By Nikhil A. Patel and G. David Elkin
AMA Journal of Ethics
October 2015, Volume 17, Number 10: 924-930.
doi: 10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.nlit1-1510.
Here is an excerpt:
A violation of medical ethics. “Primum non nocere” (first, do no harm) is a central ethical tenet that applies to all health care professionals, including psychologists. Society trusts us to provide high-quality, ethical care to those who seek our help. While we may not be able to heal all of our patients, this principle of nonmaleficence is a pillar of bioethics that must be considered in deciding whether we are doing “right” by those under our care. As the United Nations (UN) declares: “It is a contravention of medical ethics for health personnel, particularly physicians, to be involved in any professional relationship with prisoners or detainees the purpose of which is not solely to evaluate, protect or improve their physical and mental health”. The fact that the ethics leadership at the APA ensured that the ethical guidelines would be written with the operational interests of the DoD in mind is an affront to the independence and integrity of the profession of psychology.
The guidance that psychologists should defer to legal authority in conflict with professional norms has an alarming similarity to the “Nuremberg defense,” in which doctors on trial after the horrors of the Holocaust argued that they were simply following the orders of their commanding officers and that their actions were legal at the time. An action’s being legal for citizens in general or military officers does not make it ethically acceptable for members of a healing profession.
The article is here.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Texas allows guns into state mental health hospitals
By Rick Jervis
USA TODAY
Originally published January 8, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Visitors to one of Texas' 10 state mental health hospitals will be allowed to openly carry weapons into the facilities, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Employees and patients will still be barred from bringing in weapons. The hospitals this week pulled down signs banning guns at its facilities and posted new ones asking people to leave their firearms in their cars or conceal them from patients, said Carrie Williams, a state health department spokeswoman.
“While licensed visitors are legally permitted to carry on our hospital campuses, our patients are being actively treated for psychiatric conditions and generally it’s best not to expose them to weapons of any kind.,” Williams said in statement.
The article is here.
USA TODAY
Originally published January 8, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Visitors to one of Texas' 10 state mental health hospitals will be allowed to openly carry weapons into the facilities, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Employees and patients will still be barred from bringing in weapons. The hospitals this week pulled down signs banning guns at its facilities and posted new ones asking people to leave their firearms in their cars or conceal them from patients, said Carrie Williams, a state health department spokeswoman.
“While licensed visitors are legally permitted to carry on our hospital campuses, our patients are being actively treated for psychiatric conditions and generally it’s best not to expose them to weapons of any kind.,” Williams said in statement.
The article is here.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Opponents fail to derail the state's right-to-die measure, but they may yet try again in court
By The Times Editorial Board
The Los Angeles Times
Originally posted January 7, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
The group behind the referendum attempt, known as Seniors Against Suicide, says it is now contemplating a lawsuit to stop the law's implementation. The law is set to go into effect 90 days after the state Legislature concludes the still-open special session on healthcare.
We respect the law's opponents, including the Roman Catholic Church and some disability-rights advocates; they waged a passionate battle — both moral and practical — against it. But we don't share their fears. There is no evidence that a law this narrow would lead uncaring health insurers or family members to coerce sick patients to kill themselves in order to save on medical costs.
To the contrary, two decades of experience with Oregon's landmark Death with Dignity Act suggests that it will be used sparingly. In the first 17 years, just 1,327 people in Oregon requested a life-ending prescription from a doctor. More than a third of them then chose not to use the prescription.
The article is here.
The Los Angeles Times
Originally posted January 7, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
The group behind the referendum attempt, known as Seniors Against Suicide, says it is now contemplating a lawsuit to stop the law's implementation. The law is set to go into effect 90 days after the state Legislature concludes the still-open special session on healthcare.
We respect the law's opponents, including the Roman Catholic Church and some disability-rights advocates; they waged a passionate battle — both moral and practical — against it. But we don't share their fears. There is no evidence that a law this narrow would lead uncaring health insurers or family members to coerce sick patients to kill themselves in order to save on medical costs.
To the contrary, two decades of experience with Oregon's landmark Death with Dignity Act suggests that it will be used sparingly. In the first 17 years, just 1,327 people in Oregon requested a life-ending prescription from a doctor. More than a third of them then chose not to use the prescription.
