Military Suicidology - Draft Notes
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/5/12
"Comments:
General and Military "suicide epidemics" are in fact one and the same."
Comments:
The parallel between general and military "suicide epidemics" is striking. Statistical approximation of military samples to general might not be truly "corrective", the "controlling" factors, such as age and gender might not in fact be controlling and having any particular significance.
The servicemen might strongly absorb, "incorporate", the perceptions and moods of their families and a community at large; a sense of sharing the same informational and emotional space is quite strong in the collective American psyche.
The comparison of both "epidemics"
"Suicide epidemics" are in quotation marks, because the very notion of "psychiatric epidemic" is rather questionable, it is copied from general epidemiology without much accounting for the specifics and complexities of "psychiatric epidemiology". The "truer" concept might include the very relative socially mediated perceptions, values and variables, since the true baseline figures for suicide as a statistical phenomenon are not known to us, and more than this: they do not even exist and cannot exist in principle. The numbers simply reflect the current state of affairs with very relative and arbitrary "baselines". The short term dynamics of these numbers, the statistical pattern and their underlying mathematical model might be more important than the significance of nominal baselines. And this pattern, as we see it on statistical graphs for both epidemics, is the same: the one of exponential growth, increase in a geometric progression. This might signify that general and military suicide epidemics are in fact one and the same epidemic, with mostly the same factors, and with some additional specific factors for military suicides, mentioned earlier, at play.
The onset of this epidemic appears to be the second half of 2001. The effects of traumatic events of 9.11.01 on American national psyche have to be considered as causative factors in both general and military suicides, with potentially more severe impact on military and similar type of services.
The effects of economic crisis and unemployment probably are mediated by the psychological trauma of the loss of social status, a significance of which, due to other contributing factors and psychology of military service, might be more pronounced and direct in the cases of suicides in the military, and, apparently, the study of this phenomenon in this particular very large group cannot be divorced from its studies in a community, culture and the country at large.
If this reasoning about the roles of causative factors is correct, we should expect gradual levelling off, platoing and eventually decrease of suicide rates to their relative baseline level, with wearing off the effects of social trauma on younger generations.
Like any "crisis", it stimulates thinking about the direction of the Nation and its role in the world and also about the role of the military in the extended peacetime, its potential role as a leading educational, cultural and scientific institution and a model of efficient management and rational and balanced social policies.
What is the relative significance and role, the degree of their "relative causative load", "relative weight" of these and other social, psychological and medical - neurological factors in the causation of various suicidal and self-injurious behaviors and what are the best ways of managing them? This has to be accurately measured, assessed and evaluated: conceptually and socio-psychometrically.
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CDC data
Suicidology - Links List
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9/11 and national psyche - GS
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Americans have been jittery. As we cautiously open our mail, terror is ever present. Here, we take a look at fear itself.
The passengers boarding the Virgin Atlantic Airways flight from London to Los Angeles were wary, but everyone began to relax after takeoff. In midflight, over Canada, an attendant noticed a suspicious object behind a seat. Immediately, the cabin erupted in panic. The plane made an emergency landing in Edmonton, Canada, the passengers were evacuated, and a bomb squad was dispatched. The suspicious item? A cellphone.
We know nothing will be the same after September 11, 2001. Yes, policies will change: Airline security will tighten, mail service will be examined, and restrictions on civil liberties must be accepted. These are the sorts of changes politicians propose and men and women in uniforms will carry out; they are the unavoidable inconveniences of everyday life.
Such changes are coming to pass, but the altered American landscape includes more than security measures and ID cards. On September 11, terrorists did more than destroy buildings; they scarred the American psyche. The details are telling: Pharmacists report an increased demand for anti-anxiety drugs and the antibiotic Cipro, and some HMOs have seen a 25 percent increase in calls.
We are having difficulty grappling with our sudden loss of security. In the weeks immediately after the attacks, a survey of 668 Americans by the Institute of Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reported that 49 percent of participants felt their sense of safety and security had been shaken. And some 62 percent of respondents said they had difficulty sleeping. In another poll of 1,015 Americans conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 57 percent had taken steps to protect themselves—such as taking precautions when opening mail and avoiding public events.
In place of invulnerability, many people now harbor a small and disquieting fear—a fear of attack by unseen agents at unexpected times using unthinkable weapons. The most common objects or occurrences have now assumed horrific resonance. A plastic knife is no longer a utensil packed for a picnic, but a means to mass murder.
Psychologists study many kinds of fear. There are common phobias, such as the fear of spiders, and post-traumatic stress—the fears that spring from memories of dramatic, sometimes life-threatening events. But because most Americans are far removed from New York City and Washington, D.C., other sorts of fears are probably at work. In particular, psychologists will look for symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, which creates an exaggerated fear response in people who have been emotionally scarred.
Over time, the general level of anxiety should ease. But some long-lasting effects will remain, and a few things will never be the same.
A man on a flight to San Jose, California, opens an envelope and a powdery substance spills out. A fellow passenger alerts the flight attendant, reporting that he had dispersed the powder into the ventilation system. Once the plane lands, it is held on the tarmac for three hours and the FBI is called to investigate. The "powdery substance" was confetti enclosed in a greeting card.
Such an overreaction shows just how fearful ordinary people are. But there is nothing wrong with feeling fear: We all do at some point. Fear is one of the most basic emotions and is not, in itself, dangerous; it is part of a natural alarm system designed to react to or anticipate danger. And though that system was first employed to avoid natural predators—a lion on the prowl, say—it has been adapted over time to deal with abstract threats or even social situations. For some, a letter filled with a powdery substance or the sight of a man wearing a gas mask would create a distinct sensation of fear, even panic, though it would be hard to explain the exact threat to someone who lived just one hundred years ago.
Although the reaction to fear is perfectly natural, it can be unpleasant. Fear begins in the amygdala, a cluster of cells deep in the most primitive part of the brain that weighs information for emotional content and possible threat. If a threat is sensed, the amygdala sends out immediate signals. Simple reflexes are set off: a jump or a shout. And the adrenal glands in the kidneys begin pumping adrenaline and noradrenaline, two chemicals that act as messengers to trigger reactions all over the body. A rush of adrenaline and noradrenaline causes the heart to race, breathing to quicken, pupils to widen and saliva to dry up. In the extreme, it is common to experience hyperventilation, dizziness, trembling and even nausea.
Another physical reaction is a change in the blood's circulation pattern—the vessels close to the skin constrict so that more blood is available to the large muscles. This redistribution is important because muscles in the arms and legs might be needed to run from or fight off an attacker. But it creates a distinct physical sensation—the blood running cold or a chill down the spine.
As an outgrowth of this ancient alarm system, fear also weakens the ability to concentrate. People who are anxious often complain that they are easily distracted from daily chores. That's a normal part of the fear response: One of the most important aspects of dealing with danger is finding out where it is coming from. Instead of focusing on small tasks, the brain cries out to scan the environment and find the threat. In the distant past, the threat might have been a predator in the bushes. With the current threats coming not from tigers but from terrorists, people most often study the newspaper looking for clues to potential danger.
The entire design of the body's alarm system is geared toward protecting the individual from threats. But people don't just react to threats—they anticipate them, as well. Again, this kind of fear is part of the normal strategy humans have evolved to avoid danger. Anticipatory fear has two distinct modes: anxiety, a preoccupation with an impending threat, and worry, the internal struggle to find a way to escape the danger.
It is probably safe to say that most of the fear experienced since September 11 has been worry and anxiety. Americans have been anxious about attacks from anthrax-laced mail, they have worried about the availability of antibiotics and the safety of the water supply. Such anticipation is not only normal, it is healthy—often the best way to protect oneself is to spot a threat before it is imminent and find ways to avoid it.
For decades, many people feared the threat of nuclear war. Indeed, after the Soviet Union demonstrated its nuclear weapons in 1949, many Americans were beset by the kinds of worries and anxieties that some people now feel about the possibility of terrorist attacks. In fact, many people were certain that civilization as we know it was about to end—a feeling made stronger by books and movies, such as "On the Beach" and "The Day After" set in postapocalyptic futures.
This worry about nuclear annihilation led to actions such as building bomb shelters and installing the so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington. Indeed, one can argue that taking such steps in response to cold-war hysteria kept nuclear war at bay.
Yet some fears persist in ways that are not advantageous to the fearful. Those sorts of fears create more problems than they solve, and paralyze rather than motivate. Anxiety disorders are a significant mental health problem in the United States—about one in four people experience one form at some point in their lives. Several variants have been identified, from social anxiety disorder, a fear based on social scrutiny, to panic disorder, in which a person is actually afraid of fear itself.
Sometimes, though, a person may develop anxiety or worry about potential catastrophes to an extent far beyond the normal fear response. Even though the individual may not think she is worrying too much, her anxieties, in fact, cause an enormous amount of stress and may even keep her from fully participating in everyday life. This sort of exaggerated worry is known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Some 4 million American adults have GAD, and it afflicts women twice as often as it does men.
The development of GAD appears to involve a small genetic factor. In July 2001, researchers from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond reported in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders that a study of 3,100 twins suggests that inherited traits account for some 15 to 20 percent of the vulnerability to GAD; the other factors are environmental.
The National Institute of Mental Health describes the symptoms of GAD this way: People with GAD can't seem to shake their concerns, even though they usually realize that their anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants. Their worries are accompanied by physical symptoms, especially trembling, twitching, muscle tension, headaches, irritability, sweating or hot flashes.
The physical symptoms of GAD, then, mirror the body's reaction to fear. Indeed, GAD can be thought of as living in a state of constant, if low-level, fear. But unlike the normal causes of fear—real threats that require a serious response—generalized anxiety disorder exaggerates the amount of danger arising from a potential situation. People with GAD tend to overestimate the likelihood of harm coming from a given situation and view minor or ambiguous events as catastrophes. If normal fear is an alarm, GAD is a false alarm you can't turn off.
Normal worrying differs from excessive worrying in amount, not in kind. A study of 1,588 college students, published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology by psychologists at Pennsylvania State University and Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, found that there was no clear way to separate levels of worry into two tidy groups. Instead, there seems to be a continuum of worry.
Research suggests that GAD is linked to the brain's storage of emotionally charged memories. The feelings one has at the time of an event appear to play an important role in the strength of later memories. Although all memories fade over time, the ones connected with the most passionate emotions remain the most indelible.
From the evolutionary perspective, that makes sense: Memories are stored so that we can gain information about the world; so remembering emotional events helps us duplicate our biggest triumphs and avoid repeating our most ignominious defeats. The best way to do that is to retain the memory with a mental tag that conveys an emotional message.
Sometimes, though, emotionally laden memories of a dangerous situation get stored in a confusing way. That's particularly true of threats that may be somewhat abstract in nature. If a snake has threatened you, you know what to look out for in the future. But for Americans who feel threatened by terrorism, the danger signs are not exactly clear. Indeed, in the weeks after September 11, the news was filled with details of the hijackings and reports of anthrax bacteria arriving in the mail. These images, as well as predictions that future attacks are 100 percent certainties, are all "tagged" with fearful emotions.
Once a memory has been tagged with fear, the brain is ready to respond when it senses something that triggers that memory. It is almost as if a person becomes scarred emotionally and will react anytime the wound is touched. To test this model, Schmidt conducted a study of some 1,300 men and women in their first year at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Cadets who had reported having a panic attack in the past were found to be more likely to believe that anxieties are harmful—which is itself a cause of panic attacks. After experiencing a panic attack, a person becomes more vulnerable to additional attacks. This suggests that traumatic events in a person's past may play a large part in creating anxiety disorders.
Psychologists believe such scarring is the result of a person experiencing an unexpected personal loss—some event that makes him feel the world is a threatening place. But there are many people with GAD who have not had such personal losses. Instead, seeing friends experience a tragedy or even receiving mistaken information about potential risks is enough to trigger exaggerated anxiety.
Whatever the cause, once the fear structure is in place, even the most everyday occurrences can instill deep anxieties. If the fear involves the health and safety of your children, for instance, then simply watching them board a school bus can be unsettling.
It's important to remember that, on balance, fear is a good thing. It warns us of imminent dangers and reminds us of past threats. Many ingenious solutions—from the Constitution to the Internet—have come from worrying about difficult problems.
The fears that resulted from the attacks on the World Trade Center have been paralyzing for some. For others, the anxiety has led to extreme overreactions—such as refusing to enter a post office.
In time, perhaps we can put these fears to constructive use. Rather than panic at the sight of a man in a turban, read up on other cultures. Instead of worrying about the supply of antibiotics, research how difficult it is to contract anthrax.
In the wake of the most horrendous attacks in American history, it is healthy to feel some fear. Just don't allow that fear to defeat you.
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PITTSBURGH-An unusual national experiment on American emotions conducted by Carnegie Mellon University scientists reveals a national psyche deeply influenced in opposite ways by anger and fear and enormously impacted by media coverage of events post 9-11.
The scientists, all experts in studying the way people think and behave, were able to quickly pull together an experiment that studied the emotions and perceptions of the risks of terrorism of nearly 1,000 American women, men and teens following the terrorist attacks on America.
The results have been presented to NATO officials assessing the carryover impact of terrorism and are in press with the journal Psychological Science. The experiment results may have implications for better understanding of consumer behavior, the role of the media, and public support for the war on terrorism.
Jennifer Lerner, an assistant professor of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and lead author of the paper, commented that the emotional responses of Americans "clearly influence everything from future support for military action to decisions to travel."
The Carnegie Mellon team drew four major conclusions from the study:
Feelings of fear likely fueled the sense of pessimism that contributed to the national economic downturn after September 11 and the call for tighter security; feelings of anger likely fed the sense of optimism, contributing to support for military action and the sense that threats could be controlled.
Scientifically, the experiment plows new ground. Scientists say that this is the first time that the effects of emotion have been studied in a national sample, using the random assignment to conditions of fear or anger.
The experiment also underscored the profound impact that media coverage has on the American public, Lerner said.
Because emotions often affect economic decisions and the formation of policies, team members stressed the importance of undertaking further studies like this one.
"Citizens need to understand these processes in order to apply their hearts and minds to what might be a protracted struggle with the risks of terror," said Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Social and Decision Sciences Baruch Fischhoff, a member of the scientific team.
In addition to Lerner and Fischhoff, the team included doctoral students Roxana Gonzalez and Deborah Small, all of Carnegie Mellon's Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Psychological Association funded the study.
Details of the Scientific Experiment Dealing with Emotional Response to Terrorism
In contrast to the common view that negative emotions lead to pessimism, the researchers hypothesized that the negative emotion of anger would lead to optimism, relative to the negative emotion of fear. They also hypothesized that simply asking people to reflect on fear or anger while viewing a fear- or anger-inducing media clip would elicit emotions that were strong enough to shape perceptions of twenty different risky events. Finally, they hypothesized that males would experience more anger and females would experience more fear, leading males to make relatively optimistic risk estimates.
These hypotheses were tested and supported in a national field experiment with almost 1,000 American citizens, ages 13 to 88. The sample's demographics corresponded to those of the U. S. Census, so the results would generalize to the U.S. population. Using WebTVs supplied by the research corporation Knowledge Networks, the project initially asked respondents about their reactions only nine days after the attacks. Eight weeks later, using TV imagery and newspaper reports from major media organizations (e.g., CNN, the New York Times) broadcast on the Web TVs, the researchers surveyed the same people again. For this second survey, half of the sample was exposed to a fear-inducing media clip, while the other half was exposed to an anger-inducing clip.
Anger Led to Optimism; Fear Led to Pessimism
Carnegie Mellon researchers found that Americans randomly assigned to the "fear condition" perceived greater risks from terrorism, while those in the "anger condition" perceived less risk.
"Brief reminders of media stories elicited emotions that shaped Americans' perceptions of their own level of risk. Stories that induced fear increased their perception that they would be hurt in a terrorist attack, while stories that induced anger reduced their perception of personal risk," Lerner explained.
She added that the differential effects of fear and anger were not limited to emotions induced experimentally. Naturally-occurring fear and anger measured in the week after the attacks had the same pattern as the experimentally-induced fear and anger.
"Regardless of whether we randomly exposed people to emotion-inducing media stories or if we measured naturally-occurring emotions, greater anger led to greater optimism," Lerner said.
Fear, Anger Trigger Different Precautionary Responses and Policy Preferences
Fear and anger not only produced different risk perceptions, but also different precautionary responses and different policy preferences. The Carnegie Mellon scientific team contends that these findings have important implications for the health of the U.S. economy and public support for the war against terrorism.
Americans who saw a fear-inducing media story were more likely to say that they would take personal precautions, such as reducing their air travel. Americans who saw a fear-inducing media story were also more likely to support conciliatory public policies. By contrast, Americans who saw an anger-inducing story were less likely to say they would take precautions and less likely to support conciliatory policies.
Overall, Americans strongly supported the public policies of "providing Americans with honest, accurate information about the situation, even if the information worries people," "investing in general capabilities, like stronger public health, more than specific solutions, like smallpox vaccinations," and "deporting foreigners in the U.S. who lack visas." There was somewhat weaker, but still positive support for "strengthening ties with countries in the Moslem world."
Men Perceive Less Risk than Women Because They Are Angrier
The Carnegie Mellon study also discovered that males (ages 13-88) were less pessimistic about risks than were females-because they were angrier. "The striking difference in risk perception between males and females is due to males experiencing greater anger and females greater fear," Lerner said.
Americans Perceived High Risk of Terrorism-But Also Say Risk Is Higher for "Other"Americans than for Themselves
The experiment found that subjects saw "average Americans" as facing much higher risks than they did personally. The researchers said these results did not, however, reflect unrealistic personal optimism. According to Lerner, many risk estimates last November reflected profound pessimism.
On average, respondents saw a 21 percent chance of being injured in a terrorist attack within the next year as opposed to the 48 percent chance assigned to the average American. "This is still a very gloomy view," Lerner commented.
Respondents had realistic expectations about more-everyday happenings, such as the likelihood of getting the flu.
Carnegie Mellon scientists say a follow-up study will assess whether Americans' estimates of risk will have changed a year later, as well as examining the accuracy of their initial risk estimates.
NATO workshop Focuses on Terrorism
The meeting at NATO headquarters, where the findings were presented, was the first scientific workshop co-sponsored by NATO and Russia to gather scientists from around the world to consider the psychological and social consequences of chemical, biological, and radiological terrorism - and to advise policy makers on prevention and mitigation measures. A preliminary summary of the meeting and this report appears on the NATO Web site,http://www.nato.int/science/e/020325-arw2.htm.
Study Advances New Experimental Methods for Examining Emotion and Judgment
Many studies have looked at correlations between emotional responses and risk perceptions. However, no studies with a national sample have experimentally manipulated emotions. According to the researchers, only experimental manipulation, with random assignment to condition, allows one to conclusively examine causal relationships. Other national studies have typically involved correlational designs without experimental manipulations and random assignment, while experimental studies have typically been conducted only in the laboratory. Scientists say the Carnegie Mellon study breaks new ground by marrying the virtues of both methods: It takes experimental methodology outside the laboratory to a nationally representative sample of Americans.
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Aaron Reeves suicide - GS
SUICIDE RATES IN America have risen sharply since the economic crisis kicked in almost five years ago, according to a major study published today.
Researchers found that the number of suicides more than quadrupled in the United States between 2008 and 2010.
The study found that an estimated 1,500 additional suicides have taken place in the US every year since 2007 compared to the number that would have been expected if trends from the previous decade had continued. The research is published today in The Lancet.
Aaron Reeves of the University of Cambridge who led the research said that the data followed trends in other countries which have been hit hard by the economic crisis.
“In the run-up to the US Presidential election, President Obama and Mitt Romney are debating how best to spur economic recovery,” he said.
“Missing from this discussion is consideration of how to protect Americans’ health during these hard times. Suicide is a rare outcome of mental illness, but this means that these data are likely the most visible indicator of major depression and anxiety disorders among people living through the financial crisis, as revealed by recent research in Spain and Greece”.
The study also echoes similar research in Ireland which has found that suicide rates have increased as the economy has tumbled and unemployment rates have increased. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show 525 people took their own lives in Ireland in 2011, an increase of 7 per cent on the previous year.
A recent study by the National Suicide Research Foundation examined almost 200 cases of suicide in Cork over three years and found that the recession has had a direct impact on suicide rates. Almost one third of suicide victims had worked in construction or related areas which have been disproportionately affected by the downturn. Almost 40 per cent of suicide victims in the study were unemployed.
The authors of the report on the US suicide rates pointed out that some countries such as Sweden have managed to avoid increased rates of suicide during the economic downturn, suggesting that some countries have been better at promoting mental health resilience during difficult times.
If you have been affected by the issues discussed in this article please call Aware at 1890 303 302 or the Samaritans at 1850 60 90 90, or email jo@samaritans.org.
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Selected Online First articles from The Lancet journals ahead of print publication.
Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during economic recession - GS
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suicide unemployment - GS
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suicide unemployment loss of social status - GS
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suicide loss of social status - GS
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Sarah Boseley, health editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 August 2012 23.30 BST
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General and Military "suicide epidemics" are in fact one and the same."
_________________________________________
November 4, 2012
Increase Seen in U.S. Suicide Rate Since Recession
By BENEDICT CAREY
The rate of suicide in the United States rose sharply during the first few years since the start of the recession, a new analysis has found.
In the report, which appeared Sunday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal, researchers found that the rate between 2008 and 2010 increased four times
_______________________________________________
Comments:
The parallel between general and military "suicide epidemics" is striking. Statistical approximation of military samples to general might not be truly "corrective", the "controlling" factors, such as age and gender might not in fact be controlling and having any particular significance.
The servicemen might strongly absorb, "incorporate", the perceptions and moods of their families and a community at large; a sense of sharing the same informational and emotional space is quite strong in the collective American psyche.
The comparison of both "epidemics"
"Suicide epidemics" are in quotation marks, because the very notion of "psychiatric epidemic" is rather questionable, it is copied from general epidemiology without much accounting for the specifics and complexities of "psychiatric epidemiology". The "truer" concept might include the very relative socially mediated perceptions, values and variables, since the true baseline figures for suicide as a statistical phenomenon are not known to us, and more than this: they do not even exist and cannot exist in principle. The numbers simply reflect the current state of affairs with very relative and arbitrary "baselines". The short term dynamics of these numbers, the statistical pattern and their underlying mathematical model might be more important than the significance of nominal baselines. And this pattern, as we see it on statistical graphs for both epidemics, is the same: the one of exponential growth, increase in a geometric progression. This might signify that general and military suicide epidemics are in fact one and the same epidemic, with mostly the same factors, and with some additional specific factors for military suicides, mentioned earlier, at play.
The onset of this epidemic appears to be the second half of 2001. The effects of traumatic events of 9.11.01 on American national psyche have to be considered as causative factors in both general and military suicides, with potentially more severe impact on military and similar type of services.
The effects of economic crisis and unemployment probably are mediated by the psychological trauma of the loss of social status, a significance of which, due to other contributing factors and psychology of military service, might be more pronounced and direct in the cases of suicides in the military, and, apparently, the study of this phenomenon in this particular very large group cannot be divorced from its studies in a community, culture and the country at large.
If this reasoning about the roles of causative factors is correct, we should expect gradual levelling off, platoing and eventually decrease of suicide rates to their relative baseline level, with wearing off the effects of social trauma on younger generations.
Like any "crisis", it stimulates thinking about the direction of the Nation and its role in the world and also about the role of the military in the extended peacetime, its potential role as a leading educational, cultural and scientific institution and a model of efficient management and rational and balanced social policies.
What is the relative significance and role, the degree of their "relative causative load", "relative weight" of these and other social, psychological and medical - neurological factors in the causation of various suicidal and self-injurious behaviors and what are the best ways of managing them? This has to be accurately measured, assessed and evaluated: conceptually and socio-psychometrically.
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Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during economic recession
Correspondence The Lancet (online November 5)
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CDC data
Suicidology - Links List
The latest data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 38,364 suicide deaths were reported in the U.S. in 2010. This latest rise places suicide again as the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. Nationally, the suicide rate increased 3.9 percent over 2009 to equal approximately 12.4 suicides per 100,000 people. The rate of suicide has been increasing since 2000. This is the highest rate of suicide in 15 years.
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www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/.../2011/RAND_MG953.pdf
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat 9/11 and national psyche - GS
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Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)
Anxiety After 9/11
by Brad Schmidt, Ph.D., Jeffrey Winters
The passengers boarding the Virgin Atlantic Airways flight from London to Los Angeles were wary, but everyone began to relax after takeoff. In midflight, over Canada, an attendant noticed a suspicious object behind a seat. Immediately, the cabin erupted in panic. The plane made an emergency landing in Edmonton, Canada, the passengers were evacuated, and a bomb squad was dispatched. The suspicious item? A cellphone.
