Childhood adversity studies as an antidote to the predominance of neo-liberal thinking in the field of mental health

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 556-563
Author(s):  
Adam Burley

This is a personal and reflective piece written from a clinician's point of view on the influence that the developing awareness around the consequences of childhood adversity has had upon the discussions, thinking and practice across the areas in which they are working. It seeks to argue that the increased understanding and recognition of the potential impact of early adversity can not only enhance and deepen the understanding of an individual's difficulties, but can serve to inform how services respond in a way that takes account of this. It suggests that the research and literature on childhood adversity can offer a route map away from a model of mental health that focuses predominantly on the individual as the sole source of interest.

1963 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin R. Gluck

Many psychologists who undertake consultation activities for the first time may ignore, or not even be aware of, the “administrative” or sociological aspects of the situation in which the consultation process takes place. The point of view presented here is that the structure of a school system using a mental health consultant is intimately related to how the consultant operates and what he does in his role as consultant. The Superintendent, Principals and Vice-Principals all determine the areas in which the consultant can work, the types of problems with which he will be asked to help, and the possible range of activities school personnel themselves can undertake to deal with the pupil problems confronting them. Specific examples of the interactions between the consultant's role and the authority-responsibility level of the individual consultees are presented. The consultant's knowledge of any organization's structure can aid him in planning for consultative activities that are appropriate to the personnel with whom he is working.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silke Schwarz

Historically, psychiatry and clinical psychology focused on understanding how stressful life conditions led to psychiatric disorders. With the rise of positive psychology, the focus shifted to thriving through adversity and to concepts such as resilience. However, the number of mental disorders is still increasing. Due to a neoliberal Western decontextualizing stance in psychology, the concept of resilience is at risk of reproducing power imbalances and discrimination within our society. Resilience is analysed from a critical perspective, mostly with a Marxist point of view, including Foucauldian discursive approaches, as well as a biomedical critique of the current mental health system, to illustrate the shortcomings of Western psychologies. This article illustrates how a contextualized understanding of resilience that accounts for political, historical, and socioeconomic contexts at analytical levels besides the individual may overcome this ethnocentric and neoliberal bias.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Schlechter ◽  
Jessica Fritz ◽  
Paul O. Wilkinson

Early adversity (EA) can contribute to the onset, manifestation, and the course of various mental disorders. Measuring EA is still conceptually and psychometrically challenging. For example, it is unclear whether presence/absence, severity or frequency is most informative for predicting mental health subsequent to EA. In this study, 327 medical students completed the Youth and Childhood Adversity Scale (YCAS). Psychometric properties were comprehensively assessed with factor analyses, item response theory (IRT), and network analysis. A single factor structure was found for all sub-scales. IRT revealed that some EAs, like seeing a significant other being the victim of violence, are particularly discriminative for the underlying EA construct. Network models shed light on the specific interrelation patterns of EAs. EA severity was the strongest predictor for mental health outcomes. Frequency was a better predictor than presence/absence. In sum, assessing EA severity seems to be particular important for maximum information on mental health.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1922-1922
Author(s):  
L. Mehl-Madrona

North American people have different beliefs about mind and mental health than conventional biomedicine. The author reports the results of 300 consecutive psychiatric consultations in Northern Canada during which he characterized the particular beliefs of his consultees. In their views, disease is located in relationships, including relationships with family members, with food (plants and animals), minerals, other people, spirits, the environment, and more. When these relationships are distorted and out of balance, dis-ease ensues. Traditional healers see the changes found in autopsies as footprints of the illness and not the illness itself. From this perspective, traditional healers engage in very different diagnostic procedures than conventional physicians. They seek the areas of disharmony and imbalance in relationships rather than looking for diseases in physical tissues. From this point of view, each person becomes their own story about their suffering and the treatment relates to that story as it unfolds to all the stakeholders in that story. The treatment becomes a story that merges with the illness-person story to move in a direction of balance and harmony. Every treatment is different because every person is different. There is no treatment for arthritis, only for the individual people who suffer. In this presentation, we will consider how to practice psychiatry within this environment, including the matching of biomedical stories to traditional stories and the negotiation of treatment approaches in such a manner as to maximize respect for traditional belief systems and also to optimize potential for outcome.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Diego Vidaurre ◽  
Janine Bijsterbosch

