressors, which are likely to worsen their mental ...health and work productivity. Currently, it is unclear how to best support employees with mental health problems (and their managers) to improve wellbeing and productivity. We aim to develop a new intervention (MENTOR) that will jointly involve employees, managers, and a new professional (mental health employment liaison worker, MHELW), to help employees who are still at work with a mental health condition and currently receiving professional support for their mental health. A feasibility pilot study will then be undertaken to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention from the perspective of employees and line managers. The study involves a feasibility randomised controlled study comparing outcomes of participants randomised to receive the intervention (MENTOR) with wait-list controls. Participants allocated to the waitlist control group will receive the intervention after three months. We aim to randomise 56 employee-manager pairs recruited from multiple organisations in the Midlands region of England. An intervention including 10 sessions for employees and managers (3 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions) will be delivered over 12 weeks by trained MHELWs. Primary outcomes include measures of feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and work productivity. Secondary outcomes include mental health outcomes. Qualitative interviews will be undertaken with a purposively selected sub-sample of employees and line managers at three-month post-intervention assessment. To our knowledge, this will be the first trial with a joint employee-manager intervention delivered by MHELWs. Anticipated challenges are dual-level consent (employees and managers), participants' attrition, and recruitment strategies. If the intervention and trial processes are shown to be feasible and acceptable, the outcomes from this study will inform future randomised controlled trials. Trial registration: This trial is pre-registered with the ISRCTN registry, registration number: ISRCTN79256498. Protocol version: 3.0_March_2023. https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN79256498.
To report a unique case of atypical Coats' Syndrome in an 80 year old female with facioscapulohumeral dystrophy.
An 80 years old female was diagnosed clinically of retinal telangiectasia with ...exudation threatening the fovia. She received a successful macular laser photocoagulation with subsequent cessation of leakage.
This case is in keeping with Coats' syndrome in fascioscapulohumeral dystrophy, which classically affects young male subjects - making this patient an obvious outlier. This once again reflects the variation in phenotypic manifestations of inherited disorders.
Employees with mental health problems often struggle to remain in employment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees face multiple additional stressors, which are likely to worsen their mental ...health and work productivity. Currently, it is unclear how to best support employees with mental health problems (and their managers) to improve wellbeing and productivity. We aim to develop a new intervention (MENTOR) that will jointly involve employees, managers, and a new professional (mental health employment liaison worker, MHELW), to help employees who are still at work with a mental health condition and currently receiving professional support for their mental health. A feasibility pilot study will then be undertaken to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention from the perspective of employees and line managers. The study involves a feasibility randomised controlled study comparing outcomes of participants randomised to receive the intervention (MENTOR) with wait-list controls. Participants allocated to the waitlist control group will receive the intervention after three months. We aim to randomise 56 employee-manager pairs recruited from multiple organisations in the Midlands region of England. An intervention including 10 sessions for employees and managers (3 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions) will be delivered over 12 weeks by trained MHELWs. Primary outcomes include measures of feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and work productivity. Secondary outcomes include mental health outcomes. Qualitative interviews will be undertaken with a purposively selected sub-sample of employees and line managers at three-month post-intervention assessment. To our knowledge, this will be the first trial with a joint employee-manager intervention delivered by MHELWs. Anticipated challenges are dual-level consent (employees and managers), participants' attrition, and recruitment strategies. If the intervention and trial processes are shown to be feasible and acceptable, the outcomes from this study will inform future randomised controlled trials. Trial registration: This trial is pre-registered with the ISRCTN registry, registration number: ISRCTN79256498. Protocol version: 3.0_March_2023.
A 77-year-old woman who underwent an uncomplicated laparoscopic mesh sacrohysteropexy (LMH) in 2009 for uterovaginal prolapse, presented with features of small bowel obstruction (SBO) 9 years later. ...She underwent laparotomy which revealed that the sacrohysteropexy mesh had eroded into the small bowel causing complete obstruction, complicated by ischaemia and perforation. Small bowel resection and primary anastomosis was performed, and the patient had an uneventful postoperative recovery. Although rare, cases of SBO occurring secondary to the use of a synthetic mesh in LMH have been reported. This is the first reported case of SBO directly attributable to erosion of mesh into the small bowel itself. Given the increasing frequency of women undergoing surgical management of pelvic organ prolapse which involves techniques using synthetic mesh, it is important to consent patients appropriately for such life-threatening risks and to focus on the development of surgical techniques and mesh materials to minimise such complications.
