Minerva

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 well-being. According to the authors, occupational health clinicians should help anyone who has been diagnosed as having psychological problems to critically evaluate their work and to try to find out which bit of their working life is unsatisfactory (Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2005;62: 119-23).

Age does bring wisdom, according to a survey conducted by the Department of Health. People aged 45-64 make better health care decisions than younger people when it comes to knowing they should call the emergency services if they experience severe chest pain, or knowing what they should do for minor injuries and illnesses. Examples of inappropriate calls to the emergency services include calling to ask how to defrost a turkey and asking about what to do about a broken artificial nail.

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 …