 GlobalPost | Peru prison: from pot smoke to pottery class GlobalPost There's nothing quite like Lurigancho, Peru's largest prison, reputedly one of the toughest in South America. GlobalPost gets inside, and finds some surprises. LIMA, Peru — Salsa blares from the cells and the pungent smell of cannabis smoke hangs in ... |
Tear gas at Venezuela prison after gunfire erupts Las Vegas Sun AP Gunfire erupted at a Venezuelan prison on Tuesday, prompting National Guard troops to use tear gas as they sought to take back control from armed inmates. Venezuela's government is trying to close La Planta prison following two escape attempts and ... |
In Venezuela's prisons, inmates are the wardens
GlobalPost There's always a party, everyone is armed, and prisoners sometimes engage in gladiatorial fights to the death. CARACAS, Venezuela — A cloud of marijuana bounces along with the bass line from a stack of six-foot high speakers in the corner of this ... Tear gas at Venezuela prison after gunfire eruptsLas Vegas Sun all 2 news articles » Read More
There’s always a party, everyone is armed, and prisoners sometimes engage in gladiatorial fights to the death.
There's nothing quite like Lurigancho, Peru’s largest prison. GlobalPost gets inside, and finds some surprises.
With prisons overloaded, police turned anything from old buses to horse stables into detention centers. Rio de Janeiro is cracking down.
The region’s overcrowded prisons are deadly and churn out the real hardened criminals.
Some of Mexico's prisons are out of control and ill-equipped to handle the glut of inmates. While politicos fiddle, prisoners break out.
Prison overcrowding is a big concern throughout much of the Americas. GlobalPost maps out prison populations and capacity by country.
Prison riots in Venezuela. Jailbreaks in Mexico. Prison fires in Honduras. Latin America is displaying violent cases of the ails of its prison systems. Overcrowded and rundown, many of the region’s jails are out of control and ready to burst. In this in-depth series, GlobalPost gets inside some of the most violent jailhouses of the Americas to figure out what’s gone horribly wrong. 
There’s always a party, everyone is armed, and prisoners sometimes engage in gladiatorial fights to the death.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Through the darkness, noise and the bustling crowd, it takes a moment before you notice that everyone here is carrying a machine gun, a rifle or pistol — not slung over their backs or tucked into their pants, but menacingly prone. Others toss grenades up and down or sharpen knives while enjoying the cocktail of drugs and music.
There's nothing quite like Lurigancho, Peru’s largest prison. GlobalPost gets inside, and finds some surprises.
The region’s overcrowded prisons are deadly and churn out the real hardened criminals.
With prisons overloaded, police turned anything from old buses to horse stables into detention centers. Rio de Janeiro is cracking down.
Some of Mexico's prisons are out of control and ill-equipped to handle the glut of inmates. While politicos fiddle, prisoners break out.
Occupancy levels of prisons by country in 2011(All data was provided by the International Center for Prison Studies)Comparing 1992 and 2010 incarceration rates by countryComparing 1992 and 2010 prison population growth by country> |
 Scientific American (blog) | How do controversial revisions in psychiatry's guidebook make you feel? Philadelphia Inquirer By Stacey Burling When upward of 10000 members of the American Psychiatric Association meet here this weekend, they'll be met by protesters - there are always protesters - and tough questions about where their profession is headed and how it will ... A Major Transformation in Psychiatry?Medscape APA Announces New Changes to Drafts of the DSM-5, Psychiatry's New “Bible”Scientific American (blog) Last chance to comment on psychiatry's controversial diagnostic 'bible'MinnPost.com (blog) TIME -Age of Autism all 27 news articles » |
[T]he D.S.M. is the victim of its own success and is accorded the authority of a bible in areas well beyond its competence. It has become the arbiter of who is ill and who is not — and often the primary determinant of treatment decisions, insurance eligibility, disability payments and who gets special school services. D.S.M. drives the direction of research and the approval of new drugs. It is widely used (and misused) in the courts....Frances rejects the accusation that the D.S.M. is "shilling for drug companies":
The mistakes are rather the result of an intellectual conflict of interest; experts always overvalue their pet area and want to expand its purview, until the point that everyday problems come to be mislabeled as mental disorders. Arrogance, secretiveness, passive governance and administrative disorganization have also played a role....
Psychiatric diagnosis is simply too important to be left exclusively in the hands of psychiatrists....