Employees with mental health conditions often struggle to remain in employment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees faced additional stressors, including worsening mental health and work ...productivity. In 2020, as part of a larger programme of work called the Mental Health and Productivity Pilot (MHPP), we developed a new early intervention (MENTOR) that jointly involved employees, managers, and a new professional (Mental Health Employment Liaison Worker, MHELW). The intervention involved trained MHELWs delivering ten sessions to employees with existing mental health conditions and managers (three individual sessions and four joint sessions) over twelve weeks. These sessions aimed to improve psychological flexibility, interpersonal relationships, and engagement of employees. This feasibility randomised controlled trial aimed to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention from the perspective of employees and managers using a mixed methods approach. The intervention was largely considered feasible and acceptable. Initial findings suggest there may be benefits for employees productivity, mental health, and managers' mental health knowledge. Logistical challenges acted as a barrier to the participation of employees and managers in the trial and their retention throughout its duration. The major strengths of this study were the co-design and inter-disciplinary approach taken. Overall, findings suggest that this novel intervention has potential but needs some adjustments and testing in a larger sample.
•We developed an early intervention (MENTOR) to support employees with mental health conditions to help them stay engaged and productive at work.•MENTOR involves individual and joint sessions with employees and their managers, delivered by Mental Health Employment Liaison Worker (MHELW).•The intervention aims to improve psychological flexibility, interpersonal relationships and productivity.•The co-design and interdisciplinary approach were major strengths of the study, suggesting potential for future research and application.
Employees with mental health problems often struggle to remain in employment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees face multiple additional stressors, which are likely to worsen their mental ...health and work productivity. Currently, it is unclear how to best support employees with mental health problems (and their managers) to improve wellbeing and productivity. We aim to develop a new intervention (MENTOR) that will jointly involve employees, managers, and a new professional (mental health employment liaison worker, MHELW), to help employees who are still at work with a mental health condition and currently receiving professional support for their mental health. A feasibility pilot study will then be undertaken to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention from the perspective of employees and line managers. The study involves a feasibility randomised controlled study comparing outcomes of participants randomised to receive the intervention (MENTOR) with wait-list controls. Participants allocated to the waitlist control group will receive the intervention after three months. We aim to randomise 56 employee-manager pairs recruited from multiple organisations in the Midlands region of England. An intervention including 10 sessions for employees and managers (3 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions) will be delivered over 12 weeks by trained MHELWs. Primary outcomes include measures of feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and work productivity. Secondary outcomes include mental health outcomes. Qualitative interviews will be undertaken with a purposively selected sub-sample of employees and line managers at three-month post-intervention assessment. To our knowledge, this will be the first trial with a joint employee-manager intervention delivered by MHELWs. Anticipated challenges are dual-level consent (employees and managers), participants' attrition, and recruitment strategies. If the intervention and trial processes are shown to be feasible and acceptable, the outcomes from this study will inform future randomised controlled trials. Trial registration: This trial is pre-registered with the ISRCTN registry, registration number: ISRCTN79256498. Protocol version: 3.0_March_2023. https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN79256498.
PURPOSETo report a unique case of atypical Coats' Syndrome in an 80 year old female with facioscapulohumeral dystrophy. OBSERVATIONSAn 80 years old female was diagnosed clinically of retinal ...telangiectasia with exudation threatening the fovia. She received a successful macular laser photocoagulation with subsequent cessation of leakage. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPORTANCEThis case is in keeping with Coats' syndrome in fascioscapulohumeral dystrophy, which classically affects young male subjects - making this patient an obvious outlier. This once again reflects the variation in phenotypic manifestations of inherited disorders.
This paper reports the implementation, in MATLAB environment, of a very simple but efficient fuzzy logic based algorithm to detect the edges of an input image by scanning it throughout using a 2*2 ...pixel window. Also, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in MATLAB has been designed to aid the loading of the image, and to display the resultant image at different intermediate levels of processing. Threshold level for the image can be set from the slider control of GUI. Fuzzy inference system designed has four inputs, which corresponds to four pixels of instantaneous scanning matrix, one output that tells whether the pixel under consideration is "black", "white" or "edge" pixel. Rule base comprises of sixteen rules, which classify the target pixel. Algorithm for the noise removal has been implemented at different levels of processing. The resultant image from FIS is subjected to first and second derivative to trace the edges of the image and for their further refinement. The results of the implemented algorithm has been compared with the standard edge detection algorithm such as 'Canny', 'Sobel', 'Prewit' and 'Roberts'. Main feature of the algorithm is that it has been designed by the smallest possible mask i.e. 2*2 unlike 3*3 or bigger masks found in the literature.
PDF
