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Brief Screening for Family Psychiatric History The Family History Screen

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Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Brief screens to collect lifetime family psychiatric history are useful in clinical practice and for identifying potential families for genetic studies.

METHODS: The Family History Screen (FHS) collects information on 15 psychiatric disorders and suicidal behavior in informants and their first-degree relatives. Since each question is posed only once about all family members as a group, the administrative time is 5 to 20 minutes, depending on family size and illness. Data on the validity against best-estimate (BE) diagnosis based on independent and blind direct interviews on 289 probands and 305 relatives and test-retest reliability across 15 months in 417 subjects are presented.

RESULTS: Agreement between FHS and BE diagnosis for proband and relative self-report had median sensitivity (SEN) of 67.6 and 71.1 respectively; median specificity (SPC) was 87.6 and 89.4, respectively. Marked decrease in SEN occurred when a single informant....

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Technology Arms Peeping Toms with a New and Dangerous Arsenal: A Compelling Need for States to Adopt New Legislation, 17 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 1167 (1999)

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I. INTRODUCTION

The act of voyeurism is becoming an increasingly prevalent and unsettling threat to human dignity and the right to privacy. The "peeping Tom" of yesterday is now armed with a new arsenal that threatens more than just the unsuspecting victim standing by an open window. With the development and advancement of surveillance technology, voyeurism has evolved into something an increasing number of people suspect and fear. The accessibility of small video cameras and other viewing or recording methods eases the barriers for perverts to observe others engaged in otherwise personal activities. The story of Susan and Gary Wilson, recent victims of video voyeurism, illustrates what these peeping perverts can do with the aid of a video camera. In 1996, the couple went looking for a home and at the suggestion of a friend and fellow church member, Steve Glover,...

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Shelter Health: Essentials of Care for People Living in Shelters

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The Causes and Conditions of Homelessness

Serious personal health problems and flaws in health care systems are maKor contributors to contemporary homelessness. Some health problems – addictions, schiQophrenia, maKor depression, physical disabilities – are distressingly obvious, particularly in persons living in public spaces, while others are less visible but equally insidious, undermining the capacity to maintain stable housing and function independently. an far too many cases, a fragmented health care system has not responded adequately to the multiple needs of homeless persons, who are indigent and typically uninsured. With recent natural disasters in the U.S., particularly Hurricanes >atrina and Rita, the realities of homelessness on our national landscape are changing, with large numbers of poor people displaced by storms trying to make a new start in new communities, many of which are already having enough trouble providing basic services for their...

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Results of Qualitative and Online Message Testing To Support A Sexual Health Campaign

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The Communications Action Group (CAG) of the National Coalition for Sexual Health (NCSH) drafted a series of messages designed to motivate individuals to take action to protect and improve their sexual health.

Specifically, these messages were designed to define and promote:

●The benefits of sexual health.

●Core action steps to achieve good sexual health.

●A simple, consumer-friendly definition of sexual health.

This report presents the findings of a qualitative exploration with the general public to examine message clarity, relevance and appeal, and to determine:

●The motivational power of six general benefit statements and 26 specific benefits of sexual health.

●Whether five draft action steps, along with supporting statements, are clear, compelling, and perceived to be important.

●The appeal of four possible definitions of sexual health.

Messages were tested with men and women, 18 years of age and older in two phases:

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Substance Abuse & Mental Health Toolkit

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INTRODUCTION

Stress, depression, anxiety, chemical dependency, substance abuse, and other mental health conditions and impairments among law students are problems that continue to spark a national dialogue among faculty, administrators, and students. While students enter law school suffering from clinical stress and depression at a rate that mirrors the national average, the rate sharply increases during the first year of law school. Through the duration of their legal education, the rates of law students grappling with substance abuse and mental health problems increase dramatically. If unrecognized and untreated, these issues can carry into their professional careers.

Consider the following from the 2014 Survey of Law Student Well-Being:
- 89.6% of respondents have had a drink of alcohol in the last 30 days.
- 21.6% reported binge drinking at least twice in the past two weeks.
- 20.4% have thought seriously about suicide sometime in their life.
- 6.3% have thought seriously about suicide in the last 12 months.

