Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The interface between mental health services and the criminal justice system presents challenges both for professionals and patients. Both systems are stressed and inherently complex. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act is unusual being both an aspect of the Mental Health Act and a power of arrest. It has a long and controversial history related to concerns about who has been detained and how the section was applied. More recently, Section 136 has had a public profile (...) stemming from the use of police cells as places of safety for young, mentally disturbed individuals. This paper explores the current state of health of this piece of legislation. Specifically, we consider whether alternative approaches are more suitable for those individuals in crisis and/or distress who come into contact with the police. This requires careful thought as to the proper role of both health and criminal justice professionals who are daily grappling with an ethically contentious domain of multiagency work. (shrink)

Purpose of the article American university and college campus law enforcement, like their peers in American munipal law enforcement agencies, find themselves interacting frequently with civilians experiencing mental health disturbances. An innovative model for law enforcement, the Crisis Intervention Team model, has been developed to address the difficulties law enforcement professionals and civilians in mental health crisis face during encounters. This article explores how CIT can enhance police response to mental health crisis on the (...) college campus. Methodology/methods Methods of applied research were conducted, borrowing from a benchmarking model and including interviews with multiple key informants representing law enforcement and mental health. Informants were affiliated with three universities and multiple municipal jurisdictions in Virginia, USA. Scientific goal The goal was to assess the relevance of CIT on the college campus and explore creative approaches to enhancing campus police response to mental health crisis. Findings The results supported the scholarly literature regarding the efficacy of the CIT model. Creative adaptations to the CIT model for campus possibly can be implemented to address concerns of mental health crisis on campus. Conclusions CIT is a highly innovative model requiring extensive collaboration between law enforcement, mental health agencies, and mental health advocates. As standard qualitative research was not conducted, the sample size of key informants may not have reached saturation. However, findings from the interviews support the body of literature on CIT. The implementation of CIT on the college campus could possibly help to alleviate difficulties on campus arising from mental health crisis, including reducing inappropriate arrest or disciplinary action, improving campus safety, addressing concerns related to threat assessment and management, and enhancing collaborative efforts on campus and with resources in the broader community. (shrink)

This article offers a narrative analysis of the contributing factors of moral distress (MD) and moral injury (MI) among mental health clinicians working amidst humanitarian crises. It discusses the impact of moral stress on therapeutic relationships in mental health trauma. The article originated from the author's experience developing a peer-to-peer support program at a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and conducting peer-to-peer support for mental health clinicians and healthcare providers in Ukraine and Turkey. A significant amount of literature has (...) documented the detrimental effects of MD and MI on mental health, job sustainability, and resilience of healthcare providers and first responders. The negative effects of MD and MI are particularly relevant in trauma counseling, where clinicians must draw upon the use of self to develop therapeutic relationships with their clients. This process demands a high level of moral reasoning and self-awareness, which can be severely tested under the morally challenging conditions of a humanitarian crisis. There is an imperative need to deepen our understanding and to swiftly address the factors that precipitate MD and MI in mental health clinicians working in crisis zones. By doing so, we aim to bolster their resilience and the enduring nature of their commitment to help and save others. This, in turn, will not only contribute to saving more lives but also enable those who are affected by trauma to flourish in the aftermath of their experiences. (shrink)

The most recent global refugee figures are staggering, with over 82.4 million people forcibly displaced and 26.4 million registered refugees. The ongoing conflict in Syria is a major contributor. After a decade of violence and destabilization, over 13.4million Syrians have been displaced, including 6.7 million internally displaced persons and 6.7 million refugees registered in other countries. Beyond the immediate political and economic challenges, an essential component of any response to this humanitarian crisis must be health-related, including policies and interventions (...) specific to mental health. This policy and practice review addresses refugee mental health in the context of the Syrian crisis, providing an update and overview of the current situation while exploring new initiatives in mental health research and global health policy that can help strengthen and expand services. Relevant global health policy frameworks are first briefly introduced, followed by a short summary of recent research on refugee mental health. We then provide an update on the current status of research, service provision, and health policy in the leading destinations for Syrians who have been forcibly displaced. This starts within Syria and then turns to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Germany. Finally, several general recommendations are discussed, including the pressing need for more data at each phase of migration, the expansion of integrated mental health services, and the explicit inclusion and prioritization of refugee mental health in national and global health policy. (shrink)

Mental health is reaching a crisis point due to the ramifications of COVID-19. In an attempt to curb the spread of the virus and circumvent health systems from being overwhelmed, governments have imposed regulations such as lockdown restrictions and home confinement. These restrictions, while effective for infection control, have contributed to poorer lifestyle behaviors. Currently, Positive Psychology and Lifestyle Medicine are two distinct but complimentary disciplines that offer an array of evidence-based approaches for promoting mental health and (...) well-being across a universal population. However, these strategies for improving mental health are typically used in isolation. This perspective calls for a new paradigm shift to create and rollout well-designed interdisciplinary universal multicomponent mental health interventions that integrates the benefits of both disciplines, and uses innovative digital mental health solutions to achieve scalability and accessibility within the limitations and beyond the COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 4-11, February 2022.

