Press Release
Oregon State University
Originally published February 11, 2015
Identifying the population of people with mental illness who have frequent contact with police could help law enforcement officials and community agencies allocate limited resources to those with the highest needs, new research from Oregon State University indicates.
These individuals, often referred to as “frequent fliers” because of their repeated interaction with law enforcement, can consume a large amount of police time and resources, according to researchers in the School of Public Policy in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts.
Identifying and understanding the population can aid policymakers as they work to reduce the frequent and time-consuming interactions, sociologists Scott Akins and Brett Burkhardt said.
“This contact is rarely criminal in nature at the outset,” said Burkhardt, an assistant professor of sociology. “It’s usually a peace officer custody arrest, which is a type of arrest that occurs because a person is believed to be a danger to themselves or others due to a suspected mental illness. But there’s a limited amount of resources, so if we identify people with the highest needs, we can focus resources on those folks.”
Once a local region has identified its population of frequent fliers, community agencies and policy-makers can use the information to change or implement policies to assist those with the highest needs, the researchers said.
“It’s a strategic way to create a more cost-effective and humane way to assist the mentally ill,” said Akins, an associate professor of sociology.
The entire press release is here.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Could intranasal oxytocin be used to enhance relationships? Research imperatives, clinical policy, and ethical considerations
Olga A. Wudarczyk, Brian D. Earp, Adam Guastell, and Julian Savulescu
Current Opinion in Psychiatry (2013), Vol 26 No 5, 474-484
Abstract
Purpose of review
Well-functioning romantic relationships are important for long-term health and well-being, but they are often difficult to sustain. This difficulty arises (in part) because of an underlying tension between our psychobiological natures, culture/environment, and modern love and relationship goals. One possible solution to this predicament is to intervene at the level of psychobiology, enhancing partners’ interpersonal connection through neurochemical modulation. This article focuses on a single, promising biobehavioral sub-system for such intervention: the attachment system, based largely upon the expression of the neuropeptide oxytocin. Could the exogenous administration of oxytocin—under the right conditions—be used to facilitate relational or marital well-being?
Recent findings
If so, it would require considerable forethought. Recent research complicates the popular image of oxytocin as a universal social enhancer or ‘love hormone’ and shows that it may exert a variety of different effects, at different dosages, on different people, under different circumstances. Accordingly, we discuss what is known about oxytocin, including its “good” and “bad” effects on human behavior and on higher-order functional processes.
Summary
Building upon animal-model, human preclinical, and clinical findings, we outline a proposal for the use of oxytocin in the therapeutic neuroenhancement of contemporary romantic relationships. Highlighting key targets for future research along the way, we then conclude by discussing some of the clinical and ethical considerations that would pertain to the implementation of this knowledge in applied settings.
The article can be found here.
Current Opinion in Psychiatry (2013), Vol 26 No 5, 474-484
Abstract
Purpose of review
Well-functioning romantic relationships are important for long-term health and well-being, but they are often difficult to sustain. This difficulty arises (in part) because of an underlying tension between our psychobiological natures, culture/environment, and modern love and relationship goals. One possible solution to this predicament is to intervene at the level of psychobiology, enhancing partners’ interpersonal connection through neurochemical modulation. This article focuses on a single, promising biobehavioral sub-system for such intervention: the attachment system, based largely upon the expression of the neuropeptide oxytocin. Could the exogenous administration of oxytocin—under the right conditions—be used to facilitate relational or marital well-being?
Recent findings
If so, it would require considerable forethought. Recent research complicates the popular image of oxytocin as a universal social enhancer or ‘love hormone’ and shows that it may exert a variety of different effects, at different dosages, on different people, under different circumstances. Accordingly, we discuss what is known about oxytocin, including its “good” and “bad” effects on human behavior and on higher-order functional processes.
Summary
Building upon animal-model, human preclinical, and clinical findings, we outline a proposal for the use of oxytocin in the therapeutic neuroenhancement of contemporary romantic relationships. Highlighting key targets for future research along the way, we then conclude by discussing some of the clinical and ethical considerations that would pertain to the implementation of this knowledge in applied settings.
The article can be found here.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Modelling suicide and unemployment: a longitudinal analysis
Modelling suicide and unemployment: a longitudinal analysis covering 63 countries, 2000–11
Nordt, Carlos et al.
The Lancet Psychiatry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)00118-7
Summary
Background
As with previous economic downturns, there has been debate about an association between the 2008 economic crisis, rising unemployment, and suicide. Unemployment directly affects individuals' health and, unsurprisingly, studies have proposed an association between unemployment and suicide. However, a statistical model examining the relationship between unemployment and suicide by considering specific time trends among age-sex-country subgroups over wider world regions is still lacking. We aimed to enhance knowledge of the specific effect of unemployment on suicide by analysing global public data classified according to world regions.
