It's official: job satisfaction is good for your health. A meta-analysis of 485 separate studies reports that job satisfaction is highly correlated with physical and mental wellbeing. According to the authors, occupational health clinicians should help anyone who has been diagnosed as having psychological problems to critically evaluate their work andto try to find out which bit of their working life is unsatisfactory (Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2005;62: 119-23).

The risk of suicide after self harm is 30 times that in the general population, a prospective cohort study of almost 8000 people attending emergency departments after self harm has found. Four years later, 60 people had committed suicide. Women were more at risk then men, and the six months after self harm seemed to be the most vulnerable time. Independent predictive factors for suicide included trying to avoid being discovered at the time of the original self harm, not living with a close relative, a history of psychiatric treatment, alcohol misuse, and physical health problems (American Journal of Psychiatry 2005;162: 297-303).

Recovery from the ordeal of cardiac bypass grafting is one thing; what happens in the longer term is another. A complex multivariate analysis published in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (2005;129: 330-5) found that mild renal dysfunction before the operation was an independent predictor …