This article explores Stanley Cavell’s ordinary aesthetics through a close reading of one passage inThe Claim of Reason. This close reading leads to the suggestion that educating our aesthetic sense and responsiveness has ethical implications, especially as these relate to the mental health crisis in schools. The article draws implications for individuals in caring relationships with young people, suggesting that Cavell’s thinking on ordinary aesthetics is a powerful tool in our time.

An ongoing crisis in Australian agriculture resulting from climate crises including drought, decreasing irrigation water, more recent catastrophic flooding, and an uncertain policy environment is reshaping gender relations in the intimate sphere of the farm family. Drawing on research conducted in the Murray-Darling Basin area of Australia we ask the question: Does extreme hardship/climate crises change highly inequitable gender relations in agriculture? As farm income declines, Australian farm women are more likely to be working off farm for critical family (...) income while men continue to work on farm often in circumstances of damaged landscapes, rising debt, and limited production. This paper examines the way gender relations are being renegotiated in a time of significant climate crisis. Our research suggests that climate crises have indeed led to changes in gender relations and that some changes are unexpected. Whereas one would logically assume that women’s enhanced economic contribution would increase their power in gender negotiations, we argue that this does not necessarily occur because their contribution is viewed as a farm survival strategy. Men are committed to prioritizing the farm and view women’s income generating work as critical to this purpose and yet, paradoxically, long for a return to traditional farm roles. We find that women are actively resisting traditional gender relations by reshaping a role for themselves beyond the farm—in the process moving physically and mentally away from a farm family ideology, questioning gender inequalities, and by extension their relationships. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 52-54.

The modern editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, beginning with DSM-III in 1980, emerged in response to notable challenges to psychiatry’s practices and ways of knowing in the early 1970s. Because these challenges threatened psychiatry’s scientific self-understanding and moral authority, they exemplify what Alasdair MacIntyre has termed “epistemological crisis.” As a response to crisis, the modern DSM has been a stunning political achievement, providing the central diagnostic constructs around which psychiatric research, practice, and (...) reimbursement has been organized for four decades. Indeed, the DSM’s authority survives in the face of ongoing trenchant scientific and philosophical critique. But if psychiatry is to be healthy, it must be epistemologically humble, reckoning honestly with the limits of the DSM before a future epistemological crisis destabilizes it entirely. (shrink)

From good intentions to real life: introducing crisis resolution teams in Norway In Norway, as in most western countries, the adult services for people experiencing mental health problems have gone through major changes over the last decades. A report submitted to the Norwegian Parliament in 1997 summarized several areas of improvement in the provision of mental health‐care to its population, and led to the introduction of a national mental health programme in 1998 for its implementation to (...) be completed by 2008. The most significant recent development in Norway is ‘Crisis Resolution/Home Treatment’ (CRHT) teams that provide an alternative to acute hospital care services. The major aim of this study is to explore an emerging form of community mental health‐care, and present a framework for establishment and examination of CRHT teams applying the user perspectives. An illustration of user experiences in an already established CRHT team provides a background for understanding implications of this form of service in relation to service users’ needs in acute crises. (shrink)

The Crisis of Judgment in Kant's Three Critiques is intended as an analysis and reconstruction of the role of the faculty of judgment as it evolves through the course of Kant's critical philosophy. It offers an analysis of the mental power of judgment and systematically develops its links to feeling, cognition, and the will. In the introductory chapter, Scherer spells out the two guiding questions of her study: How does judgment relate systematically to understanding, reason, and the will? (...) Is judgment constitutive or regulative? Scherer's study emphasizes the architectonic and antinomic nature of reason in Kant, thereby stressing the necessarily resolutive function of judgment. (shrink)

