The relationships between religious variables and mental health may depend on cognitive-behavioural mechanisms. Developments in this area might encourage clinicians to consider further the ways in which religious variables might be utilized and assessed in therapy. However, there is a need for further efforts to incorporate religious and spiritual factors in the clinical arena.

In patients with dementia who live alone and refuse day services, their misconceptions about day services and possibility of undiagnosed depression need further exploration.

Existing evidence suggests that strength training programs for cancer survivors have marginal benefit. Further, fully powered studies are required to determine the optimal type, intensity, and timing of resistance training.

This study describes the use of reliable scales to rate the clinical skills of mental health nurses when working with individuals and families with severe mental health problems. The Cognitive Therapy Scale and the Schizophrenia Family Work Scale were adapted for the study and were shown to have good inter-rater reliability when assessing audio-taped interviews carried out by mental health nurses during their usual course of work with patients with severe mental health problems and their families. The sample of mental health nurses studied were shown to have significantly better general therapy skills than specific cognitive therapy technical skills. The implications for training are discussed.

Negative beliefs about death and superstitious beliefs appear to be positively associated with health anxiety. These types of beliefs may have the potential to offer a useful addition to cognitive-behavioural models of health anxiety.