Health and social care professional standards need to be updated to advance leadership and action for environmental sustainability and planetary health.

BACKGROUND: Human health is inextricably linked to planetary health. The desire to nurture and protect both concurrently requires the mitigation of healthcare-associated environmental harms and global initiatives that support sustainable lifestyles. Health leadership is important to bring adequate attention and action to address planetary health challenges. Health professionals are central to this endeavour, but the will and energy of a few will not be adequate to address this urgent challenge. STUDY: We present an appraisal of the current UK health professional standards, frameworks and curricula to identify content related to planetary health and environmental sustainability. RESULTS: No current UK health professional standard provides statements and competencies to guide practising and trainee health professionals to focus on and advance the sustainability agenda within their clinical practice and across wider healthcare systems. CONCLUSION: Update of health professional standards is needed to ensure that health professionals in every specialty are supported and encouraged to lead the implementation of environmentally sustainable practices within the health sector and advocate for planetary health.

The bolstering effect of conceptual priming on psychological help-seeking attitudes in men.

BACKGROUND: It is a well-established finding that men are often unwilling to engage with mental health services, and that they hold negative attitudes toward psychological help-seeking. Consequently, men's psychological problems often remain untreated, which in turn can compromise their quality of life. AIMS: The present experiment addresses this problem using a conceptual priming paradigm from social psychology called Scrambled Sentence Test as an intervention to change men's negative attitudes toward psychological help-seeking. METHOD: The Scrambled Sentence Test works by asking participants to unscramble sentences that unbeknownst to them include priming words--in this case, openness and communication-related words. Sixty-nine men completed the task (with priming or control words) under the instructions of a condition-blind experimenter. RESULTS: The primed group showed more positive attitudes (Mdn = 56.5) toward seeking psychological help compared to controls (Mdn = 40.0), p < 0.01; r = 0.38. CONCLUSION: The findings are the first to suggest that conceptual priming of this kind can be used an as effective and time-efficient intervention by mental health professionals to encourage men to seek help for psychological problems.