In modern mental health care, ‘recovery’ does not necessarily mean the same thing for clinicians, service users, and survivor groups. This divergence is especially stark where self-injury is concerned. For clinicians, recovery often refers to cessation of self-injury; for those with lived experience, self-harm may be a temporary or long-term method of navigating trauma and distress. This article explores how the survivor-led model, which regards self-injury as an understandable reaction to distress, poverty, abuse, and discrimination emerged from second-wave feminism, (...) the survivor movement, and the growth of grassroots mental health groups in the 1980s. We focus on Bristol Crisis Service for Women (BCSW), a peer-led listening service for women who self-injure, founded in 1986. We begin with the history of BCSW and how experiences of their founders and users caused them to advocate for a different model of self-injury. We then situate BCSW’s approach to self-harm and recovery within the frame of women’s mental health activism. Finally, we explore how BCSW and its allies criticised existing psychiatric paradigms of self-harm, showing how the individualised medical model was rooted in gendered stereotypes that failed to recognise the real-world concerns of many women. We argue that it remains important to see self-harm not as an individual health concern, but in relation to the structural and practical issues affecting users and survivors. Within BCSW, a peer-led service, experience of self-injury became not a deficit but a useful asset in supporting other women, indicating that recovery itself could be both collective and non-linear. (shrink)

The productions of goods and the laws governing their exchange are no longer enough to account for the economic reality with regard to which the idea of crisis is generally invoked. The psychological, intellectual and moral motivations that support the activity of production are seen today as more and more decisive factors but ones that are evasive. Thus the stakes that would govern economic crises (but are they not something else?) must be sought on new ground, around mental (...) incitements, ethical references, networks of obligations that take the question of crisis beyond the economic domain, that would pose it in terms of civilizations. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's crisis of 1826 has received a great deal of attention from scholars. This attention results from reflection on the importance of the crisis to Mill's mature thought. Did the crisis signal rejection or revision of Benthamism? Or did it have little or no effect on Mill's view of his intellectual inheritance? Ultimately, an interpretation of the cause and resolution of the crisis is integral to an understanding of the nature of Mill's moral and (...) social philosophy. Scholars, in their zeal to understand Mill's crisis, have suggested various reasons for both the onset of the crisis and the recovery. Yet Mill's own perception of his crisis has often been overlooked or rejected. (shrink)

It seems to me that not enough consideration has been given to the fundamental importance of the conditioning to which our physical as well as our mental being have been submitted due to the fact that they develop within a certain gravitational field. All the long evolution of the species seems to proceed from our desire for the impossible abolition of our own gravity, or at least for its partial alleviation. Many centuries before the appearance of man compensatory means (...) were tried and adopted, ranging from the acquatic bladder to the wing and including the simple hopping of the marsupials. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of the naming crisis of modern society. The sequences by which the social and cultural history of the West is ordered, represented by the evolution of economics, technology, religion, forms of capital and wealth, communications, following the technological acceleration of time, coexist with each other, compete for primacy, creating a society of atomized subjects who have ceased to understand their place in the history of society. This situation is described in the article (...) as an identity crisis. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the gaps that have been discovered in attempts to identify society, which are the object of criticism. The article refers to the tradition of explanatory modeling of social interactions in terms of psychopathology and psychiatry. The crisis of the identity of society is illustrated through the images of madness in modern art culture. The article hypothesizes that there is an unspoken ban on naming a society associated with the crisis of capitalism in the transition from disciplinary societies to control societies. Culture's interest in insanity serves as an indicator of a social crisis. The evolution of cultural interest in the figure of a madman from a frightening "outcast" to an attractive "rebel" is shown. The article suggests the tasks of critical philosophy that coincide with the tasks of caring for social health. The idea of the need for the deprivation of mental illness is expressed. Mental health care is considered as a social task. (shrink)

