“One Out of Ten Ain’t Going to Make It”: An Analysis of Recovery Capital in the Rural Upper Midwest

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 680-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Palombi ◽  
Amanda N. Hawthorne ◽  
Andrew Irish ◽  
Emily Becher ◽  
Elizabeth Bowen

Substance use and associated fatalities are disproportionately experienced by rural communities. This study used consensual qualitative research methodology to analyze focus group data from individuals in short- and long-term recovery in rural Michigan and Minnesota. Coding was conducted within a recovery capital framework to improve understanding of the resources and barriers participants experienced in their recovery. Key findings included barriers related to transportation, as well as access to and availability of sober meetings and sober living activities. Participants perceived connections to culturally appropriate treatment as particularly important. A reconstruction of social networks from those promoting addiction to those supporting recovery was also prominently emphasized. Recovery capital appears to be a useful framework for assessing how rural communities are experiencing substance use crises, in addition to identifying areas of low capital and high need in supporting long-term recovery.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Powlen ◽  
Kelly W. Jones ◽  
Elva Ivonne Bustamante Moreno ◽  
Maira Abigail Ortíz Cordero ◽  
Jennifer N. Solomon ◽  
...  

Protected areas (PAs) are under immense pressure to safeguard much of the world’s remaining biodiversity and can be strained by unpredicted events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the extent of the pandemic on PA inputs, mechanisms, and conservation outcomes is critical for recovery and future planning to buffer against these types of events. We use survey and focus group data to quantify the impact of the pandemic on Mexico’s PA network and outline the pathways that led to conservation outcomes. On average, across 62 PAs, we find substantial changes in management capacity, monitoring, and tourism, and a slight increase in non-compliant activities. Our findings highlight the need to increase short-term relief efforts and long-term livelihood diversification initiatives for communities dependent on tourism, who were most vulnerable during the pandemic. Increased management support, including technical capacity and financial resources, could also better sustain management activities in future shocks.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin M Brown ◽  
Robert D Ashford

As recovery from substance use disorder becomes more than a mere quantifiable outcome, there exists a need to discuss and propose the underlying theoretical constructs that ultimately describe and identify the science of recovery. In this abstract undertaking, we propose an initial formulation of a grand theory of recovery science, built upon the seminal theories of recovery capital, recovery-oriented systems of care, and socioecological theory. This grand theory - labeled recovery-informed theory (RIT) - states that successful long-term recovery is self-evident and is a fundamentally emancipatory set of processes. This paper will discuss, analyze, and explore this theory as it is situated within the larger substance use, misuse, and disorder contexts. The uses, implications, and benefits of RIT as an organizing point of inquiry for recovery science are also discussed. By promoting the role of subjective recovery experience in the formulation of the study of recovery, it may be possible to summon new ideas, metrics, and strategies that can directly address substance use disorders in society. Adopting a recovery-informed understanding as follows from this grand theory may allow individual recovery and wellness trajectories to be explored, adapted, and modified to exemplify person-centered and individualized recovery strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 927-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Marasco ◽  
Matteo Serenari ◽  
Matteo Renzulli ◽  
Luigina Vanessa Alemanni ◽  
Benedetta Rossini ◽  
...  

Abstract Changes in body composition are associated with poor outcomes in cancer patients including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Sarcopenia, defined as the loss of skeletal muscle mass, quality and function, has been associated with a higher rate of complications and recurrences in patients with cirrhosis and HCC. The assessment of patient general status before HCC treatment, including the presence of sarcopenia, is a key-point for achieving therapy tolerability and to avoid short- and long-term complications leading to poor patients’ survival. Thus, we aimed to review the current literature evaluating the role of sarcopenia assessment related to HCC treatments and to critically provide the clinicians with the most recent and valuable evidence. As a result, sarcopenia can be predictive of poor outcomes in patients undergoing liver resection, transplantation and systemic therapies, offering the chance to clinicians to improve the muscular status of these patients, especially those with high-grade sarcopenia at high risk of mortality. Further studies are needed to clarify the predictive value of sarcopenia in other HCC treatment settings and to evaluate its role as an additional staging tool for identifying the most appropriate treatment. Besides, interventional studies aiming at increasing the skeletal muscle mass for reducing complications and increasing the survival in patients with HCC are needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 1155-1163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Arora ◽  
Ian Grey

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about profound changes to social behaviour. While calls to identify mental health effects that may stem from these changes should be heeded, there is also a need to examine potential changes with respect to health behaviours. Media reports have signalled dramatic shifts in sleep, substance use, physical activity and diet, which may have subsequent downstream mental health consequences. We briefly discuss the interplay between health behaviours and mental health, and the possible changes in these areas resulting from anti-pandemic measures. We also highlight a call for greater research efforts to address the short and long-term consequences of changes to health behaviours.


