To your health: implementation of a wellness program for treatment staff and persons with mental illness.

Persons with mental illness often have poor access to both health promotion and primary care services. Consequently, they are at greater risk for earlier mortality, and comorbid health problems that ultimately impact their community rehabilitation. The "To Your Health" program is a health promotion program, based on the states of change model that was implemented as part of a clubhouse rehabilitation program. The program used personal wellness profiles, health assessments, and personal goal setting to assess the relative wellness of clients and staff in order to increase their awareness of health-promoting behaviors. Additionally opportunities were provided to engage individuals in making changes through participation in activities that provided opportunities to try out new behaviors and to set goals that integrated changes into their lives. The initial findings are reported along with the rationale for the involvement of clients and staff, and the role of health promotion in community rehabilitation of persons with mental illness.

Older adults. The case for comprehensive assessment.

Recognition of all health care problems is important to be able to provide comprehensive care with optimal outcomes and to maximize reimbursement. This article addresses the importance of conducting a thorough geriatric assessment, including an assessment of mental health. The authors present case examples to illustrate where shortcomings in the assessment could compromise both care and reimbursement.

Outcomes of care: the use of conceptual models to "see the forest and the trees" in planning outcomes studies.

Outcomes research provides many opportunities to explore how care activities, care processes, and care systems impact on individuals and health care resources. This article discusses clinical outcomes research and its connection to real-life situations. A model-building approach is presented to clarify the process of outcomes research by acknowledging multiple variables and how they interact. The process is illustrated through a hypothetical model addressing coronary artery disease. The usefulness of using conceptual modeling typing related variables together while creating a framework for increased understanding of key variables and their interaction is discussed.

The health status of elderly persons in the last year of life: a comparison of deaths by suicide, injury, and natural causes.

OBJECTIVES: This study identified health status variables related to suicide by elderly persons and compared the health status of suicide decedents with natural death and injury decedents. METHODS: Data were obtained from the 1986 National Mortality Followback Survey. RESULTS: When other variables were controlled for, suicide decedents were significantly more likely than injury decedents to have a history of cancer (odds ratio [OR] = 51.94), moderate (OR = 29.37) or heavy (OR = 22.87) alcohol use, and mental or emotional disorder (OR = 10.91) and to be White (OR = 18.54) and male (OR = 9.12). CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that a history of cancer should be considered as a risk for suicide in the elderly.

Family-focused mental health care policy.

Mental health care is undergoing many changes that affect families, which continue to provide much of the day-to-day care for mentally ill persons. This article reviews the history of mental health care in the United States from 1940 to the present as it has changed from a system of programs providing institutional care to a system of programs providing community and family care. Mental health policy has shifted in response to widely held values and assumptions about mental illness and caregiving roles. The pertinent literature that addresses the effects of family-focused research on the formation and evaluation of treatment programs is reviewed. Recommendations are made for policy initiatives that consider family caregiving. The emergent roles of nurses in the policy arena are also discussed.

Forensic implications of biochemical differences among geographic populations of the black blow fly, Phormia regina (Meigen).

Cuticular hydrocarbons were extracted from individual adult blow flies from three geographic populations of Phormia regina from areas near Tucannon River and Lyle Grove, Washington, and from Rensselaer, Indiana. The individual extracts were subjected to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), and 22 hydrocarbons were identified. Discriminant analysis of the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles separated the flies according both to location and gender. These results have potential forensic applications in the determination of corpse relocation and in the study of the population ecology of species and populations.

Cuticular lipid profiles of queens, workers, and males of social waspPolistes metricus say are colony-specific.

The cuticular lipids ofPolistes metricus queens, workers and males from seven laboratory-maintained colonies were extracted and analyzed by combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Males had higher proportions of alkenes (20.5%) in their cuticular lipids than did queens (2.3%) or workers (7.7%). Discriminant analyses of the cuticular lipid profiles of the adult wasps showed that males group separately from females. Additional analyses showed that queens group with their respective workers by colony and that queens group even more closely with males by colony. The most distinct groupings occurred with workers only by colony and with males only by colony. Stepwise discriminant analyses showed that each type of grouping was dependent upon a different combination of cuticular lipids.

Discriminant analysis of cuticular hydrocarbons of social waspPolistes exclamans viereck and surface hydrocarbons of its nest paper and pedicel.

The articular lipids were analyzed from individualPolistes exclamans workers collected from 10 nests. Surface lipids were also recovered from the paper and pedicels of these nests. Twenty-two hydrocarbons were identified in these lipid fractions. The major components of the wasp cuticular lipids weren-heptacosane,n-nonacosane, methylhentriacontane, and methyltritriacontane. Discriminant analysis of the hydrocarbon profiles of the adult wasps showed that the wasps group together according to their respective colonies. Several colonies from the same geographical location clustered more closely together than colonies from diverse locations. The nest papers and pedicels did not group with the wasps from their respective colonies, but the nest papers clustered together separately, as did the nest pedicels.