Objective: The objective of our current research is to compare the different psychological interventions and distinguish the most effective way to treat psychological crisis according to different clinical manifestations in people affected by coronavirus disease 2019. No previous systematic review has provided a comprehensive overview by performing a Bayesian network meta-analysis of this current topic.Method: A systematic review and a Bayesian network meta-analysis were conducted on randomized controlled trials, non-RCTs, case–control studies, self-controlled case series, cohort studies, and cross-sectional studies (...) of all the available interventions for psychological crisis in people affected by COVID-19. We searched the electronic databases EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Library, as well as the Chinese databases such as Sinomed, Chinese Biomedicine Literature, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, WanFang Database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, from 2019 to April 30, 2020. The main outcomes were self-rating anxiety scale, self-rating depression scale, patient health questionnaire, and symptom checklist. The study is registered with Inplasy, number 202050076.Result: Sixteen self-controlled case series comprising 1,147 participants compared five different psychological interventions with four different measurement scales were included in this study. For effectiveness, all the psychological therapies were significantly more effective than before intervention. Our results showed that supportive therapy, which is adjusted to the COVID-19-related mental crisis, is the best treatment compared with behavioral therapy, nursing-based psychological therapy, traditional Chinese medicine therapy, and COVID-19-related standard training at reducing the anxiety-related symptoms assessed by SAS. When measured by SDS, BT was better than ST and NBPT treatment for reducing the depression symptoms. And ST was better than BT and ST+BT as assessed by PHQ-9. In the end, the last network meta-analysis indicated that NBPT was more effective than ST by the measurement of SCL-90.Conclusion: Our research suggested the potential effectiveness of psychological interventions for decreasing psychological crisis in people affected by COVID-19 and try to introduce the best effective treatment options for clinical practice according to the clinical manifestations of psychological problems, but further confirmation from high-quality RCTs is needed. (shrink)

This research examines how one’s construal level of a crisis differs by crisis type, and how the interplay of crisis type and apology appeal type impacts the effectiveness of apology messages in a corporate crisis context. Findings indicate that one’s mental construal toward a crisis varies by crisis type, with a self-threatening crisis leading to a lower level of construal than a society-threatening one. Findings further suggest that in a society-threatening crisis (...) condition, an informational apology was more effective than an emotional one. However, in a self-threatening crisis condition, there was no significant difference between two different message types. These findings offer valuable guidelines for developing effective crisis response strategy. (shrink)

Crisis events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can have a devastating effect on communities and the care professionals within them. Over recent years, arts-based interventions have helped in a wide range of crisis situations, being recommended to support the workforce during and after complex crisis but there has been no systematic review of the role of arts-based crisis interventions and whether there are cogent themes regarding practice elements and outcomes. We, therefore, conducted a systematic review to (...) (i) define the arts-based change process used during and after crisis events, and (ii) explore the perceptions of intermediate and long-term mental health benefits of arts-based interventions for professionals in caring roles. Our search yielded six studies (all qualitative). All data were thematically aggregated and meta-synthesized, revealing seven practice elements (a safe place, focusing on strengths and protective factors, developing psychosocial competencies to support peers, emotional expression and processing, identifying and naming the impact of the crisis, using an integrative creative approach, and cultural and organizational sensitivity) applied across all six studies, as well as a range of intermediate and long-term benefits shared common features (adapting, growing, and recovering; using the community as a healing resource; reducing or preventing symptoms of stress or trauma reactions, psychophysiological homeostasis). The ways in which these studies were designed independently from one another and yet used the same practice elements in their crisis interventions indicates that there is comparability about how and why the arts-based practice elements are being used and to what effect. Our findings provide a sound basis and meaningful parameters for future research incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches to firmly establish the effectiveness of art-based interventions, and how arts can support cultural sensitivity, acceptability and indicated outcomes, particularly those relating to stress and trauma during or following a crisis. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 crisis has introduced a variety of stressors, while simultaneously decreasing the availability of strategies to cope with stress. In this context, it could be useful to understand issues that people find most concerning and ways in which they cope with stress. In this study, we explored these questions with a sample of graduate and professional students.MethodUsing open-ended assessments, we asked participants to identify their biggest challenge or concern, their most effective way of handling stress, and their most (...) common way of handling stress. We applied thematic analysis and evaluated whether participants’ strategies corresponded with evidence-based practices.ResultsParticipants frequently reported top problems relating to productivity, physical health, and emotional health. Distraction was the most frequently classified common strategy, whereas behavioral activation was the most frequently identified effective strategy. Participants who reported a common strategy classified as an EBP reported lower depressive and anxiety symptoms. In contrast, there was no evidence of an association between symptom levels and whether or not participants’ effective strategy was an EBP. Participants who reported the same strategy as both their common and effective strategy reported lower depressive symptoms than those whose common and effective strategies were different.ConclusionOur findings highlight stressors that students are experiencing and ways they are coping during the COVID-19 crisis. We discuss how these findings can inform mental health promotion efforts and future research on coping with stressors. (shrink)