We know nothing will be the same after September 11, 2001. Yes, policies will change: Airline security will tighten, mail service will be examined, and restrictions on civil liberties must be accepted. These are the sorts of changes politicians propose and men and women in uniforms will carry out; they are the unavoidable inconveniences of everyday life.
Such changes are coming to pass, but the altered American landscape includes more than security measures and ID cards. On September 11, terrorists did more than destroy buildings; they scarred the American psyche. The details are telling: Pharmacists report an increased demand for anti-anxiety drugs and the antibiotic Cipro, and some HMOs have seen a 25 percent increase in calls.
We are having difficulty grappling with our sudden loss of security. In the weeks immediately after the attacks, a survey of 668 Americans by the Institute of Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reported that 49 percent of participants felt their sense of safety and security had been shaken. And some 62 percent of respondents said they had difficulty sleeping. In another poll of 1,015 Americans conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 57 percent had taken steps to protect themselves—such as taking precautions when opening mail and avoiding public events.
In place of invulnerability, many people now harbor a small and disquieting fear—a fear of attack by unseen agents at unexpected times using unthinkable weapons. The most common objects or occurrences have now assumed horrific resonance. A plastic knife is no longer a utensil packed for a picnic, but a means to mass murder.
Psychologists study many kinds of fear. There are common phobias, such as the fear of spiders, and post-traumatic stress—the fears that spring from memories of dramatic, sometimes life-threatening events. But because most Americans are far removed from New York City and Washington, D.C., other sorts of fears are probably at work. In particular, psychologists will look for symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, which creates an exaggerated fear response in people who have been emotionally scarred.
Over time, the general level of anxiety should ease. But some long-lasting effects will remain, and a few things will never be the same.
A man on a flight to San Jose, California, opens an envelope and a powdery substance spills out. A fellow passenger alerts the flight attendant, reporting that he had dispersed the powder into the ventilation system. Once the plane lands, it is held on the tarmac for three hours and the FBI is called to investigate. The "powdery substance" was confetti enclosed in a greeting card.
Such an overreaction shows just how fearful ordinary people are. But there is nothing wrong with feeling fear: We all do at some point. Fear is one of the most basic emotions and is not, in itself, dangerous; it is part of a natural alarm system designed to react to or anticipate danger. And though that system was first employed to avoid natural predators—a lion on the prowl, say—it has been adapted over time to deal with abstract threats or even social situations. For some, a letter filled with a powdery substance or the sight of a man wearing a gas mask would create a distinct sensation of fear, even panic, though it would be hard to explain the exact threat to someone who lived just one hundred years ago.
Another physical reaction is a change in the blood's circulation pattern—the vessels close to the skin constrict so that more blood is available to the large muscles. This redistribution is important because muscles in the arms and legs might be needed to run from or fight off an attacker. But it creates a distinct physical sensation—the blood running cold or a chill down the spine.
As an outgrowth of this ancient alarm system, fear also weakens the ability to concentrate. People who are anxious often complain that they are easily distracted from daily chores. That's a normal part of the fear response: One of the most important aspects of dealing with danger is finding out where it is coming from. Instead of focusing on small tasks, the brain cries out to scan the environment and find the threat. In the distant past, the threat might have been a predator in the bushes. With the current threats coming not from tigers but from terrorists, people most often study the newspaper looking for clues to potential danger.
The entire design of the body's alarm system is geared toward protecting the individual from threats. But people don't just react to threats—they anticipate them, as well. Again, this kind of fear is part of the normal strategy humans have evolved to avoid danger. Anticipatory fear has two distinct modes: anxiety, a preoccupation with an impending threat, and worry, the internal struggle to find a way to escape the danger.
It is probably safe to say that most of the fear experienced since September 11 has been worry and anxiety. Americans have been anxious about attacks from anthrax-laced mail, they have worried about the availability of antibiotics and the safety of the water supply. Such anticipation is not only normal, it is healthy—often the best way to protect oneself is to spot a threat before it is imminent and find ways to avoid it.
For decades, many people feared the threat of nuclear war. Indeed, after the Soviet Union demonstrated its nuclear weapons in 1949, many Americans were beset by the kinds of worries and anxieties that some people now feel about the possibility of terrorist attacks. In fact, many people were certain that civilization as we know it was about to end—a feeling made stronger by books and movies, such as "On the Beach" and "The Day After" set in postapocalyptic futures.
This worry about nuclear annihilation led to actions such as building bomb shelters and installing the so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington. Indeed, one can argue that taking such steps in response to cold-war hysteria kept nuclear war at bay.
Yet some fears persist in ways that are not advantageous to the fearful. Those sorts of fears create more problems than they solve, and paralyze rather than motivate. Anxiety disorders are a significant mental health problem in the United States—about one in four people experience one form at some point in their lives. Several variants have been identified, from social anxiety disorder, a fear based on social scrutiny, to panic disorder, in which a person is actually afraid of fear itself.
Sometimes, though, a person may develop anxiety or worry about potential catastrophes to an extent far beyond the normal fear response. Even though the individual may not think she is worrying too much, her anxieties, in fact, cause an enormous amount of stress and may even keep her from fully participating in everyday life. This sort of exaggerated worry is known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Some 4 million American adults have GAD, and it afflicts women twice as often as it does men.
The development of GAD appears to involve a small genetic factor. In July 2001, researchers from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond reported in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders that a study of 3,100 twins suggests that inherited traits account for some 15 to 20 percent of the vulnerability to GAD; the other factors are environmental.
The National Institute of Mental Health describes the symptoms of GAD this way: People with GAD can't seem to shake their concerns, even though they usually realize that their anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants. Their worries are accompanied by physical symptoms, especially trembling, twitching, muscle tension, headaches, irritability, sweating or hot flashes.
The physical symptoms of GAD, then, mirror the body's reaction to fear. Indeed, GAD can be thought of as living in a state of constant, if low-level, fear. But unlike the normal causes of fear—real threats that require a serious response—generalized anxiety disorder exaggerates the amount of danger arising from a potential situation. People with GAD tend to overestimate the likelihood of harm coming from a given situation and view minor or ambiguous events as catastrophes. If normal fear is an alarm, GAD is a false alarm you can't turn off.
Normal worrying differs from excessive worrying in amount, not in kind. A study of 1,588 college students, published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology by psychologists at Pennsylvania State University and Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, found that there was no clear way to separate levels of worry into two tidy groups. Instead, there seems to be a continuum of worry.
Research suggests that GAD is linked to the brain's storage of emotionally charged memories. The feelings one has at the time of an event appear to play an important role in the strength of later memories. Although all memories fade over time, the ones connected with the most passionate emotions remain the most indelible.
From the evolutionary perspective, that makes sense: Memories are stored so that we can gain information about the world; so remembering emotional events helps us duplicate our biggest triumphs and avoid repeating our most ignominious defeats. The best way to do that is to retain the memory with a mental tag that conveys an emotional message.
Sometimes, though, emotionally laden memories of a dangerous situation get stored in a confusing way. That's particularly true of threats that may be somewhat abstract in nature. If a snake has threatened you, you know what to look out for in the future. But for Americans who feel threatened by terrorism, the danger signs are not exactly clear. Indeed, in the weeks after September 11, the news was filled with details of the hijackings and reports of anthrax bacteria arriving in the mail. These images, as well as predictions that future attacks are 100 percent certainties, are all "tagged" with fearful emotions.
Once a memory has been tagged with fear, the brain is ready to respond when it senses something that triggers that memory. It is almost as if a person becomes scarred emotionally and will react anytime the wound is touched. To test this model, Schmidt conducted a study of some 1,300 men and women in their first year at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Cadets who had reported having a panic attack in the past were found to be more likely to believe that anxieties are harmful—which is itself a cause of panic attacks. After experiencing a panic attack, a person becomes more vulnerable to additional attacks. This suggests that traumatic events in a person's past may play a large part in creating anxiety disorders.
Psychologists believe such scarring is the result of a person experiencing an unexpected personal loss—some event that makes him feel the world is a threatening place. But there are many people with GAD who have not had such personal losses. Instead, seeing friends experience a tragedy or even receiving mistaken information about potential risks is enough to trigger exaggerated anxiety.
Whatever the cause, once the fear structure is in place, even the most everyday occurrences can instill deep anxieties. If the fear involves the health and safety of your children, for instance, then simply watching them board a school bus can be unsettling.
It's important to remember that, on balance, fear is a good thing. It warns us of imminent dangers and reminds us of past threats. Many ingenious solutions—from the Constitution to the Internet—have come from worrying about difficult problems.
The fears that resulted from the attacks on the World Trade Center have been paralyzing for some. For others, the anxiety has led to extreme overreactions—such as refusing to enter a post office.
In time, perhaps we can put these fears to constructive use. Rather than panic at the sight of a man in a turban, read up on other cultures. Instead of worrying about the supply of antibiotics, research how difficult it is to contract anthrax.
In the wake of the most horrendous attacks in American history, it is healthy to feel some fear. Just don't allow that fear to defeat you.
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| National Experiment on American Emotions Reveals Impact of Fear, Anger | |
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PITTSBURGH-An unusual national experiment on American emotions conducted by Carnegie Mellon University scientists reveals a national psyche deeply influenced in opposite ways by anger and fear and enormously impacted by media coverage of events post 9-11.
The scientists, all experts in studying the way people think and behave, were able to quickly pull together an experiment that studied the emotions and perceptions of the risks of terrorism of nearly 1,000 American women, men and teens following the terrorist attacks on America.
The results have been presented to NATO officials assessing the carryover impact of terrorism and are in press with the journal Psychological Science. The experiment results may have implications for better understanding of consumer behavior, the role of the media, and public support for the war on terrorism.
Jennifer Lerner, an assistant professor of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and lead author of the paper, commented that the emotional responses of Americans "clearly influence everything from future support for military action to decisions to travel."
The Carnegie Mellon team drew four major conclusions from the study:
1) Americans who experience anger are more optimistic about the future, less likely to take precautionary actions, and more likely to favor aggressive policy responses than those who experience fear.The experiment involving nearly 1,000 American men and women ages 13 to 88, suggests that heightened emotions of fear and anger affect responses to the threat of terror currently facing the nation, with anger promoting greater optimism and more aggressive policies.
2) Individuals see themselves as less vulnerable than the "average American," while still perceiving strikingly high personal risk in the wake of September 11.
3) Men experience more anger about terrorism than women, leading them to be more optimistic than women.
4) Media portrayals of the terrorist attacks strongly influence emotional responses, producing anger in some instances and fear in others.
Feelings of fear likely fueled the sense of pessimism that contributed to the national economic downturn after September 11 and the call for tighter security; feelings of anger likely fed the sense of optimism, contributing to support for military action and the sense that threats could be controlled.
Scientifically, the experiment plows new ground. Scientists say that this is the first time that the effects of emotion have been studied in a national sample, using the random assignment to conditions of fear or anger.
The experiment also underscored the profound impact that media coverage has on the American public, Lerner said.
Because emotions often affect economic decisions and the formation of policies, team members stressed the importance of undertaking further studies like this one.
"Citizens need to understand these processes in order to apply their hearts and minds to what might be a protracted struggle with the risks of terror," said Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Social and Decision Sciences Baruch Fischhoff, a member of the scientific team.
In addition to Lerner and Fischhoff, the team included doctoral students Roxana Gonzalez and Deborah Small, all of Carnegie Mellon's Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Psychological Association funded the study.
Details of the Scientific Experiment Dealing with Emotional Response to Terrorism
In contrast to the common view that negative emotions lead to pessimism, the researchers hypothesized that the negative emotion of anger would lead to optimism, relative to the negative emotion of fear. They also hypothesized that simply asking people to reflect on fear or anger while viewing a fear- or anger-inducing media clip would elicit emotions that were strong enough to shape perceptions of twenty different risky events. Finally, they hypothesized that males would experience more anger and females would experience more fear, leading males to make relatively optimistic risk estimates.
These hypotheses were tested and supported in a national field experiment with almost 1,000 American citizens, ages 13 to 88. The sample's demographics corresponded to those of the U. S. Census, so the results would generalize to the U.S. population. Using WebTVs supplied by the research corporation Knowledge Networks, the project initially asked respondents about their reactions only nine days after the attacks. Eight weeks later, using TV imagery and newspaper reports from major media organizations (e.g., CNN, the New York Times) broadcast on the Web TVs, the researchers surveyed the same people again. For this second survey, half of the sample was exposed to a fear-inducing media clip, while the other half was exposed to an anger-inducing clip.
Anger Led to Optimism; Fear Led to Pessimism
Carnegie Mellon researchers found that Americans randomly assigned to the "fear condition" perceived greater risks from terrorism, while those in the "anger condition" perceived less risk.
"Brief reminders of media stories elicited emotions that shaped Americans' perceptions of their own level of risk. Stories that induced fear increased their perception that they would be hurt in a terrorist attack, while stories that induced anger reduced their perception of personal risk," Lerner explained.
She added that the differential effects of fear and anger were not limited to emotions induced experimentally. Naturally-occurring fear and anger measured in the week after the attacks had the same pattern as the experimentally-induced fear and anger.
"Regardless of whether we randomly exposed people to emotion-inducing media stories or if we measured naturally-occurring emotions, greater anger led to greater optimism," Lerner said.
Fear, Anger Trigger Different Precautionary Responses and Policy Preferences
Fear and anger not only produced different risk perceptions, but also different precautionary responses and different policy preferences. The Carnegie Mellon scientific team contends that these findings have important implications for the health of the U.S. economy and public support for the war against terrorism.
Americans who saw a fear-inducing media story were more likely to say that they would take personal precautions, such as reducing their air travel. Americans who saw a fear-inducing media story were also more likely to support conciliatory public policies. By contrast, Americans who saw an anger-inducing story were less likely to say they would take precautions and less likely to support conciliatory policies.
Overall, Americans strongly supported the public policies of "providing Americans with honest, accurate information about the situation, even if the information worries people," "investing in general capabilities, like stronger public health, more than specific solutions, like smallpox vaccinations," and "deporting foreigners in the U.S. who lack visas." There was somewhat weaker, but still positive support for "strengthening ties with countries in the Moslem world."
Men Perceive Less Risk than Women Because They Are Angrier
The Carnegie Mellon study also discovered that males (ages 13-88) were less pessimistic about risks than were females-because they were angrier. "The striking difference in risk perception between males and females is due to males experiencing greater anger and females greater fear," Lerner said.
Americans Perceived High Risk of Terrorism-But Also Say Risk Is Higher for "Other"Americans than for Themselves
The experiment found that subjects saw "average Americans" as facing much higher risks than they did personally. The researchers said these results did not, however, reflect unrealistic personal optimism. According to Lerner, many risk estimates last November reflected profound pessimism.
On average, respondents saw a 21 percent chance of being injured in a terrorist attack within the next year as opposed to the 48 percent chance assigned to the average American. "This is still a very gloomy view," Lerner commented.
Respondents had realistic expectations about more-everyday happenings, such as the likelihood of getting the flu.
Carnegie Mellon scientists say a follow-up study will assess whether Americans' estimates of risk will have changed a year later, as well as examining the accuracy of their initial risk estimates.
NATO workshop Focuses on Terrorism
The meeting at NATO headquarters, where the findings were presented, was the first scientific workshop co-sponsored by NATO and Russia to gather scientists from around the world to consider the psychological and social consequences of chemical, biological, and radiological terrorism - and to advise policy makers on prevention and mitigation measures. A preliminary summary of the meeting and this report appears on the NATO Web site,http://www.nato.int/science/e/020325-arw2.htm.
Study Advances New Experimental Methods for Examining Emotion and Judgment
Many studies have looked at correlations between emotional responses and risk perceptions. However, no studies with a national sample have experimentally manipulated emotions. According to the researchers, only experimental manipulation, with random assignment to condition, allows one to conclusively examine causal relationships. Other national studies have typically involved correlational designs without experimental manipulations and random assignment, while experimental studies have typically been conducted only in the laboratory. Scientists say the Carnegie Mellon study breaks new ground by marrying the virtues of both methods: It takes experimental methodology outside the laboratory to a nationally representative sample of Americans.
---Carnegie Mellon University
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November 4, 2012
Increase Seen in U.S. Suicide Rate Since Recession
By BENEDICT CAREY
The rate of suicide in the United States rose sharply during the first few years since the start of the recession, a new analysis has found.
In the report, which appeared Sunday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal, researchers found that the rate between 2008 and 2010 increased four times faster than it did in the eight years before the recession. The rate had been increasing by an average of 0.12 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 through 2007. In 2008, the rate began increasing by an average of 0.51 deaths per 100,000 people a year. Without the increase in the rate, the total deaths from suicide each year in the United States would have been lower by about 1,500, the study said.
The finding was not unexpected. Suicide rates often spike during economic downturns, and recent studies of rates in Greece, Spain and Italy have found similar trends. The new study is the first to analyze the rate of change in the United States state by state, using suicide and unemployment data through 2010.
“The magnitude of these effects is slightly larger than for those previously estimated in the United States,” the authors wrote. That might mean that this economic downturn has been harder on mental health than previous ones, the authors concluded.
The research team linked the suicide rate to unemployment, using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Every rise of 1 percent in unemployment was accompanied by an increase in the suicide rate of roughly 1 percent, it found. A similar correlation has been found in some European countries since the recession.
The analysis found that the link between unemployment and suicide was about the same in all regions of the country.
The study was conducted by Aaron Reeves of the University of Cambridge and Sanjay Basu of Stanford, and included researchers from the University of Bristol, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the University of Hong Kong.
via NYT > Home Page by By BENEDICT CAREY on 11/4/12
The rate of suicide in the United States rose sharply during the first few years since the start of the recession, a new analysis has found.
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- US suicide rates up since crisis began
Independent Online - 3 hours agoSuicide rates in the United States have risen sharply since the ... recession,” said Aaron Reeves of Britain's University of Cambridge, who led ...
US suicide rates up since crisis began
November 5 2012 at 11:03am
By Reuters
By Reuters
Suicide rates in the United States have risen sharply since the economic crisis took hold in 2007 and political leaders should do more to protect Americans' mental health during tough times, researchers said on Monday.
In a letter to The Lancet medical journal, scientists from Britain, Hong Kong and United States said an analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that while suicide rates rose slowly between 1999 and 2007, the rate of increase more than quadrupled from 2008 to 2010.
“There is a clear need to implement policies to promote mental health resilience during the ongoing recession,” said Aaron Reeves of Britain's University of Cambridge, who led the research and submitted it in a letter to The Lancet.
“In the run-up to the US presidential election, President Obama and Mitt Romney are debating how best to spur economic recovery, (but) missing from this discussion is consideration of how to protect Americans' health during these hard times.”
According to Reeves' analysis, around 1500 more people a year in the United States have committed suicide since 2007 compared to numbers that would have been expected if the 1997 to 2007 trends had continued.
The model used to analyse the data - one also recently used to estimate the effect of recession on suicide rates in England - showed unemployment may account for around a quarter of the excess suicides in the US since 2007, Reeves said.
Similar rises in suicide rates have also been found in Greece, Spain, Britain and other countries hit by economic recession and rising unemployment in recent years.
“Suicide is a rare outcome of mental illness, but this means that these data are likely the most visible indicator of major depression and anxiety disorders among people living through the financial crisis,” Reeves said. - Reuters
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US suicide rates have risen sharply since economic crisis
www.thejournal.ie/suicide-rates-increase-america-economic...
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by Christine Bohan - in 244 Google+ circles - More by Christine Bohan
6 hours ago – The research is published today in The Lancet. Aaron Reeves of the University of Cambridge who led the research said that the data followed ... |
US suicide rates have risen sharply since economic crisis
Researchers found that the number of suicides more than quadrupled in the United States between 2008 and 2010, echoing the findings of similar research in Ireland.
SUICIDE RATES IN America have risen sharply since the economic crisis kicked in almost five years ago, according to a major study published today.
Researchers found that the number of suicides more than quadrupled in the United States between 2008 and 2010.
The study found that an estimated 1,500 additional suicides have taken place in the US every year since 2007 compared to the number that would have been expected if trends from the previous decade had continued. The research is published today in The Lancet.
Aaron Reeves of the University of Cambridge who led the research said that the data followed trends in other countries which have been hit hard by the economic crisis.
“In the run-up to the US Presidential election, President Obama and Mitt Romney are debating how best to spur economic recovery,” he said.
“Missing from this discussion is consideration of how to protect Americans’ health during these hard times. Suicide is a rare outcome of mental illness, but this means that these data are likely the most visible indicator of major depression and anxiety disorders among people living through the financial crisis, as revealed by recent research in Spain and Greece”.
The study also echoes similar research in Ireland which has found that suicide rates have increased as the economy has tumbled and unemployment rates have increased. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show 525 people took their own lives in Ireland in 2011, an increase of 7 per cent on the previous year.
A recent study by the National Suicide Research Foundation examined almost 200 cases of suicide in Cork over three years and found that the recession has had a direct impact on suicide rates. Almost one third of suicide victims had worked in construction or related areas which have been disproportionately affected by the downturn. Almost 40 per cent of suicide victims in the study were unemployed.
The authors of the report on the US suicide rates pointed out that some countries such as Sweden have managed to avoid increased rates of suicide during the economic downturn, suggesting that some countries have been better at promoting mental health resilience during difficult times.
If you have been affected by the issues discussed in this article please call Aware at 1890 303 302 or the Samaritans at 1850 60 90 90, or email jo@samaritans.org.
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Selected Online First articles from The Lancet journals ahead of print publication.
- Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during economic recessionCorrespondence The Lancet (online November 5)
Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during economic recession - GS
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suicide unemployment - GS
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suicide unemployment loss of social status - GS
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suicide loss of social status - GS
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Rise in suicides blamed on impact of recession | Society | The ...
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14 Aug 2012 – Male suicides increased by 3.6% as joblessness rose 25%, with unemployment ... on their lives of the economic recession, according to a new analysis. ... She said: "This research gives us credible evidence that the suicide rate in England is ... policies can mitigate the increase in suicide during recession.Rise in suicides blamed on impact of recession
Male suicides increased by 3.6% as joblessness rose 25%, with unemployment linked to 1,000 deaths from 2008-10
Sarah Boseley, health editor
More than 1,000 people in the UK may have killed themselves because of the impact on their lives of the economic recession, according to a new analysis.
Suicides tend to rise in hard economic times, and there has been evidence of the numbers increasing in Greece and more recently in Italy as people have lost their jobs and struggled to support themselves and their families.
A paper published in the British Medical Journal suggests that the same pattern is now visible in Britain.
The suicide rate had been dropping steadily in the UK for 20 years before the recession hit, but in 2007-2008 it rose by 8% among men and 9% among women.
Academics from the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, investigated the figures to try to establish whether the recession was the cause.
They looked at information on suicides in 93 regions held by the National Clinical and Health Outcomes Database for the decade from 2000-2010, and also examined from the Office for National Statistics the numbers of unemployed people claiming benefits.
They found that the suicide rate among men rose by 1.4% for every 10% increase in unemployment.
Between 2008-2010, they say, 846 more men ended their life than would have been expected had the downward trend continued; the corresponding number for women was an extra 155 suicides.
On average, male unemployment rose by 25.6% in each of those years, while the male suicide rate rose by 3.6% each year. When male employment rates rose briefly in 2010, the suicide rate dropped slightly.
Ben Barr, of the public health department at Liverpool University, one of the study's authors, said joblessness, financial worries, debt and housing issues were probably all factors behind the suicide rise. But he said: "There has been a large amount of evidence from other studies and other countries that shows that unemployment is a particular risk factor for suicide."
There was a need for policies to promote employment and also to safeguard services that could help those who had lost their jobs, Barr said.
He added: "In some areas, where cuts are occurring they are affecting services that might help mitigate the effects of job loss on mental health. A lot of the charities working in the poorest parts of the country, or on mental health problems and people out of work, are potentially at risk.
"There are countries where you don't see such a relationship [between unemployment and suicide]. Those countries tend to be those [with] good employment protection and wellbeing support, such as those in Scandinavia."
Clare Wyllie, the Samaritans' head of policy and research, said the link between increased suicides and unemployment was well established.
She said: "This research gives us credible evidence that the suicide rate in England is linked to the current recession. We've seen calls to the helpline from people worried about financial difficulties double since the onset of the economic crisis. In 2008, one in 10 calls to the helpline were about financial issues, now that's one in five.