Author(s):  
Celeste M. Malone ◽  
Tierra T. Ellis ◽  
DeLon Isom

Substance use affects more than the individual user; all those who have relationships with the person using are impacted and suffer the consequences of substance use. Parental substance use places children at risk for a wide range of adverse physical, psychological, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes at all stages of the developmental continuum. However, schools can help mitigate those adverse outcomes by providing children with access to social support and helping them to develop coping skills. This chapter provides an overview of the short- and long-term effects of parental substance use and its impact on youth functioning and provides educators with strategies and resources to support these students and meet their needs.


Medicina ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giedrė Sakalauskienė ◽  
Dovilė Jauniškienė

Etiology, epidemiology, and impact of osteoarthritis on an individual, society, and nation and the main principles of management of this disease are reviewed in the article. Treatment should be tailored to the needs of an individual patient. Physicians should be familiar with pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatment modalities to maximize effective utilization and a thorough understanding of short- and long-term complications and costs. Severity of osteoarthritis should be taken into physician’s and patient’s consideration while applying an appropriate treatment. A stepwise management of osteoarthritis has to be taken into account. As effective interventions remain underused, state arthritis programs, including osteoarthritis programs, have to be developed to build an appropriate scientific base in public health, observe burden and impact, assess and disseminate evidence-based interventions, and work to reduce and delay disability, and improve quality of life among people with arthritis. Adequate studies on the costs of osteoarthritis are urgently required so that cogent arguments can be made to governments to appropriately fund prevention and treatment programs for this condition. Its recognition as a major cause of disability, particularly in the aging population, should increase community focus on this important condition. Osteoarthritis as a pathogenic process and its impact on an individual and society should be taken into special consideration by health providers and officers developing the national health policy in Lithuania, because there is a lack of information related to the prevalence of osteoarthritis, risk factors, also osteoarthritisassociated disability, and costs of the management of this disease among Lithuanian inhabitants.


Author(s):  
Matthew Torrington

This chapter discusses the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for substance use disorders and identifies addiction as a disease of reward, motivation, and memory rooted in complex biologic changes. It explains the epidemiology of addiction and identifies the rise and fall of specific drug use and behaviors. It then moves to the neurobiology of addiction, naming the numerous survival systems that are intertwined with addiction’s genetics, early brain development, and learning pathways. Finally, it looks at why some people become addicts, describing it as a pro-inflammatory, bio-psycho-social-environmental-spiritual disease state. Addicted persons often engage in this behavior, no longer to obtain pleasure, but to relieve discomfort created by withdrawal from the drug and the negative life consequences of addiction. The chapter concludes by addressing what needs to be done in both the short- and long-term, noting that applying the disease model to addiction has been the most effective method of saving lives.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Mollborn ◽  
Bethany Rigles ◽  
Jennifer A Pace

Abstract As the relationship between social class and health strengthens and socioeconomic and health inequalities widen, understanding how parents’ socioeconomic advantage translates into health and class advantages in the next generation is increasingly important. Our analyses illustrate how a classed performance of “health” is a fundamental component of transmitting cultural capital in families and communities. Socially advantaged parents’ health and class goals for children are often met simultaneously by building children’s cultural capital in community-specific ways. This study uses observational, interview, and focus group data from families in two middle-class communities to illustrate how health-focused cultural capital acquisition plays out in everyday life. As parents manage children’s lives to ensure future advantages, they often focus on health-related behaviors and performances as symbols of class-based distinction for their children. The synergy between family and community cultural capital is strengthening class and health advantages for some children, even as health-focused cultural capital often has drawbacks for stress and well-being. The intensification of and value placed on “health” in cultural capital may have long-term implications for health, socioeconomic attainment, and inequalities. If health-focused cultural capital continues to become increasingly salient for status attainment, its importance could grow, widening these gaps and reducing intergenerational mobility.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001872672095215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parisa Dashtipour ◽  
Nollaig Frost ◽  
Michael Traynor

Why do nurses in training continue to draw on the ideal of compassion when responding to their experiences of nursing work in the UK National Health Service (NHS), despite the difficulties that they face in developing compassionate, long-term relationships with patients in practice? To answer this question, we draw from a psychosocial analysis of focus group data from 49 trainee nurses in the NHS. First, we show how this ideal leads them to blame qualified nurses for failures in patient care. We suggest this is an unconscious defence against the anxiety evoked both by the vulnerability of their position as those who need to gain access to the profession, and of being unable to conduct compassionate nursing work. Second, we emphasize that less powerful occupational groups, such as trainee nurses, may adopt defences that underpin dominant organizational policy, such as idealization, despite further disadvantaging their group and benefitting those in power. We conclude by questioning the particular emphasis on compassion in nurses’ training, which can prevent occupational solidarity and the ability to reflect on the structural and organizational factors required to conduct patient-centred nursing work.


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