A debate has been developing in Nursing Standard on the issue of childhood immunizations. This article adds to the discussion by considering the likelihood of legislation being introduced to make immunisation compulsory in the UK. It also discusses how the courts approach an application for childhood vaccination against the wishes of a parent and the implications for nursing practice of that ap...

A recent article shows that a change in a single parameter in a neural-network model of brain dynamics leads to repetitive behaviors that resist termination and towards which the network tends. These findings may have implications for obsessive-compulsive disorder and are consistent with evidence of glutamatergic hyperactivity in this disorder.

* Correspondence: [email protected] Legislation sometimes leads to social change, but more often it formalises evolutions in existing community views. China’s draft Mental Health Act appears to have both elements. While the draft Act (the Act) has a significant emphasis on patients’ rights, it also aims to improve and increase services for people who are mentally unwell in China.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is generally chronic. Episodic OCD with complete remission has been rarely reported. Two cases of brief, episodic obsessions and compulsions that appeared for the first time following psychological stress and in the context of medical illness are reported. The possibility of brief episodes of OCD precipitated by stress is illustrated. Exploration of this phen...

The first thing to remember is that in India the history of rural credit, poverty alleviation and microFinance are inextricably interwoven. Any effort to understand one without reference to the others, can only lead to a fragmented understanding. The forces and compulsions that shaped the initiatives in these areas are best understood in context of State and banking policy over time. Thus, for ...

The compulsive nature of weight loss behaviors central to anorexia nervosa (AN), such as relentless self-starvation and over-exercise, has led to the suggestion of parallels between AN and other compulsive disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addictions. There is a huge unmet need for effective treatments in AN, which has high rates of morbidity and the highest mortality ra...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether in addition to repetitiveness, the motor rituals of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involve reduced functionality due to numerous and measurable acts that are irrelevant and unnecessary for task completion. METHOD Comparing motor rituals of OCD patients with behavior of non-patient control individuals who were instructed to perform the same mot...

Background and aims Most research into compulsive buying has focused on its causes: questionnaires have been used to study its association with various factors assumed to be important in its etiology. Few studies have dealt with the effects of being a compulsive buyer on shopping decisions. Also, processes underlying compulsive buying are dynamic but questionnaires give access only to a retrosp...

Obsessive compulsive and impulsive symptoms are prevalent in patients with Tourette's Syndrome (TS) and well recognized as part of the TS spectrum. However, some complex obsessive compulsive and impulsive behaviors may be mistaken for other symptoms, such as complex tics or psychotic behavior. In addition, the overlap between tics, compulsions, and impulsive actions can make them impossible to ...

The lateral hypothalamic (LH) projection to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) has been linked to reward processing, but the computations within the LH-VTA loop that give rise to specific aspects of behavior have been difficult to isolate. We show that LH-VTA neurons encode the learned action of seeking a reward, independent of reward availability. In contrast, LH neurons downstream of VTA encode...