"There is evidence that government investment in welfare and active labour market policies can mitigate the increase in suicide during recession.
"The research also points to important gender differences in suicide. Samaritans is researching how social expectations of men contribute to the considerably higher rate of suicide in men."
Suicides tend to rise in hard economic times, and there has been evidence of the numbers increasing in Greece and more recently in Italy as people have lost their jobs and struggled to support themselves and their families.
A paper published in the British Medical Journal suggests that the same pattern is now visible in Britain.
The suicide rate had been dropping steadily in the UK for 20 years before the recession hit, but in 2007-2008 it rose by 8% among men and 9% among women.
Academics from the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, investigated the figures to try to establish whether the recession was the cause.
They looked at information on suicides in 93 regions held by the National Clinical and Health Outcomes Database for the decade from 2000-2010, and also examined from the Office for National Statistics the numbers of unemployed people claiming benefits.
They found that the suicide rate among men rose by 1.4% for every 10% increase in unemployment.
Between 2008-2010, they say, 846 more men ended their life than would have been expected had the downward trend continued; the corresponding number for women was an extra 155 suicides.
On average, male unemployment rose by 25.6% in each of those years, while the male suicide rate rose by 3.6% each year. When male employment rates rose briefly in 2010, the suicide rate dropped slightly.
Ben Barr, of the public health department at Liverpool University, one of the study's authors, said joblessness, financial worries, debt and housing issues were probably all factors behind the suicide rise. But he said: "There has been a large amount of evidence from other studies and other countries that shows that unemployment is a particular risk factor for suicide."
There was a need for policies to promote employment and also to safeguard services that could help those who had lost their jobs, Barr said.
He added: "In some areas, where cuts are occurring they are affecting services that might help mitigate the effects of job loss on mental health. A lot of the charities working in the poorest parts of the country, or on mental health problems and people out of work, are potentially at risk.
"There are countries where you don't see such a relationship [between unemployment and suicide]. Those countries tend to be those [with] good employment protection and wellbeing support, such as those in Scandinavia."
Clare Wyllie, the Samaritans' head of policy and research, said the link between increased suicides and unemployment was well established.
She said: "This research gives us credible evidence that the suicide rate in England is linked to the current recession. We've seen calls to the helpline from people worried about financial difficulties double since the onset of the economic crisis. In 2008, one in 10 calls to the helpline were about financial issues, now that's one in five.
"There is evidence that government investment in welfare and active labour market policies can mitigate the increase in suicide during recession.
"The research also points to important gender differences in suicide. Samaritans is researching how social expectations of men contribute to the considerably higher rate of suicide in men."
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/5/12
On Psychiatric Epidemiology
References and Links
psychiatric epidemiology - GS
References and Links
psychiatric epidemiology - GS
The International Journal for Research in Social and Genetic Epidemiology and Mental Health Services
Editor-in-Chief: P. Bebbington
ISSN: 0933-7954 (print version)
ISSN: 1433-9285 (electronic version)
Journal no. 127
Editor-in-Chief: P. Bebbington
ISSN: 0933-7954 (print version)
ISSN: 1433-9285 (electronic version)
Journal no. 127
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/3/12
Suicides In The Military Reduction Program
Working draft outline
Background
I would like to express and share some of my thoughts on the subject of alarming increase in the rate of suicide in the military. I hope that some of the ideas described in these notes might be helpful to those involved in this field and might contribute to improvement in providing adequate and efficient mental health services to those who put their lives and their wellbeing on line for us every day and to whom we owe so much.
I would like to mention one of the aspects of this problem, which has, it seems to me, a particular significance. It is one of the most difficult, most vexing and most emotionally charged issues: man and his (not "homosexuality", not "heterosexuality", not "bisexuality", but) sexuality and his relations with other men, including his fellow soldiers, his military buddies and brothers in arms, both "straight" and "gay", and women; under the strains of the buffed up macho culture and the cult of heterosexual masculinity. Looks like a hard nut to crack, but in fact it should not be and it is not. We came to deal with this when the issue confronted us upfront, in crisis; unprepared, surprised and puzzled, while it should have been foreseen.
It seems to me that the broadly based joint workgroup with the participation of the best and most experienced minds from the military, intelligence communities and academia would be best equipped to handle the problems of suicide, self-injurious and other abnormal psychosocial behaviors in the military service.
All possible causal relationships should be explored without any cognitive or other biases, but at this point the hypothesis of the leading role of intrapsychic conflict due to changes in the environment and attitudes after the implementation of the latest policies seems to be the most likely cause, simply because there is nothing else that could account for this relatively recent and rather significant increase in the rate of suicides in the peacetime.
The work on analysis of cases and determination of causes should proceed simultaneously with the implementation of regular, monthly or quarterly computerised psychological testing and counselling, and refining the policies and rules on personnel behavior and conduct, on eclectic basis, regardless of working hypotheses and assumptions which might or might not be confirmed in the process of collection and analysis of data.
If the sufficient data is accumulated to refute this hypothesis and come up with the different or additional set of explanations, it can always be done; no one is married to his ideas or chained to them.
Statistics (including lies and damn lies)
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The following psychometric instruments should be developed and implemented.
- SISTER: Suicidal Ideation Screening Tests - Electronic Reports
- Overt suicidal ideation
- Suicidal ideation on projective tests
- Depression, the same; overt and on projective tests
- Latent psychoticism
- Signs of intrapsychic conflict
- Impulsivity
- Symptoms and signs of social withdrawal and isolation
- Etc.
- Objective structured interviews or assessments, mirroring the items of suicidal ideation self-report test should also be developed and implemented.
- Self-injurious - suicidal behavior assessment scale
Self-injurious behavior of various severity (mild - moderate - severe) - partial or uncompleted suicides - completed suicides.
- Sexual Awareness Scale
(Latent Homosexuality Scale): - overt sexual preference self-identification, penile tumescence platismography score, sexual preference self-report and projective tests, the degree of latency and its correlation with the depth of conflict, correlations with personality characteristics and demographic data/background, etc. Two versions: for men and women.
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It is a well known phenomenon, that an abstract love for the country is transformed into a concrete emotional attachment to your fellow soldier, your military buddy. Sometimes and under certain circumstances this emotional attachment can be sexualised (sexualisation can be viewed as a complex psychological "defense mechanism", apparently employed by psyche to reduce, modulate, channel and socialise the intense emotions, sometimes with "secondary gains", and sometimes to reduce hostility), "physicalised", transformed into sexual longing, since sexuality and emotional life in humans are inseparable. Sexualisation might also serve to diminish the intensity of emotional longing or attachment if they are felt as excessive, threatening to person's autonomy and independence. It defends against these threats by depreciating and degrading the object and by turning it into a simplified dehumanised sexual object, possibly and sometimes with violent and aggressive overtones, which might create the additional confusion, tension and panic due to incomprehensibility and unacceptability of these complex, contradictory and overwhelming emotions.
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Quote:
"Sexual objectification refers to the practice of regarding or treating another person merely as an instrument (object) towards one's sexual pleasure, and a sex object is a person who is regarded simply as an object of sexual gratification or who is sexually attractive. Objectification more broadly is an attitude that regards a person as a commodity or as an object for use, with little or no regard for a person's personality or sentience.[1][2] Objectification is most commonly examined at a societal level, but can also arise at an individual level."
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This leads to the so called "intrapsychic conflict": a person who identifies himself as "heterosexual" and maintains overtly heterosexual lifestyle might feel very disturbed, alarmed and panicked by these feelings, especially if he experiences some preexisting latent homosexual impulses, and especially when he sees some of his comrades living an open and now "legitimised" "gay" lifestyle. This situation is further compounded by the utmost privacy of the issues involved: he cannot talk and share his feelings and his emotional state with anyone and, just opposite, is forced to hide and to mask them. This creates an intense psychic tension, pain, the feelings of guilt, shame and self-blame; depression and, eventually suicidal thoughts.
It is very unlikely that these psychodynamics will lead to overt suicidal behavior in and by themselves, since the healthy psyche, guided by a healthy and naturally strong self-preservation instinct has an enormous capacity for compensation and dealing with the most difficult and trying conflicts; but in combination with the preexisting psychopathology and other noxious factors and stressors, however, they might produce quite a significant disturbance and persistent suicidal ideation.
The similar patterns might apply, in somewhat milder and less intense form to women also, although I think it would be fair to say that the female sexual behavior still is a much uderresearched and almost ignored area and is in need of greater attention than it receives now; especially considering the fact that the role and the presence of women in the military and other forces will increase inevitably, which might gradually change the very structure, character and inner working psychodynamics of these organisations.
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Aggression Turned Inward
Paradoxically, "The Killing Machine" (to use this somewhat awkward but exact metaphor), designed to kill, which is its sole raison d'etre, turns against itself when in inaction, producing little self-destructive explosive discharges in its tiny, almost invisible parts. Aggression, when not discharged outward, turns inward. This phenomenon is present with the certainty of the law of (psycho)mechanics in both animals and animal groups and in humans and their groups, small and large. Individuals, at least some of them, who go into the military service, have a need to discharge their inner aggression, and when it is not discharged properly, might experience problems with self-aggression. One interesting thought logically follows from all of this: if these individuals can be identified, and if these intrapsychic needs of theirs are confirmed, they can be sent into small action fields which will satisfy these needs, will be therapeutic and will increase their overall chances for survival. Be it ironic, paradoxical and almost cynical as it may seem, this line of thought is not without its rational kernel.
Internalisation
Internalised anger, violence, aggression.
- Internalised Aggression Scale
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The overall psychosocial health of military communities (this concept should be theoretically elaborated) can be assessed psychometrically with the help of
- Military Community Psychosocial Health Index
The concept of "goodness of fit", or Military Community (MC) - simply "cohesion" might serve as a basis for the developing the concept of Military Community Psychosocial Health.
Self-injurious - suicidal behavior and the incidents of hostility, violence and aggression towards other members of MC and outside communities (especially the incidents of "fragging" and similar behaviors, which are truly horrifying and extremely sick) should be viewed as symptoms of MC ill health; they should be investigated without any bias, preconceived notions or implications of guilt and the underlying causes should be diagnosed, assessed, evaluated and addressed and treated with both the individual and the psychosocial interventions.
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The Typology of Military Community Ill Health
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Quote:
"According to American Psychological Association empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention.[201] Sexual orientation is irrelevant to task cohesion, the only type of cohesion that critically predicts the team's military readiness and success.[202] "
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______________________________________________________
- Attitudes, Policies and Rules
- Psychoeducation and Counselling
- Analysis of military suicides cases
- Search for clusters: more than one suicide and suspicious suicide deaths in any given military community, with the analysis of psychological environment and attitudes in these communities.
- The art and the science of psychological autopsy
- Study of similar experiences in NATO countries military forces, first of all Canada and Great Britain
References and Links
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5:11 PM 10/3/2012
suicide epidemiology
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Scholarly articles for military suicide epidemiology | |
Suicides in the military: 1980–1992. - Helmkamp - Cited by 45
Suicide in the US Army: Epidemiological and periodic … - Rothberg - Cited by 45
Suicide surveillance in the US military—reporting and … - Carr - Cited by 29
| |
Search Results
- [PDF]
The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U.S. Military
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/.../2011/RAND_MG953.pdfYou +1'd this publicly. UndoFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
by P SAFETY - Related articles
Review the current evidence detailing suicide epidemiology in the military. • Identify “best-practice” suicide-prevention programs. • Describe and catalog ... The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U.S. Military | RAND
You +1'd this publicly. Undoby R Ramchand - 2011 - Cited by 12 - Related articles
27 Jul 2012 – The increase in suicides among military personnel has raised concern. This book reviews suicide epidemiology in the military, catalogs military ...Military suicide: factors that need to be taken into consideration to ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20120984You +1'd this publicly. Undoby JR Rodríguez - 2009
Soldier suicide rates, unfortunately, continue to rise in our military services. It is well ... Mental Disorders/epidemiology; Military Personnel*/psychology; Military...- [PDF]
Prevalence and Risk Factors Associated With Suicides of Army - Home
timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/.../prevalence-and-risk-factors_mod...You +1'd this publicly. UndoFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
7 Oct 2011 – with suicide-related death among Army soldiers from 2001 to 2009. Specifically, we describe the epidemiology of Army suicides with regards to ... Suicide in the U.S. Army: Epidemiological and ... - Wiley Online Library
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1943-278X.1987...x/pdfYou +1'd this publicly. Undoby JM Rothberg - 1987 - Cited by 45 - Related articles
ABSTRACT: An overview of suicide in the US. Army is presented in two sections: (1) the epidemiology of US. Army suicides, based on biennium reports, and (2) ...- [PDF]
Epidemiological and Public Health Perspectives in Military Suicide ...
www.health.mil/.../Hoge_Epidemiological%20studies,WRAIR.pdfYou +1'd this publicly. UndoFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
10 Nov 2009 – Rate of suicide for entire military averaged 11.8/100,000/year. (adjusted 8.3), with apparent service differences. • Service differences in rates ...
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military suicide epidemilogy
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Military Psychiatry - Google Search
military psychiatrist - Google Search
Fragging - From Wikipedia
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sexualisation as psychological defense mechanism - Google Search
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Quote:
Sexualization
Endowing an object or function with sexual significance that it did not
previously have or possessed to a smaller degree in order to ward off
anxieties associated with prohibited impulses or their derivatives.
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sexualisation as psychological defense mechanism - Google Search
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Quote:
Sexualization
Endowing an object or function with sexual significance that it did not
previously have or possessed to a smaller degree in order to ward off
anxieties associated with prohibited impulses or their derivatives.
Am J Psychoanal. 2011 Sep;71(3):264-77. doi: 10.1057/ajp.2011.23.
Source
Association of Counselling Psychologists, Australia. ruggiero.psychotherapy@gmail.com
Abstract
Sexualization is a defense mechanism frequently referred to in clinical psychoanalytic literature. Despite this, there is no research linking the theoretical nature of this observed phenomenon to social or neurobiological theory. This discussion paper proposes an interaction between social learning and neural maturation in the development of sexualized tendencies. When anxiety within peer interactions is alleviated repeatedly through sexualized behavior, learned associations develop. This explanation allows understanding and empathy for individuals demonstrating a broad spectrum of sexualized responses since such learning is argued to be functional within their historic social climate.
- PMID:
- 21818101
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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homosexuality - GS
sexuality continuum - Google Search
"The concept of the heterosexual–homosexual continuum (also referred to as the sexual orientation continuum) is a psychological and philosophical understanding of human sexuality that places sexual orientation on a continuous spectrum from heterosexuality to homosexuality. This concept stems from Alfred Kinsey's 1940s surveys of sexuality; significant numbers of Kinsey's subjects reported bisexuality of varying degrees, rather than the strict heterosexual/homosexual division that had been previously assumed."
"...individuals or members of a community might engage in homosexual behaviors but identify as heterosexual otherwise, such as some people in prison, the military, single sex boarding schools, or other sex-segregated communities."
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latent homosexuality - GS
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understanding latent homosexuality - GS
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latent homosexuality test - GS
latent homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military suicides - GS
Latent homosexuality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- You +1'd this publicly. Undo
- Latent homosexuality is an erotic inclination toward members of the same sex that is not consciously experienced or expressed in overt action. This may mean a ...
SISTER: Suicidal Ideation Screening Tests - Behavior and Law
forpn.blogspot.com/2012/09/sister-suicidal-ideation-screening.htmlYou +1'd this publicly. Undo4 hours ago – latent homosexuality us military - GS · latent homosexuality us military suicides - GS · us military suicides - GS · us military suicide rate - GS ...Get more results from the past 24 hours
- [PDF]
AR 600-110 - Army Publishing Directorate - U.S. Army
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U.S. Army Medical Command commanders • 1–11, page 3 ..... (12) Assesses for latent tuberculosis infection and counsels those who have opted out of latent ... Bullying | Drexel Publishing Group
drexelpublishing.org/2010/12/09/bullying/CachedYou +1'd this publicly. Undo9 Dec 2010 – According to recent statistics, bullied homosexual students are four times ... In response to the escalating number of suicides among bullied homosexual students, ... in the American military, was recently declared unconstitutional by a ... still exists latent “discrimination,” especially against those who are gay.Committee to examine pay, pension issues of armed forces ...
article.wn.com/.../Committee_to_examine_pay_pension_issues_of_ar...CachedYou +1'd this publicly. Undo22 Aug 2012 – en.wikipedia.org - It was a homosexual man who was instrumental in cracking ... US Military Suicides, Veteran Mental Health & Psychiatry ..... palms of the hands and soles of the feet, latent syphilis with little to no symptoms, ...- [PDF]
Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel ... - RAND Corporation
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U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment.3. RAND's update ... ter 37, Section 654, Policy Concerning Homosexuality in the Armed Forces. 2 Senate Armed ...... In our view, given our uncertainty about the latent distribution of intentions, it ...... Although the percentage of military suicides appears larger than that ... Phobic Homos – What Gays Fear – Erase the hate! - Watchwoman ...
blog.beliefnet.com/.../phobic-homos-what-gays-fear-erase-the-hate.ht...CachedYou +1'd this publicly. Undo1 Jul 2011 – Just as Defense Secretary Gates has done a fair job, with exceptions, ... indicates that the critic has latent homosexual tendencies, whether it be ... There are those of us who are not fans of Gay Marriage, Lady Gaga, the TV .... 2012 · Why isn't the media blaming Obama for 38 military suicides in July, 2012?- [PDF]
Why Tell If You're Not Asked? Self-Disclosure ... - Psychology
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The United States military's principal justification for its ... reactions to homosexuality and to persons who are gay or ...... modulates latent Epstein-Barr Virus antibody titers. Journal of .... of suicides and accidental death victims. Journal of ...
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us military suicides - GS
- News for us military suicides
ABC News
USA TODAY‎ - 4 days ago
Panetta says leaders should be held accountable for success in stemming suicide.
Military leaders must help stem suicides, Panetta says
by Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
- U.S. Army suicides reached record monthly high in July | Reuters www.reuters.com/.../us-usa-army-suicides-idUSBRE87G0WO201208...
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says military leaders should be held accountable for whether they succeed in helping desperate troops avoid choosing suicide -- which he has described as an epidemic in the military and now averaging more than one a day.
"What I've tried to do, very frankly, is to make sure that not only the secretary (of Defense), but all of the military leadership kick ass on this issue," Panetta told USA TODAY in an interview. "Leaders ought to be judged by how they lead on this issue."
He also said that the last decade of fighting two wars holds "lots of lessons" to be learned about "the human side of this prolonged warfare and how do we get a handle" on problems such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Pentagon is facing a record year of suicides among active-duty troops, averaging 33 deaths per month so far this year, according to Pentagon data through Sept. 2.
"I want to make sure that we are aware of how tragic this problem is and how urgent it is for us to try and address it," Panetta said. "We're talking about men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect this country. We have to do everything possible to try to make sure we protect them."
Panetta spoke on the issue Saturday in part because September is national suicide prevention month.
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are all reporting potentially record increases this year in suicides. The Marine Corps has averaged about two suicides a week in recent months.
Story:Panetta Q and A
But the Army has suffered the highest numbers, tripling its suicide rate from 9.7 cases-per-100,000 in 2004 to 29.1-per-100,000 last month. In July, a record 38 soldiers killed themselves, according to service data.
Among a demographically similar civilian U.S. population, the suicide rate increased from 22-per-100,000 in 2005 to 24-per-100,000 in 2009, the latest data available.
Panetta said the military is still searching for answers to what's happening.
"Part of it, I think, is due to a nation that's been at war for over a decade," he said. "You have repeated deployments and sustained combat exposure to enormous stresses and strains on our troops and on their families that produced a lot of seen and unseen wounds that contribute to the suicide risk."
He said he also believes the military population is sensitive to issues that plague society at large -- substance abuse, financial distress and relationship problems.
Last week, Panetta said, he informed a gathering of top commanders that the problems of suicide and sexual assault are two top priorities.
"Leaders have to be sensitive and got to be aware," he says. "They've got to be open to the signs of stress and they've got to be aggressive in encouraging those that need help to seek that help and be able to receive it. It's important to point out that seeking help is a sign of strength and courage, not weakness."
Gen. Lloyd Austin III, who became the Army's No. 2 officer as vice chief of staff in January, assuming oversight of suicide issues, said Friday that the service culture must change to where soldiers are more comfortable seeking counseling.
"We have to make sure that our troops understand that by taking care of yourself, it's going to help your team and it's also going to enhance your performance," he said.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Austin said the Army is committed to caring for those in need and investing in scientific research that will unlock the causes and prevention of suicide.
But he emphasized that "95% of our population is doing fine. It's operating extremely well. Which is the part we don't talk about on a daily basis."
The veteran combat commander, who served three tours in Iraq and a fourth in Afghanistan, equated suicide with periods of heavy casualties in those wars.
"When you're in a fight like that, I think it's very difficult to figure out, from time to time, exactly where you are," he said.. "But if you stay focused on the right things, eventually you'll see some pretty good results. This (suicide) is kind of like that."
17 Aug 2012 – (Reuters) - Twenty-six active-duty soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in July, more than double the number reported for June and ...
- Army Suicides Doubled Last Month From June's Total www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/.../army-suicides_n_1792372.htm...
- U.S. Military Suicides So Far in 2012: 155 Days, 154 Dead | U.S. ... nation.time.com/2012/06/08/lagging-indicator/
- Suicides at 10-year high in US military | World news | guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk › News › World news › US military
- US military suicides rising, even as combat eases - New York Daily ... articles.nydailynews.com/.../32106988_1_military-suicides-afghan-tr...
- More videos for us military suicides »
- Army suicides hit terrifying peak — RT rt.com/usa/news/army-suicide-soldiers-rate-889/
- Suicides Eclipse War Deaths for U.S. Troops - NYTimes.com www.nytimes.com/.../us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.ht...
U.S. Army suicides reached record monthly high in July
Fri, Aug 17 2012
By Colleen Jenkins(Reuters) - Twenty-six active-duty soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in July, more than double the number reported for June and the most suicides ever recorded in a month since the U.S. Army began tracking detailed statistics on such deaths.
During the first seven months of this year, there were 116 suspected suicides among active-duty soldiers, compared to 165 suicides for all of last year, the Army said. The military branch reported 12 likely suicides during June.
The monthly totals for 2012 include confirmed suicides and cases still under investigation, the Army said.
Twelve reserve soldiers who were not on active duty also appear to have killed themselves in July, bringing the yearly total for that group to 71 suicides.
The Army, which has collected in-depth monthly suicide data since January 2009, confirmed 118 suicides among members of the branch's National Guard and Reserve components in 2011.
"Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army," General Lloyd J. Austin III, vice chief of staff of the Army, said in the report released on Thursday.
"To combat it effectively will require sophisticated solutions aimed at helping individuals to build resiliency and strengthen their life coping skills," he said.
The uptick in the number of service members and veterans taking their own lives continues to trouble military leaders.
Testifying before the House of Representatives Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last month described suicide as "one of the most frustrating problems" he had come across in his role.
The Defense Department says it has made suicide prevention a top priority. More behavioral health care providers have been added to front-line units and primary care settings, and leaders are seeking to reduce the stigma associated with mental health treatment.
In a separate report, the Marine Corps recorded eight suspected suicides in July, up from six in June. That brought the number of suicide deaths to 32 for the first seven month of 2012, equal to the 32 total such deaths in 2011 but so far fewer than the 52 suicides recorded in all of 2009.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Xavier Briand)
16 Aug 2012 – The U.S. Army on Thursday reported a record number of suicides in a single month among active duty, Guard and Reserve troops, despite an ...
8 Jun 2012 – New Pentagon data show U.S. troops are killing themselves at the rate of nearly one a day so far in 2012, 18% above 2011's corresponding toll ...
8 Jun 2012 – Suicide is on the rise in the US military, averaging almost one every day, according to statistics.
7 Jun 2012 – WASHINGTON — Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade ...
BBC News - US military suicides on the rise | |
www.bbc.co.uk/.../world-us-canada-188230...
12 Jul 2012 - 3 min
Suicide rates among US soldiers have reached their highest rate since the beginning of the Afghanistan war ... | |
U.S. military suicide rate doubles for July - CBS News | |
www.cbsnews.com/.../u.s-military-suicide-ra...
16 Aug 2012
U.S. military suicide rate doubles for July. (CBS). (AP) WASHINGTON - Suicides among active-duty soldiers ... | |
17 Aug 2012 – The suicide rate among U.S. military personnel is reaching a new high, according to official statistics.
8 Jun 2012 – Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and ...
- More US military suicides than combat deaths in 2012
June 8, 2012
Suicides Outpacing War Deaths for Troops
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said Friday.
Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and alcohol, and financial counseling services.
The military said Friday that there had been 154 suicides among active-duty troops through Thursday, a rate of nearly one each day this year. The figures were first reported this week by The Associated Press.
That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said.
By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, according to the Pentagon.
Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified. Recently, the Pentagon established a Defense Suicide Prevention Office.
On Friday, Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the Pentagon had sought to remind commanders that those who seek counseling should not be stigmatized.
“This is a troubling issue, and we are committed to getting our service members the help they need,” she said. “I want to emphasize that getting help is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength.”
In a letter to military commanders last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that “suicide prevention is a leadership responsibility,” and added, “Commanders and supervisors cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.”
But veterans’ groups said Friday that the Pentagon had not done enough to moderate the tremendous stress under which combat troops live, including coping with multiple deployments.
“It is clear that the military, at the level of the platoon, the company and the battalion, that these things are not being addressed on a compassionate and understanding basis,” said Bruce Parry, chairman of the Coalition of Veterans Organizations, a group based in Illinois. “They need to understand on a much deeper level the trauma the troops are facing.”
Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called suicides among active-duty military personnel “the tip of the iceberg.” He cited a survey the group conducted this year among its 160,000 members that found that 37 percent knew someone who had committed suicide.
Mr. Rieckhoff attributed the rise in military suicides to too few qualified mental health professionals, aggravated by the stigma of receiving counseling and further compounded by family stresses and financial problems. The unemployment rate among military families is a particular problem, he said.
“They are thinking about combat, yeah, but they are also thinking about their wives and kids back home,” he said.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting.
11 Jun 2012 – The rate of suicide among US military members is on track to be the highest since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, exposing the mental ...
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/13/12
Get "The Handle"! - Comments on 2011 RAND study "The War Within: Preventing suicide in the U.S. military"
With all due and the most sincere respect and admiration for this study (apparently the first, very serious and focused study of this kind in the new field of military suicidology) and its authors and their efforts, I have to admit, that in my very humble and personal opinion this study is unsatisfactory, inadequate, superficial and formal. Apparently it follows the general matrix of similar studies in psychiatric epidemiology but it fails to identify and to address the root problems.
Statistics indicate that the rate of suicides in the military since 2005 grew in an exponential fashion, in geometric progression, which means that it is a true psychiatric epidemic: an explosion, a raging wild fire which has not reached its apex yet by far and has a grim potential for expanding and taking more lives.
If it is a sudden and a very pronounced epidemic arising de novo, then there must be some very specific and powerful forces which fuel it and propel its pathogenetic mechanism. This RAND study fails to recognise and identify these specific forces and prefers to concentrate on nonspecific and more or less implied in the past general suicidogenic factors. Without the identification of these new specific causes and their mechanisms, it seems to be quite doubtful to me that this epidemic can be understood, addressed and stopped. In other words, if we want to get a handle on it, it must be The John Snow Handle of the specific causation, which has to be found, identified, studied and neutralised or removed.
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What makes john snows and their "handle finding and removing ability"?
Emotional, intellectual and scientific independence, open-mindedness and curiosity; search for the truth "and nothing but the truth", commitment to serve, social activism, and probably some other traits. This is an interesting subject for research also.
_____________________________________________
Summary of the 20011 RAND study on epidemiology of suicidal behavior in the U.S. military
- "The RAND research team took an epidemiological approach to answering questions of keen interest to DoD policymakers." (p. xiii)
Comments:
This is exactly what the problem with this study is: you cannot approach this issue from epidemiological - statistical perspectives only: it is just a part, one of the facets of the whole picture. The methodological approach, as always, should be comprehensive, interdisciplinary and analytical - interpretative. "Number crunching" has to be balanced, supplemented, complemented, refined and verified by individual cases and their milieu analyses in the attempt to capture the true, integrated insights and understandings.
This is exactly what the problem with this study is: you cannot approach this issue from epidemiological - statistical perspectives only: it is just a part, one of the facets of the whole picture. The methodological approach, as always, should be comprehensive, interdisciplinary and analytical - interpretative. "Number crunching" has to be balanced, supplemented, complemented, refined and verified by individual cases and their milieu analyses in the attempt to capture the true, integrated insights and understandings.
- "The figure also indicates that the suicide rate across DoD has been climbing, rising from 10.3 in 2001 to 15.8 in 2008, which represents about a 50-percent increase. The increase in the DoD suicide rate is largely attributable to a doubling of the rate in the Army." (p.xiv)
Comments:
One of the most interesting statistical facts on this graph is the difference in rates between the services, which, apparently reflects the smarter and more effective policies, probably along with the better shape of mental health services in the Navy and Air Force (these are, apparently more of the "elite" branches) than in lagging Army and the Marines (the latter is especially telling and troubling).
- "Across services, there are significant differences in only the Army’s suicide rate over time. Specifically, the Army suicide rates for CYs 2006 and 2007 were higher than in 2001 and 2004, and the rate in CY 2008 was higher than in it was between CY 2001 and CY 2005 and higher than the average rate for CYs 2001 through 2008." (p.xiv)
- "These results show that the suicide rate in the synthetic civilian population is both fairly constant and substantially higher than that in DoD. Of concern, however, is that the gap between DoD and the general population is closing. The most pronounced increases in the DoD suicide rate occurred in 2007 and 2008, so, assuming that the national rate remains relatively stable in these years, the gap between the rate in DoD and the general population may be even narrower." (p. xv)
Comments:
It is also possible that this psychiatric epidemic just reflects the demographic and attitudinal "catching up" with the larger (and the main) community, and if it is so, the rates increase curve should plato at this point, at 20 per 100,000. The real reason to worry would be if it continues its exponential growth. The next three years will clarify the picture somewhat.
The interesting question is: can any predictions be ventured based on the characteristics of this curve? Can the possible plato or continuing growth be seen now? Apparently, more accurate, "cleaner", more natural, original, smaller community samples might be more helpful in the attempts to find the answer. And this should be a question for the statisticians and epidemiologists to entertain and seriously consider.
It is also possible that this psychiatric epidemic just reflects the demographic and attitudinal "catching up" with the larger (and the main) community, and if it is so, the rates increase curve should plato at this point, at 20 per 100,000. The real reason to worry would be if it continues its exponential growth. The next three years will clarify the picture somewhat.
The interesting question is: can any predictions be ventured based on the characteristics of this curve? Can the possible plato or continuing growth be seen now? Apparently, more accurate, "cleaner", more natural, original, smaller community samples might be more helpful in the attempts to find the answer. And this should be a question for the statisticians and epidemiologists to entertain and seriously consider.
- "In the United States, males are more likely to die by suicide than females—thus, the expected suicide rate based on this demographic characteristic alone is higher than for the country as a whole." (p.xvi)
Comments: Why? ("males are more likely to die by suicide than females")
It is, at least hypothetically conceivable that this "niche" is filled with latently homosexual males (which probably is a major suicide risk factor for males; this aspect still is very much underresearched, I think.) If it is so, then it is also possible that those of them who found their "asylum" and their solution for this intrapsychic conflict in the military, became the group which does "the catching up" with the general population when they were deprived of their convenient "cover" and this "safety net" of antigay policies and exclusions. And this brings us back to the hypothesis previously described here. It would be interesting (and valuable, if we want to understand the situation completely) to confirm or refute this hypothesis by research methods. Comparisons with other cultures and countries with different gender distribution of suicide rates might be helpful in this type of a research.
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| … sexual orientation and suicide risk: Evidence from a … - Russell - Cited by 413
Am J Public Health. 2001 August; 91(8): 1276–1281.
PMCID: PMC1446760
Adolescent Sexual Orientation and Suicide Risk: Evidence From a National Study
Stephen T. Russell, PhD and Kara Joyner, PhD
Abstract
Objectives. Sexual orientation has been a debated risk factor for adolescent suicidality over the past 20 years. This study examined the link between sexual orientation and suicidality, using data that are nationally representative and that include other critical youth suicide risk factors.
Methods. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were examined. Survey logistic regression was used to control for sample design effects.
Results. There is a strong link between adolescent sexual orientation and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The strong effect of sexual orientation on suicidal thoughts is mediated by critical youth suicide risk factors, including depression, hopelessness, alcohol abuse, recent suicide attempts by a peer or a family member, and experiences of victimization.
Conclusions. The findings provide strong evidence that sexual minority youths are more likely than their peers to think about and attempt suicide.
Risk factors for suicide among gay, lesbian, and … - Proctor - Cited by 140
… and Bisexual Youths General and Specific Risk Factors - Hegna - Cited by 14
| |
people.ucalgary.ca/~ramsay/gender-sissy-butch/index.htmCached
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The Homosexuality Factor is Associated with Higher Risk for Suicidality ... GLBTTs and Transgender Males at Greater Risk for Attempting Suicide: The ..... an indication of deviance, either latent or actual, from heterosexuality" (Phelan, 1993, p.
*
Who Is at Risk?
Prior Suicide Attempts: "...a prior suicide attempt is the strongest predictor of subsequent death by suicide (Isometsa and Lonnqvist, 1998, Harris and Barraclough, 1997)."
Mental Disorders: "depression and anxiety disorders (including post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that approximately 4 percent of those with depression will die by suicide (Goldsmith et al., 2002), and, though the same figure is not yet known for those with PTSD, community-based surveys indicate that persons with PTSD are more likely than those without the disorder to report past suicide attempts and ideation (Kessler, Borges, and Walters, 1999; Sareen et al., 2005; Farberow, Kang, and Bullman, 1990)."
Substance-Use Disorders: "...approximately 20 percent of servicemembers report heavy alcohol use (drinking five or more drinks per typical drinking occasion at least once per week) (Bray and Hourani, 2007)."
Head Trauma/Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): "persons with concussions, cranial fractures, or cerebral contusions or traumatic intracranial hemorrhages had higher rates of suicide mortality than the general population (Teasdale and Engberg, 2001; Simpson and Tate, 2002, 2005)."
Those Suffering from Hopelessness, Aggression and Impulsivity, and Problem-Solving Deficits: "Those with high levels of hopelessness are at increased risk, and there is some evidence that higher levels of aggression and impulsivity, as well as those with problem-solving deficits, are also at increased risk for suicide (McMillan et al., 2007; Mann et al., 1999; Rudd, Rajab, and Dahm, 1994)."
Life Events, Precipitating Events, and Triggers: "Most of the scientific literature suggests that it is the interaction with underlying vulnerabilities, such as behavioral health problems, that influence a suicidal response to these relatively common events (Yen et al., 2005; Joiner and Rudd, 2000)."
Firearm Access: Military personnel have access to firearms, particularly when deployed, and are more likely to own a personal gun than are members of the general population (Hepburn et al., 2007).
Suicides of Others and Reporting of Suicides: "For youth and young adults, there is evidence of contagion—that a suicide may lead to subsequent suicides (Insel and Gould, 2008)
(p. xvii)
______________________________
"The challenge in identifying best practices for suicide prevention is the lack of
data on the effectiveness of programs."
"Our assessment of these various programs indicates that promising practices exist, but much remains unknown about what constitutes a best practice."
(p. xviii) "...Comprehensive suicide-prevention program should include the following six practices:
1. Raise awareness and promote self-care...
2. Identify those at high risk...
3. Facilitate access to quality care...
4. Provide quality care...
5. Restrict access to lethal means...
6. Respond appropriately..."
(p. xix)
*
"Suicide Prevention in the Army
The Army’s current approach to suicide prevention revolves around programs that encourage “soldiers to take care of soldiers” and those that offer a holistic approach to promote resiliency."
(p. xx)
Comments:
This is a very sound and practical approach. In general, "self-help" movement and strategies are, most likely, the directions of the future, in both civilian and military mental health services.
Recommendation:
Establish psychological help (not just specifically suicide prevention) hotline staffed by trained (1 week initial training, with regular additional training) soldiers. The criteria for their selection (first of all "psychological mindedness" and ability for empathy, ability to be a good listener) and the guidelines for training can be elaborated and described at a later time. Call this hot line, for example, "My Buddy". The same psychotherapists can conduct semistructured interviews and psychometric assessments.
*
"Suicide Prevention in the Navy
The Navy’s approach to suicide prevention is guided by a model that sees stress on a continuum and in which suicide represents an extreme endpoint on the continuum.The model emphasizes early intervention to prevent and manage stress, particularly in the face of challenging life events (e.g., relationship or financial difficulties)."
(pp. xx-xi)
Comments:
This is also a very good and logical approach and is consistent with the line of thinking expressed earlier.
Recommendation:
This approach should be developed further, expanded and adopted by all other services.
*
"Suicide Prevention in the Air Force
The Air Force approach to preventing suicide is based on initiating cultural changes in
attitudes and actions pertaining to suicide and implementing these changes through
the highest-ranking Air Force officials.
...
There is published evidence to suggest that the implementation of the Air Force Suicide Prevention Program (AFSPP) was associated with a 33-percent risk reduction in suicide (Knox et al., 2003).
It has been reviewed by the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, which found that research methods were strong enough to support these claims
(SAMHSA, 2010)."
(p. xxi)
Comments:
This issue here is taken very seriously, apparently not only because it might involve a significant material loss in addition to human loss, but because culturally and traditionally this is an elite service, adequately saturated with refined attitudes and technology.
Recommendation:
There is no reason why the best approaches and methods could not be combined and utilised by all services.
*
"Suicide Prevention in the Marine Corps
The Marine Corps approach to suicide prevention relies primarily on programs in
which members of the USMC community are trained to identify and refer marines
at risk for suicide to available resources (e.g., a commander, chaplain, mental health
professional)."
(p. xxi)
Comments:
Apparently, this is a more formal approach and there might also be some denial of this issue and its associated complexities.
*
Conclusions
"Raise Awareness and Promote Self-Care
Most of the messages conveyed focus on raising awareness, which has limited evidence of creating behavior change."
(p. xxii)
Comments: Which is not surprising at all, in the light of what was discussed earlier. It simply does not work: we cannot instruct the ill person (lack of insight of various degrees is very often the part of the problem) to understand his illness or to cure it; just like we cannot expect the dead body to revive itself.
*
"Identify Those at High Risk"
(p. xxiii)
Comments:
This is a very important key point. The best identification is the direct one: 1) via the computerised self-reports and 2) standardised semistructured (checklists) assessments by not only and necessarily "gatekeepers" but those who know the subject more or less well: from family and friends to hotline therapists; with further central processing and referral.
*
"Access to and delivery of "quality care"
(p. xxiii)
Comments:
"Quality" of care is difficult to define and to measure, and the question will always remain: by what margin the results of this "quality" care might exceed the less expensive and more "mass" options, such as group therapy led by trained therapists selected from soldiers. My hunch is that the latter will be all in all more efficacious and preferable mode of intervention, with "quality" care reserved for serious, severe or treatment resistant cases. In other words, the so called "quality" care is not necessarily the guarantee of "quality results".
*
"Restricting access to lethal means"
(p. xxiv)
Comments:
This does not appear to be very practical, especially when the "means", if not some, then the others, could always be found.
*
"Appropriate response"
(p. xxiv)
Comments:
This depends on training and the structure of the programs. The best response is always preventive and automatic.
*
General Comments to "Conclusions":
There is a very "clear and convincing" evidence that the services which pay the greatest attention to this issue and which utilise the best: most thought out and systematic programs and their implementations are the most successful in controlling the problem.
*
*
Notes
*
Ep-st an-s
*
Psychotic Suicides
Nonpsychotic suicides
should be viewed as first of all and most of all the manifestations of the disorders of (psycho)social integration. Suicides are practically nonexistent in the animal kingdom. This indicates that the epiphenomenon of suicide is a part and parcel of social nature of man. It is the end result of deep and irreconcilable conflict (as it appears to be to the victim of suicidal behavior) between the individual and his social milieu. It is a wreckage of the ship which has not been able to negotiate with the sea and to become a part of it.
If it is so, then all the corrective and preventive measures directed at the individual only are the palliative half-measures and will ultimately fail. The underlying conflict between the individual and his group has to be addressed, explored, diagnosed properly and objectively and the preventive treatment should be directed at the social reintegration, including, if needed, the transfer and reassignment.
The best measurements of suicide as a psychosocial pathology are not only their nominal numbers (it is just the number of completed shipwrecks), but the measurements of the state and capacity for the adequate and healthy psychosocial integration in a given military community, which should take into account all possible relevant factors: subculture, attitudes, circumstances, complex knots of interrelationships, etc. No service would be better positioned and equipped to handle this task than the military intelligence, with the additional training in psychology, mental health, sociology and philosophy. We have to understand what lead to a shipwreck, what was wrong with the ship's engine, what kind of weather was there at the moment, why the catastrophe happened and what we should do to help the other ships to avoid it.
Psychometric and sociometric instruments have to be developed and used for the assessment of suicidogenic situations and environments and for the overall state of psychosocial health in a military community and for measurements of effectiveness of corrective and preventive interventions. These measurements have to be pooled statistically and epidemiologically, they have to be studied carefully, common threads should be discerned, causal connections should be traced and analysed; conceptual organisation and understanding of this data should be attempted and better, more effective interventions should be sought. This should be ongoing routine activity, especially since the social environments and attitudes always change; almost imperceptibly but most definitely.
*
Situational Suicides
Altruistic Suicides
*
should be viewed as first of all and most of all the manifestations of the disorders of (psycho)social integration. Suicides are practically nonexistent in the animal kingdom. This indicates that the epiphenomenon of suicide is a part and parcel of social nature of man. It is the end result of deep and irreconcilable conflict (as it appears to be to the victim of suicidal behavior) between the individual and his social milieu. It is a wreckage of the ship which has not been able to negotiate with the sea and to become a part of it.
If it is so, then all the corrective and preventive measures directed at the individual only are the palliative half-measures and will ultimately fail. The underlying conflict between the individual and his group has to be addressed, explored, diagnosed properly and objectively and the preventive treatment should be directed at the social reintegration, including, if needed, the transfer and reassignment.
The best measurements of suicide as a psychosocial pathology are not only their nominal numbers (it is just the number of completed shipwrecks), but the measurements of the state and capacity for the adequate and healthy psychosocial integration in a given military community, which should take into account all possible relevant factors: subculture, attitudes, circumstances, complex knots of interrelationships, etc. No service would be better positioned and equipped to handle this task than the military intelligence, with the additional training in psychology, mental health, sociology and philosophy. We have to understand what lead to a shipwreck, what was wrong with the ship's engine, what kind of weather was there at the moment, why the catastrophe happened and what we should do to help the other ships to avoid it.
Psychometric and sociometric instruments have to be developed and used for the assessment of suicidogenic situations and environments and for the overall state of psychosocial health in a military community and for measurements of effectiveness of corrective and preventive interventions. These measurements have to be pooled statistically and epidemiologically, they have to be studied carefully, common threads should be discerned, causal connections should be traced and analysed; conceptual organisation and understanding of this data should be attempted and better, more effective interventions should be sought. This should be ongoing routine activity, especially since the social environments and attitudes always change; almost imperceptibly but most definitely.
*
Situational Suicides
Altruistic Suicides
*
Suicide as a form of ultimate social protest
Suicide from philosophical perspectives
*
Stoicism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/Similar
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15 Apr 1996 – The Stoic view on modality is supposed to make the world safe for ..... however, a choice, for example, to end our lives by suicide can be in ...
*
Suicide as "pathological" acclamation of freedom and autonomy
Evolution of social perceptions and views on Suicide
Religious views on Suicide
Suicide across cultures
___________________________________________
Recommendations
I would like to respectfully submit the following set of recommendations to DoD:
- Organise Conference on Military Suicidology in PR.
- Attitudes and Policies:
Family model
Sexual attitudes: freedom, equality, no violence, no coercion and no sexual exploitation.
Psychosexual health is one of the most important components of general mental health.
Family model
Sexual attitudes: freedom, equality, no violence, no coercion and no sexual exploitation.
Psychosexual health is one of the most important components of general mental health.
Zero tolerance policies re: homophobia, heterophobia, or any other phobias.
- Issue an order directly prohibiting the self-injurious, aggressive (towards members of the MC) and suicidal behaviors: it would be justified ethically, medically and militarily. Sounds ridiculous but will definitely bring some benefits: soldiers do trust their collective parent: The DOD.
- Train the specialists in Military Mental Health field:
Task:
To create an institute of military philosophers-psychotherapists who will be in charge of all issues pertinent to individual and overall MC (Military Community) mental health, recruited primarily from the interested and psychologically minded officers of military intelligence services.
To create an institute of military philosophers-psychotherapists who will be in charge of all issues pertinent to individual and overall MC (Military Community) mental health, recruited primarily from the interested and psychologically minded officers of military intelligence services.
Rationale:
The need for the therapeutic element in the services is apparent. Interpersonal relationship (nonspecific, eclectic, atheoretical, and, for the purposes of this discussion, task oriented) is the basis of any psychotherapy curative mechanism. Therapeutic relationship is a silver cup which "argentifies": charges, purifies, enables, makes therapeutically efficient any psychotherapy theory that is contained in it. It also might become one of the major factors in this "war within" for one of the most valuable, powerful, unique and irreplaceable weapons in any armed forces arsenal: the soldier's soul, mind and his/her mindset. This is not the issue of crude propaganda which does not work anyway. This is the issue of mental and spiritual health and mutual "goodness of fit".
The need for the therapeutic element in the services is apparent. Interpersonal relationship (nonspecific, eclectic, atheoretical, and, for the purposes of this discussion, task oriented) is the basis of any psychotherapy curative mechanism. Therapeutic relationship is a silver cup which "argentifies": charges, purifies, enables, makes therapeutically efficient any psychotherapy theory that is contained in it. It also might become one of the major factors in this "war within" for one of the most valuable, powerful, unique and irreplaceable weapons in any armed forces arsenal: the soldier's soul, mind and his/her mindset. This is not the issue of crude propaganda which does not work anyway. This is the issue of mental and spiritual health and mutual "goodness of fit".
Psychoanalytic theory and methods are not the best choice in these circumstances: they are excessively, emptily (the core of the onion), stressfully and unnecessarily "deep", foster dependence and loss of autonomy in a "transferrential therapeutic relationship", whatever this term means; and might be even detrimental and harmful to troops morale and military readiness. Stoicism as a theory of psychotherapy, based on philosophical teaching, might be much better suited for these purposes and much more therapeutically efficient.
- Therapeutic military philosophy:
Stoicism: to elaborate and develop for practical implementation.
- Continuous Data Collections,
more refined and sophisticated, down to platoon levels, with broader and at the same time more focused scope, with an effort to trace the connections between suicide rates and chronological changes in attitudes and policies on various levels and across all services and demographic groupings.
- Development of psychometric instruments: scales, computerised interviews and diagnostic-therapeutic video games.
-Use EEG ( Electroencephalography - From Wikipedia ), preferably its computerised option, as a part of routine medical checkup and screening, especially in persons with history of head trauma, somewhat inadequate and puzzling (although not necessarily overtly "abnormal") behavior ( I realise that great many of us might fit into this vague "category", probably including your humble servant); especially with excessive and obsessive religious preoccupations, with the follow-up (or even routine screening, if it can be afforded) by sleep deprivation EEG and neurological consultation. Temporal Lobe Pathology ( Temporal lobe epilepsy - From Wikipedia ), with or without seizure activity, can present with various and protean psychiatric manifestations and be a source of latent psychoticism and various ("not otherwise specified") affective (e.g. "epileptoid disphorias" of various intensities, also as the possible precipitants of suicidal behaviors) and complex behavioral disturbances. This pathological phenomenon is poorly understood conceptually and diagnostically, is mis - and underdiagnosed frequently (if not all of the time), is inadequately researched and can be a frequent and unrecognised source of self-injurious and suicidal behaviors. There is a need for the development of more precise and accurate, and, hopefully, more predictive electrodiagnostic methods and instruments. For example (very grim, shocking and tragic one), major Hasan looks very much "organic" to me; for me (again) it is literally "written on his face"; and his inflexible, overvalued, dysfunctional religiosity (or hyperreligiosity, for that matter), also appears to be quite telling and possibly "symptomatic".
Generally speaking, the biological, medical, neurological aspects and pathological underpinnings of various suicidal behaviors should not be overlooked in our "easy" and very tempting rush to "psychologising".