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Bargaining Citizenship: Women’s Organizations, The State, And Marriage Migrants In South Korea

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DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Since 1948, South Korea has maintained restrictive immigration and citizenship policies that promote ethnic homogeneity and discourage the settlement of immigrants who do not have marital or family ties to ethnic Koreans. From 2005, the Korean government has instituted unprecedented reforms that have included local voting rights to permanent residents, dual citizenship for certain categories of citizens, and policies that promote multiculturalism; such reforms have made Korea the country with the most progressive stance on immigration in East Asia. Why has the Korean government proactively embraced immigrant incorporation under the banner of multiculturalism, after decades of promoting ethnic homogeneity and racial purity?

In contrast to previous studies that focus on the adoption of liberal international norms, the remnants of the developmental state, and grassroots pressures from civil society, this dissertation explains immigrant incorporation in Korea as the unintended consequences of the negotiations between state efforts to...

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Family Interventions in Health Care

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In this article the author discusses the background and present status of family interventions in health care. He notes the convergence of interest occurring in this area among several health care disciplines during the 1970s and 1980s. He also summarizes his and colleague Macaran Baird's model for primary care family interventions in health care, which distinguishes between primary care interventions and specialized family therapy interventions. The author then describes new work on delineating levels of professional involvement with families in health care, and discusses curriculum implications of these levels. Finally, he offers advice and warnings about collaboration among different professional groups in this emerging area.

Family interventions in health care can be defined as efforts by health care professionals to work systematically with the patient's family for the purposes of prevention, treatment, management, or rehabilitation of biopsychosocial problems. The focus of such interventions may be: (a) on the individual patient, with the family playing a supportive...

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The Misuse Of Input Information In Judgments Of Outcomes

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Abstract

In this paper we identify an input bias, the systematic misuse of input information in judgments of outcome quality. In many settings irrelevant input measures, such as the amount of time an employee spends in the office, influence outcome assessments, such as performance reviews. Across four studies we find that input values subtly, but significantly distort judgments of outcome quality.Irrelevant input information predictably influences outcome assessments even when people recognize that input measures should not matter and believe that input information did not matter. We examine the mechanics of the input bias, and suggest that because input measures are often easy to manipulate or misrepresent, the input bias is likely to have broad implications for managerial judgment and decision making.

2003 Published by Elsevier Science (USA)

1. Introduction

Judgments of quality are essential prerequisites for many decision making tasks. For example, prior to making a hiring decision a manager needs to assess thequality of...

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Danger Ahead: The Changing Face Of Failure To Warn Claims

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Defense attorneys involved in product liability litigation are familiar with claims alleging failure to warn against a manufacturer or seller. The typical failure to warn claim is fairly straightforward: the plaintiff asserts that the defendant placed inadequate warnings of potential hazards on or with the product and the lack of proper warnings was a proximate cause of harm to the plaintiff. Not all failure to warn claims are so basic, however. Many such claims have wrinkles that do not allow the standard analysis to be used, whether it involves a unique argument for insufficiency or the targeting of an uncommon defendant. Plaintiffs try to assert these non-traditional claims in the hope of finding additional sources of recovery, even if the outlook for success may appear bleak...

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Saboteurs, Scapegoats And Secrets: Diagnosis In Family Therapy

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IN CLINICAL PRACTICE one becomes more and more impressed with the importance of interviewing and understanding the whole family in certain situations. Family attitudes can make or break a successful treatment program, so a diagnostic interview should be held to determine how a family functions.

The Diagnostic Interview

The diagnostic interview is different from a therapeutic interview, especially concerning the referring agent and the family. No commitment for ongoing work is made prior to the diagnostic interview. The possibilities for further counselling are assessed with the family, and ideally with the referring agent,'at or shortly after the diagnostic interview. The referring agent may be a public health nurse, teacher, child care worker, or social worker from a community agency. We hope to have all the important members of the family present at the diagnostic interview. In practice this usually means everyone living in the same house as...

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When Munchausen Becomes Malingering: Factitious Disorders That Penetrate the Legal System

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Factitious disorders are those conditions in which individuals actively create signs or symptoms of physical or psychological disease states.' Although there are numerous reports of factitious psychological disorders, there is controversy about the legitimacy of the diagnosis This paper will limit its focus to factitious physical disorders and how they may enter the legal system in civil litigation. Although most psychiatrists are familiar with factitious disorders from their medical training, many attorneys and judges have had not any exposure to such cases. As these cases appear to be developing more frequently in legal and other non-medical settings,' it is important for these non-psychiatrists to become aware of the factitious disorders in order to deal with cases appropriately. Considerable education may be necessary to inform legal staff about factitious disorders because the entity is so counter intuitive-no one expects an apparently reasonable person to actively create a...

