Surge in police sickness costs taxpayer £90m a year / The Times, 23 October 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4995725.ece
"Police forces lost more than one million days to long-term sick leave last year at a record cost of nearly £90 million, an investigation by The Times has found. The cost has soared by more than 20 per cent in the past five years despite a drive within the police to reduce prolonged sick absences. Freedom of information requests to the 43 forces in England and Wales revealed that stress, depression, back pain and other musculo-skeletal disorders are mainly responsible."

Think-tank urges support for UK's mental 'wellbeing' / 24dash.com, 22 October
2008
http://digbig.com/4xsnq
"Action across society to support the nation's mental wellbeing would reap huge benefits, according to the Government's futures think-tank Foresight. Mental capital is defined as the thinking and emotional resources that enable people to learn, develop social skills, and cope with stress.The report sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) follows a two-year study involving more than 400 international experts in fields ranging from neuroscience to economics."
Mental Capacity and Well-Being: Making the Most of Ourselves in the 21st Century: Executuve Summary / The Government Office for Science, October 2008
PDF - http://digbig.com/4xsnr
Foresight Mental Capital and Well-Being Project:Mental Capital Through Life: Future Challenges
PDF - http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Mental%20Capital/Mental_capital_through_life.pdf
Learning Through Life: Future Challenges
PDF - http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Mental%20Capital/Learning_through_life.pdf
Mental Health: Future Challenges
PDF - http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Mental%20Capital/Mental_Health.pdf
Well-Being and Work: Future Challenges
PDF - http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Mental%20Capital/Wellbeing_and_work.pdf
Learning Difficulties: Future Challenges
PDF - http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Mental%20Capital/Learning_difficulties.pdf

Stress relief by numbers set to address officers' mental health
Jane's Police Review, 10 September 2008
http://jpr.janes.com
"Japanese number puzzles could be the answer to relieving the stress and depression associated with police work, according to mental health experts. Spending an hour working on Sudoku puzzles each evening can alleviate symptoms of stress, according to Mind, the national association for mental health."
[Sub required]

Researchers investigate impact of stress on police officers' physical and mental health / Eurekalert, 26 September 2008
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/uab-rii092608.php
"Policing is dangerous work, and the danger lurks not on the streets alone.
The pressures of law enforcement put officers at risk for high blood pressure, insomnia, increased levels of destructive stress hormones, heart problems, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide, University at Buffalo researchers have found through a decade of studies of police officers."

Mentally ill kept in police cells /BBC, 10 September 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7604089.stm
"Thousands of people with mental health problems are being detained in police cells rather than being taken to hospital for assessment, a report says. Over a year, more than 11,500 people were held in police custody for assessment under the Mental Health Act - double the number taken to hospital. The Independent Police Complaints Commission collated data for all 43 police forces in England and Wales. IPCC commissioner Ian Bynoe said the situation was "intolerable"."

Civil service sickness 'too high'/BBC, 4 September 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7597148.stm
"There area unacceptably high levels of sickness leave within the civil service, a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report has revealed. In May, an Audit Office report found that Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) staff took four more days off, on average, than the rest of the UK."

[USA] Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Disease, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2007 / Trust for America’s Health, December 2007
PDF - http://healthyamericans.org/reports/bioterror07/BioTerrorReport2007.pdf

New Findings Provide Clearest Picture Yet of How Enrollees in the World Trade Center Health Registry Were Affected by 9/11 / Journal of Urban Health (via New York City Department of Health and Urban Hygiene), September 2008
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2008/pr062-08.shtml
"Two to three years after the disaster, psychological trauma and new respiratory problems were still elevated across all groups."
2008 Annual Report on 9/11 Health / WorldTrade Center Medical Working Group of New York City, September 2008
PDF - http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2008/2008_mwg_annual_report.pdf

British Authorities Credit Health Messages for Drop in Youth Drug Use Rates / Join Together, 21 July 2008
http://digbig.com/4xgbk
"Department of Health leaders in England are attributing decreases in drug experimentation rates among the nation's young teenagers to a well-financed campaign on drugs' dangers."

