Adolescent diet, physical activity and nutritional status are generally known to be sub-optimal. This is an introduction to a special issue of papers devoted to exploring factors affecting diet and physical activity in adolescents, including food insecure and vulnerable groups.

Eight settings including urban, peri-urban and rural across sites from five different low- and middle-income countries.

Focus groups with adolescents and caregivers carried out by trained researchers.

Our results show that adolescents, even in poor settings, know about healthy diet and lifestyles. They want to have energy, feel happy, look good and live longer, but their desire for autonomy, a need to ‘belong’ in their peer group, plus vulnerability to marketing exploiting their aspirations, leads them to make unhealthy choices. They describe significant gender, culture and context-specific barriers. For example, urban adolescents had easy access to energy dense, unhealthy foods bought outside the home, whereas junk foods were only beginning to permeate rural sites. Among adolescents in Indian sites, pressure to excel in exams meant that academic studies were squeezing out physical activity time.

Interventions to improve adolescents’ diets and physical activity levels must therefore address structural and environmental issues and influences in their homes and schools, since it is clear that their food and activity choices are the product of an interacting complex of factors. In the next phase of work, the Transforming Adolescent Lives through Nutrition consortium will employ groups of adolescents, caregivers and local stakeholders in each site to develop interventions to improve adolescent nutritional status.

To explore the perceptions of adolescents and their caregivers on drivers of diet and physical activity in rural India in the context of ongoing economic, social and nutrition transition.

A qualitative study comprising eight focus group discussions (FGD) on factors affecting eating and physical activity patterns, perceptions of health and decision-making on food preparation.

Villages approximately 40–60 km from the city of Pune in the state of Maharashtra, India.

Two FGD with adolescents aged 10–12 years (n 20), two with 15- to 17- year-olds (n 18) and four with their mothers (n 38).

Dietary behaviour and physical activity of adolescents were perceived to be influenced by individual and interpersonal factors including adolescent autonomy, parental influence and negotiations between adolescents and caregivers. The home food environment, street food availability, household food security and exposure to television and digital media were described as influencing behaviour. The lack of facilities and infrastructure was regarded as barriers to physical activity as were insufficient resources for public transport, safe routes for walking and need for cycles, particularly for girls. It was suggested that schools take a lead role in providing healthy foods and that governments invest in facilities for physical activity.

In this transitioning environment, that is representative of many parts of India and other Lower Middle Income Countries (LMIC), people perceive a need for interventions to improve adolescent diet and physical activity. Caregivers clearly felt that they had a stake in adolescent health, and so we would recommend the involvement of both adolescents and caregivers in intervention design.

To disrupt cycles of health inequity, traceable to dietary inequities in the earliest stages of life, public health interventions should target improving nutritional wellbeing in preconception/pregnancy environments. This requires a deep engagement with pregnant/postpartum people (PPP) and their communities (including their health and social care providers, HSCP). We sought to understand the factors that influence diet during pregnancy from the perspectives of PPP and HSCP, and to outline intervention priorities.

We carried out thematic network analyses of transcripts from ten focus group discussions (FGD) and one stakeholder engagement meeting with PPP and HSCP in a Canadian city. Identified themes were developed into conceptual maps, highlighting local priorities for pregnancy nutrition and intervention development.

FGD and the stakeholder meeting were run in predominantly lower socioeconomic position (SEP) neighbourhoods in the sociodemographically diverse city of Hamilton, Canada.

All local, comprising twenty-two lower SEP PPP and forty-three HSCP.

Salient themes were resilience, resources, relationships and the embodied experience of pregnancy. Both PPP and HSCP underscored that socioeconomic-political forces operating at multiple levels largely determined the availability of individual and relational resources constraining diet during pregnancy. Intervention proposals focused on cultivating individual and community resilience to improve early-life nutritional environments. Participants called for better-integrated services, greater income supports and strengthened support programmes.

Hamilton stakeholders foregrounded social determinants of inequity as main factors influencing pregnancy diet. They further indicated a need to develop interventions that build resilience and redistribute resources at multiple levels, from the household to the state.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy involve significant interpersonal and behavioural impairments. However, little is known about white matter (WM) abnormalities in tracts linking grey matter regions. A previous diffusion tensor imaging (DT-MRI) tractography study in ASPD and psychopathy revealed abnormalities in the right uncinate fasciculus, indicating fronto-limbic disconnectivity.

It is not clear whether WM abnormalities are restricted to only this tract or are more widespread. Therefore, we planned to use whole brain DT-MRI voxel-based analyses.

To clarify if WM abnormalities extend beyond the frontal lobe.

We used whole brain DT-MRI to compare WM fractional anisotropy (FA) of 15 adults with ASPD and healthy age, handedness and IQ-matched controls. Also, within ASPD subjects, we related differences in FA to severity of psychopathy measures.

Significant WM FA reductions were found in ASPD subjects relative to controls. These were found bilaterally in the anterior corpus callosum. Right hemisphere FA reduction was found in the anterior corona radiata, uncinate fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and internal capsule. Left hemisphere, FA deficits encompassed the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and internal capsule. There was a significant negative correlation between WM FA in the right uncinate fasciculus and corpus callosum and measures of psychopathy.

We report FA reduction in the uncinate fasciculus and anterior corpus callosum which may be associated with frontal and inter-hemispheric disconnectivity in ASPD, in addition to abnormalities in other tracts which directly or indirectly connect to prefrontal regions.

