The UK prevalence of PFS was 2%, although this varied according to the location of the practice population. The majority of PFS+ve subjects first reported symptoms in their teens. The reported age of onset has important implications for the diagnosis of primary and cross-reactive peanut and tree nut allergies in teenagers and young adults. The continuing rise in aeroallergen sensitization is likely to result in an increased frequency of PFS presenting in both primary and secondary care.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether two regional intellectual disability (ID) assessment and treatment (A&T) units in England were meeting the recommended length of stay stipulated by the Learning Disability Professional Senate, in line with the Transforming Care (TC) agenda. A secondary purpose of the study was to evaluate the reasons for admissions and delayed discharges in order to inform how to reduce these. Design/methodology/approach A retrospective evaluation of 85 admissions across two A&T units was conducted over a three-year period (2013–2016) following publication of the TC agenda. Findings There were 85 admissions compared to 71 discharges. Of the 85 admissions, 11 were readmissions. The most common factors thought necessary to prevent admission were early support for care providers or alternative service provision. There were barriers to discharge in over half of admissions; the main reason was a lack of suitable service provision. Practical implications The study suggests that providing specific support or training to care providers could prevent (re)admission and ensure shorter admissions. Further research to establish reasons for the reported lack of suitable providers would be beneficial. Originality/value This study provides current admission and discharge rates for regional A&T units, as recommended by the TC national guidance. It also provides potential reasons underlying preventable admissions and delayed discharges and therefore indicates what might be necessary to prevent admissions and reduce the length of inpatient stays for people with ID and/or autism.

Mental health stigma and barriers to care (BTC) have been reported as impeding help-seeking among UK military personnel. A deeper understanding of the impact of stigma and BTC on help-seeking may be accessible via the perceptions of UK military health service providers. Secondary thematic analysis of interviews with 21 UK Army Welfare Officers and Medical Officers was conducted to investigate their perceptions of how mental health stigma, BTC, and stigma alleviation efforts impact UK Army soldiers' help-seeking. Three master themes were identified; Military culture; Barriers to care: and, Stigma alleviation success. The Welfare and Medical Officers perceived that military culture and its promotion of stoicism lead to certain beliefs surrounding legitimacy of mental health problems, confidentiality, and concerns for career impacts that affect UK Army personnel seeking help. They also reported perceiving stigma to have decreased and attributed this to some of the stigma reduction interventions currently in place. Recommendations for education based stigma reduction methods are made, including reframing beliefs surrounding the need to "soldier on" and that help-seeking is a weakness, providing consistent advice about confidentiality of health service attendance, and education for leaders to promote symptom recognition and treatment seeking.

BackgroundUS studies have shown an increase of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, but not alcohol misuse related to time of assessment since returning from deployment. We assessed if similar trends occur in the UK Armed Forces.MethodsWe selected UK studies based on our data base of King’s Centre for Military Health Research publications from 2006 until January 2016 with at least one of the following measures: PTSD checklist-civilian version (PCL-C), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The studies included personnel assessed for these outcomes after their most recent deployment. A search in Medline, Psycho-Info and Embase confirmed that no relevant publication was missed.ResultsTwenty one thousand, seven hundred and forty-six deployed personnel from nine studies contributed to the meta-analyses by time since end of deployment in the PTSD analysis. The number of studies for period of time varied from two to four studies. The trend by time-category of questionnaire completion since returning from deployment were for PTSD β = 0.0021 (95 % CI −0.00046 to 0.0049, p = 0.12), for psychological distress β = 0.0123 (95 % CI 0.005 to 0.019, p = 0.002) and for alcohol misuse β = 0.0013 (−0.0079 to 0.0105, p = 0.77).ConclusionsThere was no evidence that the prevalence of PTSD and alcohol misuse changed according to time since the end of deployment over a three-year period, but there was evidence for an association with increasing psychological distress.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-016-1038-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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