The article is here.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
That Time The United States Sterilized 60,000 Of Its Citizens
By Alexandra Minna Stern
The Huffington Post
Originally published January 7, 2016
Not too long ago, more than 60,000 people were sterilized in the United States based on eugenic laws. Most of these operations were performed before the 1960s in institutions for the so-called “mentally ill” or “mentally deficient.” In the early 20th century across the country, medical superintendents, legislators, and social reformers affiliated with an emerging eugenics movement joined forces to put sterilization laws on the books. Such legislation was motivated by crude theories of human heredity that posited the wholesale inheritance of traits associated with a panoply of feared conditions such as criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance. Many sterilization advocates viewed reproductive surgery as a necessary public health intervention that would protect society from deleterious genes and the social and economic costs of managing “degenerate stock.” From today’s vantage point, compulsory sterilization looks patently like reproductive coercion and unethical medical practice.
At the time, however, sterilization both was countenanced by the U.S. Supreme Court (in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case) and supported by many scientists, reformers, and lawmakers as one prong of a larger strategy to improve society by encouraging the reproduction of the “fit” and restricting the procreation of the “unfit.” In total, 32 U.S. states passed sterilization laws between 1907 and 1937, and surgeries reached their highest numbers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Beginning in the 1970s, state legislatures began to repeal these laws, finding them antiquated and discriminatory, particularly towards people with disabilities.
The article is here.
The Huffington Post
Originally published January 7, 2016
Not too long ago, more than 60,000 people were sterilized in the United States based on eugenic laws. Most of these operations were performed before the 1960s in institutions for the so-called “mentally ill” or “mentally deficient.” In the early 20th century across the country, medical superintendents, legislators, and social reformers affiliated with an emerging eugenics movement joined forces to put sterilization laws on the books. Such legislation was motivated by crude theories of human heredity that posited the wholesale inheritance of traits associated with a panoply of feared conditions such as criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance. Many sterilization advocates viewed reproductive surgery as a necessary public health intervention that would protect society from deleterious genes and the social and economic costs of managing “degenerate stock.” From today’s vantage point, compulsory sterilization looks patently like reproductive coercion and unethical medical practice.
At the time, however, sterilization both was countenanced by the U.S. Supreme Court (in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case) and supported by many scientists, reformers, and lawmakers as one prong of a larger strategy to improve society by encouraging the reproduction of the “fit” and restricting the procreation of the “unfit.” In total, 32 U.S. states passed sterilization laws between 1907 and 1937, and surgeries reached their highest numbers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Beginning in the 1970s, state legislatures began to repeal these laws, finding them antiquated and discriminatory, particularly towards people with disabilities.
The article is here.
Friday, January 22, 2016
'We Didn't Lie,' Volkswagen CEO Says Of Emissions Scandal
Sonari Glinton
NPR.org
Published January 11, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
NPR: You said this was a technical problem, but the American people feel this is not a technical problem, this is an ethical problem that's deep inside the company. How do you change that perception in the U.S.?
Matthias Mueller: Frankly spoken, it was a technical problem. We made a default, we had a ... not the right interpretation of the American law. And we had some targets for our technical engineers, and they solved this problem and reached targets with some software solutions which haven't been compatible to the American law. That is the thing. And the other question you mentioned — it was an ethical problem? I cannot understand why you say that.
NPR: Because Volkswagen, in the U.S., intentionally lied to EPA regulators when they asked them about the problem before it came to light.
Mueller: We didn't lie. We didn't understand the question first. And then we worked since 2014 to solve the problem. And we did it together and it was a default of VW that it needed such a long time.
The entire interview is here.
NPR.org
Published January 11, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
NPR: You said this was a technical problem, but the American people feel this is not a technical problem, this is an ethical problem that's deep inside the company. How do you change that perception in the U.S.?
Matthias Mueller: Frankly spoken, it was a technical problem. We made a default, we had a ... not the right interpretation of the American law. And we had some targets for our technical engineers, and they solved this problem and reached targets with some software solutions which haven't been compatible to the American law. That is the thing. And the other question you mentioned — it was an ethical problem? I cannot understand why you say that.