Methods
We retrospectively analysed public data for suicide, population, and economy from the WHO mortality database and the International Monetary Fund's world economic outlook database from 2000 to 2011. We selected 63 countries based on sample size and completeness of the respective data and extracted the information about four age groups and sex. To check stability of findings, we conducted an overall random coefficient model including all study countries and four additional models, each covering a different world region.
Findings
Despite differences in the four world regions, the overall model, adjusted for the unemployment rate, showed that the annual relative risk of suicide decreased by 1·1% (95% CI 0·8–1·4) per year between 2000 and 2011. The best and most stable final model indicated that a higher suicide rate preceded a rise in unemployment (lagged by 6 months) and that the effect was non-linear with higher effects for lower baseline unemployment rates. In all world regions, the relative risk of suicide associated with unemployment was elevated by about 20–30% during the study period. Overall, 41 148 (95% CI 39 552–42 744) suicides were associated with unemployment in 2007 and 46 131 (44 292–47 970) in 2009, indicating 4983 excess suicides since the economic crisis in 2008.
Interpretation
Suicides associated with unemployment totalled a nine-fold higher number of deaths than excess suicides attributed to the most recent economic crisis. Prevention strategies focused on the unemployed and on employment and its conditions are necessary not only in difficult times but also in times of stable economy.
Nordt, Carlos et al.
The Lancet Psychiatry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)00118-7
Summary
Background
As with previous economic downturns, there has been debate about an association between the 2008 economic crisis, rising unemployment, and suicide. Unemployment directly affects individuals' health and, unsurprisingly, studies have proposed an association between unemployment and suicide. However, a statistical model examining the relationship between unemployment and suicide by considering specific time trends among age-sex-country subgroups over wider world regions is still lacking. We aimed to enhance knowledge of the specific effect of unemployment on suicide by analysing global public data classified according to world regions.
Methods
We retrospectively analysed public data for suicide, population, and economy from the WHO mortality database and the International Monetary Fund's world economic outlook database from 2000 to 2011. We selected 63 countries based on sample size and completeness of the respective data and extracted the information about four age groups and sex. To check stability of findings, we conducted an overall random coefficient model including all study countries and four additional models, each covering a different world region.
Findings
Despite differences in the four world regions, the overall model, adjusted for the unemployment rate, showed that the annual relative risk of suicide decreased by 1·1% (95% CI 0·8–1·4) per year between 2000 and 2011. The best and most stable final model indicated that a higher suicide rate preceded a rise in unemployment (lagged by 6 months) and that the effect was non-linear with higher effects for lower baseline unemployment rates. In all world regions, the relative risk of suicide associated with unemployment was elevated by about 20–30% during the study period. Overall, 41 148 (95% CI 39 552–42 744) suicides were associated with unemployment in 2007 and 46 131 (44 292–47 970) in 2009, indicating 4983 excess suicides since the economic crisis in 2008.
Interpretation
Suicides associated with unemployment totalled a nine-fold higher number of deaths than excess suicides attributed to the most recent economic crisis. Prevention strategies focused on the unemployed and on employment and its conditions are necessary not only in difficult times but also in times of stable economy.
Debate heats up over safety of electronic health records
Jayne O'Donnell and Laura Ungar
USAToday
Originally posted February 3, 2015
Department of Health and Human Services officials said Tuesday that the safety benefits of electronic health records far outweigh any potential problems, but critics say regulators are pushing health care providers to use them while downplaying the risks to patients.
"This transition to electronic health records has led to far better safety than (it has) created new problems," said Andy Gettinger, an physician who heads health information technology (HIT) safety at HHS, at a government-sponsored conference here.
The entire article is here.
USAToday
Originally posted February 3, 2015
Department of Health and Human Services officials said Tuesday that the safety benefits of electronic health records far outweigh any potential problems, but critics say regulators are pushing health care providers to use them while downplaying the risks to patients.
"This transition to electronic health records has led to far better safety than (it has) created new problems," said Andy Gettinger, an physician who heads health information technology (HIT) safety at HHS, at a government-sponsored conference here.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Which Doctors Should ‘Own’ End-of-Life Planning?
By Randi Belisomo
Medscsape
February 12, 2015
The duty to guide patients through the end-of-life decision-making process rests squarely on primary care providers, writes one internist in The New England Journal of Medicine in a February 11 online article, maintaining that her colleagues should better support seriously ill patients earlier and throughout the course of disease.
