A Multinational Health Professional Perspective of the Prevalence of Mood Disorders in Patients with Acute and Chronic Wounds.

Recent research has started to identify mood disorders and problems associated with acute and chronic wounds, which have been shown to contribute to delayed healing, poor patient well-being and a reduced quality of life. Furthermore, mood disorders have been shown to have a negative impact on financial costs for service providers and the wider society in terms of treatment and sickness absence. This study aimed to survey a multinational sample of health professionals to explore their perspective and awareness of mood disorders amongst acute and chronic wound patients. Responses were received from n = 908 health professionals working in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. A strong awareness of the prevalence of mood disorders appeared to be widespread among the health professionals across the world, in addition to a view on the potential factors contributing to these problems with mood. Despite this, it was thought that few patients were actually receiving treatment for their mood disorders. Implications for clinical practice include the need for health professionals to actively engage with their patients to enable them to learn from their experiences. Studies that explore the benefits of treatments and techniques appropriate for minimising mood disorders in patients with wounds would provide empirical evidence for health professionals to make recommendations for patients with acute and chronic wounds.

Readjusting our Sporting Sites/Sight: Sportification and the Theatricality of Social Life

This paper points out the potential of using sport for the analysis of society. Cultivated human movement is a specific social and cultural subsystem (involving sport, movement culture and physical culture), yet it becomes a part of wider social discourses by extending some of its characteristics into various other spheres. This process, theorised as sportification, provides as useful concept to examine the permeation of certain phenomena from the area of sport into the social reality outside of sport. In this paper, we investigate the phenomena of sportification which we parallel with visual culture and spectatorship practices in the Renaissance era. The emphasis in our investigation is on theatricality and performativity; particularly, the superficial spectator engagement with modern sport and sporting spectacles. Unlike the significance afforded to visualisation and deeper symbolic interpretation in Renaissance art, contemporary cultural shifts have changed and challenged the ways in which the active and interacting body is positioned, politicised, symbolised and ultimately understood. We suggest here that the ways in which we view sport and sporting bodies within a (post)modern context (particularly with the confounding amalgamations of signs and symbols and emphasis on hyper-realities) has invariably become detached from sports’ profound metaphysical meanings and resonance. Subsequently, by emphasising the associations between social theatrics and the sporting complex, this paper aims to remind readers of ways that sport—as a nuanced phenomenon—can be operationalised to help us to contemplate questions about nature, society, ourselves and the complex worlds in which we live.