NPR: Because Volkswagen, in the U.S., intentionally lied to EPA regulators when they asked them about the problem before it came to light.
Mueller: We didn't lie. We didn't understand the question first. And then we worked since 2014 to solve the problem. And we did it together and it was a default of VW that it needed such a long time.
The entire interview is here.
Advancing Medical Professionalism in US Military Detainee Treatment
Leonard S. Rubenstein, Scott A. Allen, Phyllis A. Guze
PLOS One
Published: January 5, 2016
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001930
Summary Points
PLOS One
Published: January 5, 2016
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001930
Summary Points
- The United States Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) promulgated policies and requirements that required health professionals to participate in the mistreatment of counter-terrorism detainees through participation in such practices as abusive interrogation and force-feeding of detainees, in violation of ethical standards established by associations representing the health professions.
- A report of the Defense Health Board to the Secretary of Defense on military medical ethics released in 2015 found that the Department of Defense “does not have an enterprise-wide, formal, integrated infrastructure to systematically build, support, sustain, and promote an evolving ethical culture within the military health care environment.”
- The Board also found that ethical codes promulgated by the health professions, including the duty to avoid harm, provide a sound basis for military medical practice, even taking into account the unique challenges often faced by military health professionals in reconciling the military mission with patient needs.
- The health professional community should urge the Secretary of Defense to adopt and implement the recommendations of the Defense Health Board, rescind directives authorizing participation of health professionals in interrogation and force-feeding because they are inconsistent with professional ethics, and provide ongoing advice and support for the reform process.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation
Adam Bear and David G. Rand
PNAS 2016 : 1517780113v1-201517780.
Abstract
Humans often cooperate with strangers, despite the costs involved. A long tradition of theoretical modeling has sought ultimate evolutionary explanations for this seemingly altruistic behavior. More recently, an entirely separate body of experimental work has begun to investigate cooperation’s proximate cognitive underpinnings using a dual-process framework: Is deliberative self-control necessary to reign in selfish impulses, or does self-interested deliberation restrain an intuitive desire to cooperate? Integrating these ultimate and proximate approaches, we introduce dual-process cognition into a formal game-theoretic model of the evolution of cooperation. Agents play prisoner’s dilemma games, some of which are one-shot and others of which involve reciprocity. They can either respond by using a generalized intuition, which is not sensitive to whether the game is one-shot or reciprocal, or pay a (stochastically varying) cost to deliberate and tailor their strategy to the type of game they are facing. We find that, depending on the level of reciprocity and assortment, selection favors one of two strategies: intuitive defectors who never deliberate, or dual-process agents who intuitively cooperate but sometimes use deliberation to defect in one-shot games. Critically, selection never favors agents who use deliberation to override selfish impulses: Deliberation only serves to undermine cooperation with strangers. Thus, by introducing a formal theoretical framework for exploring cooperation through a dual-process lens, we provide a clear answer regarding the role of deliberation in cooperation based on evolutionary modeling, help to organize a growing body of sometimes-conflicting empirical results, and shed light on the nature of human cognition and social decision making.
The article is here.
PNAS 2016 : 1517780113v1-201517780.
Abstract
Humans often cooperate with strangers, despite the costs involved. A long tradition of theoretical modeling has sought ultimate evolutionary explanations for this seemingly altruistic behavior. More recently, an entirely separate body of experimental work has begun to investigate cooperation’s proximate cognitive underpinnings using a dual-process framework: Is deliberative self-control necessary to reign in selfish impulses, or does self-interested deliberation restrain an intuitive desire to cooperate? Integrating these ultimate and proximate approaches, we introduce dual-process cognition into a formal game-theoretic model of the evolution of cooperation. Agents play prisoner’s dilemma games, some of which are one-shot and others of which involve reciprocity. They can either respond by using a generalized intuition, which is not sensitive to whether the game is one-shot or reciprocal, or pay a (stochastically varying) cost to deliberate and tailor their strategy to the type of game they are facing. We find that, depending on the level of reciprocity and assortment, selection favors one of two strategies: intuitive defectors who never deliberate, or dual-process agents who intuitively cooperate but sometimes use deliberation to defect in one-shot games. Critically, selection never favors agents who use deliberation to override selfish impulses: Deliberation only serves to undermine cooperation with strangers. Thus, by introducing a formal theoretical framework for exploring cooperation through a dual-process lens, we provide a clear answer regarding the role of deliberation in cooperation based on evolutionary modeling, help to organize a growing body of sometimes-conflicting empirical results, and shed light on the nature of human cognition and social decision making.