Susan Tolle, director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at the Oregon Health and Science University, is one of three physicians responding to the NEJM's most recent "Clinical Decisions" case feature, detailing a woman undergoing treatment for metastatic breast cancer. However, her advance directive has not been reviewed in close to a decade.
The entire article is here.
Medscsape
February 12, 2015
The duty to guide patients through the end-of-life decision-making process rests squarely on primary care providers, writes one internist in The New England Journal of Medicine in a February 11 online article, maintaining that her colleagues should better support seriously ill patients earlier and throughout the course of disease.
Susan Tolle, director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at the Oregon Health and Science University, is one of three physicians responding to the NEJM's most recent "Clinical Decisions" case feature, detailing a woman undergoing treatment for metastatic breast cancer. However, her advance directive has not been reviewed in close to a decade.
The entire article is here.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Traditional and Experimental Approaches to Free Will and Moral Responsibility
By Gunnar Björnsson and Derk Pereboom
Forthc., Justin Sytsma & Wesley Buckwalter (eds.)
Companion to Experimental Philosophy, Blackwell
1. Introduction
From the early days of experimental philosophy, attention has been focused on the problem of free will and moral responsibility. This is a natural topic for this methodology, given its proximity to the universal concerns of human life, together with the intensity with which the issues are disputed. We’ll begin by introducing the problem and the standard terminology used to frame it in the philosophical context. We’ll then turn to the contributions of experimental philosophy, and the prospects for the use of this methodology in the area.
The problem of free will and moral responsibility arises from a conflict between two powerful considerations. On the one hand, we human beings typically believe that we are in control of our actions in a particularly weighty sense. We express this sense of difference when we attribute moral responsibility to human beings but not, for example, to machines like thermostats and computers. Traditionally, it’s supposed that moral responsibility requires us to have some type of free will in producing our actions, and hence we assume that humans, by contrast with such machines, have this sort of free will. At the same time, there are reasons for regarding human beings as relevantly more like mechanical devices than we ordinarily imagine. These reasons stem from various sources: most prominently, from scientific views that consider human beings to be components of nature and therefore governed by natural laws, and from theological concerns that require everything that occurs to be causally determined by God.
One threat to our having the sort of free will required for moral responsibility results from the view that the natural laws are deterministic, which motivates the position that all of our actions are causally determined by factors beyond our control. An action will be causally determined in this way if a process governed by the laws of nature and beginning with causally relevant factors prior to the agent’s coming to be ensures the occurrence of the action. An action will also be causally determined by factors beyond the agent’s control if its occurrence is ensured by a causal process that originates in God’s will and ends with the action. For many contemporary philosophers, the first, naturalistic version of causal determinism about action is a serious possibility, and thus the threat that it poses to our conception of ourselves as morally responsible for our actions is serious and prevalent.
The entire chapter is here.
Forthc., Justin Sytsma & Wesley Buckwalter (eds.)
Companion to Experimental Philosophy, Blackwell
1. Introduction
From the early days of experimental philosophy, attention has been focused on the problem of free will and moral responsibility. This is a natural topic for this methodology, given its proximity to the universal concerns of human life, together with the intensity with which the issues are disputed. We’ll begin by introducing the problem and the standard terminology used to frame it in the philosophical context. We’ll then turn to the contributions of experimental philosophy, and the prospects for the use of this methodology in the area.
The problem of free will and moral responsibility arises from a conflict between two powerful considerations. On the one hand, we human beings typically believe that we are in control of our actions in a particularly weighty sense. We express this sense of difference when we attribute moral responsibility to human beings but not, for example, to machines like thermostats and computers. Traditionally, it’s supposed that moral responsibility requires us to have some type of free will in producing our actions, and hence we assume that humans, by contrast with such machines, have this sort of free will. At the same time, there are reasons for regarding human beings as relevantly more like mechanical devices than we ordinarily imagine. These reasons stem from various sources: most prominently, from scientific views that consider human beings to be components of nature and therefore governed by natural laws, and from theological concerns that require everything that occurs to be causally determined by God.
One threat to our having the sort of free will required for moral responsibility results from the view that the natural laws are deterministic, which motivates the position that all of our actions are causally determined by factors beyond our control. An action will be causally determined in this way if a process governed by the laws of nature and beginning with causally relevant factors prior to the agent’s coming to be ensures the occurrence of the action. An action will also be causally determined by factors beyond the agent’s control if its occurrence is ensured by a causal process that originates in God’s will and ends with the action. For many contemporary philosophers, the first, naturalistic version of causal determinism about action is a serious possibility, and thus the threat that it poses to our conception of ourselves as morally responsible for our actions is serious and prevalent.
