words etiketine sahip kayıtlar gösteriliyor. Tüm kayıtları göster
words etiketine sahip kayıtlar gösteriliyor. Tüm kayıtları göster

26 Şubat 2017 Pazar

Iris Murdoch’s philosopher was losing his words back in 1983 | Letters

You report (21 February) on research suggesting that Iris Murdoch’s use of language in later works such as Jackson’s Dilemma (1995) might be an indication of the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But I wonder whether Murdoch suspected a problem far earlier than it could become manifest to readers of her books. In The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983), the ageing philosopher, John Robert Rozanov, deplores his own increasing loss of control over language, a problem that is not, at that time, apparent to the other characters in the novel. He feels that he is “losing the clarity of his mind, losing his words, and mislaying his thoughts”.


Was Murdoch describing a situation that was already becoming apparent to her? Or is this just a tragic irony?
Tricia Ayrton
Rochdale, Lancashire


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Iris Murdoch’s philosopher was losing his words back in 1983 | Letters

10 Ocak 2017 Salı

Words are not enough to tackle the crisis in mental health | Letters

I am, of course, pleased that Theresa May recognises that increasing numbers of adults and children are suffering from mental health difficulties (May pledges to try to reduce stigma, 9 January). The huge emotional burden this puts on families only increases the risks. These difficulties have escalated in thesix years since massive cuts to public services and most preventive mental health services, alongside the increased culture of competition that leads to more anxiety and less security.


Having been part of primary prevention and secondary child and adolescent mental health services in my 30-year career in the NHS, it was soul-destroying to see services closed and specialist skills built up over decades being lost. It is galling to hear the plans presented as if they are new and concerning that one of the plans is for teachers to be trained to identify mental health issues and provide interventions. Often teachers, also struggling with cuts to services and increased pressures, can already recognise mental health issues but lack the time and expertise to offer interventions that could make a significant difference. Identification alone is not helpful unless combined with resources to deal with the issues.


The link between mental health difficulties and environmental stresses is well known, and community services can only develop if mental health crises are safely managed. Links between mental health services and schools and GP practices work well and have been used before, but tend to be cut when there are huge pressures on other parts of the system. There is no mention of increasing funding to any mental health services or of any evidence-based focus to these policies.
Dr Julia Nelki
Retired consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, Merseyside


Re the prime minister’s announcement of new measures to end stigma and unjust life chances for young people with mental illness, schools and their linkage to healthcare and the voluntary and community sector are central to “improve mental health”. As the new UK services are set up and evaluated, could I beg Guardian readers to share their observations with colleagues in the World Health Organisation’s initiative Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents?


A global “sharing society” could strengthen our government’s planned green paper on mental health, and help planners in countries with less expertise learn from UK successes and failures. I guarantee there will be both failures and successes – but it is the responsibility of the whole spectrum of stakeholders in mental health to learn from the implementation of policy.
Professor Woody Caan
Editor, Journal of Public Mental Health


So Theresa May is going to improve mental health care. Let me cite my son’s last two years. He is in the highest suicide risk group, single white males between 40 and 45. Recent talk about more support for teenagers is a distraction from the fact that adult mental health services are in a state of near collapse.


He had a major breakdown two years ago, when single and 42. Since then he has been in seven different hospitals. After each discharge, he has relapsed within a few weeks. “Care in the community” has been either conspicuously absent or totally inadequate. The shortage of beds has meant that on five occasions, he was assessed as in need of hospital readmission and, after a long wait in A&E, was transported to a new, strange hospital. The lack of continuity of care for someone already frightened, confused and distressed is absolutely counter to the kind of support necessary.


Providing supported residential accommodation, to ease the transition from hospital back into the world, is essential. The lack of available beds is in part due to “bed-blocking”, because of a lack of such accommodation. Community care teams would be more effective, working together with residential teams in supported accommodation, preparing people for rebuilding their lives in the community, providing a necessary bridge between hospital and the world.


This, Theresa, is a long-term problem in need of a seriously thought-through long-term strategy, and considerable investment.
Name and address supplied


It is not only acute care that is in difficulties (A&E crisis deepens, 10 January). My local NHS mental health trust has had to temporarily merge two inpatient wards due to staffing shortages as they cannot recruit enough qualified staff. This is not surprising, given the government’s policy of pay restraint in the public services by imposing pay rises of no more than 1% in recent years, and with no sign of any change, despite the effect they must know this has on the ability of the NHS to recruit and retain staff.
Ian Arnott
Peterborough


A Christmas card from an NHS forensic psychiatrist schoolfriend a few weeks ago said: “Don’t believe claims re money for mental health. We’ve just had millions chopped off our budget three weeks ago & meltdown consequently.” I expect to read next December that Theresa May gave it all back.
Mark Lewinski
Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire


The prime minister’s pledge to implement new measures to improve mental health services for young people couldn’t be more timely, as new figures from the Prince’s Trust reveal that one in four young people don’t feel in control of their lives.