_________________________________________________
References and Links
military philosophy - Google Search
therapeutic military philosophy - Google Search
stoicism - Google Search
______________________________________________________________
|
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/13/12
Psychometric Assessment of Suicidal Risk
Suicidal Ideation Self-Report Scale
0 - Disagree, not at all
Agree:
1 - A little
2 - Definitely
3 - Strongly, very much
Overt Suicidal Ideation Items:
- Others will be better off without me
- Sometimes the death is the best solution for all problems
- Sometimes you have to die to prove your point
- To die is the sign of strength, not weakness
- I have thoughts about killing myself almost every day
- This life is not worth living
- I have nothing to live for
- I did try to kill myself in the past
- There is no hope for me
- They will be sorry when I die
- They will learn that they were wrong when I die
- I can prove them wrong only by killing myself
- Death is the only way out
- I think about death a lot
- I think about killing myself almost every day
- I do have a plan to kill myself
- I want to kill myself and I know how to do it
Projected Suicidal Ideation Items:
- When people are useless to others they do not deserve to live
Depression Items:
- I feel sad, blue, down in the dumps all the time
- I have problems with my sleep
- I do not feel rested and refreshed in the morning after a night sleep
- Some nights I wake up early in the morning and cannot go back to sleep
- It is difficult for me to fall asleep
- Lately I do not have much of an appetite and do not eat as much as I used to
- Lately I feel increased need for food and I overeat
- I feel tired all the time
- I do not have much energy to do things
- I do not enjoy sex as much as before
- Nothing brings me joy
- I do not really enjoy much of anything lately
- I feel trapped
- Sometimes I feel that I want to harm myself
- Sometimes I feel that I want to harm others
- I feel very angry almost every day
- Others have to be punished for their wrong deeds and words
- Sometimes I feel tense and tearful without a particular reason
- Lately I am not able to remember things as easily as before
- Sometimes it is difficult for me to keep track of things and to concentrate on work or tasks
- Lately it is difficult for me to make decisions
- I know that I am not worth much
- Lately I feel very guilty about many different things I did in the past
Latent Psychoticism Items:
- Sometimes I hear someone talking when no one is around me
- I believe that someone wants to harm me
- I have to be on my guard all the time
- I have to watch my ass all the time
- They will always try to harm you if you let them
- Someone plays games with me
Risk Taking Items:
- I do quite risky things lately
- Lately I fight with others verbally or physically more than before
- Lately I do things that harm or could harm me
Social Withdrawal and Isolation Items
- I do not feel like talking much with anyone
- I do not feel like seeing anyone much
- I do not have any friends
- I do not need any friends
- My family does not understand me
- I do not feel like seeing my family or my friends as much as before
- I do not need anyone
- I do not need any friends
- People do not understand me
- I do not fit in
- If I cannot shape up I have to ship out
Substance Abuse Items:
- Lately I drink alcohol more than usually
- I do drugs more often than I should
Latent Homosexual Ideation Items:
- Faggots and sissies are all around me
- They want to turn me into a homosexual
- I think that it is wrong to let gays to serve in the military
- Men who have sex with men are like animals
- Men who have sex with men will burn in hell
- Male bodies do not interest or excite me at all
- Female bodies do not interest or excite me at all
- I hate gays
- Gays are our main problem these days
- If not for gays life would be much better everywhere
- I believe that homosexuality is a sin
- Gays ought to be killed
- Gays belong in prisons
- If I feel sexually excited by people of the same sex, it means that devil plays games with me
© Copyright 2012 Michael Novakhov, M.D. and NISBS
__________________________________________________
Review of existing instruments
Psychometric Assessment of Suicidal Risk - Google Search
*
| page 1 of 3 |
| Original references: Beck AT Kovacs M Weissman A. Assessment of suicidal intention: The scale of suicide ideation. J Consult Clin Psychology. 1979; 47: 343-352. Beck AT Steer RA Rantieri WF. Scale for suicide ideation: Psychometric properties of a self-report version. J Clin Psychology. 1988; 44: 499-505. The scale of suicidal ideation consists of 19 items, scored 0 to 2, which can be used to evaluate a patient's suicidal intentions. It can also be used to monitor a patient's response to interventions over time. |
| Item | Response | |
| 1. Wish to live | moderate to strong | |
| weak | ||
| none | ||
| 2. Wish to die | none | |
| weak | ||
| moderate to strong | ||
| 3. Reasons for living/dying | for living outweigh for dying | |
| about equal | ||
| for dying outweigh for living | ||
| 4. Desire to make active suicide attempt | none | |
| weak | ||
| moderate to strong | ||
| 5. Passive suicidal desire | would take precautions to save life | |
| would leave life/death to chance | ||
| would avoid steps necessary to save or maintain life | ||
| 6. Duration of suicide ideation/wish | brief fleeting periods | |
| longer periods | ||
| continuous (chronic) or almost continuous | ||
| 7. Frequency of suicide ideation | rare occasional | |
| intermittent | ||
| persistent or continuous | ||
| 8. Attitude toward ideation/wish | rejecting | |
| ambivalent indifferent | ||
| accepting |
go to page 2
obtained from http://www.psy-world.com
*
| page 2 of 3 |
| Item | Response | |
| 9. Control over suicidal action/acting-out wish | has sense of control | |
| unsure of control | ||
| has no sense of control | ||
| 10. Deterrents to active attempt | would not attempt because of a deterrent | |
| some concern about deterrents | ||
| minimal or no concern about deterrents | ||
| 11. Reason for contemplated attempt | to manipulate the environment; get attention or revenge | |
| combination of desire to manipulate and to escape | ||
| escape surcease solve problems | ||
| 12. Method: specificity or planning of contemplated attempt | not considered | |
| considered but details not worked out | ||
| details worked out and well-formulated | ||
| 13. Method: availability or opportunity for contemplated attempt | method not available or no opportunity | |
| method would take time or effort; opportunity not readily available | ||
| method and opportunity available | ||
| future opportunity or availability of method anticipated | ||
| 14. Sense of "capability" to carry out attempt | no courage too weak afraid incompetent | |
| unsure of courage or competence | ||
| sure of competence courage | ||
| 15. Expectancy/anticipation of actual attempt | no | |
| uncertain not sure | ||
| yes | ||
| 16. Actual preparation for contemplated attempt | none | |
| partial | ||
| complete |
obtained from http://www.psy-world.com
*
| page 3 of 3 |
Scale of Suicidal Ideation
| Item | Response | |
| 17. Suicide note | none | |
| started but not completed; only thought about | ||
| completed | ||
| 18. Final acts in anticipation of death | none | |
| thought about or made some arrangements | ||
| made definite plans or completed arrangements | ||
| 19. Deception or concealment of contemplated suicide | revealed ideas openly |
| Scoring:The total score for the 19 items is calculated. Minimum score = 0 Maximum score = 38 Higher scores indicate greater suicidal ideation |
obtained from http://www.psy-world.com
__________________________________________________
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/3/12
The Vulnerability of Desire: Samson syndrome and other stories | Suicides in military history
Book Description
*
Concepts
Hadrian sexuality - GS
Shakespear sexuality - GS
Lincoln sexuality - GS
Reflections in a Golden Eye - GS
Stoicism on Desire - GS
Suicidal behaviors in military history: the claim to liberty and victory amidst defeat
Reducing Suicide Behavior. Among Military Servicemembers and Veterans. U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Military Operational Medicine ...
Marcus Antonius and Cleopathra - GS
ANCIENT ROME
Mark Atteberry (Author)
Mark Atteberry (Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
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Book Description
Publication Date: April 3, 2003
*
Concepts
- Desire (emotion), a sense of longing or hoping
- Desire (philosophy)
- Greed, one of the seven deadly sins, selfish pursuit of wealth, power, or possessions
- Interpersonal attraction
- Libido, sexual desire according to Freud and psychoanalysis
- Limerence, an involuntary state of intense romantic desire
- Lust, intense craving for self gratification
- Motivation, a thought that leads to an action
- Preference, a concept in the social sciences, particularly economics
- Taṇhā, craving in Buddhist psychology
- Want, in economics
Hadrian sexuality - GS
Shakespear sexuality - GS
Lincoln sexuality - GS
Reflections in a Golden Eye - GS
Stoicism on Desire - GS
Suicidal behaviors in military history: the claim to liberty and victory amidst defeat
Scholarly articles for Suicidal behaviors in military history | |
Monoamine metabolites in CSF and suicidal behavior - Traskman - Cited by 553
Aggression in humans correlates with cerebrospinal … - Brown - Cited by 839
The family history method using diagnostic criteria: … - Andreasen - Cited by 1493
| |
Search Results
Comments: This is a very important and valuable sociological paper on the subject:
Suicide, Social Integration, and Masculinity in the US Military ...
emory.academia.edu/.../Suicide_Social_Integration_and_Masculinity...Cached
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Nevertheless, the history of suicide within Western military populations provides ..... Understanding suicidal behavior in the military: an evaluation of Joiner's ...
[PDF]
"These increases in military suicide rates have been striking, even given the notorious difficulties in determining accurate statistics for military suicide. First, suicides among military personnel are frequently misclassified as deaths from accidents or undetermined causes; such classification errors may lead military suicide totals to be as much as 21% higher than reported (Carr, Hoge, Gardner, & Potter,2004, p. 233)."
"These increases in military suicide rates have led a number of experts and commentators to refer to military suicide as a “hidden epidemic” (Sklar,2007). The origins of this epidemic have proven difficult to detect."
"Investigators of military suicide have been cautious about attributing this putative epidemic to a single cause (Stewart, 2009)."
"Finally, the military’s “warrior culture” has been thought to discourage soldiers from speaking openly about their psychological and emotional fragility (Alvarez, 2009;Dinges & Mueller, 2009). This inhibits the ability of mental health practitioners to recognize suicidal individuals and hinders the healing process necessary to overcome suicidal ideation and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Alvarez, 2009; Dinges & Mueller,2009). The lethality of all of these factors is significantly magnified by the ready access to firearms characteristic of military life (Mahon, Tobin, Cusack, Kelleher, & Malone, 2005; Martin,Ghahramanlou-Holloway, Lou, & Tucciarone, 2009)."
"Durkheim’s theory of the protective nature of social integration forms the foundation for what has become known as social capital theory..."
"Identity itself is rewritten through the “depersonalization and deindividuation in which the military, in the form of drills sergeants, must strip the individual of all previous self-definition” (Herbert, 1998, p. 9).
*
Comments: One of the important factors might be general rigidity of military subculture, code of conduct, discipline and training which place a significantly stringent demands on individual capacity for integrating this image and social role of "ideal (or idealised) soldier" with complexities, paradoxes, contradictions and general "harmoniously chaotic" nature of individual emotional life and deep instinctual drives, with individual "Animula Vagula Blandula"; and more so if it is covered by a mask of omnipotent strength and toughness. One of my clinical observations is that suicides occur more often in those, in whom you relatively suspect and expect it the least, because 1) when you suspect it, you do something to prevent it and 2) the more rigid and inflexible is the mask, designed to convey the sense of invulnerability and health, the more vulnerable and fragile is its carrier and the more chances are there for the "breaking point".
*
"Gender identity is central to the formation of social capital in the military. Even Stewart (1991, p. 89), whose study does not employ “gender” as a central analytic, describes the military as a “cult of masculinity”. Melissa S.Herbert (1998, p. 7), in her study of female soldiers, notes that the masculine nature of military society has been so widely recognized that there is “little dispute” over the matter. She argues that the specificity of the military is that it is “structured along the lines of gender, not age, race, or physical fitness” (Herbert,1998,p.7). It is by emphasizing masculinity and rigidly separating the male from the female that the military creates social capital from a group of soldiers whose economic statuses, ethnicities, and ideologies might otherwise place them in conflict with one another (Herbert, 1998; Stewart, 1991). Masculine unity thus forms the “cementing principle” of military life (Harrison, 2003, p. 75)."
*
Comments: Generally speaking military mentality might be viewed as the expression of the need (and necessity) for masculine (male) control and domination. Hence the historical phenomenon of mass rapes (including the less frequent in recent times, but probably quite wide spread in the past occurrences of male rapes [as a substitute for killing]; turning the defeated male enemy into a woman, both symbolically and to a certain degree in a real sense; thus neutralising and neutering this enemy's threat to the conqueror's own masculinity). Thus for those who viewed gays as "women in male bodies" (and therefore as the potential objects of psychosexual domination and rape), the destruction and deprivation of this institutional notion and image constitute a blow to their own idealised self-image and a social role as dominant heterosexual male warriors and might lead towards unraveling of the deep intrapsychic conflict, especially if the elements of latent homosexuality are present.
*
"As Whitworth (2008,p.119) notes “recent studies in the USA indicate that between 43 and 60 percent of female enlisted personnel experience some form of physical or sexual harassment or violence”. This physical and sexual abuse attests to the exclusion of women within the military."
*
Comments: These statistics are truly shocking and feel almost inconceivable. Is it not an indication that something, at some level is deeply wrong with the subculture and prevailing attitudes, and the need for change is ripe?
*
"As a result of their exclusion, women in the military may be more prone to externalize their frustration via homicide, rather than internalizing it (as do men) via suicide."
"Tapering the effect of masculine fatalism on suicidal behavior will thus entail addressing military culture directly."
*
Comments: Apparently, the maximal approximation of military subculture to the norms, values and attitudes of the mainstream culture of the great country would the most healthy, productive and promising approach.
*
"These increases in military suicide rates have been striking, even given the notorious difficulties in determining accurate statistics for military suicide. First, suicides among military personnel are frequently misclassified as deaths from accidents or undetermined causes; such classification errors may lead military suicide totals to be as much as 21% higher than reported (Carr, Hoge, Gardner, & Potter,2004, p. 233)."
"These increases in military suicide rates have led a number of experts and commentators to refer to military suicide as a “hidden epidemic” (Sklar,2007). The origins of this epidemic have proven difficult to detect."
"Investigators of military suicide have been cautious about attributing this putative epidemic to a single cause (Stewart, 2009)."
"Finally, the military’s “warrior culture” has been thought to discourage soldiers from speaking openly about their psychological and emotional fragility (Alvarez, 2009;Dinges & Mueller, 2009). This inhibits the ability of mental health practitioners to recognize suicidal individuals and hinders the healing process necessary to overcome suicidal ideation and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Alvarez, 2009; Dinges & Mueller,2009). The lethality of all of these factors is significantly magnified by the ready access to firearms characteristic of military life (Mahon, Tobin, Cusack, Kelleher, & Malone, 2005; Martin,Ghahramanlou-Holloway, Lou, & Tucciarone, 2009)."
"Durkheim’s theory of the protective nature of social integration forms the foundation for what has become known as social capital theory..."
"Identity itself is rewritten through the “depersonalization and deindividuation in which the military, in the form of drills sergeants, must strip the individual of all previous self-definition” (Herbert, 1998, p. 9).
*
Comments: One of the important factors might be general rigidity of military subculture, code of conduct, discipline and training which place a significantly stringent demands on individual capacity for integrating this image and social role of "ideal (or idealised) soldier" with complexities, paradoxes, contradictions and general "harmoniously chaotic" nature of individual emotional life and deep instinctual drives, with individual "Animula Vagula Blandula"; and more so if it is covered by a mask of omnipotent strength and toughness. One of my clinical observations is that suicides occur more often in those, in whom you relatively suspect and expect it the least, because 1) when you suspect it, you do something to prevent it and 2) the more rigid and inflexible is the mask, designed to convey the sense of invulnerability and health, the more vulnerable and fragile is its carrier and the more chances are there for the "breaking point".
*
"Gender identity is central to the formation of social capital in the military. Even Stewart (1991, p. 89), whose study does not employ “gender” as a central analytic, describes the military as a “cult of masculinity”. Melissa S.Herbert (1998, p. 7), in her study of female soldiers, notes that the masculine nature of military society has been so widely recognized that there is “little dispute” over the matter. She argues that the specificity of the military is that it is “structured along the lines of gender, not age, race, or physical fitness” (Herbert,1998,p.7). It is by emphasizing masculinity and rigidly separating the male from the female that the military creates social capital from a group of soldiers whose economic statuses, ethnicities, and ideologies might otherwise place them in conflict with one another (Herbert, 1998; Stewart, 1991). Masculine unity thus forms the “cementing principle” of military life (Harrison, 2003, p. 75)."
*
Comments: Generally speaking military mentality might be viewed as the expression of the need (and necessity) for masculine (male) control and domination. Hence the historical phenomenon of mass rapes (including the less frequent in recent times, but probably quite wide spread in the past occurrences of male rapes [as a substitute for killing]; turning the defeated male enemy into a woman, both symbolically and to a certain degree in a real sense; thus neutralising and neutering this enemy's threat to the conqueror's own masculinity). Thus for those who viewed gays as "women in male bodies" (and therefore as the potential objects of psychosexual domination and rape), the destruction and deprivation of this institutional notion and image constitute a blow to their own idealised self-image and a social role as dominant heterosexual male warriors and might lead towards unraveling of the deep intrapsychic conflict, especially if the elements of latent homosexuality are present.
*
"As Whitworth (2008,p.119) notes “recent studies in the USA indicate that between 43 and 60 percent of female enlisted personnel experience some form of physical or sexual harassment or violence”. This physical and sexual abuse attests to the exclusion of women within the military."
*
Comments: These statistics are truly shocking and feel almost inconceivable. Is it not an indication that something, at some level is deeply wrong with the subculture and prevailing attitudes, and the need for change is ripe?
*
"As a result of their exclusion, women in the military may be more prone to externalize their frustration via homicide, rather than internalizing it (as do men) via suicide."
"Tapering the effect of masculine fatalism on suicidal behavior will thus entail addressing military culture directly."
*
Comments: Apparently, the maximal approximation of military subculture to the norms, values and attitudes of the mainstream culture of the great country would the most healthy, productive and promising approach.
*
Research Efforts Toward Reducing Suicide Behavior Among Military ...
www.health.mil/.../DoD_VA%20Conf%20Suicide%20Brief_1-6-...
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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick ViewReducing Suicide Behavior. Among Military Servicemembers and Veterans. U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Military Operational Medicine ...
- [PDF]
Strategic Direction for the Prevention of Suicidal Behavior
www.cdc.gov/.../pdf/suicide_strategic_direction_full_version-a.pdfYou +1'd this publicly. UndoFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
Prevention's (CDC) work to prevent fatal and nonfatal suicidal behavior. ..... and active or retired military personnel.2 ... turation, and disconnection from history ...
Marcus Antonius and Cleopathra - GS
ANCIENT ROME
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/18/12
Military Psychology Links
Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist whose seminal study, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896) led to the development of group psychology.
Sigmund Freud: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
"What, then, is a ‘group’? How does it acquire the capacity for exercising such a decisive influence over the mental life of the individual? And what is the nature of the mental change which it forces upon the individual?
...
Adorno - Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda
(Theodor Adorno reprised Freud's essay in 1951 with his Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, and said that "It is not an overstatement if we say that Freud, though he was hardly interested in the political phase of the problem, clearly foresaw the rise and nature of fascist mass movements in purely psychological categories."[7] ) - Social psychology - From Wikipedia
group psychology - GS
10 Rules That Govern Groups
Freud and the Institution of Psychoanalytic Knowledge - By Sarah Winter - Google Books
Freud all male institutions psychology - GS
Military Psychology - GS
- www.amazon.com/Military-Psychology-Second.../dp/1462506496Cached
- You +1'd this publicly. Undo
- Military Psychology,Second Edition: Clinical and Operational Applications [Carrie H. Kennedy,Eric A. Zillmer] on Amazon.com. *FREE* super saver shipping on ...
- www.amazon.com › ... › Psychology & CounselingCachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoJanice H. Laurence, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Adult & Organizational Development, Temple University, and editor of the journal Military Psychology.
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During wartime, the need for mental health professionals intensifies, and the role they play is increasingly important. This comprehensive professional reference ...
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/20/12
Some preliminary conclusions on research into the "psychiatric epidemic" of suicide in the military 2000 - 2012
The true picture, including the epidemiological one, in the area of suicides in the military and the true state of affairs in the military mental health field is not known to us yet. The deaths suspicious of suicide and the incidents of self-injurious behavior, as well as homicides and other relevant occurrences should be included into the statistics. The sophisticated data collection system needs to be established, socio - and psychometric instruments to be developed and used; theoretical models conceptualised and tested, etc. The riddle might not be solved to provide more or less satisfactory causal explanation for some time, if at all; in the end, all attempts at the explanation are just interpretational hypotheses, due to the specifics of the subject matter: suicide, and the mental health field. Regardless of all the possible hypothetical explanations (which do have to be developed and tested), the general sociotherapeutic sanation measures, including the changes in the military subculture, if needed, should be implemented and continuously improved and refined, with the aim of improving, making more healthy and humane and maximally consistent with the values and norms of larger, mainstream culture, the general emotional climate in military communities and units, and providing the range of various relevant services. This approach might be just as, if not more productive, than the specific "suicide prevention measures", which can continue to stay in place.
The true picture, including the epidemiological one, in the area of suicides in the military and the true state of affairs in the military mental health field is not known to us yet. The deaths suspicious of suicide and the incidents of self-injurious behavior, as well as homicides and other relevant occurrences should be included into the statistics. The sophisticated data collection system needs to be established, socio - and psychometric instruments to be developed and used; theoretical models conceptualised and tested, etc. The riddle might not be solved to provide more or less satisfactory causal explanation for some time, if at all; in the end, all attempts at the explanation are just interpretational hypotheses, due to the specifics of the subject matter: suicide, and the mental health field. Regardless of all the possible hypothetical explanations (which do have to be developed and tested), the general sociotherapeutic sanation measures, including the changes in the military subculture, if needed, should be implemented and continuously improved and refined, with the aim of improving, making more healthy and humane and maximally consistent with the values and norms of larger, mainstream culture, the general emotional climate in military communities and units, and providing the range of various relevant services. This approach might be just as, if not more productive, than the specific "suicide prevention measures", which can continue to stay in place.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/21/12
Profiling approach for identification of potential suicidal behavior
(instead of "risk factors")
the same or similar way FBI profiles criminal behaviors
(Morally, in most religions, especially in the Abrahamic ones, it is considered a very serious violation: "you are the slave of God and He only can take your life from you, because it was Him, who granted it to you"; and also on the books in many jurisdictions, still.)
- history of previous suicidal attempts
- history of self-injurious behavior
- Externalised - Internalised Aggression Scale and Index: EA/IA = 1 (+ - 0.5)
- signs of anxiety and depression
- changes in overt behavior
- Socialisation styles: loner or family problems
- Personality styles and vulnerabilities
- "Real Life Problems": financial, family, others
References and Links
profiling - GS
Notes
Do we want just to improve the statistics to look better or do we want to address the problem "in-depth"? Or both? Of course both: one purpose does not exclude the other at all; it would be a "false dichotomy". But the statistics have to be truthful. They should be cleaned of "lies and damn lies" as much as possible, otherwise they mislead, which is dangerous epistemologically: the search for truthful and more or less "scientific" explanations has to be based on "clean" and adequately collected factual and data sets.
Seriously consider and explore the possibilities and advantages of Dance Therapy - GS
(instead of "risk factors")
the same or similar way FBI profiles criminal behaviors
(Morally, in most religions, especially in the Abrahamic ones, it is considered a very serious violation: "you are the slave of God and He only can take your life from you, because it was Him, who granted it to you"; and also on the books in many jurisdictions, still.)
- history of previous suicidal attempts
- history of self-injurious behavior
- Externalised - Internalised Aggression Scale and Index: EA/IA = 1 (+ - 0.5)
- signs of anxiety and depression
- changes in overt behavior
- Socialisation styles: loner or family problems
- Personality styles and vulnerabilities
- "Real Life Problems": financial, family, others
References and Links
profiling - GS
Notes
Do we want just to improve the statistics to look better or do we want to address the problem "in-depth"? Or both? Of course both: one purpose does not exclude the other at all; it would be a "false dichotomy". But the statistics have to be truthful. They should be cleaned of "lies and damn lies" as much as possible, otherwise they mislead, which is dangerous epistemologically: the search for truthful and more or less "scientific" explanations has to be based on "clean" and adequately collected factual and data sets.
Seriously consider and explore the possibilities and advantages of Dance Therapy - GS
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/24/12
The very uncomfortable "odd ball out" aspect of suicides in the military
Sanctity of life is the central part of Judeo-Christian Ethics. Therefore the idea and the consideration of suicide as a result and product of self-regulatory mechanism of military group dynamics aimed at enhancing its cohesion and functional ability by extruding and expelling one of its dysfunctioning members feels foreign and unacceptable to us. However, any human group is a living organism which is governed by its biopsychosocial laws with the same certainty and inevitability as any biological organism is governed by its biological laws. The question is the price: is any presumed or putative advantage in cohesion and functioning worth the loss of human life and the loss of the member of the military community? The answer of course, intuitive but firm, is "no" and "no; under any circumstances". Then, it becomes, again, the issue of better understanding and better management of complex relationships between the military groups and their individual members.
