Implementation of the Crisis Resolution Team model in adult mental health settings: a systematic review.

Crisis Resolution Teams (CRTs) aim to offer an alternative to hospital admission during mental health crises, providing rapid assessment, home treatment, and facilitation of early discharge from hospital. CRTs were implemented nationally in England following the NHS Plan of 2000. Single centre studies suggest CRTs can reduce hospital admissions and increase service users' satisfaction: however, there is also evidence that model implementation and outcomes vary considerably. Evidence on crucial characteristics of effective CRTs is needed to allow team functioning to be optimised. This review aims to establish what evidence, if any, is available regarding the characteristics of effective and acceptable CRTs

Cultures of caste and rural development in the social network of a south Indian village

Cultures of caste in much of rural India have become entangled with institutions of rural development. In community-driven development, emphasis on “local resource persons” and “community spokespersons” has created new opportunities for brokerage and patronage within some villages, which interact with existing forms of authority and community afforded by caste identity and intra-caste headmanship. In this article, we study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. We find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village’s network, its influence varies across different communities. This fluidity of caste’s influence on community network structures is argued to be the result of multiple distinct yet partially overlapping cultural-political forces, which include sharedness afforded by caste identity and new forms of difference and inequality effected through rural development

Photodynamic therapy: Inception to application in breast cancer.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is already being used in the treatment of many cancers. This review examines its components and the new developments in our understanding of its immunological effects as well as pre-clinical and clinical studies, which have investigated its potential use in the treatment of breast cancer

Towards a new theory of practice for community health psychology

The article sets out the value of theorizing collective action from a social science perspective that engages with the messy actuality of practice. It argues that community health psychology relies on an abstract version of Paulo Freire’s earlier writing, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which provides scholar-activists with a ‘map’ approach to collective action. The article revisits Freire’s later work, the Pedagogy of Hope, and argues for the importance of developing a ‘journey’ approach to collective action. Theories of practice are discussed for their value in theorizing such journeys, and in bringing maps (intentions) and journeys (actuality) closer together

Can the Experience of Participatory Development Help Think Critically about ‘Patient and Public Involvement’ in UK Healthcare?

The expansion of spaces for ‘patient and public involvement’ (PPI) in health systems in the UK is a relatively recent phenomenon, and yet ‘participation’ as a principle for planned interventions in international development is well established as a field of practice and controversy. Development workers and scholars have passed through moments of enchantment and disenchantment with the idea that the true source of innovation, expertise and workable (and sustainable) solutions is to be found not in the professionals but in communities of experience. Making ‘local knowledge’ the basis of interventions has proved unexpectedly problematic. How could incommensurable forms of knowing, across steep gradients of power be bridged? This article describes a decade-long experiment in participatory development in a remote Adivasi (tribal) region of western India in order to suggest the relevance of this experience for the very different context of PPI in healthcare settings. In particular, it highlights some general points about knowledge practices at the interface, and the human tendency to adjust, mirror, mimic, loop and in other ways make the ‘patient-professional’ interface itself hard to navigate. The article suggests that self-reflective insight into these social processes is necessary for effective ‘engagement’ by professional and lay actors alike

The establishment of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza under aseptic conditions

RESP-459

Advances in the study of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza

RESP-689

Electron-microscope studies of nodule development in some clover species

RESP-510

Brokering justice: global indigenous rights and struggles over hydropower in Nepal

This article explores the dynamics of brokerage at the intersection between the justice conceptions enshrined in global norms and the notions of justice asserted in specific socio-environmental struggles. Using the case of a small hydropower project in Nepal, we trace the attempts of an indigenous activist to enrol villagers in his campaign against the background of villagers’ everyday negotiations with the hydropower company. The study shows how global norms, such as indigenous peoples’ rights, may fail to gain traction on the ground or even become sources of injustice in particular contexts