Objectives and methods: This study examines the effects of parental employment in the early years on child socio-emotional behavior at age 5 in a recent birth cohort study in the United Kingdom. Participants of the Millennium Cohort Study were born between September 2000 and January 2002 (n=18,819). Data on parental employment across three sweeps of data collection (infancy, age 3 and age 5) were used to investigate: (i) whether children whose mothers were in paid work during their first five years were more likely than children whose mothers were at home full-time to display adverse behavioral symptoms at age 5, independent of maternal education, mental health or economic position; (ii) whether effects of maternal employment on child socio-emotional development were cumulative in nature, or whether children were more sensitive to the effects of maternal employment during their first year; and (iii) the effects of different types of parental work arrangements on child socio-emotional behavior at age 5. Child socio-emotional behavior was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire with clinically relevant cut-points for problem behaviors. Results: No evidence of detrimental effects of maternal employment in the early years on subsequent child socio-emotional behavior was seen. There were significant gender differences in the effects of parental work arrangements on behavioral outcomes. Girls whose mothers were not in paid work during their first five years were 77% (95% CI= 1.21-2.57) more likely to have behavioral difficulties at age 5 than girls whose mothers were in paid work throughout their early years, independent of maternal characteristics and household income. For boys this was not the case, but boys in two-parent households in which their father was not in paid work for at least one period during their first five years were at an increased risk for behavioral problems at age 5. The most beneficial working arrangement for both girls and boys was that in which both mothers and fathers were present in the household and in paid work, independent of parental educational attainment and household income. The purpose of this study is to develop a cognitive-behavior group intervention program to reduce the hostility levels of coronary heart disease (CHD) patients and to examine its effect on blood coagulation function. A case control study with matched age, sex and education, based on a two group pre-and post-test design was adopted. Participants of the experimental group were 9 CHD patients (mean age=56.33±10.45, male 67%) who attended a weekly two-and-a-half hour session and did homework for two months. The intervention foci included psycho-education, biofeedback-assistant relaxation training, and cognitive-behavior strategies to reduce the levels of hostility affect, hostility cognition, and hostility behavior. Participants of the control group were 13 CHD patients (mean age=59.23±6.80, male 69%) who did not receive any psychological treatment until they finished the three-month waiting status. After intervention, participants showed a significant reduction in hostility level (t=4.27, p<.01) and respiration rate (t=3.06, p<.01), and a significant increase in prothrombin time (t=−4.75, p<.001). The results of the repeated measure of ANOVA indicated that the experimental group revealed a significantly higher reduction of respiration rate (F= 8.76, p<.01), and a marginally higher increase of prothrombin time (F=−3.66, p=.06) than the waiting control group. In conclusion, the results of this study imply that psychological intervention is efficient to reduce the biological risk of disease recurrence for CHD patients. Complementary therapies are popular and frequently used by patients with CVD. Survey data indicate that herbal therapies and mind-body therapies are most commonly used. One such treatment option is qigong. Several reviews have claimed that qigong has therapeutic effects on blood pressure in patients with hypertension. However, these reviews are non-systematic and therefore open to bias. To systematically assess the clinical evidence of qigong for hypertension. Databases were searched up to December 2009. All randomised clinical trials testing qigong in patients with hypertension of any origin and assessing clinically relevant outcomes were considered. Trials using any type of control intervention were included. The selection of studies, data extraction and quality assessment were performed independently by at least two reviewers. Methodological quality was evaluated using the Jadad score. 12 RCTs could be included. Seven of these RCTs tested qigong in combination with antihypertensive drugs compared with antihypertensive drugs alone. The meta-analysis of four trials reporting adequate data suggested beneficial effects in favour of qigong (weighted mean difference, systolic blood pressure (mmHg) -12.06, 95% confidence interval (CI) -17.12 to -7.00; diastolic blood pressure -8.46, 95% CI -12.55 to -4.37). Qigong alone was compared with waiting list control in 2 RCTs and was found to significantly reduce systolic blood pressure (weighted mean difference (mmHg) -18.46, 95% CI -23.07 to -13.86). In further three RCTs comparisons made were: qigong combined with antihypertensive drugs versus muscle relaxation combined with antihypertensive drugs; qigong as a sole treatment versus exercise and/or antihypertensive drugs, all reported positive results in at least some of the relevant outcome measures. The methodological quality of the original studies was low. There is some encouraging evidence to suggest that qigong is effective for lowering systolic blood pressure. However, the conclusiveness of these findings is limited. Rigorously designed trials seem warranted to confirm these results. Background: One in five people suffer from depression after myocardial infarction (MI) or heart attack. Depression impedes important indicators of recovery including Quality of Life (QOL) and employment outcomes. Yet depression continues to remain under-recognised and under-treated in cardiac patients. We are conducting a randomised controlled trial of a state-of-the-art, telephone-delivered counselling and educational program (MOOD-CARE) for MI patients diagnosed with depression and investigating its effectiveness in relation to mental and physical functioning and employment outcomes. Method: Newly diagnosed MI patients admitted to five hospitals in Australia are being screened for depression using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) (n=1619). Those with PHQ9=5-19 (mild-moderately severe depression) at discharge who are still symptomatic 2 weeks later will be randomly assigned to a Usual Care (UC) or Intervention (MOOD-CARE) group, stratified by current DSM-IV diagnosis of depression versus subthreshold depression. MOOD-CARE includes up to 10 telephone counselling sessions over 6 months, delivered by clinical psychologists using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factor management.