References and Links
military group dynamics
Group Dynamics - Presented by Capt Tim Gleaton, CAP
Perceived cohesion
Perceived Cohesion Scale (PCS) is a six item scale that is used to measure structural cohesion in groups. In 1990, Bollen and Hoyle used the PCS and applied it to a study of large groups which were used to assess the psychometric qualities of their scale.[3]
References
Sanctity of life is the central part of Judeo-Christian Ethics. Therefore the idea and the consideration of suicide as a result and product of self-regulatory mechanism of military group dynamics aimed at enhancing its cohesion and functional ability by extruding and expelling one of its dysfunctioning members feels foreign and unacceptable to us. However, any human group is a living organism which is governed by its biopsychosocial laws with the same certainty and inevitability as any biological organism is governed by its biological laws. The question is the price: is any presumed or putative advantage in cohesion and functioning worth the loss of human life and the loss of the member of the military community? The answer of course, intuitive but firm, is "no" and "no; under any circumstances". Then, it becomes, again, the issue of better understanding and better management of complex relationships between the military groups and their individual members.
References and Links
military group dynamics
Group Dynamics - Presented by Capt Tim Gleaton, CAP
Perceived cohesion
Perceived Cohesion Scale (PCS) is a six item scale that is used to measure structural cohesion in groups. In 1990, Bollen and Hoyle used the PCS and applied it to a study of large groups which were used to assess the psychometric qualities of their scale.[3]
See also
References
- ^ Moody, James; White, Douglas (2003). "Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups." (PDF). American Sociological Review 68 (1): 1–25. http://www2.asanet.org/journals/ASRFeb03MoodyWhite.pdf. Retrieved 2006-08-19.
- ^ White, Douglas; Frank Harary (2001). "The Cohesiveness of Blocks in Social Networks: Node Connectivity and Conditional Density." (book). Sociological Methodology 2001 (Blackwell Publishers, Inc., Boston, USA and Oxford, UK.) 31 (1): 305–359. doi:10.1111/0081-1750.00098. http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/sm-w23.PDF. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
- ^ Chin, Wynne W., et al. Perceived Cohesion: A Conceptual and Empirical Examination: Adapting and Testing the Perceived Cohesion Scale in a Small-Group Setting. 1999. Small Group Research 30(6):751-766.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/24/12
Biopsychosocial Systems: some general principles of functioning - working draft
Notes
BPS S - (WS): (cells) individuals, couples, families, groups, societies.
Sources:
Interpretational nature of all BPS knowledge; pragmatic, utilitarian slant and approach
General Systems Theory | von Bertalanffy
George L. Engel
The biopsychosocial paradigm
*
"Organic" ("Organismic") Theory
organic theory - GS
organic theory of the state - GS
*
The organic theory of the State with special reference to Herbert Spencer
Ankita (?)
The basic idea of the organic theory is to show that the state is, in its nature, like a biological organism or a living being and that the relation between the state and the individual is the same as between an organism and its cell. The organismic theory is essentially a biological concept which describes the phenomena of the state in biological terms.
According to this theory, the state is not a mere aggregation of individuals, but an organism having parts and organs which are related to one another in the same way as the different organs of an animal or a plant are related to one another.
The theory is as old as political thought itself. Plato compared state to 'A' and man to 'a': it is an individual magnified. He compared the rulers, warriors and working classes to wisdom, courage, and appetite of the individual respectively.
Aristotle drew a comparison between the symmetry of the state and symmetry of the body and believed that the individual is an intrinsic part of the society.
Cicero, a Roman philosopher, also makes a passing reference to this theory. He likened the head of the state to the spirit that rules the body. Hobbes compared the state to a huge, imaginary monster called the Laviathan, which is but an artificial man, of great strength and stature. According to him the state could suffer from human ailments like pleurisy, scabies and boils etc.
Rousseau, a French philosopher, too, compared the "body politic" to the "Human body", both of which he said possessed the "motive power" of "force" and "will" (the legislative power and the executive power). The former was the "heart" of the state; the latter its "brain".
Blunschli, a German philosopher, found a striking resemblance between the state and an organism. According to him the state is not a lifeless mechanism. It has life and spirit. It is not merely a collection of individuals just as an oil painting is not merely a collection of drops of oil-paint.
The state has its own personality independency as that of the individual comprising the state. Idealists described the state as a moral organism but according to Spencer the state is a living organism. He draws an elaborate analogy between the state and a living organism in the following manner:
1. Both state and an organism show a similar process of growth and evolution from simplicity to complexity. State in the beginning was just a tribal organization but it has developed from that primitive stage to the modern complex structure with a multiplicity of functions.
An organism also exhibits similar process of growth. An embryo in the body of the mother is just a lump of flesh but slowly grows to a complete whole with various organs having variety of functions.
Both grow from inside outwards. Each evolves by adjustment and response to environments. In process of growth each undergoes individualization, specialization and differentiation of both organs and functions.
2. Both state and organism have three main systems ; a sustaining system; a distributory system; a regulating system. Sustaining system of an organism consists of digestive system by which food is digested and life of an organism, is sustained.
In the case of the state there is a corresponding sustaining system which consists of agriculture and industries by virtue of which the State is sustained.
The distributing system in an organism consist of circulatory system by which blood is distributed to various parts of the body. In the case of the state, the distributing system consists of transport and communication.
The regulating system of an organism consists of brain and nerves. Governmental and Military system constitute the regulating system in the State. There is thus a parallelism between the ways in which animal and social life are preserved.
3. As an organism is composed of cells, so the state is composed of individuals. In both cases, the component units contribute to the life of the whole.
4. An organism is constantly subjected to the process of constant wear and tear. Old and worn out cells die out and their place is taken by the fresh cells formed by the blood.
In the case of social organism as well old and decrepit individuals die out and their place is taken by the newborns.
5. Health of an organism depends upon the health of the cells organs. In case they get diseased, the whole organism suffers. In the similar way, health of the state depends upon the moral and physical health of the individuals, and associations of individuals.
In case they do not work properly the efficiency and performance of the state is bound to suffer. There is thus a complete interdependence of the parts and the whole in both cases.
6. Both organism and state exhibit a "similar cycle of birth, growth, decay and death. From these points of agreement, the conclusion is drawn that state is an organism and there is a lot of identity between the two.
The state lives, grows and develops much as an individual does.
Conclusions:
The theory inevitably leads to the assumption that the individuals comprising the state are completely subordinated to the state just as the cells of the body depend for their life and existence on the organism. Chop off a part of the skin, it ceases to exist.
This theory leads us, therefore, to the conclusion that an individual cannot exist outside the state. The theory thus hits at individual freedom and inevitably leads to the idea of the establishment of totalitarian state or fascism.
[Comments to the above part in italics: This is entirely incorrect. This is the oversimplification and incorrect interpretation and conclusion from this theory. Details will follow later.]
*
organic theory sociology - GS
More videos for organic theory sociology »
organic theory of society - GS
organic theory definition - GS
*
BPS continuum
Ontogenesis and phylogenesis
*
Principles of functioning
- Autochthonic (Autochtonic - GS) (Autochthon - From Wikipedia) nature of "living systems"
- Stimulus and Response; reflexes, "conditioned reflexes", behaviorism
- Summation
- Specialisation
- Hierarchies and centrality
- Boundaries: fixed, semipermeable, permeable; exchange; cell
- Communications
- Memories and Information
- Selective expression: e.g. genes and junk
Links and References
Notes
BPS S - (WS): (cells) individuals, couples, families, groups, societies.
Sources:
Interpretational nature of all BPS knowledge; pragmatic, utilitarian slant and approach
General Systems Theory | von Bertalanffy
George L. Engel
The biopsychosocial paradigm
*
"Organic" ("Organismic") Theory
organic theory - GS
organic theory of the state - GS
Organic theory of the state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- You +1'd this publicly. Undo
- The Organic Theory of the State is a species of political collectivism which maintains that the state transcends individuals within the State in power, right, ...
What is the organic state theory
You +1'd this publicly. UndoIt is comparing a state to a living organism. The state needs land to grow such as an organism needs nutrition to grow. Improve answer. First answer by ...
*
The organic theory of the State with special reference to Herbert Spencer
Ankita (?)
The basic idea of the organic theory is to show that the state is, in its nature, like a biological organism or a living being and that the relation between the state and the individual is the same as between an organism and its cell. The organismic theory is essentially a biological concept which describes the phenomena of the state in biological terms.
According to this theory, the state is not a mere aggregation of individuals, but an organism having parts and organs which are related to one another in the same way as the different organs of an animal or a plant are related to one another.
The theory is as old as political thought itself. Plato compared state to 'A' and man to 'a': it is an individual magnified. He compared the rulers, warriors and working classes to wisdom, courage, and appetite of the individual respectively.
Aristotle drew a comparison between the symmetry of the state and symmetry of the body and believed that the individual is an intrinsic part of the society.
Cicero, a Roman philosopher, also makes a passing reference to this theory. He likened the head of the state to the spirit that rules the body. Hobbes compared the state to a huge, imaginary monster called the Laviathan, which is but an artificial man, of great strength and stature. According to him the state could suffer from human ailments like pleurisy, scabies and boils etc.
Rousseau, a French philosopher, too, compared the "body politic" to the "Human body", both of which he said possessed the "motive power" of "force" and "will" (the legislative power and the executive power). The former was the "heart" of the state; the latter its "brain".
Blunschli, a German philosopher, found a striking resemblance between the state and an organism. According to him the state is not a lifeless mechanism. It has life and spirit. It is not merely a collection of individuals just as an oil painting is not merely a collection of drops of oil-paint.
The state has its own personality independency as that of the individual comprising the state. Idealists described the state as a moral organism but according to Spencer the state is a living organism. He draws an elaborate analogy between the state and a living organism in the following manner:
1. Both state and an organism show a similar process of growth and evolution from simplicity to complexity. State in the beginning was just a tribal organization but it has developed from that primitive stage to the modern complex structure with a multiplicity of functions.
An organism also exhibits similar process of growth. An embryo in the body of the mother is just a lump of flesh but slowly grows to a complete whole with various organs having variety of functions.
Both grow from inside outwards. Each evolves by adjustment and response to environments. In process of growth each undergoes individualization, specialization and differentiation of both organs and functions.
2. Both state and organism have three main systems ; a sustaining system; a distributory system; a regulating system. Sustaining system of an organism consists of digestive system by which food is digested and life of an organism, is sustained.
In the case of the state there is a corresponding sustaining system which consists of agriculture and industries by virtue of which the State is sustained.
The distributing system in an organism consist of circulatory system by which blood is distributed to various parts of the body. In the case of the state, the distributing system consists of transport and communication.
The regulating system of an organism consists of brain and nerves. Governmental and Military system constitute the regulating system in the State. There is thus a parallelism between the ways in which animal and social life are preserved.
3. As an organism is composed of cells, so the state is composed of individuals. In both cases, the component units contribute to the life of the whole.
4. An organism is constantly subjected to the process of constant wear and tear. Old and worn out cells die out and their place is taken by the fresh cells formed by the blood.
In the case of social organism as well old and decrepit individuals die out and their place is taken by the newborns.
5. Health of an organism depends upon the health of the cells organs. In case they get diseased, the whole organism suffers. In the similar way, health of the state depends upon the moral and physical health of the individuals, and associations of individuals.
In case they do not work properly the efficiency and performance of the state is bound to suffer. There is thus a complete interdependence of the parts and the whole in both cases.
6. Both organism and state exhibit a "similar cycle of birth, growth, decay and death. From these points of agreement, the conclusion is drawn that state is an organism and there is a lot of identity between the two.
The state lives, grows and develops much as an individual does.
Conclusions:
The theory inevitably leads to the assumption that the individuals comprising the state are completely subordinated to the state just as the cells of the body depend for their life and existence on the organism. Chop off a part of the skin, it ceases to exist.
This theory leads us, therefore, to the conclusion that an individual cannot exist outside the state. The theory thus hits at individual freedom and inevitably leads to the idea of the establishment of totalitarian state or fascism.
[Comments to the above part in italics: This is entirely incorrect. This is the oversimplification and incorrect interpretation and conclusion from this theory. Details will follow later.]
You May Also Like:
*
organic theory sociology - GS
Sociological Theory: Emile Durkhiem and Social Solidarity - YouTube | |
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VwoihGP_i8
13 Feb 2010 - 9 min - Uploaded by segelgeist
... between traditional "mechanical" solidarity and modern "organic" solidarity. ...Sociological Theory ... | |
More videos for organic theory sociology »
Scholarly articles for organic theory sociology | |
… : International Library of Sociology A: Social Theory … - Rex - Cited by 415
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Search Results
organic theory of society - GS
organic theory definition - GS
Organic theory of the state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
The Organic Theory of the State is a species of political collectivism which maintains that the state transcends individuals within the State in power, right, ...
What is the organic state theory
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
It is comparing a state to a living organism. The state needs land to grow such as an organism needs nutrition to grow. Improve answer. First answer by ...
*
BPS continuum
Ontogenesis and phylogenesis
*
Principles of functioning
- Autochthonic (Autochtonic - GS) (Autochthon - From Wikipedia) nature of "living systems"
- Stimulus and Response; reflexes, "conditioned reflexes", behaviorism
- Summation
- Specialisation
- Hierarchies and centrality
- Boundaries: fixed, semipermeable, permeable; exchange; cell
- Communications
- Memories and Information
- Selective expression: e.g. genes and junk
Links and References
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/24/12
military and eroticism - GS
soldier boy - GS
soldier boy dance - GS
homosexual armies - GS
homosexual armies history - GS
Homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece - Wikipedia, the ...
Photo ID 16749
Google Translation:
I walked once, to amuse me,
I saw in the distance a damsel stand.
I asked humbly: "Miss may I accompany you?"
As said, this small, "Oh please, please, no!
I'm verheirat long been verheirat
and so have everything you need.
I do not need to wonder long, just need to say a word
and what they do-my husband young man can do. "
Honolulu, in the land of the Azores and in Samoa and Hawaii -
because the little girls go to dance in the town
no shirt and no panties with a fig leaf.
And the down must, because there is still something under it,
what a sailor is such a pleasure.
*
Marlene Dietrich - Johnny (Live 1954)
Uploaded by Thorneycroft1937 on Dec 23, 2009
P.2 - GS
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soldier boy - GS
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homosexual armies - GS
homosexual armies history - GS
Homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece - Wikipedia, the ...
You +1'd this publicly. UndoHomer's Nestor was not well skilled in ordering an army when he advised the Greeks to rank tribe and tribe ... he .... Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender history ...
A Brief History of Gays in the Military - TIME
www.time.com/time/magazine/.../0,9171,1960257,00.htmlYou +1'd this publicly. Undoby Kayla Webley - in 1,134 Google+ circles - More by Kayla Webley2 Feb 2010 – Though the U.S. military explicitly prohibited homosexuality in the Articles of ... Amid the largest mobilization in U.S. history, the Army, Navy and ...Homosexuality in Greek Armies - Historum - History Forums
www.historum.com › World History › Ancient HistoryYou +1'd this publicly. Undo10 posts - 3 authors - 22 Jan 2010So, how widespread do you think homosexuality was in the ancient Greek and Macedonian armies? It is a well-known fact that "couples"
Homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece - Wikipedia, the ...
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Homer's Nestor was not well skilled in ordering an army when he advised the Greeks to rank tribe and tribe ... he .... Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender history ...Photo ID 16749
Ich ging einmal spazieren
Uploaded by Ahnentreue on Dec 6, 2009
Ich ging einmal spazieren, um mich zu amüsieren,
da sah ich in der Ferne ein Mägdlein stehn.
Ich fragte sie bescheiden: "Fräulein darf ich sie begleiten?"
Da sagte diese Kleine:" Ach bitte, bitte nein!
Ich bin verheirat, bin lange schon verheirat
und hab so alles, was man so braucht.
Ich brauch nicht lang zu fragen, brauch nur ein Wort zu sagen
und was sie können -junger Mann- kann mein Mann auch."
In Honolulu, im Lande der Azoren und auf Samoa und auf Hawaii -
da gehn die kleinen Mädchen zum Tanzen in das Städtchen
ohne Hemd und ohne Höschen mit einem Feigenblatt.
Und das muss runter, denn da ist ja noch was drunter,
was einem Seemann viel Freude macht.
da sah ich in der Ferne ein Mägdlein stehn.
Ich fragte sie bescheiden: "Fräulein darf ich sie begleiten?"
Da sagte diese Kleine:" Ach bitte, bitte nein!
Ich bin verheirat, bin lange schon verheirat
und hab so alles, was man so braucht.
Ich brauch nicht lang zu fragen, brauch nur ein Wort zu sagen
und was sie können -junger Mann- kann mein Mann auch."
In Honolulu, im Lande der Azoren und auf Samoa und auf Hawaii -
da gehn die kleinen Mädchen zum Tanzen in das Städtchen
ohne Hemd und ohne Höschen mit einem Feigenblatt.
Und das muss runter, denn da ist ja noch was drunter,
was einem Seemann viel Freude macht.
Google Translation:
I walked once, to amuse me,
I saw in the distance a damsel stand.
I asked humbly: "Miss may I accompany you?"
As said, this small, "Oh please, please, no!
I'm verheirat long been verheirat
and so have everything you need.
I do not need to wonder long, just need to say a word
and what they do-my husband young man can do. "
Honolulu, in the land of the Azores and in Samoa and Hawaii -
because the little girls go to dance in the town
no shirt and no panties with a fig leaf.
And the down must, because there is still something under it,
what a sailor is such a pleasure.
*
Marlene Dietrich - Johnny (Live 1954)
Uploaded by Thorneycroft1937 on Dec 23, 2009
"Johnny (wenn du Geburtstag hast)" sung by Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) live in 1954.
*
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay - NYTimes.com
Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay - NYTimes.com
Gray Matter
Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay
By RICHARD M. RYAN and WILLIAM S. RYAN
Published: April 27, 2012
*
Wenn die Soldaten
Uploaded by SALTYPLUGGER on Aug 9, 2009
Hitler's SS Portrait in Evil(1985)
Night of the Long Knives - GS
Night of the Long Knives - GS
*
love and death - GS
homosexual eroticism
Subconscious homosexual eroticism - GS | Unconscious homosexual eroticism
death wish
Subconscious death wish | Unconscious death wish
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love and death - GS
homosexual eroticism
Subconscious homosexual eroticism - GS | Unconscious homosexual eroticism
death wish
Subconscious death wish | Unconscious death wish
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1.1 Punishments and interrogation tactics; 1.2 Hazing rituals; 1.3 Erotic humiliation ... In military circles hazing is sometimes assumed to test recruits under ...
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50s BC), whose poems explore a range of erotic experience near the end of the .... The iconography links deities of love and desire with military success and ... P.2 - GS
Gay Liberation Movement - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
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(Military same-sex erotic relationships have also been reported from ancient China and from the Samurai in medieval Japan.) The most famous male couple in ...*
Looking at arts, culture and entertainment in Gauteng
Moffie, a look at gays in the military
Posted on September 7, 2012by moirads
‘Moffie’ is a South African, Afrikaans, derogotory term for ‘gay man’. Bailey Snyman, the winner of the 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance, presented his production, Moffie, at the National Arts Festival. It had one performance at Dance Umbrella 2, now part of the Arts Alive Festival in Johannesburg.
Moffie, Photo credit John Hogg
*
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/31/12
> Pathological Narcissism - Individualism - ("The Norm: the most frequent and the most "socially permissible and acceptable" types of behaviors) - Collectivism - Totalitarian (=? "Herd") Mentality > circle, connections
A Scale of Social Behavioral Style (from individual to cultural levels)
The Scales of - SBS (I -C L): I-C.
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References and Links
individualism and collectivism theory - GS
individualism and collectivism theory method and applications - GS
individualism and collectivism psychology - GS
individualism and collectivism culture - GS
individualism and collectivism in the united states - GS
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individualism and collectivism scale - GS
*
individualism vs collectivism scale - GS
individualism vs collectivism hofstede - GS
*
A Scale of Social Behavioral Style (from individual to cultural levels)
The Scales of - SBS (I -C L): I-C.
*
References and Links
individualism and collectivism theory - GS
individualism and collectivism theory method and applications - GS
individualism and collectivism psychology - GS
individualism and collectivism culture - GS
individualism and collectivism in the united states - GS
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individualism and collectivism scale - GS
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
Most societies contain elements of both individualism and collectivism. .... On the one hand, at the country scale, there are the Communist states, which have ...
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Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook .... It is often rejected by collectivist, Islamic, or confucian societies in Asia or the ..... are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world.*
individualism vs collectivism scale - GS
individualism vs collectivism hofstede - GS
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 12/1/12
First same-sex marriage being celebrated Saturday at West Point's Cadet Chapel - Fox News
from Nation - Google News
 KSDK |
First same-sex marriage being celebrated Saturday at West Point's Cadet Chapel
Fox News The first same-sex marriage at West Point's Cadet Chapel will be celebrated Saturday – when a military veteran and her partner exchange vows roughly one year after President Obama ended the military policy banning openly gay people from serving in the ... West Point chapel to host first same-sex marriageUSA TODAY all 33 news articles » |
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/25/12
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/9/12
November 5, 2012
The Heart Grows Smarter
By DAVID BROOKS
If you go back and read a bunch of biographies of people born 100 to 150 years ago, you notice a few things that were more common then than now.
First, many more families suffered the loss of a child, which had a devastating and historically underappreciated impact on their overall worldviews.
Second, and maybe related, many more children grew up in cold and emotionally distant homes, where fathers, in particular, barely knew their children and found it impossible to express their love for them.
It wasn’t only parents who were emotionally diffident; it was the people who studied them. In 1938, a group of researchers began an intensive study of 268 students at Harvard University. The plan was to track them through their entire lives, measuring, testing and interviewing them every few years to see how lives develop.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the researchers didn’t pay much attention to the men’s relationships. Instead, following the intellectual fashions of the day, they paid a lot of attention to the men’s physiognomy. Did they have a “masculine” body type? Did they show signs of vigorous genetic endowments?
But as this study — the Grant Study — progressed, the power of relationships became clear. The men who grew up in homes with warm parents were much more likely to become first lieutenants and majors in World War II. The men who grew up in cold, barren homes were much more likely to finish the war as privates.
Body type was useless as a predictor of how the men would fare in life. So was birth order or political affiliation. Even social class had a limited effect. But having a warm childhood was powerful. As George Vaillant, the study director, sums it up in “Triumphs of Experience,” his most recent summary of the research, “It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”
Of the 31 men in the study incapable of establishing intimate bonds, only four are still alive. Of those who were better at forming relationships, more than a third are living.
It’s not that the men who flourished had perfect childhoods. Rather, as Vaillant puts it, “What goes right is more important than what goes wrong.” The positive effect of one loving relative, mentor or friend can overwhelm the negative effects of the bad things that happen.
In case after case, the magic formula is capacity for intimacy combined with persistence, discipline, order and dependability. The men who could be affectionate about people and organized about things had very enjoyable lives.
But a childhood does not totally determine a life. The beauty of the Grant Study is that, as Vaillant emphasizes, it has followed its subjects for nine decades. The big finding is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The men kept changing all the way through, even in their 80s and 90s.
One man in the study paid his way through Harvard by working as a psychiatric attendant. He slept from 6 p.m. to midnight. Worked the night shift at a hospital, then biked to class by 8 in the morning. After college, he tried his hand at theater. He did not succeed, and, at age 40, he saw himself as “mediocre and without imagination.” His middle years were professionally and maritally unhappy.
But, as he got older, he became less emotionally inhibited. In old age, he became a successful actor, playing roles like King Lear. He got married at 78. By 86, the only medicine he was taking was Viagra. He lived to 96.
Another subject grew up feeling that he “didn’t know either parent very well.” At 19, he wrote, “I don’t find it easy to make friends.” At 39, he wrote, “I feel lonely, rootless and disoriented.” At 50, he had basically given up trying to socialize and was trapped in an unhappy marriage.
But, as he aged, he changed. He became the president of his nursing home. He had girlfriends after the death of his first wife and then remarried. He didn’t turn into a social butterfly, but life was better.
The men of the Grant Study frequently became more emotionally attuned as they aged, more adept at recognizing and expressing emotion. Part of the explanation is biological. People, especially men, become more aware of their emotions as they get older.
Part of this is probably historical. Over the past half-century or so, American culture has become more attuned to the power of relationships. Masculinity has changed, at least a bit.
