This study sought to replicate Parslow and Jorm's (Aust N Z J Psychiatry 34(6): 997-1008, 2000) research on need, enabling and predisposing factors as predictors of mental health service use, with the addition of childhood trauma as a predisposing factor. It utilised a non-treatment seeking epidemiological sample of Australian adults (N = 822) to examine 25 variables covering psychiatric disorder, socio-demographics, physical health problems, and childhood trauma as predictors of mental health visits to general practitioners (GP's), mental health specialists and non-mental health specialists. A consistent multivariate predictor of mental health visits to all types of professionals was psychological distress. Presence of an affective disorder, age, and number of health problems were additional predictors of visiting a GP. Being female, divorced, and exposure to childhood trauma predicted use of a mental health specialist, while rural living was associated with lower use of these services. Results highlight the importance of general psychological distress and need factors in seeking help for mental health, and reinforce the lifelong disadvantage arising from adverse childhood experiences and the need to address these issues in adult mental health services.

The use of computer-simulated microworlds has become increasingly popular to test concepts related to naturalistic decision-making (NDM) in a controlled laboratory environment. However, the construct validity for such methods is unclear. The current study followed previous microworld-based studies that compared indirect (macromanagement) methods of management with direct methods (micromanagement). To explore the construct validity of microworld research, the current study compared performance scores generated by participants with experience in a prototypical NDM environment, with those without such experience. Using a networked computer simulation for firefighting, 10 Army officers and 10 civilians played the role of Fire Chief within three-person command and control teams. The two subordinates were confederates. Comparison of management structures supported previous results indicating that indirect control produces significantly better NDM performance. However, no difference was found between the experienced and inexperienced participant groups, questioning the construct validity of results produced using microworlds.

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The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how few point-of-care diagnostic tools were available that could be safely and easily operated by healthcare workers with no laboratory training. The gold-standard test, and initially the only test, used RT-PCR with nasal pharyngeal swabs (NPS). Two issues quickly emerged: 1) RT-PCR required central laboratory processing leading to significant time delays and 2) NPS collection causes discomfort, is inappropriate for ongoing repeat sampling of individuals (e.g., frontline healthcare workers) and poses difficulty when obtaining samples from some sections of the population (e.g. some elderly and young children). The Sal6830 platform is a fully self-contained, RT-PCR point-of-care device for detecting SARS-CoV-2 from saliva that takes less than thirty minutes to complete. In this study we tested the usability of the Sal6830 platform by healthcare workers unfamiliar with the instrument at two community clinics: Care 4 U Community Health Center (Miami, Florida, USA) and St. Marys Health Wagon (Wise, Virginia, USA). Staff participated in three tests: 1) determining SARS-CoV-2 status from blinded positive and negative saliva samples, 2) a clinical study comparing SARS-CoV-2 detection with a comparator point-of-care technology from the same patient and 3) completing a survey designed to measure comfort and confidence using the Sal6830 point-of-care device having received no training. Participants overwhelming found the Sal6830 platform easy and intuitive to use, successfully called SARS-CoV-2 status of contrived, blinded samples and measured a 93.3% overall percent agreement when comparing patient samples across two point-of-care technologies.