In response to these findings and the fact that more young people than ever before are coming to us experiencing mental health issues, we are addressing an urgent need to improve mental health provision by launching our own mental health strategy. We welcome the government’s pledge to implement new measures to improve mental health services for young people and bring more focus to an area where we’ve seen an increasing need for support.


The Prince’s Trust Macquarie Youth Index reveals that young people’s confidence and happiness are at their lowest levels since the report was first launched in 2009. It paints a deeply concerning picture for a generation of young people who feel that their future is slipping away from them.


Many young people feel desperate about their situation; it’s vital that we act now if we’re to help them get the right support to create brighter futures for themselves.


The most important thing we can do to empower these young people is to continue to help them find work, education or training. Now, more than ever before, we need to work together to help them build a brighter future and regain control of their lives.
Dame Martina Milburn
Chief executive, The Prince’s Trust


As part of the work we undertake across the east of England, Ormiston Families works with children and young people struggling with mental health issues. We see Theresa May’s announcement about a new approach to mental health as hugely significant.


It is well documented that the provision of mental health services across the UK is inadequate and this lack of care has led to an increase in the number of children and young people suffering with mental ill health for prolonged periods of time. Through our services in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire we know early intervention in young people showing signs of mental health issues is critical.


The prime minister talked about focusing “on prevention as well as treatment, especially since so many adult mental health problems – which one in four of us will suffer from at any one time – begin in childhood”. As a charity working on the frontline with children and young people showing signs of mental health issues, we are relieved to hear this. Early intervention, and thus prevention, is key to reducing the number of people suffering with chronic mental health issues.


The numbers in Theresa May’s speech are exactly the type of statistics we are working to reduce.


Mental health is without doubt one of the biggest issues facing our society today and it is good to hear the prime minister is keen for the government to do more to address the problems and “not just in our hospitals but in classrooms and communities”.
Mark Heasman
Chief executive, Ormiston Families


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Words are not enough to tackle the crisis in mental health | Letters

18 Aralık 2016 Pazar

Why pictures trigger buried memories much faster than words

As you’ll have noticed, in our issue devoted to this year’s most memorable news images, there is an immediacy to a photograph that we can’t help but respond to. A picture can trigger a buried memory and recall a precise moment in time much more rapidly than words. But why exactly?


Neuroscientists have known for many years that humans have an extraordinary ability to encode pictures. In one study, first carried out around 50 years ago and repeated since, people are shown 10,000 photographs and, a few days later, another 1,000 – half from the original batch and half new. Within seconds, respondents point accurately to the ones they’ve seen before. Which is why, at this time of year when you look through a photo review, a picture glanced at six months ago will still chime and feel familiar, even though you couldn’t call it to mind a minute ago.


This is possible because our brains are so efficient at storing the ‘essence’ of a picture, capturing not just the subject but specific visual qualities. You can’t bring this to mind actively, it’s what we call a ‘passive effect’. If you were asked to recall a news image from March, you may struggle, but if you saw a stack of photos from that time, you’d instantly know the ones you’d seen before.


Before we get too full of ourselves, it’s worth knowing that at least one other animal shares a similar ability – the pigeon. In studies they show high levels of recall when presented with different images – helpful for finding food. For us it may be linked to social relations or just navigation.


However trivial the picture, it’s the recognition and the rush of familiarity that is fun – an added benefit that’s lost on pigeons but satisfying for us.


Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London



Why pictures trigger buried memories much faster than words

28 Kasım 2016 Pazartesi

Being an anaesthetist has taught me the power of patients" last words

Every so often, as an anaesthetist, you know the patient may not wake up and that you will be the last person they ever speak to. This operation may be their last chance at survival but it may also be the very instrument which ends their life. Something has ruptured. They may be bleeding. You don’t know if you can “turn off the tap”. The patient may be frail but you must at least give them the chance.


Getting them through the operation can be the easy part but the body has suffered enough and simply does not have the reserve to deal with the trauma. They remain sedated as the feeling of a breathing tube and the nature of being a patient in intensive care would be as unpleasant as the operation itself. You keep them alive but only under the immense power of an arsenal of drugs reserved for these circumstances. You keep them alive with the hope they may pull through, but occasionally only so their loved ones can be by their side at the moment of passing.