The so-called Flynn Effect describes the rise in measured I.Q. scores over the decades. Perhaps we could invent something called the Grant Effect, on the improvement of mass emotional intelligence over the decades. This gradual change might be one of the greatest contributors to progress and well-being that we’ve experienced in our lifetimes.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/6/12
via NYT > Global Opinion by By AARON B. O’CONNELL on 11/5/12
We’ve ignored Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex, to our peril.
November 4, 2012
The Permanent Militarization of America
By AARON B. O’CONNELL
Annapolis, Md.
IN 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning of the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Most people know the term the president popularized, but few remember his argument.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for a better equilibrium between military and domestic affairs in our economy, politics and culture. He worried that the defense industry’s search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation. He warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation’s history. He cautioned that war and warmaking took up too large a proportion of national life, with grave ramifications for our spiritual health.
The military-industrial complex has not emerged in quite the way Eisenhower envisioned. The United States spends an enormous sum on defense — over $700 billion last year, about half of all military spending in the world — but in terms of our total economy, it has steadily declined to less than 5 percent of gross domestic product from 14 percent in 1953. Defense-related research has not produced an ossified garrison state; in fact, it has yielded a host of beneficial technologies, from the Internet to civilian nuclear power to GPS navigation. The United States has an enormous armaments industry, but it has not hampered employment and economic growth. In fact, Congress’s favorite argument against reducing defense spending is the job loss such cuts would entail.
Nor has the private sector infected foreign policy in the way that Eisenhower warned. Foreign policy has become increasingly reliant on military solutions since World War II, but we are a long way from the Marines’ repeated occupations of Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century, when commercial interests influenced military action. Of all the criticisms of the 2003 Iraq war, the idea that it was done to somehow magically decrease the cost of oil is the least credible. Though it’s true that mercenaries and contractors have exploited the wars of the past decade, hard decisions about the use of military force are made today much as they were in Eisenhower’s day: by the president, advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council, and then more or less rubber-stamped by Congress. Corporations do not get a vote, at least not yet.
But Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower’s era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to NBC’s shameful and unreal reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution — particularly one financed by the taxpayers — should be immune from thoughtful criticism.
Like all institutions, the military works to enhance its public image, but this is just one element of militarization. Most of the political discourse on military matters comes from civilians, who are more vocal about “supporting our troops” than the troops themselves. It doesn’t help that there are fewer veterans in Congress today than at any previous point since World War II. Those who have served are less likely to offer unvarnished praise for the military, for it, like all institutions, has its own frustrations and failings. But for non-veterans — including about four-fifths of all members of Congress — there is only unequivocal, unhesitating adulation. The political costs of anything else are just too high.
For proof of this phenomenon, one need look no further than the continuing furor over sequestration — the automatic cuts, evenly divided between Pentagon and nonsecurity spending, that will go into effect in January if a deal on the debt and deficits isn’t reached. As Bob Woodward’s latest book reveals, the Obama administration devised the measure last year to include across-the-board defense cuts because it believed that slashing defense was so unthinkable that it would make compromise inevitable.
But after a grand budget deal collapsed, in large part because of resistance from House Republicans, both parties reframed sequestration as an attack on the troops (even though it has provisions that would protect military pay). The fact that sequestration would also devastate education, health and programs for children has not had the same impact.
Eisenhower understood the trade-offs between guns and butter. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he warned in 1953, early in his presidency. “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
He also knew that Congress was a big part of the problem. (In earlier drafts, he referred to the “military-industrial-Congressional” complex, but decided against alienating the legislature in his last days in office.) Today, there are just a select few in public life who are willing to question the military or its spending, and those who do — from the libertarian Ron Paul to the leftist Dennis J. Kucinich — are dismissed as unrealistic.
The fact that both President Obama and Mitt Romney are calling for increases to the defense budget (in the latter case, above what the military has asked for) is further proof that the military is the true “third rail” of American politics. In this strange universe where those without military credentials can’t endorse defense cuts, it took a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, to make the obvious point that the nation’s ballooning debt was the biggest threat to national security.
Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names.
Were Eisenhower alive, he’d be aghast at our debt, deficits and still expanding military-industrial complex. And he would certainly be critical of the “insidious penetration of our minds” by video game companies and television networks, the news media and the partisan pundits. With so little knowledge of what Eisenhower called the “lingering sadness of war” and the “certain agony of the battlefield,” they have done as much as anyone to turn the hard work of national security into the crass business of politics and entertainment.
Aaron B. O’Connell, an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer, is the author of “Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps.”
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/20/12
Military Psychiatry and Psychology Review
Suicidology Review: Durkheim, Typology of Suicides
Military Suicidology Review
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Topics Review:
Unit Cohesion
Individual and Groups
Military Groups
Structure and Function of Hierarchies
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Suicidology Review: Durkheim, Typology of Suicides
Military Suicidology Review
*
Topics Review:
Unit Cohesion
Individual and Groups
Military Groups
Structure and Function of Hierarchies
*
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/20/12
Protective and destructive effects of groups - GS
The sociological hypothesis of military suicides causation as a destructive effect of a military group (1): a conflict between an individual soldier and his group, his military unit; does not contradict the Durkheim hypothesis of protective effect of groups, as the authors try to prove, but confirms it as a more general paradigm. The authors of this interesting and valuable paper base their thinking on Durkheim's theory and try to disprove it in a particular case of suicides in the military "from within": by operating this theory's own postulates and general conceptual framework (a "paradigm"). This reminds a proverbial "fight with your own shadow". The whole Durkheim's typology of suicides and its value and utility, especially for clinical purposes, should be questioned. It is not used in practical clinical settings. It seems to me that the the simple division of suicides into psychotic and nonpsychotic might be introduced (whatever these terms mean). Suicides in the military are mostly nonpsychotic. They should be divided further, according to the relative preponderance of causative factors into:
- Situational:
caused mostly by external circumstances and as an escape from them.
- Emotional:
due to severe and continuous stresses of various kinds, when the capacity for psychological resilience is stretched to a limit, to a "breaking point". Suicide thus, paradoxically, saves the psyche's integrity, protects the"immortal soul" from its destruction by pain and demoralisation.
- As a form of a conscientious social (and/or political) protest
The latter two are interconnected and practically are the same, since they have both components.
The circumstances of various kinds are also almost always present. Therefore we can try to conceptualise various forms of suicidal behaviors as an Escape and as an Emotional and Social Protest.
Therapeutic intervention should be attempted in all three dimensions and geared specifically to them. For example, a soldier with suicidal thoughts, if they are in any way detected or suspected, might be helped with his/her bank loan, offered individual or family therapy for his/her personal and/or family problems and offered to attend an educational group if he/she does not agree with certain policies or attitudes; overtly or covertly, with the understanding that his/her disagreements or grievances will be heard and their input in resolution of the general issues like these will be appreciated.
The interventions should be attempted at earlier stages, when it did not come to suicidal thoughts yet, and should be of general, mass and routine nature. In other words this is an issue of general and preventive sanation of emotional climate in a military unit or community, including the attitudes, policies and relationships.
Due to centralised structure of military services, the TeleTherapy option with centrally managed referral, recordkeeping, sophisticated data collections and training and and research departments might be the most beneficial option.
References and Links
*
Notes
Individual and Groups
Military Groups
Structure and Function of Hierarchies
Durkheim
Typology of Suicides
The sociological hypothesis of military suicides causation as a destructive effect of a military group (1): a conflict between an individual soldier and his group, his military unit; does not contradict the Durkheim hypothesis of protective effect of groups, as the authors try to prove, but confirms it as a more general paradigm. The authors of this interesting and valuable paper base their thinking on Durkheim's theory and try to disprove it in a particular case of suicides in the military "from within": by operating this theory's own postulates and general conceptual framework (a "paradigm"). This reminds a proverbial "fight with your own shadow". The whole Durkheim's typology of suicides and its value and utility, especially for clinical purposes, should be questioned. It is not used in practical clinical settings. It seems to me that the the simple division of suicides into psychotic and nonpsychotic might be introduced (whatever these terms mean). Suicides in the military are mostly nonpsychotic. They should be divided further, according to the relative preponderance of causative factors into:
- Situational:
caused mostly by external circumstances and as an escape from them.
- Emotional:
due to severe and continuous stresses of various kinds, when the capacity for psychological resilience is stretched to a limit, to a "breaking point". Suicide thus, paradoxically, saves the psyche's integrity, protects the"immortal soul" from its destruction by pain and demoralisation.
- As a form of a conscientious social (and/or political) protest
The latter two are interconnected and practically are the same, since they have both components.
The circumstances of various kinds are also almost always present. Therefore we can try to conceptualise various forms of suicidal behaviors as an Escape and as an Emotional and Social Protest.
Therapeutic intervention should be attempted in all three dimensions and geared specifically to them. For example, a soldier with suicidal thoughts, if they are in any way detected or suspected, might be helped with his/her bank loan, offered individual or family therapy for his/her personal and/or family problems and offered to attend an educational group if he/she does not agree with certain policies or attitudes; overtly or covertly, with the understanding that his/her disagreements or grievances will be heard and their input in resolution of the general issues like these will be appreciated.
The interventions should be attempted at earlier stages, when it did not come to suicidal thoughts yet, and should be of general, mass and routine nature. In other words this is an issue of general and preventive sanation of emotional climate in a military unit or community, including the attitudes, policies and relationships.
Due to centralised structure of military services, the TeleTherapy option with centrally managed referral, recordkeeping, sophisticated data collections and training and and research departments might be the most beneficial option.
References and Links
emory.academia.edu/.../Suicide_Social_Integration_and_Masculinity...Cached
Notes
Individual and Groups
Military Groups
Structure and Function of Hierarchies
Durkheim
Typology of Suicides
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/17/12
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 4/28/12
Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay - NYTimes.com
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on April 29, 2012, on page SR12 of the National edition with the headline: Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay.
Links
Gray Matter
Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay
By RICHARD M. RYAN and WILLIAM S. RYAN
Published: April 27, 2012
WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?
Chloé Poizat
In recent years, Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute; Larry Craig, a United States senator who opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct in a men’s bathroom; and Glenn Murphy Jr., a leader of the Young Republican National Convention and an opponent of same-sex marriage, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after being accused of sexually assaulting another man.
One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation” — the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled. Even Mr. Haggard seemed to endorse this idea when, apologizing after his scandal for his anti-gay rhetoric, he said, “I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war.”
It’s a compelling theory — and now there is scientific reason to believe it. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchers provide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire.
Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.
The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.
Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.
What leads to this repression? We found that participants who reported having supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation and less susceptible to homophobia. Individuals whose sexual identity was at odds with their implicit sexual attraction were much more frequently raised by parents perceived to be controlling, less accepting and more prejudiced against homosexuals.
It’s important to stress the obvious: Not all those who campaign against gay men and lesbians secretly feel same-sex attractions. But at least some who oppose homosexuality are likely to be individuals struggling against parts of themselves, having themselves been victims of oppression and lack of acceptance. The costs are great, not only for the targets of anti-gay efforts but also often for the perpetrators. We would do well to remember that all involved deserve our compassion.
Richard M. Ryan is a professor of psychology, psychiatry and education at the University of Rochester. William S. Ryan is a doctoral student in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Citation
Database: PsycARTICLES
[ Journal Article ]
Parental autonomy support and discrepancies between implicit and explicit sexual identities: Dynamics of self-acceptance and defense.
Weinstein, Netta; Ryan, William S.; DeHaan, Cody R.; Przybylski, Andrew K.; Legate, Nicole; Ryan, Richard M.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 102(4), Apr 2012, 815-832. doi: 10.1037/a0026854
Abstract
- When individuals grow up with autonomy-thwarting parents, they may be prevented from exploring internally endorsed values and identities and as a result shut out aspects of the self perceived to be unacceptable. Given the stigmatization of homosexuality, individuals perceiving low autonomy support from parents may be especially motivated to conceal same-sex sexual attraction, leading to defensive processes such as reaction formation. Four studies tested a model wherein perceived parental autonomy support is associated with lower discrepancies between self-reported sexual orientation and implicit sexual orientation (assessed with a reaction time task). These indices interacted to predict anti-gay responding indicative of reaction formation. Studies 2–4 showed that an implicit/explicit discrepancy was particularly pronounced in participants who experienced their fathers as both low in autonomy support and homophobic, though results were inconsistent for mothers. Findings of Study 3 suggested contingent self-esteem as a link between parenting styles and discrepancies in sexual orientation measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Links
Homophobia and psychotic crimes of violence
by Denis Murphy
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology (2006)
Volume: 17, Issue: 1, Pages: 131-150
- ISSN: 14789949
- DOI: 10.1080/14789940500441477
Available from www.informaworld.com
Related research
Dave Hinsburgerin Impact Feature Issue on Violence Against Women with Developmental or Other Disabilities(2000)
Michael S Kimmel, Matthew Mahlerin American Behavioral Scientist(2003)
K Pernanenin Social Aspects of Alcoholism(1976)
S Tombsin British Journal of Criminology(2006)
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 5/6/12
Is homophobia associated with homosexual ar... [J Abnorm Psychol. 1996] - PubMed - NCBI
J Abnorm Psychol. 1996 Aug;105(3):440-5.
Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?
Source
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens 30602-3013, USA.Abstract
The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.- PMID:
- 8772014
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 5/24/12
A Way Out of the Same-Sex Marriage Mess - NYTimes.com
Mr. Obama was right both to embrace equality as a principle and to respect the process by which the understanding of marriage gradually evolves to include same-sex couples, within the premises of federalism. What is needed now is a similarly coherent and sound ruling by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Obama was right both to embrace equality as a principle and to respect the process by which the understanding of marriage gradually evolves to include same-sex couples, within the premises of federalism. What is needed now is a similarly coherent and sound ruling by the Supreme Court.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 6/11/12
Mike Nova's starred items - 9:19 PM 6/11/2012
via Psychiatric News Alert by noreply@blogger.com (Psychiatric News Alert) on 6/11/12
Among the causes to which the increase is attributed are posttraumatic stress disorder, exposure to combat, marital strife, financial problems, and the toll taken by multiple deployments. Also, seeking help for mental health problems is often seen as a sign of weakness and a barrier to advancement in the military. Psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis, M.D., a retired Army brigadier general, told the AP that these suicides are a "sign in general of the stress the Army has been under over the 10 years of war. We've seen before that these signs show up even more dramatically when the fighting seems to go down and the Army is returning to garrison."
To read much more about the problem of suicide among members of the military, see Psychiatric News here and here.
(image: Creatista/Shutterstock.com)
For previous news alerts, click here.
via psychiatric diagnosis - Google Blog Search by Yael on 6/11/12
As with any revision to American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic Manual (DSM), the release of the DSM-5 in 2013 is not without controversy. Parents of children diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, are especially concerned ...
via psychiatric diagnosis - Google Blog Search by Lisa Lambert on 6/11/12
When she was four years old, my daughter received a diagnosis of mood disorder, and when she was six, a new psychiatrist diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. I.
via Twitter / APAPsychiatric on 6/11/12
APAPsychiatric: Nominations call for 2013 American #Psychiatric Association National Election http://t.co/C8wE8ohC Send to election@psych.org #psychiatrists
via Twitter / NIMHgov on 6/11/12
NIMHgov: RT @YalePsych: We are pleased to host @NIMHgov's Dr. Pamela Collins, this Wed, to speak on global mental health. Details: http://t.co/jG ...
via Health News by Health Editor on 6/11/12
MONDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) — A seizure may be to blame for U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson’s two hit-and-run crashes that occurred Saturday in California’s San Gabriel Valley, according to a Commerce Department spokeswoman.“Secretary Bryson was involved in a traffic accident in Los Angeles over the weekend. He suffered a seizure,” Jennifer Friedman said [...]
via Psychiatric Times on 6/11/12
In light of our problems and uncertainties about the state of current psychiatry, or perhaps because of them, what might describe good psychiatry? Following are some suggestions for what we, as psychiatrists, can do.
via Health News by Health Editor on 6/11/12
MONDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) — Changes in walking speed among older adults may indicate the early stages of a type of dementia called mild cognitive impairment, researchers say. Their study included 93 people, aged 70 and older, who lived alone. Of the participants, 54 had no cognitive impairment, 31 had so-called non-memory-related mild cognitive impairment [...]
via Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health Headlines on 6/8/12
APA President-Elect Jeffrey Lieberman discusses the ongoing grief vs depression controversy. Plus, a call to place more emphasis on etiology in psychiatric diagnosis.
Medscape Psychiatry
Medscape Psychiatry
via psychiatry research - Google News on 6/11/12
Blood test to diagnose depression?
Times of India Dr Eva Redei, who developed the test, is a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, says that she finds the results of her research promising, particularly given what she calls the ... |
via psychiatry research - Google News on 6/11/12
 Medical Daily |
Even 7 Year Old Kids Harming Themselves, Study
Medical Daily A separate study published in Psychiatry Research says that children who resort to self-injury are at higher risk of attempting a suicide. According to this study, 70 percent of the children who engaged in NSSI reported a lifetime suicide attempt. Study: Even 7-year-olds sometimes hurt themselvesThe Associated Press Self-harm showing up in elementary schoolsMyFox Detroit all 204 news articles » |
via psychiatry - Google News on 6/11/12
Treating Childhood Anxiety With Computers, Not Drugs
Science Daily (press release) The understandable reluctance to use psychiatric medications when it comes to children means child psychologists are always searching for viable therapeutic alternatives. Now Prof. Yair Bar-Haim of Tel Aviv University's School of Psychological Sciences ... and more » |
via psychiatry - Google News on 6/11/12
How to End a Psychiatric Epidemic: The Redemption of Psychiatry
Psychiatric Times (blog) The Reichstag in Berlin had a sign: Willkommen, and something about psychiatry. Although I took German in high school, my German was a little rusty. I seemed to be looking around for my childhood friend who was now stationed in Germany with his wife. |
via Twitter / APAPsychiatric on 6/11/12
APAPsychiatric: RT @APP_Publishing: Military Suicides Continue Troubling Increase: Despite enhanced education and antistigma programs and increased ... ...
via psychiatric diagnosis - Google News on 6/11/12
 The Foreigner |
Breivik Trial Day 34: Diagnoses and Knights Templar called into question again
The Foreigner Breivik Trial Day 34: Diagnoses and Knights Templar called into question again. UPDATED: Today's trial witnesses included forensic psychology expert Pål Grøndahl, top Norwegian psychiatry professor Einar Kringlen and Eirik Johannesen from Bærum's ... Norway killer 'not psychotic'Herald Sun Autistic with Tourette's - but not pyschoNew Zealand Herald Norwegian court gets to heart of Breivik trial: Is he sane?Christian Science Monitor DAWN.com all 82 news articles » |
via international psychiatry journals - Google News on 6/11/12
Treating Childhood Anxiety With Computers, Not Drugs
Science Daily (press release) The results of the trial were reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Children are comfortable with computers, explains Prof. Bar-Haim. And because of the potential side effects of medications or the difficulty in obtaining cognitive behavioral ... and more » |
via NYT > Health by By BENEDICT CAREY on 6/11/12
The study found more psychological and social problems among young adults from broken homes who had a gay parent.
via Behavior and Law - General and Forensic Psychiatry News Review by Mike Nova on 6/11/12
Google Reader - General Psychiatry News
6:33 PM 6/11/2012 - General Psychiatry News
"General Psychiatry News" bundle created by Mike Nova
A bundle is a collection of blogs and websites hand-selected by your friend on a particular topic or interest. You can keep up to date with them all in one place by subscribing in Google Reader.
There are
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 9/20/12
DSM5 in Distress
The DSM's impact on mental health practice and research
by Allen Frances, M.D.
Ten suggested interventions
Published on September 19, 2012 by Allen J. Frances, M.D. in DSM5 in Distress
With understandable urgency, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has made suicide one of his top priorities, instructing commanders at all levels to feel acutely accountable for it. The numbers are startling. On average, one active duty soldier is committing suicide each day, twice the number of combat deaths and twice the civilian rate. Suicides have jumped dramatically since 2005 and increased by 18 percent in just the last year. The DOD and VA are groping for explanations and plans of action—clearly, just commanding the commanders to prevent suicide can't possibly do very much. And sadly, psychiatry has no ready or certain answers, no sure way to predict or prevent suicide. Research in this area has huge methodological problems and is unlikely to bear any low-hanging fruit. So we may have to rely on obvious, common sense suggestions...
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My Comments:
This is unconscionable! How do we care for people who defend us? Thank you again, Dr. Frances.
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Fighting the Wrong War On Drugs
Taming the pharmaceutical companies, undercutting the cartels
Published on August 28, 2012 by Allen J. Frances, M.D. in DSM5 in Distress
Since Richard Nixon was President, we have been fighting a drug war we can't possibly win. Meanwhile, we have barely begun to fight a different drug war we couldn't possibly lose.
The losing battle is against illegal drugs. Interdiction has been as big a bust as Prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s. Occasionally arresting a drug kingpin or confiscating a few million of dollars worth of contraband heroin or cocaine makes for a nice headline, but doesn't stop the flow.
The beneficiaries of our war on drugs have been the cartels and the narco-terrorists; the casualties are the failing states they can buy or bully. The Mexican government is fighting what amounts to an undeclared civil war against cartels armed to the teeth and flowing with money -- both from north of the border. We have unwittingly created a terrific business model for the drug dealers and a disaster for the states where they deal.
The losing battle is against illegal drugs. Interdiction has been as big a bust as Prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s. Occasionally arresting a drug kingpin or confiscating a few million of dollars worth of contraband heroin or cocaine makes for a nice headline, but doesn't stop the flow.
The beneficiaries of our war on drugs have been the cartels and the narco-terrorists; the casualties are the failing states they can buy or bully. The Mexican government is fighting what amounts to an undeclared civil war against cartels armed to the teeth and flowing with money -- both from north of the border. We have unwittingly created a terrific business model for the drug dealers and a disaster for the states where they deal.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 9/27/12
PRISBS: Puerto Rico Institute for Strategic Behavioral Studies
Proposal
working draft outline
Divisions:
- Studies in Military Psychiatry and Psychology, with primary focus on the problem of suicide and other abnormal psychosocial behaviors.
- Behavioral Criminology and Forensic Studies; forensic psychiatry and psychology.
- Transcultural Studies of Puerto Rican nationalism and the issues of integration; strategic Latin American Studies.
- Studies in Behavioral Economics and market behaviors.
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via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/19/12
Suicidology - Links List
suicide epidemiology
suicidal signs
psychometric assessment of suicidal risk - Google Search
suicide research - GS
Military Suicide Research Consortium
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The likelihood of suicide attempts are increased in both gay males and lesbians, as well as bisexuals of both sexes when compared to their heterosexual counterparts.[19][20][21] The trend of having a higher incident rate among females is no exception with lesbians or bisexual females and when compared with homosexual males, lesbians are more likely to attempt than gay or bisexual males.[22]
Studies vary with just how increased the risk is compared to heterosexuals with a low of 0.8-1.1 times more likely for females[23] and 1.5-2.5 times more likely for males.[24][25] The highs reach 4.6 more likely in females[26] and 14.6 more likely in males.[27]
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Historical trends
Historical data show lower suicide rates during periods of war.[45][46][47]
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suicide epidemic - Google Search
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military suicide epidemilogy
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Military Psychiatry - Google Search
military psychiatrist - Google Search
by P SAFETY - Related articles
Review the current evidence detailing suicide epidemiology in the military. • Identify “best-practice” suicide-prevention programs. • Describe and catalog ...
military suicidology
The John Snow Handle
psychiatric epidemiology
exponential fashion
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suicide epidemiology
suicidal signs
psychometric assessment of suicidal risk - Google Search
suicide research - GS
Military Suicide Research Consortium
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Sexual orientation and suicide
See also: Homosexuality and psychology
Studies vary with just how increased the risk is compared to heterosexuals with a low of 0.8-1.1 times more likely for females[23] and 1.5-2.5 times more likely for males.[24][25] The highs reach 4.6 more likely in females[26] and 14.6 more likely in males.[27]
...