Experts in Philly describe mysteries of polyamory: When one lover isn't enough Philadelphia Inquirer A panel of experts at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Philadelphia last week said that open relationships between more than two people can work, but it requires a lot of talk about rules, boundaries, and time spent with various lovers. |
Diagnosing the DSM New York Times AT its annual meeting this week, the American Psychiatric Association did two wonderful things: it rejected one reckless proposal that would have exposed nonpsychotic children to unnecessary and dangerous antipsychotic medication and another that would ... and more » |
 Independent Online | For women prisoners, a bittersweet Mother's Day behind bars Chicago Tribune CHINO, California (Reuters) - On a recent Saturday morning, hundreds of sleepy children tumbled out of buses and into a dusty jail parking lot in southern California to pay a rare visit to their mothers in prison. A hundred feet (Thirty meters) away, ... Mother's Day event provides children opportunity to see moms behind barsmsnbc.com (blog) A bittersweet Mother's Day for those behind barsTVNZ all 27 news articles » |
While no psychiatric syndrome has yet been fully validated by a complete series of steps, a great deal of work has been published indicating that substantial validation is possible. This communication is a summary of that work in the form of specific diagnostic criteria.
It will be apparent below that certain diagnoses are mutually exclusive (primary affective disorders and schizophrenia), while others may be made in the same patient (antisocial personality disorder with alcoholism or drug dependency ; hysteria or anxiety neurosis with secondary depression). More work will be necessary before the full significance of various diagnostic combinations becomes evident.
An outsider-insider’s views about revising the DSMs
by Spitzer RL.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 1991 100[3]:294-296.
…In discussing the development of DSM-III, Widiger et al. noted the increasing role of empirical validation in psychiatry and the five phases for validating a psychiatric diagnosis proposed by Robins and Guze. Their approach led Robins and Guze to recognize only 16 diagnoses that they believed had been validated by follow-up and family studies [Feighner et al., 1972]. Clearly, if the DSM-III Task Force had adopted this strategy, as Widiger et al. implied, it would not have recommended that DSM-III include over 200 categories — most of which were included on the basis of expert clinical judgment [face validity] alone. The Task Force recognized, correctly I believe, that limiting DSM-III to only those categories that had been fully validated by empirical studies would be at the least a serious obstacle to the widespread use of the manual by mental health professionals. The approach that was adopted by the DSM-III Task Force, from Robins and Guze’s recommendations, was the use of specified diagnostic criteria for virtually all of the disorders—the major innovation of DSM-III.
Expert Consensus Versus Empirical Basis: It is understandable that Widiger et al. (1991) emphasized the many ways in which DSM-IV can improve on the process involved in the development of DSM-III and DSM-III-R, such as by systematically reviewing the relevant literature, documenting the rationale for all changes, and conducting many focused field trials. The DSM-IV leadership is to be congratulated for the tremendous effort that is involved in these projects. However, I am troubled by the tendency [intended or not] to play down the major role that expert consensus will have in the final decision-making process for DSM-IV. My own prediction is that when final decisions are made about DSM-IV, they will still be based primarily on expert consensus, rather than on data, as was the case with the DSM-III and DSM-III-R…
Are DSM-III and DSM-II1-R Atheoretical With Regard to Etiology? As is well known, the developers of DSM-III and DSM-IIIR claim that—with only a few exceptions, such as the organic mental disorders and adjustment disorder—the classification does not subscribe to any particular etiologic theories. For example, some investigators who have studied panic disorder believe that the disorder arises from learned avoidance responses to conditioned somatic symptoms of anxiety; other investigators believe the disorder results from a dysregulation of biological systems mediating separation anxiety. However, neither etiologic theory has any effect on the diagnostic criteria for the disorder, which are solely based on the descriptive features of the disorder. Therefore, I am puzzled by Millon’s (1991) statement that "despite assertions to the contrary, recent DSMs are a product of implicit causal or etiologic speculation"…
On Values in Recent American Psychiatric Classification
by John Z. Sadler, Yosaf F. Huglus and George J. Agich
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1994 19:261-277.
The DSM-IV, like its predecessors, will be a major influence on American psychiatry. As a consequence, continuing analysis of its assumptions is essential. Review of the manuals as well as conceptually-oriented literature on DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV reveals that the authors of these classifications have paid little attention to the explicit and implicit value commitments made by the classifications. The response to DSM criticisms and controversy has often been to incorporate more scientific diversity into the classification, instead of careful inquiry and assessment of the principal values that drive the nosologic process. Implications for psychiatric science and future DSM classifications are discussed.
