Jose Silveira

Recognition of affective prosody by speakers of English as a first or foreign language

Adults who were fluent in English, and who grew up speaking English or one of 21 other languages listened to words spoken with angry or neutral intonation. We measured the accuracy with which the listeners identified the intended emotion. English mother tongue (EMT) polyglots scored higher than other mother tongue (OMT) listeners, whereas EMT monoglots did not. Women were significantly more accurate than men across the three listener groups. There was a modest inverse correlation between accuracy and age. The learning of a second language may have helped the EMT polyglots develop additional perceptual skills in decoding speech emotion in their native language.

A novel network for mentoring family physicians on mental health issues using E-mail.

ObjectiveFamily practitioners are significant providers of mental health care and routinely report difficulty acquiring timely support in this area. The Collaborative Mental Health Care Network assembled groups of family practitioners and provided them with mental health practitioner mentors. This article addresses communication in the Network, its effect on family practitioners, and the role e-mail plays.MethodsThis descriptive study utilizes two sources of data: a quality assurance survey administered to family practitioners in the Network and a sampling of e-mail correspondence between family practitioners and mental health and addiction mentors, examined qualitatively.ResultsFamily practitioners in the Network requested consultation on pharmacotherapy (53%), psychotherapy (34%), treatment review (27%), and diagnosis (24%). Satisfaction with the Network was high, with 88% of family practitioners reporting an improvement in ability to provide mental health care. E-mail analysis suggests that mentors convey information directly and indirectly and that a knowledge hierarchy, but not a power hierarchy develops. The trusted relationship between the mentee and mentor is an important context for effective education.ConclusionThis model of mentoring is highly satisfactory to family practitioners and correlates with increased confidence in caring for patients with mental health issues. E-mail is a promising strategy for effective feedback and support between family practitioners and specialists.

Incentives and disincentives for treating of depression and anxiety in Ontario Family Health Teams: protocol for a grounded theory study

Introduction There is strong consensus that prevention and management of common mental disorders (CMDs) should occur in primary care and evidence suggests that treatment of CMDs in these settings can be effective. New interprofessional team-based models of primary care have emerged that are intended to address problems of quality and access to mental health services, yet many people continue to struggle to access care for CMDs in these settings. Insufficient attention directed towards the incentives and disincentives that influence care for CMDs in primary care, and especially in interprofessional team-based settings, may have resulted in missed opportunities to improve care quality and control healthcare costs. Our research is driven by the hypothesis that a stronger understanding of the full range of incentives and disincentives at play and their relationships with performance and other contextual factors will help stakeholders identify the critical levers of change needed to enhance prevention and management of CMDs in interprofessional primary care contexts. Participant recruitment began in May 2016. Methods and analysis An explanatory qualitative design, based on a constructivist grounded theory methodology, will be used. Our study will be conducted in the Canadian province of Ontario, a province that features a widely implemented interprofessional team-based model of primary care. Semistructured interviews will be conducted with a diverse range of healthcare professionals and stakeholders that can help us understand how various incentives and disincentives influence the provision of evidence-based collaborative care for CMDs. A final sample size of 100 is anticipated. The protocol was peer reviewed by experts who were nominated by the funding organisation. Ethics and dissemination The model we generate will shed light on the incentives and disincentives that are and should be in place to support high-quality CMD care and help stimulate more targeted, coordinated stakeholder responses to improving primary mental healthcare quality.