Out of sight, out of mind: the State of Mental Healthcare in Prison / Policy Exchange, 2008
PDF - http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/404.pdf
Professor Charlie Brooker and Ben Ullmann
Edited by Gavin Lockhart

Are alcohol squads a good idea? / Guardian, June 11 2008
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/joepublic/2008/06/alcohol_squads_highlight_new_a.html
Sara Gaines
“Alcohol support squads are planned for the 10 towns with the most drink-related hospital admissions, to encourage people to seek help for hazardous drinking. The initiative, announced under government plans to tackle health inequalities, follows moves to reduce drug related crime by offering treatment to problem users at police stations. So does this show a new willingness to treat the cause as well as the symptoms?”

The opium fields of England... heroin-producing poppies grown to make NHS pain-relief drugs / Daily Mail, 23 June 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1028504/The-opium-field-England--heroin-producing-poppies-grown-make-NHS-pain-relief-drugs.html
Tamara Cohen
“Covering more than 6,400 acres on around a dozen farms in Hampshire, Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire, the flowers are harvested in the late summer. The heads are dried and the seeds – up to 10,000 in a single flower – removed from the capsules for use in the food industry. But it is in the seed pods that the important chemicals are found, and the pods are chopped, dried and turned into pellets in order to be transported. The pellets are then sent to a processing plant in Scotland. This year’s crop will be made into more than 100 tons of morphine and codeine.”

Healthy eating plan for public sector workers, patients and prisoners / Guardian, 8 July 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/08/health.health?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews
James Meikle
"Hospital patients, prisoners and millions of Britain's public sector workers are to be the focus of a healthy eating initiative drawn up by ministers. Canteens will be expected to meet new guidelines on nutrition, lower fat, salt and sugar content, and portion size. The scheme, already compulsory in schools, will be extended under voluntary arrangements to hospitals, care homes, prisons and government offices, although legislation has been threatened if these initiatives fail to work."

A crisis of enforcement: The decriminalisation of death and injury at work / Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, June 2008
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/acrisisofenforcementstructure.html
“This briefing argues that fatalities and injuries caused through work are under-reported and the Health and Safety Executive does not have the resources to carry out proper enforcement. It suggests that being a victim of a work-related fatality or injury is far more likely than experiencing conventionally defined and measured violence and homicide.”
PDF - http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus685/crisisenforcementembargo.pdf

Pandemic influenza: guidance on preparing mental health services in England http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_085925?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=168200&Rendition=Web
"This document is designed to assist mental health trusts and other specialist mental health service providers in developing their plans for responding to an influenza pandemic. This document details a national approach, setting out the key planning assumptions and principles, roles and responsibilities that should inform the development of local plans."

Suicide and stress in the workplace / Cafe Babel, 21 May 2008
http://www.cafebabel.com/eng/article/24838/stress-work-suicide-google.html
Aurélien BORDET
"The emergence of a liberal, anti-hierarchical management has sought to increasingly empower employees. However, it has also played a role in stressful work environments. Certainly, modes of organisation within companies have significantly decreased the monotony of certain tasks. Whereas previously, tasks assigned to each employee were clearly defined, today, the employee faces a multitude of endless things to do. Because of high labour costs, employees are facing arduous hardships in dealing with additional responsibilities at the workplace."

A Crisis of enforcement: The decriminalisation of death and injury at work / Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 17 June 2008
PDF - http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus685/crisisenforcementembargo.pdf
"This briefing argues that fatalities and injuries caused through work are far more prevalent than the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) currently reports. The authors find that more than 80 per cent of officially recorded work-related fatalities are filtered out from the HSE's headline figure and remain buried in other categories in the official data. After re-assessing the scale of the harms caused, Tombs and Whyte conclude that being a victim of a work-related fatality or injury is far more likely than experiencing conventionally defined and measured violence and homicide."

The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness: Lessons for Mental Health Care in Scotland / University of Manchester, 16 June 2008
Summary report
PDF - http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/suicideprevention/nci/Useful/scotland_summary_report.pdf
Full report
PDF - http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/suicideprevention/nci/Useful/scotland_full_report.pdf

Information network on good practice in health care for migrants and minorities / Eurekalert, 21 May 2008
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/qmuo-ino052108.php
"The UK wiki is available at www.mighealth.net/uk and contains information on migrant and minority populations, the state of health of migrants and minorities and their access and accessibility to health care services. "Good practices" developed to address the health care needs of migrants and minorities, as well as information on organizations dealing with migrant and minority health, are also presented.@

Is stress a health and safety hazard? / BBC, 5 May 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7384002.stm
"It's widely thought that employees on lower grades suffer if they have little control over their jobs. Is this true?..."