Purpose of the study is explication of ethical and existential conditions of realization of human responsibility for the protection and recreation of the environment on a scale of the common world with all the other living beings. The crisis of the environment is the crisis of human morality. For responsible environmental management, it is necessary to form the ecological consciousness of society and reinterpret the anthropocentrism on the ethical foundations. The theoretical basis of the research is the analysis (...) of ethical and existential dimensions of understanding of the human environment ranging from the sphere of the home and the natural environment to the dimension of the common world of people and all the entities. The work clarifies the genesis of the concept of home from the ancient "oikos", household to the idea of home as a "hub", a base for mental and physical mobility in the contemporary technosphere. Correspondent to the transformation of the living world of mankind is the concept of communication and universal discourse of norms and values of human coexistence of J. Habermas, К.-О. Apel, D. Böhler, W. Kuhlmann, and others. The domain of the ecological consciousness and behaviour also requires motivation at the level of human feelings, beliefs, and convictions, which is represented by the philosophic and religious thought of H. Jonas, O. Leopold, K. M. Меуеr-Abich, A. Naess, the pope Francis, and others. As the result, the study proves the relevance of the concept of care about the common home based on the recognition of the value of the existence of all beings. Originality. The study explicates the genesis and meaning of the ethos of the common home with values of love, care, openness, solidarity, freedom, and responsibility which is proved to be the ethical and existential condition of the solution of the environmental crisis. The traditional anthropocentrism is reinterpreted towards the duty of people to be the centre of the responsibility for the existence of all beings that requires both reason and care. Conclusions. The ethics of care for our common home completes the moral duty of people as providers of the universal discourse who represent the interests of all beings. Concern for the preservation of the human environment and of all creation makes it possible for humanity to realize its universal responsibility in the world. The contemporaneous science and religious thought modify anthropocentrism to the holistic ethical understanding of human’s mission to be responsible for all beings. (shrink)

Crisis resolution and home treatment (CRHT) teams have been introduced into mental health care in the UK because, in general, patients do not want to be admitted to hospital, treatment at home is cheaper and in the only randomized controlled trial conducted so far there was no difference in symptomatic outcome. However, because of compulsory gate-keeping by CRHT teams, some patients no longer have the option of going to hospital if they want to. This aspect of the introduction (...) of CRHT teams has not been discussed so far, but it certainly warrants further examination. Intervention through CRHT teams may in fact increase compulsory admissions and serious and untoward incidents, although this is not certain. Sufferers from psychosis are the patient group most likely to be compulsorily admitted to hospital and they are generally considered less responsible for serious and untoward incidents. Therefore, a possible solution could be to offer a choice to some patients, namely those with a psychotic disorder, on whether they want to be admitted or not. At least one should investigate what the consequences of this policy would be, if it were to be adopted in a test region. This example shows that in developing policies for rationing health care, it can be important to look at subgroups and not just at average results when determining the best course of action. (shrink)

The philosophy of Thomas Kuhn proposes that scientific progress involves periods of crisis and revolution in which previous paradigms are discarded and replaced. Revolutions in how mental health problems are conceptualised have had a substantial impact on the work of mental health nurses. However, despite numerous revolutions within the field of mental health, the biological paradigm has remained largely dominant within western healthcare, especially in orientating the understanding and treatment of psychosis. This paper utilises concepts drawn (...) from the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn to explore the impact of what Kuhn terms ‘anomalies’ within the dominant biological paradigm: the anomaly of the meaningful utterance, the anomaly of complex aetiology and taxonomy and the anomaly of pharmacological inefficacy in recovery. The paper argues that the biological paradigm for understanding psychosis is in crisis and explores the implications for mental health nursing. (shrink)

El objetivo es la creación de una metodología de acercamiento a los estudiantes de canto, a través de la facilitación del aprendizaje de la didáctica vocal desde la perspectiva de la Cantoterapia y el Counseling, para que los profesores de canto trabajen con sus alumnos en tiempos de crisis personal o colectiva. Se analizarán los resultados de un cuestionario que involucra a 10 alumnos del curso desde el 2020 al 2022. Los Siete Momentos Básicos de la Clase de Canto (...) han sido vinculados con los Cinco Elementos Esenciales de la Intervención Inmediata y Masiva de Trauma a Medio Plazo de Hobfoll y colegas. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the Aum case, various suggestions as to the causes of dangerous cult mentality, and possible measures for its prevention have been offered in the Japanese media, but it seems that a much more penetrating diagnosis is necessary than that thus far proffered. To merely lay blame to the person of Shoko Asahara, or the phenomenon of mind control, or an insensitivity, ineptitude, or lack of resources on the part of the Japanese police, is to grossly oversimplify (...) and objectify a problem which has complex roots within the structure of the very institutions and values which Japanese society regards as its greatest assets. (shrink)

