Margaret Clarke

Evaluation of a self-help leaflet in treatment of social difficulties following facial disfigurement

Psychological difficulty, particularly in social situations, is widely reported by disfigured people, but many receive no formal psychological treatment. This study randomly allocated 106 facially disfigured people either to receive a self-help leaflet offering cognitive-behavioural guidance or not. Participants were assessed pre-treatment and at 3 month follow-up. The untreated group then received the leaflet. Participants in the leaflet group fared better than controls on 3 of the 9 scales employed (Social Leisure [SAQ] (t=2.31, p=0.012), HADS anxiety (t=2.22, p=0.015), HADS depression (t=1.83, p=0.036). There is support for a cognitive-behavioural approach and the usefulness of self-help instructions in addressing the social difficulties of facially disfigured people. The approach merits further development and investigation.

Research resource development in the United Kingdom.

Nursing research was virtually non-existent in the United Kingdom until 1953, by which time the National Health Service was well established following its inception in 1948. However because there were no departments of nursing within higher education at that time, overall responsibility for nurse training was vested in Government health departments. In many ways the U.K. is fortunate that much of the responsibility for the development of resource for nursing research was accepted by the Department of Health alongside their responsibility for health care provision. Please note that the major health care provider is the NHS, the Private Care Sector is extremely small even today. The United Kingdom comprises the countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; together with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. However, in this paper, we focus upon the first four of these constituent parts and when referring to Government Health Departments we mean those departments with administrative responsibility for health at governmental level within these four countries. Over the years, partly due to political change, the title both of these Departments and the responsible Minister have changed. In recent years a Secretary of State with Cabinet membership has been in charge of Health. Subtle policy differences in the four countries have affected nurse education, nurse employment and in its turn the development of nursing research. It is inevitable that in treating the U.K. as a single entity in this paper some blurring of the differences between countries will occur. A further complication has been that until a 1979 Act of Parliament created a single