Tuesday, December 20, 2005

GPs deal with 10m mental health visits

Australians made almost 10 million visits to their GPs for mental health problems last financial year, a new report shows.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report also found almost 200,000 Australians were admitted to hospital due to some form of mental illness in 2003-04, the latest period for which figures are available.

The AIHW said mental health problems accounted for almost 11 per cent of all problems managed by GPs last financial year.

"There were about 9.8 million attendances (during 2004/05) in which general practitioners managed mental health problems," the report said.

It said the number of visits to GPs for mental health-related care had been relatively stable since 1999.

In 2003-04, there were almost five million visits to publicly-funded mental health services.
"The care that people with mental health problems receive most often is care in the community from GPs or government-operated health services, rather than from hospitalisations," said Jenny Hargreaves, head of AIHW's hospitals and mental health services unit.

She said men sought assistance more often for mental health problems than women.
"There were 256 service contacts per 1,000 people for men, compared with 226 for women," Ms Hargreaves said.

But she said that was not surprising given that one of the more common conditions treated in government-funded mental health care was schizophrenia, which is more common in men.

Between 1999-2004 the number of mental health-related admissions to hospitals increased at an average annual rate of just over two per cent to 197,712 for that year, the report said.

Schizophrenia accounted for the highest number of hospital admissions with specialised psychiatric care at 19 per cent, followed by a depressive episode at 16 per cent.

The report found that for patients who did not receive specialised psychiatric care while in hospital, the most common diagnosis was mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol use at 17 per cent.

For patients whose hospital visit involved specialised psychiatric care, the number of admissions was highest for those living in major cities and lowest for those in remote areas.
The opposite was true for patients who did not receive specialised psychiatric care while in hospital.

The AIHW said there were 14 psychiatrists per 100,000 people in Australia in 2003.
However, remote areas had only 2.5 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, compared to 18.5 in major cities.

The report also said there were more than 12,800 mental health nurses per 100,000 people in that year.

www.theage.com.au

Business owners look to revitalize Canmore

Business owners in Canmore are working on a plan to revitalize their downtown area.
Despite $130 million worth of commercial development in the past decade, about ten per cent of downtown commercial space is sitting empty.

Business owner Greg Bury worries the empty shops will scare off customers who might think the town is having economic troubles.

"I think this town is full right now in terms of what the marketplace wants," Bury told CBC News. "And for us to continue to just throw stores out there – like throwing a dart on a dart board and hoping that something good happens is a very scary business proposition."

Leah Kendal, one of the area's largest property developers, says he has about 13 vacant stores downtown.

He says development outside the town centre has significantly hurt the town's retail core, while others blame high rents for the vacancies.

To fight the problem, a group of the town's concerned business owners have formed what they call a business revitalization zone.

Sean Meggs, a local business owner and chair of the new group, says store owners have been struggling for more than a decade to get the municipal government to commit to redeveloping the downtown.

Meggs says the revitalization group is working on its own plan.
The plan includes aesthetic work like burying overhead wires, installing new lighting and benches as well as improving traffic flow. The costs would be split between business owners and the town.

"We're talking about working out a formula with the town as to a reasonable split as to what businesses would pay and what the town would pay," Meggs says.

Canmore Mayor Ron Casey says no amount of redesign will fix the problem. He says Canmore is simply overdeveloped commercially and until tourism rebounds to what it was before Sept. 11, there won't be enough demand to fill the vacancies.
Town council would still have to approve the plan that could cost the town as much as $8 million.

www.cbc.ca

Microsoft reveals more Vista technology

"We are on a path to be code-complete by the end of 2005," said Shanen Boettcher, Microsoft senior director in the company's Windows client group. A code-complete CTP is expected in early 2006, with the general release version of Vista set for the second half of next year.

With the December CTP, Windows AntiSpyware has been renamed Windows Defender. It features improved detection and removal of spyware and malware as well as a redesigned user interface, Boettcher said. Microsoft describes the anti-spyware offering in the December CTP as a functioning early preview of what will be in the final version.

Also offered in the CTP is BitLocker Drive Encryption, formerly known as full-volume encryption. It provides hardware-based data protection to address the issue of data being accessed from lost or stolen machines. The entire Windows system volume is encrypted to prevent unauthorised access.

Users of the new CTP can apply Group Policy to block installation of removable storage drives. "This has been a big concern for folks in terms of data leakage," Boettcher said.

Internet Explorer gets support for international domain names as well as protection from spoofing of these domain names. Advancements in firewall software include bi-directional filtering. Rules set in the Windows Service Hardening platform are enforced to limit the file, registry, and network access. Advanced IPSec is offered, integrated into a single management console with firewall management.

To improve performance and mobility, a single button is being used as an on/off control while a Windows SuperFetch algorithm caches items used most frequently. USB Flash drive can be used to provide additional memory employed by SuperFetch.

The new user interface in build 5270 features improvements in design elements and some consumer-oriented features. The December CTP includes Windows Media Player 11, featuring improvements to the look and feel.

An early version of Aero is highlighted, as well. Aero encompasses a new design philosophy that includes a translucent "glass" appearance of open windows as well as smoother transitions between windows. A re-designed start menu also is part of Aero.
One analyst described the December CTP as a progression toward the final version.

www.techworld.com