Historical trends
Historical data show lower suicide rates during periods of war.[45][46][47]
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suicide epidemic - Google Search
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military suicide epidemilogy
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Military Psychiatry - Google Search
military psychiatrist - Google Search
latent homosexuality - GS
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understanding latent homosexuality - GS
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latent homosexuality test - GS
latent homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military suicides - GS
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understanding latent homosexuality - GS
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latent homosexuality test - GS
latent homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us - GS
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homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military - GS
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latent homosexuality us military suicides - GS
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air force suicides
navy suicides
national guard suicides
us military suicides 2012
us military suicides on the rise
us military suicides 2011
us military suicides by year
number of us military suicides 2011
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us military suicide rate - GS
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us military suicides statistics - GS
us military suicide rate - GS
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us military suicides statistics - GS
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The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U.S. Military
www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/.../2011/RAND_MG953.pdf
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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobatby P SAFETY - Related articles
Review the current evidence detailing suicide epidemiology in the military. • Identify “best-practice” suicide-prevention programs. • Describe and catalog ...
military suicidology
The John Snow Handle
psychiatric epidemiology
exponential fashion
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Suicide as epiphenomenon
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* Recognizing the Warning Signs of Suicide WebMD SUICIDE WARNING -- Depression carries a high risk of suicide. Anybody who expresses suicidal thoughts or intentions should be taken very seriously. Do not hesitate to call your local suicide hotline immediately. Call 800-SUICIDE (800-784-2433) or 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255) or the deaf hotline at 800-799-4889. The best way to minimize the risk of suicide is to know the risk factors and to recognize the warning signs of suicide. Take these signs seriously. Know how to respond to them. It could save someone's life. How Prevalent Is Suicide?Suicide is a potentially preventable public health problem. In 2009, the last year for which statistics are available, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. That year, there were nearly 37,000 suicides, and 1 million people attempted suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.Men take their lives nearly four times the rate of women, accounting for 79% of suicides in the U.S. Are There Risk Factors for Suicide?Risk factors for suicide vary by age, gender, and ethnic group. And risk factors often occur in combinations.Over 90% of people who die by suicide have clinical depression or another diagnosable mental disorder. Many times, people who die by suicide have a substance abuse problem. Often they have that problem in combination with other mental disorders. Adverse or traumatic life events in combination with other risk factors, such as clinical depression, may lead to suicide. But suicide and suicidal behavior are never normal responses to stress. Other risk factors for suicide include:
Are There Warning Signs of Suicide?Warning signs that someone may be thinking about or planning to commit suicide include:
Further Reading:
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American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Resources
Bibliography
Blumenthal, Susan and Kupfer, David, (Eds.) Suicide over the life cycle: Risk factors, assessment, and treatment of suicidal patients. Wash., DC: Amer. Psych. Press, 1990.
Hendin, Herbert. Suicide in America. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.
Maltsberger, J.T. Essential papers on suicide.1996.
Schneidman, Edwin. Definition of suicide. Jason Aronson, 1985.
American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research.Calling from the rim: Suicidal behavior among American Indian and Alaska Native adolescents. Volume 4, Monograph. Denver, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1994.
Bell, Ruth and Lenizeiger Wildflower. Talking with your teenager. New York: Random House, 1983.
Blumenthal, Susan J. and Kupfer, David J. (Eds.). Suicide over the life cycle. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1990.
Borst, Sophie R. Adolescent suicidal behavior: A Clinical-Developmental Perspective. 1960.
Carlson, Trudy. The Suicide of My son: A Story of Childhood Depression. Minnesota: Benline Press, 1995.
Farberow; Norman. Many Faces Of Suicide: Indirect Self-Destructive Behavior. New York: McGraw Hill, 1979.
Farberow; Norman and Schneidman, E.S. The cry for help.New York: McGraw Hill, 1961.
Garland, Sherry. I never knew your name. New York: Ticknor & Fields Books for Young Readers, 1994.
Gordon, Sol. When living hurts. New York: UAHC Press, 1985.
Hendin, Herbert. Suicide in America. W.W. Norton & Company, 1995.
Holinger, Paul. Suicide and homicide among adolescents.Guilford Publications, 1994.
Hyde, Margaret O. and Forsyth, Elizabeth H. Suicide: The Hidden Epidemic. CompCare Publishers, 1978.
Klagsbrun, F. Too Young to Die: Youth and suicide. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.
Klerman, Gerald (Ed.). Suicide & depression among adolescents & young adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1986.
Lettieri, D.J. (Ed.). Drugs and suicide: When other coping strategies fail. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979.
Noam, Gil G. and Borst, Sophie (Eds.). Children, Youth, And Suicide: Developmental Perspectives. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 1994.
Peck, M.L., Farberow, N.L., and Litman, R.E. (Eds.). Youth suicide. New York: Springer, 1985.
Perlin, S. (Ed.). A Handbook for the Study of Suicide.New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Pfeffer, C.R. The suicidal child. New York: Guilford Publications, 1986.
Rabkin, B. Growing Up Dead. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Ltd., 1978.
Rotheram-Borus, Mary J., Bradley, Jon, and Obolensky, Nina.Planning to live: Evaluating and treating suicidal teens in community settings. National Resource Center for Youth Services, 1990.
Shneidman, Edwin. Definitions of suicide. John Wiley & Sons, 1985.
Slaby, Andrew and Garfinkel, Lili Frank. No One Saw My Pain: Why Teens Kill Themselves. 1995.
Sudak, H., Ford, A.B. and Rushforth, N.B. (Eds.). Suicide in the Young. Boston: John Wright/ PSG, Inc., 1984.
Hipple, J. and P. Combolic (Eds.). The Counselor and Suicidal Crisis: Diagnosis and Intervention. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1979.
Leenaars, Antoon. Treatment of suicidal people. Hemisphere Publications, 1994.
McEvoy, Alan. Preventing youth suicide. 1994.
Mufson, Laura, Donna Moreau, Myrna Weissman, Gerald Klerman.Interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents. New York: Guilford Press, 1993.
Schneidman, E.S. Psychology of Suicide: A clinician's guide to evaluation and treatment. 1995.
Zimmerman, James and Asnis, Gregory. Treatment approaches with suicidal adolescents. John Wiley & Sons, 1995.
Alexander, Paul. Rough magic: A biography of Sylvia Plath. New York: Penguin Group, 1991.
American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research.Calling from the rim: Suicidal behavior among American Indian and Alaska Native adolescents. Volume 4, Monograph. Denver, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1994.
Bender, David L., Leone, Bruno and Roleff, Tamara. Suicide: Opposing viewpoints. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1998.
Brown, George W. and Harris, Tirril. Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women. New York: The Free Press, 1978.
Carlson, Trudy. The suicide of my son: A story of childhood depression. Minnesota: Benline Press, 1995.
Cobain, Bev. When Nothing Matters Anymore: A survival guide for depressed teens. Minnesota: Free Spirit Publishing, Inc., 1998.
Conroy, David L. Out of the nightmare: recovery from depression and suicidal pain. New York: New Liberty Press, 1991.
Cook, John. How to help someone who is depressed, or suicidal: Practical suggestions from a survivor. Connecticut: Rubicon Press, Inc., 1993.
Cronkite, Kathy. On the edge of darkness. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Ellis, Thomas E. and Newman, Cory F. Choosing to live: How to defeat suicide through cognitive therapy. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 1996.
Gordon, Sol. When living hurts. New York: UAHC Press, 1985.
Griffith, Gail. Will’s Choice: A Suicidal Teen, a Desperate Mother and a Chronicle of Recovery. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Grinker, Roy R., Miller, Julian, Sabshin, Melvin, Nunn, Robert, and Nunnally, Jum. The phenomena of depressions. Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1961.
Hoch, Paul H. and Zubin, Joseph. Depression. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1954.
Klerman, Gerald L., Weissman, Myrna M., Rounsaville, Bruce J., and Chevron, Eve S. Interpersonal psychotherapy of depression. Basic Books, 1984.
Lesser, Rika. All we need of hell: Poems. Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1995.
McIntosh, John L., Santos, John F., Hubbard, Richard W., and Overholser, James C. Elder suicide: Research, theory and treatment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.
Mufson, Laura, Moreau, Donna, Weissman, Myrna M., and Klerman, Gerald L. Interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents. Guilford Press, 1995.
Papolos, Demitri and Papolos, Janice. Overcoming depression. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Roy, Alec (Ed.). Suicide. Williams & Wilkins, 1986.
Shneidman, Edwin S., Farberow, Norman L. and Litman, Robert E.The Psychology of Suicide. New York: Science House, 1970.
Slaby, Andrew and Garfinkel, Lili F. No one saw my pain: Why teens kill themselves. W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.
Styron, William. Darkness visible: A memoir of madness.New York: Random House, 1990.
Alexander, Paul. Rough magic: A biography of Sylvia Plath. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Canetto, Silvia. Women and suicidal behavior. Springer Publications, 1994.
Hendin, Herbert. Seduced by death: Doctors, patients, and the Dutch cure. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Jamison, Kay. Touched with fire: Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament. New York: The Free Press, 1993.
McIntosh, John. Elder suicide: Research, theory, and treatment. American Psychological Assoc., 1994.
Pfeffer, Cynthia. The suicidal child. New York: Guilford Publications, 1986.
Rosenberg, Mark and Mary Ann Fenly (Eds.) Violence in America: A public health approach. New York: Oxford Press, 1991.
Styron, William. Darkness visible. New York: Random House, 1990.
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The latest data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 38,364 suicide deaths were reported in the U.S. in 2010. This latest rise places suicide again as the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. Nationally, the suicide rate increased 3.9 percent over 2009 to equal approximately 12.4 suicides per 100,000 people. The rate of suicide has been increasing since 2000. This is the highest rate of suicide in 15 years.
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A suicide crisis is a time-limited occurrence signaling immediate danger of suicide. Suicide risk, by contrast, is a broader term that includes the above factors such as age and sex, psychiatric diagnosis, past suicide attempts, and traits like impulsivity. The signs of crisis are:
Warning Signs of Suicide Suicide can be prevented. While some suicides occur without any outward warning, most people who are suicidal do give warnings. Prevent the suicide of loved ones by learning to recognize the signs of someone at risk, taking those signs seriously and knowing how to respond to them. Warning signs of suicide include:
* When You Fear Someone May Take Their Life Most suicidal individuals give some warning of their intentions. The most effective way to prevent a friend or loved one from taking his or her life is to recognize the factors that put people at risk for suicide, take warning signs seriously and know how to respond. Know the FactsPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERSMore than 90 percent of people who kill themselves are suffering from one or more psychiatric disorders, in particular:
The core symptoms of major depression are a "down" or depressed mood most of the day or a loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were previously enjoyed for at least two weeks, as well as:
Between 25 and 50 percent of people who kill themselves had previously attempted suicide. Those who have made suicide attempts are at higher risk for actually taking their own lives. Availability of means
Recognize the Imminent DangersThe signs that most directly warn of suicide include:
Take it Seriously
* |
Mike Nova's starred items
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 10/21/12
Dance Therapy Links
Principles
The theory of DMT is based upon the idea that “the body and mind are inseparable”.[3]
“Dance movement therapy rests on certain theoretical principles. These are:
- Body and mind interact, so that a change in movement will affect total functioning
- Movement reflects personality
- The therapeutic relationship is mediated at least to some extent non-verbally, for
- example through the therapist mirroring the client’s movement
- Movement contains a symbolic function and as such can be evidence of unconscious process
- Movement improvisation allows the client to experiment with new ways of being
- DMT allows for the recapitulation of early object relationships by virtue of the largely non-verbal mediation of the latter”[4]
Links
gurdjieff - GS
gurdjieff dance - GS
war dance - GS
A war dance is a dance involving mock combat, usually in reference to tribal warrior societies where such dances were performed as a ritual connected with endemic warfare. Martial arts in various cultures can be performed in dance-like settings for various reasons, such as for evoking ferocity in preparation for battle or showing off skill in a more stylized manner. Many such martial arts incorporate music, especially strong percussive rhythms
See also
External links
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Notes
Seriously consider and explore the possibilities and advantages of Dance Therapy - GS
Let the "gay" and the "straight" guys and garls dance War Dances together. It probably will bond them together as nothing else.
Hire the best dance therapists and composers to create a new therapeutic movement: Military Dance Therapy.
War Dances - YouTube
American Indian Ceremonial and War Dances
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Immortals - Dance with Sabers LIVE. "Georgian Fire" National Ballet Metekhi Potskhishvili
Uploaded by david potskhishvili on Apr 6, 2010
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Liberace playing Saber Dance
Uploaded by showmanlee on Aug 7, 2008
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PROKOFIEV - Romeo & Juliet - Ballet
Seriously consider and explore the possibilities and advantages of Dance Therapy - GS
Let the "gay" and the "straight" guys and garls dance War Dances together. It probably will bond them together as nothing else.
Hire the best dance therapists and composers to create a new therapeutic movement: Military Dance Therapy.
War Dances - YouTube
American Indian Ceremonial and War Dances
Uploaded by diggsduke on Jun 20, 2011
From a compilation of Native American music entitled "American Indian Ceremonial and War Dances"
Immortals - Dance with Sabers LIVE. "Georgian Fire" National Ballet Metekhi Potskhishvili
Uploaded by david potskhishvili on Apr 6, 2010
Immortals - Dance with Sabers LIVE. "Georgian Fire" National Ballet Metekhi Potskhishvili
Национальный балет Грузии «МЕТЕХИ» имини: Поцхишвили. с программой ''Огонь Грузии''
Национальный балет Грузии «МЕТЕХИ» имини: Поцхишвили. с программой ''Огонь Грузии''
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Liberace playing Saber Dance
Uploaded by showmanlee on Aug 7, 2008
Here is Liberace performing Saber Dance from the 50's
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Prokofiev - Dance of the Knights - YouTube Search
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Prokofiev - Dance of the Knights - YouTube Search
PROKOFIEV - Romeo & Juliet - Ballet
Uploaded by mihmoh on Aug 5, 2007
PROKOFIEV - Romeo and Juliet - Opéra National Paris - Nureyev - Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris - Monique Loudières - Manuel Legris
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/3/12
via NYT > U.S. by By JAMES RISEN on 11/2/12
One sergeant’s account of abuse suggests that more than 20 years after Tailhook, the infamous 1991 scandal involving Navy fighter pilots, little has changed in the insular fighter pilot culture.
November 2, 2012
Military Has Not Solved Problem of Sexual Assault, Women Say
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON — Jennifer Smith, an Air Force technical sergeant, walked into the office of a senior officer at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea with an armful of paperwork. Instead of signing the documents, she said, he insisted that she sit down. “He said to me, ‘It’s Friday afternoon, why don’t you take off your blouse and get comfortable?’ ” Sergeant Smith recalled.
In Germany, a master sergeant who offered to escort her home tried to sexually assault her, she said, and was deterred only when co-workers intervened. At Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where she eventually complained about pornography and other graphic material on her unit’s computers, a supervisor warned her to keep quiet, she said.
During her 17-year career as an enlisted woman performing administrative work for Air Force fighter squadrons, Sergeant Smith said, she has endured repeated sexual assaults and harassment. She said she has decided to speak out now after keeping silent for many years because senior officers were involved or appeared to tolerate improper behavior by fighter pilots, one of the military’s most elite groups.
“I learned quickly that the enlisted females who do well are the ones who keep their mouths shut,” said Sergeant Smith, who filed a formal complaint last month charging that the Air Force has turned a blind eye to pervasive sexual attacks and harassment against women. “It’s a career ender to come forward.”
The Air Force declined to comment on her allegations, citing privacy laws, but said it acts to combat such misconduct. “The goal for sexual assault in the United States Air Force is zero,” Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff, said in a written statement. “If you’re a commander or a supervisor and you are not directly and aggressively involved in speaking up about this issue in your unit, then you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
Faced with lawsuits and mounting evidence of widespread sexual abuse in the military, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta acknowledged this year that the number of sexual assaults in the military is probably far higher than the official statistics show, because so many episodes are covered up. More than 3,000 sexual assault cases were reported in 2011 throughout all of the military services, but Mr. Panetta said that the actual figures could be as high as 19,000.
The Defense Department has found that about one in three women in the military has been sexually assaulted, compared with one in six civilian women. About 20 percent of female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced some form of sexual assault or related trauma, according to the Veterans Administration. “Despite the implementation of prevention programs and improved reporting mechanisms, female soldiers continue to experience sexual harassment and assault and are reluctant to report incidences,” a 2011 Labor Department report concluded.
Susan Burke, a Washington lawyer representing women who said they were victims of sexual assault or harassment and who have filed a series of lawsuits against the Pentagon beginning last year, said that since then more than 500 additional women, including Sergeant Smith, and a few men, have contacted her for help.
The Air Force and other services have instituted programs to deter abuses and discipline those who commit them. But Sergeant Smith, who is still on active duty with the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw, and others in the Air Force said that many women are skeptical.
Air Force Technical Sgt. Kimberly Davis, assigned to Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York, said that after she reported being raped, officers on the base, including one assigned to handle sexual assault cases, conspired to cover up the episode. “The sexual assault program in the Air Force is a joke,” she said.
Lola Miles, a former Air Force helicopter mechanic at Hurlburt Field in Florida, said that when she told senior officers that a male co-worker had repeatedly hit her at work and made vulgar remarks to her, they joked about it. Instead of taking action against her co-worker, she said, the leaders in her unit sought to discredit her and force her out of the Air Force. Both she and Sergeant Davis have filed lawsuits against the Air Force.
Sergeant Smith, 35, has worked with fighter squadrons inside the United States and overseas for most of her career. Her account of abuse suggests that more than 20 years after Tailhook, the infamous 1991 scandal involving Navy fighter pilots, little has changed in the insular fighter pilot culture.
“They can’t deal with women in fighter squadrons,” Sergeant Smith said. “The military is going ahead with getting rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ but they still aren’t even ready to deal with women.
“The pilots know we think of them like our heroes,” she added. “It’s just a game to them, really.”
Sergeant Smith’s allegations could not be independently confirmed because she had not formally reported the episodes, many of which happened years ago, until now. Several other people in the Air Force who she said knew of some of the episodes, including her husband, who is an enlisted man in the 20th Fighter Wing, declined to be interviewed for this article, citing fears of retribution. Her wing commander, Col. Clay W. Hall, did not address any specifics, but said in a written statement: “We take these matters with utmost seriousness. All allegations of misconduct are investigated immediately and actions are taken appropriately.”
Sergeant Smith’s written administrative complaint filed with the Air Force notes that she has consistently received high marks in performance reviews. She joined the Air Force in 1995, out of high school in Salamanca, N.Y. The next year, during her first overseas temporary duty assignment at Sembach Air Base in Germany, she was assaulted by a master sergeant in his room after a night of drinking, she said. Male co-workers who came to the rescue warned that the sergeant had a reputation for preying on young enlisted women, she said.
At Kunsan in South Korea in 2001, Sergeant Smith said, she was walking in the America Town bar district near the base when a group of fighter pilots rushed out of a bar, carried her inside and threw her on top of a table. About 30 pilots crowded around. She had been caught up in a “sweep,” when fighter pilots grab women off the street for “naming ceremonies,” or drinking parties to celebrate a pilot’s new nickname. “Some of the pilots called Kunsan ‘the land of do as you please,’ ” Sergeant Smith said. “They could get away with anything.”
That same year, while attending a party at the base commander’s home at Kunsan, several pilots grabbed her and bound her and a pilot together with duct tape despite her resistance, she said. Twenty or more pilots gathered around, but nothing was done to stop it.
When she was transferred to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, Sergeant Smith, by then married to the enlisted man in her unit, attended a family event in 2003 with the squadron at the Arizona Diamondbacks stadium, where an Air Force pilot made sexual remarks to her in front of her husband. The couple went back to the base and complained to the operations director of their squadron about the harassment she endured, she said.
Nothing came of it, but when she arrived at her next assignment at Shaw, a supervisor pulled her aside and said she had a reputation for being too outspoken. “He said he wanted to make sure I understood my place in the world, and if not, things could be harder on me,” she recalled.
She said she finally got fed up and decided to go public after discovering large collections of pornography and other sexually graphic and offensive materials stored on the unit’s computers and in a vault supposedly reserved for classified documents at Shaw. She complained to senior officers, who promised they would get rid of the materials, but then did nothing.
“I’ve been able to serve my country, but I’ve also had to put up with a lot,” the sergeant said. “I want it to be changed.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 2, 2012
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misstated who had just returned from Iraq. Jennifer Smith, an Air Force technical sergeant, had just returned, not her husband, who, as the article noted, is an enlisted man in the 20th Fighter Wing.
*Correction: November 2, 2012
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misstated who had just returned from Iraq. Jennifer Smith, an Air Force technical sergeant, had just returned, not her husband, who, as the article noted, is an enlisted man in the 20th Fighter Wing.
via NYT > U.S. by By JAMES RISEN on 11/2/12
One sergeant’s account of abuse suggests that more than 20 years after Tailhook, the infamous 1991 scandal involving Navy fighter pilots, little has changed in the insular fighter pilot culture.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 11/3/12
via NYT > Home Page by By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on 11/2/12
For nearly six years, a senior Secret Service agent kept his extramarital affair with a Mexican woman a secret from the agency responsible for protecting the president.
November 2, 2012
Secret Service Agent Who Hid Affair Kills Himself
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — For nearly six years, a senior Secret Service agent kept his extramarital affair with a Mexican woman a secret from the agency responsible for protecting the president.
But in the wake of an embarrassing prostitution scandal involving 13 agents and officers, Rafael Prieto's secret was revealed by a fellow employee amid concerns the Secret Service wasn't enforcing its rules consistently. With an internal investigation ongoing, Prieto apparently committed suicide last week, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Prieto, a married father assigned to the security detail for President Barack Obama, admitted the years-long relationship with a woman from Mexico to U.S. investigators when confronted. Before his death, he was the subject of an investigation focused on whether he violated agency rules that require disclosing relationships with foreigners, those familiar with the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Prieto's death or the investigation.
Secret Service rules require that employees with a security clearance notify the agency about any relationship with a foreign citizen to ensure that the person is not a risk to national security. There is no evidence that Prieto's relationship posed any security threat. Failing to disclose such a relationship would be not be a crime, but a violation of the agency's administrative rules.
Prieto was serving on the protective detail for Obama, though he was not on duty at the time of his death. As recently as 2009, he was identified as the resident agent in charge at the Secret Service's office in White Plains, N.Y. He had worked for the Secret Service for 22 years. He was 47, according to public records.
Prieto's apparent cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. He was found in his car with the engine running. His death was being investigated by Metropolitan Police in Washington and the medical examiner's office.
"Rafael Prieto had a distinguished 20-year career with the Secret Service that was marked by accomplishment, dedication and friendships," agency spokesman Edwin Donovan said in a statement. "The Secret Service is mourning the loss of a valued colleague."
The Secret Service protects the lives of the president, vice president and their families, and also investigates counterfeiting, bank fraud, computer hacking and other financial crimes.
The behavior of Secret Service agents and officers has come under scrutiny since 13 employees were implicated in a prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, in April.
Those employees were in the Caribbean resort city in advance of Obama's arrival for a South American summit. After a night of heavy partying in some of Cartagena's bars and clubs, the employees brought women, including prostitutes, back to the where they were staying. The incident became public after one agent refused to pay a prostitute and argued with her in a hotel hallway. Prieto was never in Colombia during the scandal.
Eight of those Secret Service employees have been forced out of the agency, three were cleared of serious misconduct and at least two are fighting to get their jobs back.
The scandal prompted Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan to issue a new code of conduct that barred employees from drinking within 10 hours of the start of a shift or bringing foreigners to their hotel rooms.
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via NYT > World by By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and RICK GLADSTONE on 11/2/12
A new video that seems to show Syrian rebels summarily executing a group of captured soldiers or militiamen could, if verified, represent evidence of a war crime, the United Nations said on Friday.
via NYT > World by By MARTIN FACKLER on 11/2/12
Japanese leaders reacted angrily on Friday after the police on Okinawa said a United States Air Force serviceman was suspected of assaulting a 13-year-old boy.
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 1/20/13
Sex is major reason military commanders are fired
via AP Top Headlines At 8 a.m. EST by By LOLITA C. BALDOR on 1/20/13
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, fired from his command in Afghanistan last May and now facing a court-martial on charges of sodomy, adultery and pornography and more, is just one in a long line of commanders whose careers were ended because of possible sexual misconduct....
via BEHAVIOR AND LAW - General, Forensic, Military and Prison Psychiatry News by Mike Nova on 2/2/13
(title unknown):
The Complicated World of Higher Education for Troops and Veterans
www.nytimes.com
With more than $10 billion being spent this year educating troops and veterans, the order has been given: help them graduate. But how?
The Complicated World of Higher Education for Troops and Veterans
www.nytimes.com
With more than $10 billion being spent this year educating troops and veterans, the order has been given: help them graduate. But how?
Veterans Make Up Shrinking Percentage of Suicides »
The convergence reflects the fact that suicide numbers are rising slightly among both veterans and everyone else, but has increased more in the general population.
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