Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Epidemic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Epidemic. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic

J. Everett, C. Colombatta, & others
PsyArXiv PrePrints
Originally posted 20 March 20

Abstrac
With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening millions of lives, changing our behaviors to prevent the spread of the disease is a moral imperative. Here, we investigated the effectiveness of messages inspired by three major moral traditions on public health behavioral intentions. A sample of US participants representative for age, sex and race/ethnicity (N=1032) viewed messages from either a leader or citizen containing deontological, virtue-based, utilitarian, or non-moral justifications for adopting social distancing behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measured the messages’ effects on participants’ self-reported intentions to wash hands, avoid social gatherings, self-isolate, and share health messages, as well as their beliefs about others’ intentions, impressions of the messenger’s morality and trustworthiness, and beliefs about personal control and responsibility for preventing the spread of disease. Consistent with our pre-registered predictions, deontological messages had modest effects across several measures of behavioral intentions, second-order beliefs, and impressions of the messenger, while virtue-based messages had modest effects on personal responsibility for preventing the spread. These effects were observed for messages from leaders and citizens alike. Our findings are at odds with participants’ own beliefs about moral persuasion: a majority of participants predicted the utilitarian message would be most effective. We caution that these effects are modest in size, likely due to ceiling effects on our measures of behavioral intentions and strong heterogeneity across all dependent measures along several demographic dimensions including age, self-identified gender, self-identified race, political conservatism, and religiosity. Although the utilitarian message was the least effective among those tested, individual differences in one key dimension of utilitarianism—impartial concern for the greater good—were strongly and positively associated with public health intentions and beliefs. Overall, our preliminary results suggest that public health messaging focused on duties and responsibilities toward family, friends and fellow citizens will be most effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Ongoing work is investigating whether deontological persuasion generalizes across different populations, what aspects of deontological messages drive their persuasive effects, and how such messages can be most effectively delivered across global populations.

The research is here.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Preventing Med School Suicides

Roger Sergel
MegPage Today
Originally posted May 2, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The medical education community needs to acknowledge the stress imposed on our medical learners as they progress from students to faculty. One of the biggest obstacles is changing the culture of medicine to not only understand the key burnout drivers and pain points but to invest resources into developing strategies which reduce stress. These strategies must include the medical learner taking ownership for the role they play in their lack of well-being. In addition, medical schools and healthcare organizations must reflect on their policies/processes which do not promote wellness. In both situations, there is pointing to the other group as the one who needs to change. Both are right.

We do need to change how we deliver a quality medical education AND we need our medical learners to reflect on their personal attitudes and openness to developing their resilience muscles to manage their stress. Equally important, we need to reduce the stigma of seeking help and break down the barriers which would allow our medical learners and physicians to seek help, when needed. We need to create support services which are convenient, accessible, and utilized.

What programs does your school have to support medical students' mental health?

The information is here.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States

Katherine A. Fowler, Linda L. Dahlberg, Tadesse Haileyesus, Carmen Gutierrez, Sarah Bacon
Pediatrics
July 2017, VOLUME 140 / ISSUE 1

RESULTS: Nearly 1300 children die and 5790 are treated for gunshot wounds each year. Boys, older children, and minorities are disproportionately affected. Although unintentional firearm deaths among children declined from 2002 to 2014 and firearm homicides declined from 2007 to 2014, firearm suicides decreased between 2002 and 2007 and then showed a significant upward trend from 2007 to 2014. Rates of firearm homicide among children are higher in many Southern states and parts of the Midwest relative to other parts of the country. Firearm suicides are more dispersed across the United States with some of the highest rates occurring in Western states. Firearm homicides of younger children often occurred in multivictim events and involved intimate partner or family conflict; older children more often died in the context of crime and violence. Firearm suicides were often precipitated by situational and relationship problems. The shooter playing with a gun was the most common circumstance surrounding unintentional firearm deaths of both younger and older children.


CONCLUSIONS: Firearm injuries are an important public health problem, contributing substantially to premature death and disability of children. Understanding their nature and impact is a first step toward prevention.

The article is here.

Friday, May 12, 2017

US Suicide Rates Display Growing Geographic Disparity.

JAMA.
2017;317(16):1616. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.4076

As the overall US suicide rate increases, a CDC study showed that the trend toward higher rates in less populated parts of the country and lower rates in large urban areas has become more pronounced.

Using data from the National Vital Statistics System and the US Census Bureau, the researchers reported that from 1999 to 2015, the annual suicide rate increased by 14%, from 12.6 to 14.4 per 100, 000 US residents aged 10 years or older.

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Higher suicide rates in less urban areas could be linked with limited access to mental health care, the opioid overdose epidemic, and social isolation, the investigators suggested. The 2007-2009 economic recession may have caused the sharp upswing, they added, because rural areas and small towns were hardest hit.

The article is here

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

America’s Suicide Epidemic Is a National Security Crisis

Fredrik Deboer
Foreign Policy
Originally published April

Here is an excerpt:

Too many in our culture, meanwhile, still place the blame for suicide on its victims. It’s common, after high-profile suicides like that of actor and comedian Robin Williams, for some to argue that suicide is “the coward’s way out,” that taking one’s own life is somehow a cowardly act. Such attitudes are a flagrant failure of empathy, as well as a misunderstanding about the relationship between suicide and mental illness and addiction, both of which are strongly associated with suicide risk. Like many social problems, suicide does not have single and obvious causes but rather a concert of contributing factors working together. To blame suicide on a lack of personal character demonstrates ignorance about the nature of the problem. But such thinking contributes to the country’s persistent and deep inability to grapple with suicide in an open and healthy way.

The article is here.