Barriers may unintentionally fall and their true feelings are revealed, possibly followed by a knowing laugh




A patient’s last words can be deeply profound, even prophetic of their own mortality. They can be completely ignorant of their condition through delirium or dementia. Vital organs only take minutes to become irreversibly damaged. They need oxygen, they need blood and the body’s systems are failing, often before your eyes. Sudden confusion, unconsciousness, abnormal breathing, all signs of impending shutdown. You have to take over, you have to replace that which has failed. A tube to deliver life-sustaining oxygen, fluids or blood to replenish what was lost, and anaesthesia to rest a frantic brain and spare the memory of any suffering.


Those who you can talk to you reassure. You tell them everything will be done to wake them and that there will be no pain, they will not suffer. They understand. Reassurance is easy, a few simple words spoken honestly and calmly. You gauge the mood and ask them about who is waiting for them when they awaken. How long have you been married? What kind of dog do you have? Find the right path to follow and they will lead you down a road of conversation which lasts until the point of unconsciousness. Barriers may unintentionally fall and their true feelings are revealed, possibly followed by a knowing laugh. They know their secrets are safe.


Revelations range from patients, previously brave-faced, who confess their terror at the prospect of never waking, to those who divulge a sense of abandonment of life. They have suffered enough and want this sleep to guide them gently to death. One patient admitted to having enjoyed a cheeky slug of whisky a friend had smuggled to him just before coming to theatre. People share a joke and a smile. The release of a smile is echoed in the slowing heart rate only associated with feeling calm and relaxed. The beeping machine that monitors their heart becomes a metronome of their emotion.


I remember one man who was brought to theatre for an emergency operation. He was dying but nobody knew when. The cancer had spread and was now blocking his gut. He knew the operation might kill him but wanted to take the chance that he may survive long enough to leave hospital to organise his affairs and be with his loved ones at the end. His mood struck us all. He was dying yet had a smile on his face and was quick to share a joke. No one said “see you afterwards” as we most often do, we just invited him to think of somewhere he would rather be. He smiled again – “anywhere but here” – and laughed. He never spoke again. He passed away under anaesthesia the following day with his family by his side.


Only in the hours or days following the event does the poignancy hit you. You start to reflect on not only the words themselves but the underlying emotions the patient was experiencing. There is a sadness, especially when speaking to a patient’s loved ones, but the opportunity to reflect provides a chance to learn and question your own practice. Your normal bedside manner was aimed at inducing calm before the anaesthesia itself. Did it work? Did you quell the fear in any way? Could anything have been said differently or not at all?


A person’s last words can be a defining moment. You speak to families and you tell them there was a smile, even a giggle. The fact that this was their last conscious, communicated thought will hold in the memory of anyone who cared for them. “Yep, that sounds like him!” Another smile. A seemingly impossible moment of happiness.


If you would like to write a blogpost for Views from the NHS frontline, read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com.


Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more pieces like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.



Being an anaesthetist has taught me the power of patients" last words

26 Haziran 2014 Perşembe

In their personal words: Jimmy Savile"s victims "badly allow down" by the NHS

“However Savile then French kissed me … for about ten seconds.


“This created me feel very uncomfortable and I went red with embarrassment. I remember individuals had been laughing at him they seemed to uncover it funny. Savile then stood up straight and he looked at me with his eyebrows up and a grin on his face.


“He did not say anything at all to me. I remember putting my hand on his shoulder as he kissed me to brace myself, but he was like a brick wall.”


In the early 1990s, G was a medical professional working at Leeds Basic Infirmary on a paediatric ward.


She was on the ward on a Christmas Day when Savile entered the ward accompanied by two other men.


As she walked in the direction of Savile to welcome him, he lunged forward, grabbed her hand and kissed her forcibly on the mouth. He then rubbed her breasts.


Savile then turned and left the ward quickly with out speaking, leaving the doctor “stunned and repulsed”.


She recalls being supported by the ward Sister, but did not feel about making a formal complaint.


“The Sister came more than to me and mentioned ‘are you all correct?’ and I said ‘no’ and I informed her what happened… I can don’t forget the nurses saying ‘why do you feel we stayed behind here?’ [which means the nurses’ desk].


“It was nearly an acknowledgement that that was the way he behaved and it was identified by the nursing personnel, the female workers, that you hold away from that man… I do bear in mind the consultant came on [the ward] and I remember telling him as in not ‘I am reporting it to XXX’, but telling him as in ‘you’ll by no means guess what occurred to me’… once again it was extremely sympathetic… not ‘I need to have to escalate it up and speak about it’.


