Latest developments in stress include the following …
Alcohol 'harms women faster'
Excessive drinking causes brain damage in women more quickly than in men, according to scientists. The finding is especially worrying in the light of reports that binge drinking among women is soaring: The number of women drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week increased by 70% between 1988 and 2002, and women aged 16 to 24 are most prone to binge drinking, with 49% cramming their weekly consumption into one to three days.
Scientists at the University of Heidelberg in Germany took brain scans of 158 volunteers, 76 of whom were alcoholic men and women. They found they could use the brain scans to trace the progression of alcohol dependency in women, and the scans also revealed that alcohol-induced brain damage could be picked up much earlier in women than men. “The women developed equal brain-volume reductions as the men after a significantly shorter period of alcohol dependence,” said Karl Mann, who led the study.
Five million UK workers 'suffer extreme stress' at a cost of £1 billion
More than 5 million people complain of 'extreme' stress in their jobs which puts them at risk of a breakdown, and the pressures of the workplace are exacting a social and economic toll which can no longer be ignored, according to the leading mental health charity Mind. Stress costs the UK economy £1 in lost productivity for every £10 generated, yet less than 10% of companies have a policy to deal with it. Mind also said 12.8 million working days a year are now lost to work-related stress alone, with 58% of workers complaining of job stress, costing the UK economy £100bn a year..
The Mind survey found the most stressed workers were teachers, social workers, call centre workers, prison officers and the Police. Workers in the public sector suffered most stress and 'macho work environments' made it difficult for staff to admit to stress for fear of affecting their career prospects.
Mental illness is now Britain's biggest social problem, worse than unemployment and 'at least as important as poverty,' according to Lord Layard, a Labour peer. Almost a million people with mental health problems are on incapacity benefit, more than are receiving job-seeker's allowance. Only one in two people with depression receives any kind of treatment, yet it is of proven effectiveness, with a gain of £3,000 in productivity for every £1,000 spent, he said. And three in 10 people take sick leave in any one year with mental distress, yet fewer than one in 10 of these receives specialist treatment such as psychological counselling, according to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
Robot kidney transplant
A woman has donated a kidney to her partner after undergoing Britain's first live transplant operation carried out with a robot. The £1 million machine at Guy's Hospital in London, one of only two in the UK, removed the organ from Pauline Payne's body using two mechanical arms. Conventional surgery was then used to implant it in her seriously ill partner, Raymond Jackson. The da Vinci robot has been used before in Britain to remove diseased organs and carry out simple reconstructive surgery, but this is the first time anything as critical and difficult as a live organ transplant has been attempted with the machine in the UK.
Excessive drinking causes brain damage in women more quickly than in men, according to scientists. The finding is especially worrying in the light of reports that binge drinking among women is soaring: The number of women drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week increased by 70% between 1988 and 2002, and women aged 16 to 24 are most prone to binge drinking, with 49% cramming their weekly consumption into one to three days.
Scientists at the University of Heidelberg in Germany took brain scans of 158 volunteers, 76 of whom were alcoholic men and women. They found they could use the brain scans to trace the progression of alcohol dependency in women, and the scans also revealed that alcohol-induced brain damage could be picked up much earlier in women than men. “The women developed equal brain-volume reductions as the men after a significantly shorter period of alcohol dependence,” said Karl Mann, who led the study.
Five million UK workers 'suffer extreme stress' at a cost of £1 billion
More than 5 million people complain of 'extreme' stress in their jobs which puts them at risk of a breakdown, and the pressures of the workplace are exacting a social and economic toll which can no longer be ignored, according to the leading mental health charity Mind. Stress costs the UK economy £1 in lost productivity for every £10 generated, yet less than 10% of companies have a policy to deal with it. Mind also said 12.8 million working days a year are now lost to work-related stress alone, with 58% of workers complaining of job stress, costing the UK economy £100bn a year..
The Mind survey found the most stressed workers were teachers, social workers, call centre workers, prison officers and the Police. Workers in the public sector suffered most stress and 'macho work environments' made it difficult for staff to admit to stress for fear of affecting their career prospects.
Mental illness is now Britain's biggest social problem, worse than unemployment and 'at least as important as poverty,' according to Lord Layard, a Labour peer. Almost a million people with mental health problems are on incapacity benefit, more than are receiving job-seeker's allowance. Only one in two people with depression receives any kind of treatment, yet it is of proven effectiveness, with a gain of £3,000 in productivity for every £1,000 spent, he said. And three in 10 people take sick leave in any one year with mental distress, yet fewer than one in 10 of these receives specialist treatment such as psychological counselling, according to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
Robot kidney transplant
A woman has donated a kidney to her partner after undergoing Britain's first live transplant operation carried out with a robot. The £1 million machine at Guy's Hospital in London, one of only two in the UK, removed the organ from Pauline Payne's body using two mechanical arms. Conventional surgery was then used to implant it in her seriously ill partner, Raymond Jackson. The da Vinci robot has been used before in Britain to remove diseased organs and carry out simple reconstructive surgery, but this is the first time anything as critical and difficult as a live organ transplant has been attempted with the machine in the UK.
posted by Carole Spiers @ Wednesday, June 15, 2005
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