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Therapeutic Communication

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Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of "Therapeutic communication". it also tries to highlight the importance of this concept, which through verbal or nonverbal communication makes the nurse consciously influence a client or help the client. it involves the use of specific strategies that encourage the patient to express feelings and ideas. There are different reactions to "therapeutic communication" as all patients differ in their characters, background, social status, culture, etc.

This article will also compare the role of the nurse as compared to that of the doctor. They must both master efficient therapeutic techniques of communication in order to establish empathy towards the experience that the patient reveals. it is of great importance for them to have communicative therapeutic skills in order to successfully apply the communicative process as well as to fulfill the standards of healthcare for the patients. Through therapeutic communication they should establish a relationship,...

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Why Women Engage in Anal Intercourse: Results from a Qualitative Study

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Abstract

This study used qualitative methods to assess why women engage in heterosexual anal (receptive) intercourse (AI) with a male partner.Four focus groups which comprised women from diverse ethnicities were conducted. All groups were digi- tally recorded for transcription; transcripts were analyzed using the methods of grounded theory to determine themes. Women’s reasons for engaging in anal intercourse with a male partner can be described in broad categories including that the women wanted to have anal intercourse, either because of their own desire, to please a male partner, or they were responding to a quid pro quo situation. The riskiness of AI was assessed within relationship contexts. Past experience with AI including emotional and physical reactions was identified. Among the negative physical experiences of AI were pain and disliking the sensation, and uncomfortable side effects, such as bleeding of the rectum. Negative ...

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When Words Alone Don’t Suffice: Employing a Systematic Approach in Measuring Offender Bias Motivation

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Abstract

The challenge of determining bias motivation in hate crime offenders was examined with the Bias Motivation Profile-Revised (BMP-R), a rating guide that measures behavioral, historical, and ideological indicators of suspect motivation to commit a hate crime. In review of 551 hate crime cases, the BMP-R rating criteria revealed adequate external validity in classifying hate crimes from non-hate motivated crimes and non-criminal “hate incidents”, as independently determined by crime investigators. The BMP-R criteria were related to offender pre-meditation, and revealed a significant predictive relationship to hate crimes involving violence to the person. Offender differences on the BMP-R were noted for gender and age, with modest race/ethnic differences being observed. These findings illustrate the importance of examining bias motivation in terms of an array of criteria, independent of the element of hate speech, in the assessment of hate crime offenders....

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What Every Hospital Discharge Planner Should Know About Homeless Patient Resource Connections

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Learning Objectives

1. Overview of a social model of Recuperative Care (aka Medical Respite)

2. Provide insights on how to ensure successful care transition to a Medical Respite Care facility

3. Discuss the resource connections provided to clients at a Medical Respite including an overview of criteria, costs and timelines

4. Overview of Social Security benefits with respect to disabilities

What is Recuperative Care?

Recuperative Care (aka Medical Respite) provides care to homeless persons recovering from an acute illness or injury, no longer in need of acute care but unable to sustain recovery if living on the street or other unsuitable place.

Combined with effective case management and possible housing placement, recuperative care program allows individual with complex medical and psycho-social needs the opportunity to recover in a stable environment while reducing potential health complications and subsequent hospital readmissions....

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Three-Dimensional Reconstitution Of Bullet Trajectory In Gunshot Wounds: A Case Report

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Abstract

In the med ico-legal assessment of cases of aggression with firearms, imaging techniques have a particularly important role, especially in the study of a bullet’s path through the victim’s body. The analysis of these trajectories can be performed by the use of three-dimensional reconstitution techniques, namely Three-Dimensional Multi-Slice Computed Tomography (3D-MSCT). This imaging technique has been widely used in fatal cases, as a very important complement of the classical autopsy procedures, becoming known as ‘‘virtual autopsy” or ‘‘Virtopsy”. To our knowledge, no reports describing the use of 3D-MSCT in nonfatal cases have been described in the medico-legal literature. The authors present a case of a man with a gunshot injury, in the context of a multiple aggressor situation, in which it was not possible to extract the bullet. To accurately determine the bullet’s trajectory, 3D-MSCT was performed, thus contributing to a more reliable reconstruction of the crime scene in which ...

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