One reason why value conflict is not seen as such by DSM-IV – and its predecessors, to be sure – is the apparent adherence of the Task Force to a particular view of classification and science. A large literature establishes that medical practice [and scientific practice as well], including classification, necessarily involves value commitments… For a psychiatric classification example, consider the above mentioned dispute over DSM-III/III-R’s descriptive terms. Psychodynamically oriented psychiatrists believe the nosology ignored theoretically important terms essential to their practice [such as "neurosis" and "defense mechanism"]. The syndromatic approach used by DSMIII/ III-R, however, met the descriptive needs of biological psychiatry much better… The implicit value choice made by the authors of DSM-III/III-R was that the biological descriptive approach was more important than the psychodynamic descriptive approach, presumably for a variety of reasons. We doubt that this preference for biological approaches that is implicit in the descriptive, syndromatic approach was consciously intended by the authors of the DSM-III and III-R. Instead, we suspect that this preference and its associated commitments were more the byproduct of a naive view of science and psychiatric nosology as value-free or value-neutral… Although the notion of value-free or value-neutral science has been discredited by a large number of authors, philosophers and scientists… the view nonetheless persists. The reasons for the rejection of value-neutral language are many, but can be summarily stated:
Values, not cognitions, determine what we select as "important," "crucial," "central," "decisive," or "related." In other words, values lend structure to the field of attention, pre-defining background and foreground, and clustering disparate items into groups. Consequently, "descriptive" statements about psychopathology issue from presupposed value stances that conceal their own deeper sources, compatibilities, and incompatibilities…
Values and Assumptions in the Development of DSM-III and DSM-III-R:
An Insider’s Perspective and a Belated Response to Sadler, Hulgus, and Agich’s “On Values in Recent American Psychiatric Classification”
by ROBERT L. SPITZER, M.D.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 2001 189:351–359.
…Let us broadly divide etiological perspectives into two major … groupings: according to the biological perspective, the causes of mental disorders will ultimately be shown to be disturbances in biological functioning that are relatively independent of life experience; according to the psychological perspective, the major causes of mental disorders will ultimately be shown to be disturbances in life experiences. The author challenges anyone to show how grouping disorders together on the basis of their shared descriptive features … inherently suggests favoring either perspective.
…I recall a psychoanalyst and chair of a DSM-III oversight committee who commenting on a draft of DSM-III said, “There is so much more that we know.” By this, he meant that DSM-III did not include all of the knowledge that his fellow clinicians had painstakingly learned about human behavior and motivation from the intensive study of patients in long-term psychotherapy. In a sense, the real controversy about DSM-III was a controversy about who were the leaders in the profession and whether progress in our field was most likely to come from empirical research studies or from clinical wisdom collected by intensive long-term psychotherapy. It is hard to see how the controversy would have been conducted at a higher level if the DSM-III committee had made any clearer their value commitments.
Sadler et al. are correct when they assert that basic values, assumptions, and commitments determine how developers of a classification system of mental disorders approach their difficult task. In this paper, we have presented those values, assumptions, and commitments, which were, for the most part, widely known and were contained in the ongoing DSM-III and DSM-IIII-R literature. It is not true that DSM-III and DSM-III-R gave greater emphasis to reliability than to validity, and it is not true that the DSM atheoretical approach with regard to etiology is implicitly biased toward a particular etiological perspective [organic or behavioral].
Sgt. Joshua Seil unloads gifts at the North Dakota Veterans Home in Lisbon, N.D. Guard members delivered Christmas gifts as part of an annual holiday event honoring the residents of the home. See more at www.army.mil Guard gifts bring smiles to veterans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reblogged from BGTV MEDIA ONLINE:
Establishment of Diagnostic Validity in Psychiatric Illness: Its Application to Schizophrenia
BY ELI ROBINS. M.D.AND SAMUEL B. GUZE, M.D.
American Journal of Psychiatry. 1970 126[7]:107-111.
Since Bleuler, psychiatrists have recognized that the diagnosis of schizophrenia includes a number of different disorders. We are interested in distinguishing these various disorders as part of our long-standing concern with developing a valid classification for psychiatric illnesses. We believe that a valid classification is an essential step in science. In medicine, and hence in psychiatry, classification is diagnosis.
