The social gradient in health describes a graded association between an individual’s position on the social hierarchy and health: the lower the socioeconomic position of an individual, the worse their health. The fact that the social gradient extends from the highest echelons of society to the lowest suggests that everyone is affected to a greater or lesser extent by the social determinants of ...

Women exhibit a nearly twofold increased risk of developing depression and anxiety disorders when compared to men, a fact that has been hypothesized to result in part from increased stress susceptibility. Here, we used the tryptophan hydroxylase-2 R439H knock-in mouse (Tph2KI) and the chronic unpredictable mild stress (CMS) model to examine sex differences in response to congenital 5-HT deficie...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate trends in premature death rates by cause of death, age, race, and urbanization level in the United States. METHODS We calculated cause-specific death rates using the Compressed Mortality File, National Center for Health Statistics data for adults aged 25 to 64 years in 2 time periods: 1999 to 2001 and 2013 to 2015. We defined 48 subpopulations by 10-year age groups, rac...

BACKGROUND The importance of spirituality in coping with a terminal illness is becoming increasingly recognised. We aimed to assess the relation between spiritual well-being, depression, and end-of-life despair in terminally-ill cancer patients. METHODS 160 patients in a palliative care hospital with a life expectancy of less than 3 months were interviewed with a series of standardised instru...

The NHS does bad things. A youngman with learning disability drowned in a bath while in its care. Subcultures have existed that have ignored cries of pain. The NHS has covered up events leading to deaths rather than being open. The chief inspector of general practice in England, Steve Field, has said that he’s ashamed of his profession and that we haven’t dealt with our failings. There are two ...

For patients in the 1920s, diagnosis and therapeutic tools rather than social position were now determining hospital admission. The hospital was becoming a complex operation, no longer seen as adequately supervised by absentee lay trustees, but only by professionalizing superintendents. To some critics, hospitals were beginning to appear as monolithic and impersonal medical factories. But thoug...