The article is here.
The Role of Compassion in Altruistic Helping and Punishment Behavior
Helen Y. Weng, Andrew S. Fox, Heather C. Hessenthaler, Diane E. Stodola, Richard J. Davidson
PLOS One
Published: December 10, 2015
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143794
Abstract
Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a transgressor. We investigated the relationship between compassion and subtypes of altruistic behavior using third-party paradigms where participants 1) witnessed an unfair economic exchange between a transgressor and a victim, and 2) had the opportunity to either spend personal funds to either economically a) help the victim or b) punish the transgressor. In Study 1, we examined whether individual differences in self-reported empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was associated with greater altruistic helping or punishment behavior in two independent samples. For participants who witnessed an unfair transaction, trait empathic concern was associated with greater helping of a victim and had no relationship to punishment. However, in those who decided to punish the transgressor, participants who reported greater empathic concern decided to punish less. In Study 2, we directly enhanced compassion using short-term online compassion meditation training to examine whether altruistic helping and punishment were increased after two weeks of training. Compared to an active reappraisal training control group, the compassion training group gave more to help the victim and did not differ in punishment of the transgressor. Together, these two studies suggest that compassion is related to greater altruistic helping of victims and is not associated with or may mitigate altruistic punishment of transgressors.
The article is here.
PLOS One
Published: December 10, 2015
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143794
Abstract
Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a transgressor. We investigated the relationship between compassion and subtypes of altruistic behavior using third-party paradigms where participants 1) witnessed an unfair economic exchange between a transgressor and a victim, and 2) had the opportunity to either spend personal funds to either economically a) help the victim or b) punish the transgressor. In Study 1, we examined whether individual differences in self-reported empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was associated with greater altruistic helping or punishment behavior in two independent samples. For participants who witnessed an unfair transaction, trait empathic concern was associated with greater helping of a victim and had no relationship to punishment. However, in those who decided to punish the transgressor, participants who reported greater empathic concern decided to punish less. In Study 2, we directly enhanced compassion using short-term online compassion meditation training to examine whether altruistic helping and punishment were increased after two weeks of training. Compared to an active reappraisal training control group, the compassion training group gave more to help the victim and did not differ in punishment of the transgressor. Together, these two studies suggest that compassion is related to greater altruistic helping of victims and is not associated with or may mitigate altruistic punishment of transgressors.
The article is here.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Using Internet and Social Media Data as Collateral Sources of Information in Forensic Evaluations
By Pirelli, G., Otto, R.K., and Estoup, A.
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Jan 11 , 2016
Abstract
Increasing use of Internet search engines (e.g., Google), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), and commentary vehicles (e.g., Twitter) has prompted discussion regarding users’ privacy. Whereas there is a growing professional literature pertaining to the use of data drawn from social media sources in employment, university admissions, and health-care settings, few publications address the use of Internet data in forensic mental health assessment contexts. In this paper, we consider the appropriateness of professionals seeking and incorporating Internet and social media data when conducting forensic psychological evaluations, and we set forth a call for research and additional commentary.
The article is here.
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Jan 11 , 2016
Abstract
Increasing use of Internet search engines (e.g., Google), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), and commentary vehicles (e.g., Twitter) has prompted discussion regarding users’ privacy. Whereas there is a growing professional literature pertaining to the use of data drawn from social media sources in employment, university admissions, and health-care settings, few publications address the use of Internet data in forensic mental health assessment contexts. In this paper, we consider the appropriateness of professionals seeking and incorporating Internet and social media data when conducting forensic psychological evaluations, and we set forth a call for research and additional commentary.
The article is here.
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