One of the reasons that diagnostic classification has fallen into disrepute among some psychiatrists is that diagnostic schemes have been largely based upon a priori principles rather than upon systematic studies. Such systematic studies are necessary, although they may be based upon different approaches. We have found that the approach described here facilitates the development of a valid classification in psychiatry. This paper illustrates its usefulness in schizophrenia…
Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research
by FEIGHNER, J. P., ROBINS, E., GUZE, S. B., WOODRUFF, R. A., WINOKUR, G. & MONOZ, R.
Archives of General Psychiatry. 1972 26:57-63.
This communication presents specific diagnostic criteria for those adult psychiatric illnesses that have been sufficiently validated by precise clinical description, follow-up, and family studies to warrant their use in research as well as in clinical practice. These criteria are not intended as final for any illness. The criteria represent a distillation of our clinical research experience, and of the experiences of others cited in the references. This communication is meant to provide common ground for different research groups so that diagnostic definitions can be emended constructively as further studies are completed. The use of formal diagnostic criteria by a number of groups, regardless of whether their interests are clinical, psychodynamic, pharmacologic, chemical, neuropsychological, or neurophysiological, will result in a solution of the problem of whether patients described by different groups are comparable. This first and crucial taxonomic step should expedite psychiatric investigation.
Diagnosis has functions as important in psychiatry as elsewhere in medicine. Psychiatric diagnoses based on studies of natural history permit prediction of course and outcome, allow planning for both immediate and long-term treatment, and make communication possible between psychiatrists and other physicians, as well as among psychiatrists themselves. Such functions are of obvious importance in research. In contrast to the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-II], in which the diagnostic classification is based upon the "best clinical judgement and experience" of a committee and its consultants, this communication will present a diagnostic classification validated primarily by follow-up and family studies…
Primary Affective Disorders.
Depression.
—For a diagnosis of depression, A through C are required.A. Dysphoric mood characterized by symptoms such as the following: depressed, sad, blue, despondent, hopeless, "down in the dumps," irritable, fearful, worried, or discouraged.B. At least five of the following criteria are required for "definite" depression; four are required for "probable" depression.
—For a diagnosis of mania, A through C are required.A. Euphoria or irritability.B. At least three of the following symptom categories must also be present.
A Re-analysis of the Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis
By ROBERT L. SPITZER and JOSEPH L. FLEISS
British Journal of Psychiatry. 1974 125:341-347.
… With respect to improving the nomenclature, the St.Louis group has offered a system limited to 16 diagnoses for which they believe strong validity evidence exists, and for which specified requirements are provided. Whereas in the standard system the clinician determines to which of the various diagnostic stereotypes his patient is closest, in the St. Louis system the clinician determines whether his patient satisfies explicit criteria. For example, for a diagnosis of the depressive form of primary affective disorder the three requirements are dysphoric mood, a psychiatric illness lasting at least one month with no other pre-existing psychiatric condition,and at least five of the following eight symptoms: poor appetite or weight loss; sleep difficulty; loss of energy; agitation or retardation; loss of interest in usual activities or decrease in sexual drive; feelings of self-reproach or guilt; complaints of or actually diminished ability to think or concentrate; and thoughts of death or suicide.
A consequence of the St. Louis approach is the necessity for an ’undiagnosed psychiatric disorder’ category for those patients who do not meet any of the criteria for the specified diagnoses. In actual use, this category is applied to 20-30 per cent of newly-admitted in-patients. These two approaches, structuring the interview and specifying all diagnostic criteria, are being merged in a series of collaborative studies on the psychobiology of the depressive disorders sponsored by the N.I.M.H. Clinical Research Branch. We are confident that this merging will result not only in improved reliability but in improved validity which is, after all, our ultimate goal.
Research Diagnostic Criteria Rationale and Reliability
by Robert L. Spitzer, MD; Jean Endicott, PhD; and Eli Robins, MD
Archives of General Psychiatry. 1978 35:773-792.
A crucial problem in psychiatry, affecting clinical work as well as research, is the generally low reliability of current psychiatric diagnostic procedures. This article describes the development and initial reliability studies of a set of specific diagnostic criteria for a selected group of functional psychiatric disorders, the Research Diagnostic Criteria [RDC]. The RDC are being widely used to study a variety of research issues, particularly those related to genetics, psychobiology of selected mental disorders, and treatment outcome. The data presented here indicate high reliability for diagnostic judgments made using these criteria…
Alliant Techsystems is poised to take first prize in the commercial space game.
Alliant Techsystems is poised to take first prize in the commercial space game.
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Developed in 1994 and published the following year, <em>Chop Suey</em> was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups — smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably — as it was to the prescribed “girls 7 to 12” crowd.
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