The Art of Healing

In this issue we have our huge Feature on Dementia and Aged Care. Find out about the new Aged Care Act and how it will affect you, and how better medication management is needed in hospitals. And did you know that 4 out of 10 aged care residents in aged care are malnourished, or that 65% of health and care professionals still believe that dementia is a normal part of ageing – or that robots might be the future of aged care? We also shine the light on toxicity in this magazine: a decade-long investigation using mapping and spatial intelligence has raised red flags over more than 260,000 sites that could be toxic hotspots in Australia; and an international study by Monash University and the University of Tuscia show that pharmaceutical pollutants discharged in wastewater and thereby our rivers, lakes and oceans, have definitively been found to alter behaviour and reproductive traits in fish .. and for humans ….? We also have more on the repercussions of too much social media in this magazine, with a piece on “chroming,” where youth are inhaling toxic fumes from household items after seeing this practice featured on Tik Tok. And doomscrolling we know about, but we need to keep the pressure up to these big social media companies to change their algorithms so they are more safe. So it is great to report that ReachOut, Beyond Blue and Black Dog Institute are calling for evidence-based measures to help improve the safety of social media platforms for young people. And we have lots more books for you to look at in this issue, and our usual wonderful recipes – the Oxalis & Lime Tarts – an extract from From the Wild by Heidi Merika, look delicious!