OBJECTIVES To study whether proactive educational counselling, in addition to routine clinical care, reduces psychological morbidity and improves quality of life and client satisfaction among women who suffer suboptimal outcomes during childbirth. DESIGN A randomised controlled trial. SETTING Obstetric unit of a tertiary teaching hospital. POPULATION Women who had unexpected antenatal, in...

BACKGROUND Depression is a significant cause of morbidity. Many patients have communicated an interest in non-pharmacological therapies to their general practitioners. Systematic reviews of acupuncture and counselling for depression in primary care have identified limited evidence. The aim of this study was to evaluate acupuncture versus usual care and counselling versus usual care for patients...

I am very happy to write my opinion regarding Dr. Oostrom’s paper. First of all, I agree with Dr. Oostrom’s shortened BRCA counselling protocol. Actually, in my clinical practice, I have already adopted the shortened protocol and usually two sessions are enough for non-mutation carriers. Although my experience in genetic counselling is not that long, I hardly encounter patients with psychologic...

While there is good evidence to show that counselling may be beneficial to those patients in general practice with non-organic problems, deployment of the available resources lacks standardization and rationalization. The Counselling in Medical Settings Working Party of the British Association for Counselling is pressing for standardized training and accreditation of counsellors so that general...

In this study, expectant parents of twins were questioned about their feelings and need for information and counselling on the parenting of twins. Data were obtained from self-rating questionnaires and an interview with the expectant mother. From the results it is argued that expectant parents of twins need specific information and counselling about the medical, emotional and parenting issues o...

In the present work, we outline basic health counselling skills, specifically, those for performing pre-test and post-test counselling for HIV infection. The ultimate goal is to propose that counselling be performed in facilities that carry out screening for anti-HIV antibodies, following standardised (and thus replicable) criteria, with consistent focus on the quality of the relationship betwe...

BACKGROUND Different strategies have been used to improve the initiation and duration of breastfeeding. Peer counsellors are reported to improve exclusive breastfeeding levels, but few studies have assessed the satisfaction of women with the support given, especially in Africa. In this paper we describe women's experiences of peer counselling for exclusive breastfeeding in an East African setti...

INTRODUCTION This study describes the use of prescription medications and psychological counselling in the past 12 months among Canadian adults with a self-reported mood and/or anxiety disorder diagnosis; the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics associated with their use; and reasons for not using them. METHODS We used data from the 2014 Survey on Living with Chronic Diseases in Cana...

BACKGROUND Perinatal depression is a major public health issue especially in low income settings in South Africa, where there is a shortage of mental health professionals. New psychological interventions delivered by non-specialists are needed to fill the treatment gap. This paper describes the process of developing a manual based task sharing counselling intervention for perinatal depression i...