“It was quite supportive and that was the culture at the time. ”



In their personal words: Jimmy Savile"s victims "badly allow down" by the NHS

16 Mayıs 2014 Cuma

Remembering Stephen: in his own words


Teenage cancer victim Stephen Sutton raised more than £3 million for charity throughout his lifetime and has continued inspiring men and women to donate soon after his death.




The 19 year-outdated acquired plaudits from a host of celebrities and political leaders for his optimistic frame of mind.




His mantra that “life isn’t measured by the sum of time you are right here, it is measured by your achievements” was repeated on his social media accounts.




He was a prolific user of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and employed the websites to document his ongoing sickness.




Right here are some of his online posts since his diagnosis witty, heartbreaking and relentlessly upbeat.




January 13 2013


July three


July 17


September six


September ten


September 15


October 4


October four


October 4


October 4


October 17


November one


November 14


December sixteen


January 17 2014


January 27


January 28


January 29


January 31


February five


February 7


February ten


February 13


February 19


February 20


February 20


February 21


March 19


March 19


March 26


March 27


March 28


March 29


April 1


April 1


April 7


April 17


April 22


April 22


April 26


Could one


Could two


May five


May 14




Remembering Stephen: in his own words

21 Nisan 2014 Pazartesi

4-yr-old boy utters 1st words following complex tracheal surgery

Steph and her partner Sharron Cook, of Leeds, West Yorkshire, agonised about whether or not he need to have the risky surgery, which involved grafting a piece of cartilage from Lyall’s rib onto his airway to strengthen it.


The couple ultimately made a decision to go ahead and he underwent the operation at Leeds Basic Infirmary final month. The surgical treatment was productive, although not with out its issues.


Ms Cook explained: “Lyall had the operation on March 13, he was sedated for 3 days to cease him from pulling on the tubes and allow the wound to heal. Then he got a chest infection and they had to preserve him sedated for up to a week in complete.


“Waiting 3 or four days for him to wake up was long sufficient, but it was hell waiting for a week to see how he was and if we’d made the appropriate determination.


“They took him into theatre for forty minutes to verify every little thing was healing properly, and when they brought him out he was breathing by himself, which was incredible.


“They brought him round and he stirred – and then said ‘Mummy’, really plainly.


“It was this kind of an emotional moment. It was the perfect first word for him to say actually, hearing it was just amazing.


“It took about 3 weeks for him to get back to himself – now he’s operating around, shouting, back to his boisterous self.”


Many of the physicians who had taken care of Lyall via his illnesses came to visit him soon after the operation.


Lyall is now in a position to form phrases, laugh, shout and do the normal factors a 4-year-outdated need to thanks to the operation.



4-yr-old boy utters 1st words following complex tracheal surgery

28 Mart 2014 Cuma

Let"s not mince words - unwanted fat can be a death sentence

These ailments are all Go Right to A&ampE, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Gather £200 corollaries of being obese, as nearly two thirds of British grownups now are. And a quarter of these are obese.


The figures are supposed to double by 2050, despite the fact that I’m not sure how we can have “four thirds” – maybe, like our waist measurements, moobs and cankles, fractions are ballooning in size, also? Or will our sloppy wodge of adipose tissue flop over and cover Normandy and parts of Britanny as effectively?


By now, any person carrying far more than a handful of additional heft will be feeling cross or unhappy or at least aggrieved. Allow she who has no muffin leading cast the 1st creamy cronut and all that. Properly, speaking as one particular who has variously been as well massive and as well tiny and has recently taken up kick-boxing to slap my BMI into its rightful area, I know what I’m talking about.


It is not just about the strain on the well being service and the £50billion financial toll. It is a public heath crisis that ruins lives and demands to be tackled – like smoking – a single individual at a time. But how? Much more than 3 quarters of dad and mom (77 per cent) with obese or even obese youngsters presume, or at least assert, that they are perfectly healthy. Or at least the new normal.


In current instances, “acceptance” has been elevated to mankind’s highest virtue. This is totally appropriate, when it applies to these previously discriminated against owing to race, religion, disability, sexuality and yes, dimension. But enshrining equality ought not to preclude intervening when a person we care about is smoking or consuming, or in this instance consuming themselves into an early grave.


Most of us wouldn’t hesitate to mention, in a spirit of real concern, if a friend’s daughter was looking as well thin. But hand on heart, who between us would dare to level out that her son was too effectively upholstered?


There is a simplistic assumption that even mentioning fat problems will lead each teenager to swing like a pendulum in the direction of size zero starvation, which just is not borne out by the evidence. A lot more lives will be blighted by weight problems than anorexia.