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic we are witnessing a significant rise in mental illness diagnosis and corresponding anti-depressant prescription uptake. The drug response to this situation is unsurprising and reinforces the dominant role (neuro)biology continues to undertake within modern psychiatry. In contrast to this biologically informed, medicalised approach, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a statement stressing the causal role of psychological and social factors.Using the concept of ontological insecurity, contextualised within the WHO guidance, the interrelation of (...) psychological and social factors is illuminated, and a psychosocial framework is produced as a means of understanding the mental health consequence of the post-Covid-19 fallout.The psychosocial framework generated provides a rationale to revise and reprioritise how we engage with the biopsychosocial model that is intended to underpin modern psychiatry. This framework establishes a connection between psychological and social theory which are too often addressed as disparate terrains within mental health services and policy creation. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has placed significant strain on United States’ health care and health care providers. While most Americans were sheltering in place, nurses headed to work. Many lacked adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), increasing the risk of becoming infected or infecting others. Some health care organizations were not transparent with their nurses; many nurses were gagged from speaking up about the conditions in their workplaces. This study used a descriptive phenomenological design to describe the lived experience of acute (...) care nurses working with limited access to PPE during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 28 acute care nurses via telephone, WebEx, and Zoom. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The major theme, emotional roller coaster, describes the varied intense emotions the nurses experienced during the early weeks of the pandemic, encompassing eight subthemes: scared and afraid, sense of isolation, anger, betrayal, overwhelmed and exhausted, grief, helpless and at a loss, and denial. Other themes include: self‐care, ‘hoping for the best’, ‘nurses are not invincible’, and ‘I feel lucky’. The high levels of stress and mental assault resulting from the COVID‐19 crisis call for early stress assessment of nurses and provision of psychological intervention to mitigate lasting psychological trauma. (shrink)

As the crisis around Covid-19 evolves, it becomes clear that there are numerous negative side-effects of the lockdown strategies implemented by many countries. Currently, more evidence becomes available that the lockdowns may have more negative effects than positive effects. For instance, many measures taken in a lockdown aimed at protecting human life may compromise the immune system, and purpose in life, especially of vulnerable groups. This leads to the paradoxical situation of compromising the immune system and physical and (...) class='Hi'>mental health of many people, including the ones we aim to protect. Also, it is expected that hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger and postponed medical treatments. Other side effects include financial insecurity of billions of people, physical and mental health problems, and increased inequalities. The economic and health repercussions of the crisis will be falling disproportionately on young workers, low-income families and women, and thus exacerbate existing inequalities. As the virus outbreak and media coverage spread fear and anxiety, superstition, cognitive dissonance reduction and conspiracy theories are ways to find meaning and reduce anxiety. These behavioral aspects may play a role in the continuance of lockdown decisions. Based on theories regarding agnotology (i.e. the ways ignorance or doubt about certain topics is created by means of withholding or presenting information in a certain way), social influence, superstition and stress and coping, I seek to explain the social and behavioral aspects of human behavior in times of crises. Both the Covid-19 crisis itself as well as the resulting economic and (mental) health crisis are global problems that may require global solutions. I present a model of drivers and outcomes of lockdown behaviors and offer suggestions and a tool to counteract the negative psychological effects by means of online life crafting therapeutic writing interventions. (shrink)

Professor Davidson's anomalous monism has been subject to the criticism that, despite advertisements to the contrary, if it were true mental properties would be epiphenomenal. To this Davidson has replied that his critics have misunderstood his views concerning the extensional nature of causal relations and the intensional character of causal explanations. I call this his 'extension reply'. This paper argues that there are two ways to read Davidson's 'extension reply'; one weaker and one stronger. But the dilemma is that: (...) (i) the weak extension reply on its own isn't sufficient to support the principle of the nomological character of causality, (ii) anything strong enough to support that principle under the weak extension reply would be strong enough to warrant the strong extension reply; but (iii) the strong extension reply threatens the very stability of anomalous monism by threatening the causal potency and reality of the mental. For these reasons, I claim that either version of the 'extension reply' is bad news for anomalous monism. I conclude by suggesting that a form of absolute idealism circumvents the very assumptions that generate these kinds of difficulty for committed monists. (shrink)