The entire chapter is here.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Medicaid, Morality and Mormonism
By Guest Blogger
The Cultural Hall PodcastOriginally posted February 26, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Frequently I hear conservative Mormons counter these sorts of scriptures with an assertion that for us to be blessed for our charity, it has to be voluntary, not government mandated. In my opinion this line of thinking is not only flawed, but carries an inherent selfishness which is contrary to the spirit of charity. It clearly states that charity is about getting blessings for doing it, not about truly caring for those who need it, which I submit is a far greater betrayal of Christ-like concepts of charity than government compulsion is. Second, so many of the same people loudly using that argument are just as loudly asserting their right to legislatively mandate their concept of morality. It makes no sense that we are morally justified in imposing our morals when it comes to who can get married but not on using taxes dollars to care for the needy. I can’t speak for anybody else, but my marriage is infinitely more personal and sacred to me than my taxes are.
Even those who are stuck on LDS concepts of “self-sufficience” have nothing to complain about here. Healthy Utah is structured to include a work requirement (the most popular reason to prefer it to traditional Medicaid in the Dan Jones poll which shows Utahns overwhelmingly support the Governor’s proposal). This is not at all unlike LDS welfare programs which encourage doing our part to care for own needs (but also encourage helping those who need it).
The entire blog post is here.
The Evolution of Altruism
By Oren Harman
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published February 9, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
But if Wilson pulls back from entering the mind, focusing instead on evolutionary dynamics, a cottage industry has grown in recent years around theories purporting to explain how our brains produce empathy, morality, and good will. One recent example comes from Donald W. Pfaff, a professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University. Stepping, as he says, out of his "comfort zone" studying steroid hormones’ effects on nerve cells in mice, Pfaff argues that recognizing our inborn goodness can add to our capacity for benevolence. "If a person simply realizes that he is wired for good, altruistic behavior and behaves accordingly," he promises, "and if the person toward whom he is about to behave does the same thing, then everything is likely to come out OK." Happily, "science now knows that we are wired to empathize." Really, it isn’t all that complicated.
The entire article is here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published February 9, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
But if Wilson pulls back from entering the mind, focusing instead on evolutionary dynamics, a cottage industry has grown in recent years around theories purporting to explain how our brains produce empathy, morality, and good will. One recent example comes from Donald W. Pfaff, a professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University. Stepping, as he says, out of his "comfort zone" studying steroid hormones’ effects on nerve cells in mice, Pfaff argues that recognizing our inborn goodness can add to our capacity for benevolence. "If a person simply realizes that he is wired for good, altruistic behavior and behaves accordingly," he promises, "and if the person toward whom he is about to behave does the same thing, then everything is likely to come out OK." Happily, "science now knows that we are wired to empathize." Really, it isn’t all that complicated.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Belief in a Just World and Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action
By Vicky M. Wilkins and Jeffrey B. Wenger
Policy Studies Journal
Volume 42, Issue 3, pages 325–343, August 2014
The effect of identity, as socially constructed by race and gender, on social policies has been widely examined in policy analysis. Policy analysis would be improved by a wider discussion that includes the influence of social-psychological constructs on social provision. We fill this gap by drawing on the theory of the “belief in a just world” and link this theory to attitudes toward the support of controversial government programs. We argue that this theory is a critical antecedent to the previous research on social construction. We hypothesize that citizens who perceive that the world is just and that opportunities are equal between groups are much less likely to favor government interventions altering market outcomes. We find that after controlling for race, sex, and political ideology, respondents who believe that luck is the primary determinant of success (low belief in a just world) are more supportive of preferential hiring programs for African Americans and women.
The article is here.
Policy Studies Journal
Volume 42, Issue 3, pages 325–343, August 2014
The effect of identity, as socially constructed by race and gender, on social policies has been widely examined in policy analysis. Policy analysis would be improved by a wider discussion that includes the influence of social-psychological constructs on social provision. We fill this gap by drawing on the theory of the “belief in a just world” and link this theory to attitudes toward the support of controversial government programs. We argue that this theory is a critical antecedent to the previous research on social construction. We hypothesize that citizens who perceive that the world is just and that opportunities are equal between groups are much less likely to favor government interventions altering market outcomes. We find that after controlling for race, sex, and political ideology, respondents who believe that luck is the primary determinant of success (low belief in a just world) are more supportive of preferential hiring programs for African Americans and women.
The article is here.
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