AbstractLinks between cognitive deficits and psychiatric disorders have been studied predominantly at the group level, leaving unique individual characteristics largely unknown. Here, we applied normative modeling to UK Biobank data (N=18,634) and estimated the interplay of large-scale brain networks over time (i.e., dynamic brain state) at the individual level. Abnormality in such brain states was linked to individual variation in mental health. Specifically, brain state measures including fractional occupancy were estimated as a function of general cognitive ability and abnormality scores per participant were quantified to represent the degree of deviations relative to the estimated population norm. We found significant associations between the abnormality scores of several brain states and individual’s overall mental health. Our findings suggest potential impact of mental health on dynamic brain states subserving cognitive functions and shed light on the relevant brain mechanisms underlying cognitive deficits in mental illness.


Crisis ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 316-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Gillies ◽  
David Chicop ◽  
Paul O'Halloran

Abstract. Background: The ability to predict imminent risk of suicide is limited, particularly among mental health clients. Root cause analysis (RCA) can be used by health services to identify service-wide approaches to suicide prevention. Aims: To (a) develop a standardized taxonomy for RCAs; (b) to quantitate service-related factors associated with suicides; and (c) to identify service-related suicide prevention strategies. Method: The RCAs of all people who died by suicide within 1 week of contact with the mental health service over 5 years were thematically analyzed using a data collection tool. Results: Data were derived from RCAs of all 64 people who died by suicide between 2008 and 2012. Major themes were categorized as individual, situational, and care-related factors. The most common factor was that clients had recently denied suicidality. Reliance on carers, recent changes in medication, communication problems, and problems in follow-through were also commonly identified. Conclusion: Given the difficulty in predicting suicide in people whose expressions of suicidal ideation change so rapidly, services may consider the use of strategies aimed at improving the individual, stressor, support, and care factors identified in this study.


2019 ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Н. В. Фрадкіна

The purpose and tasks of the work are to analyze the contemporary Ukrainian mass culture in terms of its value and humanistic components, as well as the importance of cultural studies and Ukrainian studies in educational disciplines for the formation of a holistic worldview of modern youth.Analysis of research and publications. Scientists repeatedly turned to the problems of the role of spirituality in the formation of society and its culture. This problem is highlighted in the publications by O. Losev, V. Lytvyn, D. Likhachev, S. Avierintsev, M. Zakovych, I. Stepanenko and E. Kostyshyn.Experts see the main negative impact of mass culture on the quality approach, which determines mass culture through the market, because mass culture, from our point of view, is everything that is sold and used in mass demand.One of the most interesting studies on this issue was the work by the representatives of Frankfurt School M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno «Dialectics of Enlightenment» (1947), devoted to a detailed analysis of mass culture. Propaganda at all socio-cultural levels in the form is similar in both totalitarian and democratic countries. It is connected, according to the authors, with the direction of European enlightenment. The tendency to unify people is a manifestation of the influence of mass culture, from cinema to pop. Mass culture is a phenomenon whose existence is associated with commerce (accumulation in any form – this is the main feature of education), in general, the fact that it exists in this form is related to the direction of the history of civilization.Modern mass culture, with its externally attractive and easily assimilated ideas and symbols, appealing to the trends of modern fashion, becomes a standard of prestigious consumption, does not require intense reflection, allows you to relax, distract, not teach, but entertains, preaches hedonism as the main spiritual value. And as a consequence, there are socio-cultural risks: an active rejection of other people, which leads to the formation of indifference; cruelty as a character trait; increase of violent and mercenary crime; increase in the number of alcohol and drug addicts; anti-patriotism; indifference to the values of the family and as a result of social orphanhood and prostitution.Conclusions, perspectives of research. Thus, we can conclude that modern Ukrainian education is predominantly formed by the values of mass culture. Namely, according to the «Dialectic» by Horkheimer and Adorno, «semi-enlightenment becomes an objective spirit» of our modern society.It is concluded that only high-quality education can create the opposite of the onset of mass culture and the destruction of spirituality in our society. It is proved that only by realizing the importance of cultivating disciplines in the educational process and the spiritual upbringing of the nation, through educational reforms, humanitarian knowledge will gradually return to student audiences.Formation of youth occurs under the influence of social environment, culture, education and self-education. The optimal combination of these factors determines both the process of socialization itself and how successful it will be. In this context, one can see the leading role of education and upbringing. It turns out that the main task of modern education is to spread its influence on the development of spiritual culture of the individual, which eventually becomes a solid foundation for the formation of the individual. Such a subject requires both philosophical and humanitarian approaches in further integrated interdisciplinary research, since the availability of such research will provide the theoretical foundation for truly modern educational and personal development.