By following the arguments developed by Vygotsky and employing the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in addition to dialectical logic, this paper attempts to investigate the interaction between psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) to confront the epistemological and methodological challenges encountered in AI research. The paper proposes that AI is facing an epistemological and methodological crisis inherited from psychology based on dualist ontology. The roots of this crisis lie in the duality between rationalism and objectivism or in the mind-body (...) rupture that has governed the production of scientific thought and the proliferation of approaches. In addition, by highlighting the sociohistorical conditions of AI, this paper investigates the historical characteristics of the shift of the crisis from psychology to AI. Additionally, we examine the epistemological and methodological roots of the main challenges encountered in AI research by noting that empiricism is the dominant tendency in the field. Empiricism gives rise to methodological and practical challenges, including challenges related to the emergence of meaning, abstraction, generalization, the emergence of symbols, concept formation, functional reflection of reality, and the emergence of higher psychological functions. Furthermore, through discussing attempts to formalize dialectical logic, the paper, based on contradiction formation, proposes a qualitative epistemological, methodological, and formal alternative by using a preliminary algorithmic model that grasps the formation of meaning as an essential ability for the qualitative reflection of reality and the emergence of other mental functions. (shrink)

Research highlights several risk and resilience factors at multiple ecological levels that influence individuals’ mental health and wellbeing in their everyday lives and, more specifically, in disaster or outbreak situations. However, there is limited research on the role of these factors in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. The present study examined if and how potential risk factors and resilience factors are associated with mental health and well-being outcomes, and whether these resilience factors buffer the associations (...) between risk factors and said outcomes. One to two weeks after the government recommended preventative measures, 1,122 Canadian workers completed an online questionnaire, including multiple wellbeing outcome scales in addition to measures of potential risk and resilience factors. Structural equation models were tested, highlighting that overall, the considered risk factors were associated with poorer wellbeing outcomes, except social distancing which was associated with lower levels of stress. Each of the potential resilience factors was found to have a main effect on one or more of the wellbeing outcomes. Moderation analysis indicated that in general these resilience factors did not, however, buffer the risk factors. The findings confirm that the COVID-19 crisis encompasses several stressors related to the virus as well as to its impact on one’s social, occupational, and financial situation, which put people at risk for lower wellbeing as early as one to two weeks after the crisis began. While several resilience factors emerged as positively related to wellbeing, such factors may not be enough, or sufficiently activated at that time, to buffer the effects of the numerous life changes required by COVID-19. From an ecological perspective, while mental health professionals and public health decision-makers should offer/design services directly focused on mental health and wellbeing, it is important they go beyond celebrating individuals’ inner potential for resilience, and also support individuals in activating their environmental resources during a pandemic. (shrink)

A sense of success, perception of economic crisis and the form of occupational activity The studies presented attempt to outline a relationship between a feeling of success, the perception of economic crisis and the form of occupational activity. The article shows the results of empirical research conducted among 341 economically active people and concerns the psychological differences between them in Poland. The theoretical basis of the research is the new model of success by Dej, Stephan, Gorgievsky. This research (...) has proven the existence of significant statistical differences in a sense of success between entrepreneurs, employees in private companies, and employees in state-owned companies, but there are no differences in perception of economic crisis. People who scored a high general result in a feeling of success perceive economic crisis as harmless. The results show that being an entrepreneur is the most beneficial activity from a mental health standpoint. (shrink)

In COVID’s immediate wake, the 2020 death toll from a different enemy of the public’s health — gun violence — ticked up by 15 percent in the United States from the previous year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Caniglia v. Strom that will allow people who have recently threatened suicide — with a gun — to keep unsecured guns in their home unless police take time to obtain a search warrant to remove them.

ABSTRACT“Trust” can describe many different positive features of our social relationships with others. In this exploratory paper, we reflect on some of the ways in which people orient themselves toward others in the context of a psychological crisis, a time when trust may be threatened or eroded. We draw upon qualitative data extracts from two previously reported studies, in order to illustrate and develop some observations about the dynamics of relational trust during such periods of acute distress. We show (...) how these dynamics arise out of particular contexts and have particular consequences for psychological health. We discuss how, in a relationship mediated by trust, it can sometimes be an act of care – toward self, or toward others – to filter and limit the extent of what one entrusts to another. We suggest that further consideration by philosophers can be very helpful to the mental health field here, if we are to understand the negotiation of interpersonal trust in the context of mental health crises. We note that it would be extremely helpful to understand more about how to create the kinds of environments which afford trust. (shrink)