White matter (WM) abnormalities are considered integral to the pathophysiology of Schizophrenia (SZ) and Bipolar Disorder (BD), but there is ongoing uncertainty about the contribution of medication to these findings.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) is a neuroimaging technique that provides quantitative indices of the structural and orientational characteristics of WM. These indices include mean diffusivity (MD), which is a directionally averaged measure of the apparent diffusion coefficient, and fractional anisotropy (FA), which summarizes the orientational dependence of diffusivity. We wanted to determine if these indices are affected by antipsychotic medication.

Our aim was to examine the available literature in order to differentiate antipsychotic effects from disorder-specific WM abnormalities on DTI measures.

We conducted a systematic qualitative review of the DTI literature in Bipolar Disorder (BD) and Schizophrenia (SZ), between 1998 and 2010 and included only studies where the relationship between DTI measures and antipsychotic medication was explicitly examined and reported.

We identified 40 studies in SZ and 8 in BD. All studies were cross-sectional and involved relatively small patient samples. 32 studies (80%) did not find any relationship between antipsychotic medication (dose, cumulative exposure) and FA or MD.

Current evidence does not indicate a major impact of antipsychotic treatment on DTI indices of WM integrity. However, the lack of longitudinal, within-subject designs is a major gap in the current literature.

In 2007 the Mental Health Act in England and Wales was amended and the definition of Mental Disorder was broadened. This change affected people with Personality Disorders who now can be admitted for hospital treatment without consent, often for prolonged period of time.

This poster reviews clinicians’ attitudes towards the new legislation and its consequences and also presents the research on the different perspectives about the new law.

To review clinicians’ attitudes with regard to interfaces between Personality Disorders and the new law.

Use of the specifically designed questionnaire for clinicians providing hospital care for patients with Borderline Personality Disorders. MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases were also searched for all English-language articles published between 2008 and 2012 containing the keywords “rsonality Disorder”, “Mental Health Act” and “clinicians view on compulsory treatment of persons with Borderline Personality Disorder”. Additional key articles published before 2008 were reviewed. The most relevant articles were selected for the review.

There is still no common consensus in regard to the benefit of compulsory hospital admission of persons with Borderline Personality Disorders. Results from questionnaires are under review.

In 2007 the Mental Health Act in England and Wales was amended and the definition of Mental Disorder was broadened. This change affected people with Personality Disorders who now can be admitted for hospital treatment without consent, often for prolonged period of time.

This poster reviews patients’ attitudes towards the new legislation and its consequences and also presents the research on the different perspectives about the new law.

To review patients’ attitudes with regard to interfaces between Personality Disorders and the new law.

Use of the specifically designed questionnaire for patients with Borderline Personality Disorders hospitalized under Mental Health Act. MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases were also searched for all English-language articles published between 2008 and 2012 containing the keywords “Personality Disorder”, “Mental Health Act” and “patients’ view on compulsory treatment”. Additional key articles published before 2008 were reviewed. The most relevant articles were selected for review.

There is still no common consensus in regard to the benefit of compulsory hospital admission of persons with Borderline Personality Disorders. Results from questionnaires are under review.

Language and communication are fundamental to the human experience, and, traditionally, spoken language is studied as an isolated skill. However, before propositional language (i.e., spontaneous, voluntary, novel speech) can be produced, propositional content or ‘ideas’ must be formulated.

This review highlights the role of broader cognitive processes, particularly ‘executive attention’, in the formulation of propositional content (i.e., ‘ideas’) for propositional language production.

Several key lines of evidence converge to suggest that the formulation of ideas for propositional language production draws on executive attentional processes. Larger-scale clinical research has demonstrated a link between attentional processes and language, while detailed case studies of neurological patients have elucidated specific idea formulation mechanisms relating to the generation, selection and sequencing of ideas for expression. Furthermore, executive attentional processes have been implicated in the generation of ideas for propositional language production. Finally, neuroimaging studies suggest that a widely distributed network of brain regions, including parts of the prefrontal and parietal cortices, supports propositional language production.

Theoretically driven experimental research studies investigating mechanisms involved in the formulation of ideas are lacking. We suggest that novel experimental approaches are needed to define the contribution of executive attentional processes to idea formulation, from which comprehensive models of spoken language production can be developed. Clinically, propositional language impairments should be considered in the context of broader executive attentional deficits.

Infants with prenatally diagnosed CHD are at high risk for adverse outcomes owing to multiple physiologic and psychosocial factors. Lack of immediate physical postnatal contact because of rapid initiation of medical therapy impairs maternal–infant bonding. On the basis of expected physiology, maternal–infant bonding may be safe for select cardiac diagnoses.

This is a single-centre study to assess safety of maternal–infant bonding in prenatal CHD.

In total, 157 fetuses with prenatally diagnosed CHD were reviewed. On the basis of cardiac diagnosis, 91 fetuses (58%) were prenatally approved for bonding and successfully bonded, 38 fetuses (24%) were prenatally approved but deemed not suitable for bonding at delivery, and 28 (18%) were not prenatally approved to bond. There were no complications attributable to bonding. Those who successfully bonded were larger in weight (3.26 versus 2.6 kg, p<0.001) and at later gestation (39 versus 38 weeks, p<0.001). Those unsuccessful at bonding were more likely to have been delivered via Caesarean section (74 versus 49%, p=0.011) and have additional non-cardiac diagnoses (53 versus 29%, p=0.014). There was no significant difference regarding the need for cardiac intervention before hospital discharge. Infants who bonded had shorter hospital (7 versus 26 days, p=0.02) and ICU lengths of stay (5 versus 23 days, p=0.002) and higher survival (98 versus 76%, p<0.001).

Fetal echocardiography combined with a structured bonding programme can permit mothers and infants with select types of CHD to successfully bond before ICU admission and intervention.