No abstract

Despite there being effective clinical treatments for a range of mental health issues (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999, Mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), men have a particularly low rate of help-seeking from mental health professionals (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002, The NHSDA report: Serious mental illness among adults. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health). A variety of contextual factors may be associated with why men are resistant to professional help-seeking (Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R., 2003, Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help-seeking, American Psychologist, 58, 5–14). The current project recruited a diverse community sample and used two observational rating measures to assess men’s verbal reactions to common mental health labels (“anxiety” and “depression”), different forms of help-seeking (medication, psychotherapy, friends and family, and “other forms of help-seeking”), and different sources of help-seeking advice (romantic partner, doctor, and psychotherapist) within the context of a clinical-style interview. The findings indicated that men prefer talk-therapy with a psychotherapist compared to other forms of professional help-seeking and that many men, particularly those who adhere to hegemonic masculine norms, are more resistant to taking medication. Men were also found to react more positively to seeking professional treatment at the suggestion of a psychotherapist compared with a medical doctor or romantic partner. Finally, the study confirmed previous self-report findings that adherence to masculine norms is negatively associated with men’s willingness to seek professional help.

Background. Cancer patients using cannabis report better influence from the plant extract than from synthetic products. However, almost all the research conducted to date has been performed with synthetic products. We followed patients with a medicinal cannabis license to evaluate the advantages and side effects of using cannabis by cancer patients. Methods. The study included two interviews based on questionnaires regarding symptoms and side effects, the first held on the day the license was issued and the second 6–8 weeks later. Cancer symptoms and cannabis side effects were documented on scales from 0 to 4 following the CTCAE. The distress thermometer was used also. Results. Of the 211 patients who had a first interview, only 131 had the second interview, 25 of whom stopped treatment after less than a week. All cancer or anticancer treatment-related symptoms showed significant improvement (P < 0.001). No significant side effects except for memory lessening in patients with prolonged cannabis use (P = 0.002) were noted. Conclusion. The positive effects of cannabis on various cancer-related symptoms are tempered by reliance on self-reporting for many of the variables. Although studies with a control group are missing, the improvement in symptoms should push the use of cannabis in palliative treatment of oncology patients.

Similar to concentrations of crime, mental health calls have been found to concentrate at a small number of places, but few have considered the context of places where mental health calls occur. The current study examines the influence of the physical and social context of street segments, particularly the role of service providers, land use features of the street and nearby area, and characteristics of residents on the likelihood of a mental health crisis call to the police occurring on the street. The findings demonstrate that the social context, such as offending and drug use among residents, levels of social cohesion and community involvement, and drug and violent crime influenced the occurrence of mental health crisis calls. Findings from this study make theoretical and practical contributions to a number of disciplines by improving our understanding of where mental health crisis calls occur and why they are found at specific places.