Evolution, which programmes us to consume in times of lots, tends to make no allowance for the round-the-clock availability of cheap, fat, sugary, addictive foods. Our genetic lottery plays a function in storing unwanted fat, and even though desk-bound operating lives burn us out, they don’t burn calories – so it is all feast and no famine.


An overweight friend, gaily shedding pounds with the five:two diet program, mischievously suggests a classification of people’s size similar to that employed in the Paralympics: as a result, instead of employing the “fat” word, a series of letters and numbers would denote girth and so forth. I can not see even silver-tongued Nigel Farage getting that certain Brave New World notion to fly. But we do require to have a wise conversation, which signifies shelving the guilt trip and the defensiveness. And, no matter whether we like it or not, the chips, booze and chocolate.


——————————————–


EMMA WATSON’S Demonstrate AND Inform REVEALS Far more THAN JUST HER KNICKERS


Emma Watson (above) would seem like a wonderful, sensible lady: no visible tattoos, shiny hair, insisted on finishing her degree so that she has a fall-back position if the total international stardom issue does not perform out.


But. Having bemoaned the lack of difficult, adult roles following her stint as Hermione in the Harry Potter series, the 23-yr-old has now tweeted a photograph of the entire contents of her make-up bag (such as her Commando Better Than Nothing knickers) like a hyperventilating teenage YouTuber.


Not that I’m complaining it proved an education to me at any fee. Tide instantaneous stain remover need to be in each woman’s armoury, Giorgio Armani skin flash radiance booster would transform the school run (even if my spangled Oscar de la Renta train does get caught in the vehicle door), and who knew Tom Ford created lipstick? Well, apart from A-Listers.


I really do not believe her motive was blatant solution placement – our Em has banked ample not to require freebies of dry shampoo – and it was plainly in the show-and-inform spirit of the age. But. It is not terribly Hedda Gabler now, is it?


Maybe Emma wants to accept she’s not really ready to put away childish things, which may well clarify why, for now, she keeps obtaining presented ingénue retreads.


It may well appear aggravating, but she’s in a unusual and covetable position for any actress actually looking forward to increasing older.


——————————————–


JOANNE MILNE’S JOY OF SOUND


Who could fail to be moved by images of Joanne Milne, weeping with emotion as she heard sound for the very first time in her forty years of deafness?


Joanne, who was born without having hearing and then lost her vision in her twenties, obtained cochlear implants last month. This week they were ultimately switched on, and as a nurse recited the days of the week into her headphones, the charity employee broke down in tears at the sound of a human voice.


Joanne has because been launched to music – John Lennon’s Imagine was the initial track she listened to, followed by a compilation comprising a song from every 12 months since her birth, lovingly picked by her friends.


She is drunk on birdsong and traffic and the sound of lights getting switched on. Lord understands how she’ll cope when she stumbles upon the opening chords of Rhapsody in Blue or the 1st, exquisitely melancholy notes of Satie’s Gymnopédie No one.


But all these are so considerably background noise when in contrast to the sound of laughter and babies crying, idle chatter, cheering or merely whispered endearments.


It was Helen Keller who observed that while blindness separates folks from factors, deafness separates people from folks.


Following half a lifetime locked in silence, Joanne Milne has last but not least broken free of charge. Even to my jaded ears, the days of the week have never sounded sweeter.


——————————————–


25 Many years Collectively IS NO JOKE


It’s April Fool’s day on Tuesday, when the newspapers will be positively chocca with wildly improbable stories about, oh, I do not know, David Cameron wresting key EU concessions from the Germans. Oh he has, has he? Gosh.


Anyway, the April one joke is technically supposed to put on off at midday, but at times it doesn’t.


At times, the giddy merriment lasts 25 years, which is how prolonged, because the very coup de foudre, my husband and I will have been with each other. And prior to you even contemplate undertaking the maths, let’s just say I was younger. Quite, really youthful.


Though we did not wed for more than a decade, I contemplate 1989 to be the crucible of shock and awe, as that was when I set about making an attempt to modify him.


My partner, on the other hand, claims that 2000 is 12 months zero, which is partly due to bloody-minded pedantry in excess of the date of our actual marriage vows, and partly a troubling reluctance to bankroll a solid silver filter for the dishwasher or what ever other gewgaw is customary to mark the date of domestic enslavement.


Over the past 25 many years, we’ve weathered the deaths of mother and father and the births of children, been painfully winded by life’s calamities and, just usually enough, lifted substantial on sudden thermals of utter joy.


So we really do not require to acquire one particular one more cripplingly pricey, tritely clear presents in order to express our really like and appreciation for 1 an additional. But, darling, if you are reading through this, I might have acquired you a small some thing. Just so you know.



Let"s not mince words - unwanted fat can be a death sentence