2020 ◽  

BACKGROUND: This paper deals with territorial distribution of the alcohol and drug addictions mortality at a level of the districts of the Slovak Republic. AIM: The aim of the paper is to explore the relations within the administrative territorial division of the Slovak Republic, that is, between the individual districts and hence, to reveal possibly hidden relation in alcohol and drug mortality. METHODS: The analysis is divided and executed into the two fragments – one belongs to the female sex, the other one belongs to the male sex. The standardised mortality rate is computed according to a sequence of the mathematical relations. The Euclidean distance is employed to compute the similarity within each pair of a whole data set. The cluster analysis examines is performed. The clusters are created by means of the mutual distances of the districts. The data is collected from the database of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic for all the districts of the Slovak Republic. The covered time span begins in the year 1996 and ends in the year 2015. RESULTS: The most substantial point is that the Slovak Republic possesses the regional disparities in a field of mortality expressed by the standardised mortality rate computed particularly for the diagnoses assigned to the alcohol and drug addictions at a considerably high level. However, the female sex and the male sex have the different outcome. The Bratislava III District keeps absolutely the most extreme position. It forms an own cluster for the both sexes too. The Topoľčany District bears a similar extreme position from a point of view of the male sex. All the Bratislava districts keep their mutual notable dissimilarity. Contrariwise, evaluation of a development of the regional disparities among the districts looks like notably heterogeneously. CONCLUSIONS: There are considerable regional discrepancies throughout the districts of the Slovak Republic. Hence, it is necessary to create a common platform how to proceed with the solution of this issue.


Author(s):  
Paul E. Bebbington ◽  
Sally McManus ◽  
Jeremy W. Coid ◽  
Richard Garside ◽  
Terry Brugha

Abstract Purpose Prisoners experience extremely high rates of psychiatric disturbance. However, ex-prisoners have never previously been identified in representative population surveys to establish how far this excess persists after release. Our purpose was to provide the first community-based estimate of ex-prisoners’ mental health in England using the data from the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS). Methods APMS 2014 provides cross-sectional data from a random sample (N = 7546) of England’s household population aged 16 or above. Standardised instruments categorised psychiatric disorders and social circumstances. Participants who had been in prison were compared with the rest of the sample. Results One participant in seventy had been in prison (1.4%; 95% CI 1.1–1.7; n = 103). Ex-prisoners suffered an excess of current psychiatric problems, including common mental disorders (CMDs), psychosis, post-traumatic disorder, substance dependence, and suicide attempts. They were more likely to screen positive for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic traits, to have low verbal IQ, and to lack qualifications. They disclosed higher rates of childhood adversity, including physical and sexual abuse and local authority care. The odds (1.88; 95% CI 1.02–3.47) of CMDs were nearly doubled in ex-prisoners, even after adjusting for trauma and current socioeconomic adversity. Conclusions Prison experience is a marker of enduring psychiatric vulnerability, identifying an important target population for intervention and support. Moreover, the psychiatric attributes of ex-prisoners provide the context for recidivism. Without effective liaison between the criminal justice system and mental health services, the vulnerability of ex-prisoners to relapse and to reoffending will continue, with consequent personal and societal costs.


Author(s):  
Tanuka Datta ◽  
Andrew J. Lee ◽  
Rachel Cain ◽  
Melissa McCarey ◽  
David J. Whellan

AbstractObesity is a growing worldwide epidemic with significant economic burden that carries with it impacts on every physiologic system including the cardiovascular system. Specifically, the risk of heart failure has been shown to increase dramatically in obese individuals. The purpose of this review is to provide background on the individual burdens of heart failure and obesity, followed by exploring proposed physiologic mechanisms that interconnect these conditions, and furthermore introduce treatment strategies for weight loss focusing on bariatric surgery. Review of the existing literature on patients with obesity and heart failure who have undergone bariatric surgery is presented, compared, and contrasted.


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