For the last thirty years, the nation's mental health and social service systems have been under relentless assault, with dramatically rising costs and the fragmentation of service delivery rendering them incapable of ensuring the safety, security, and recovery of their clients. The resulting organizational trauma both mirrors and magnifies the trauma-related problems their clients seek relief from. Just as the lives of people exposed to chronic trauma and abuse become organized around the traumatic experience, so too have our social (...) service systems become organized around the recurrent stress of trying to do more under greater pressure: they become crisis-oriented, authoritarian, disempowered, and demoralized, often living in the present moment, haunted by the past, and unable to plan for the future.Complex interactions among traumatized clients, stressed staff, pressured organizations, and a social and economic climate that is often hostile to recovery efforts recreate the very experiences that have proven so toxic to clients in the first place. Healing is possible for these clients if they enter helping, protective environments, yet toxic stress has destroyed the sanctuary that our systems are designed to provide.This thoughtful, impassioned critique of business as usual begins to outline a vision for transforming our mental health and social service systems. Linking trauma theory to organizational function, Destroying Sanctuary provides a framework for creating truly trauma-informed services. The organizational change method that has become known as the Sanctuary Model lays the groundwork for establishing safe havens for individual and organizational recovery. The goals are practical: improve clinical outcomes, increase staff satisfaction and health, increase leadership competence, and develop a technology for creating and sustaining healthier systems. Only in this way can our mental health and social service systems become empowered to make a more effective contribution to the overall health of the nation.Destroying Sanctuary is a stirring call for reform and recovery, required reading for anyone concerned with removing the formidable barriers to mental health and social services, from clinicians and administrators to consumer advocates. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 139-147, February 2022.

"This book is based on new work relating gendered assumptions about rationality to men's mental health. It offers the reader a theoretical exploration of a topically and politically sensitive issue and provides a valuable critique of postmodern theory and theorists. It is relevant to practitioners and activists in the mental health field, will be of interest to profeminist theorists, and is essential reading for academics and students of sociology and allied disciplines."--Jacket.

Professor Davidson's anomalous monism has been subject to the criticism that, despite advertisements to the contrary, if it were true mental properties would be epiphenomenal. To this Davidson has replied that his critics have misunderstood his views concerning the extensional nature of causal relations and the intensional character of causal explanations. I call this his ‘extension reply’. This paper argues that there are two ways to read Davidson's ‘extension reply’; one weaker and one stronger. But the dilemma is that: (...) the weak extension reply on its own isn't sufficient to support the principle of the nomological character of causality, anything strong enough to support that principle under the weak extension reply would be strong enough to warrant the strong extension reply; but the strong extension reply threatens the very stability of anomalous monism by threatening the causal potency and reality of the mental. For these reasons, I claim that either version of the ‘extension reply’ is bad news for anomalous monism. I conclude by suggesting that a form of absolute idealism circumvents the very assumptions that generate these kinds of difficulty for committed monists. (shrink)

Liberal-Democratic changes in the Russian Society have brought a number of acute problems threatening national security and leading to converting Russia into a peripheral socio-cultural system («national self-identification crisis»). Scientific research shows that the main indicator of the said crisis is not only the critical economic differentiation of people into the «poor» and «rich» Russia (with the different ways of life, needs, mentality) but also spiritual degradation, spread of aggressive – depressive syndrome (growth of hatred, feeling of injustice, (...) loss of meaning of the life, anger, melancholy, hopelessness, loneliness etc.). Twothirds of the citizens (74.9%) interviewed in 2006 think that their social status does not correspond to their personal achievements in education and professional abilities. One of the main reasons of their distrust towards the government bodies is insufficient professional and cultural level, absence of unity of a word and business. It is worth mentioning that books and articles of scientists and ideologists who resist Western liberalism are freely published, but you can hardly see these people close to the President. Russians are openly and secretly under pressure of ideas propagandizing negative past which undermine national self-identification, national pride for the great history of their country. The original sphere of influence of Russian language and Russian culture is shortening under the press of mass-culture. Meanwhile, 67% of Russians expressed their negative attitude towards massive Western cultural expansion. The Futureof Russia is in safeguarding national intellectual and spiritual values, Science, education and in supporting the person of work and creativity. (shrink)

An increasing number of academic papers, newspaper articles, and other media representations from all over the world recently bring climate change’s impact on mental health into focus. Commonly summarized under the terms of climate or ecological emotions, these reports talk about distress, anxiety, trauma, grief, or depression in relation to environmental decline and anticipated climate crisis. While the majority of psychology and mental health literature thus far presents preliminary conceptual analysis and calls for empirical research, some explanations (...) of ecological emotions are already offered. They mainly draw from psychoanalysis and depth existential and humanistic psychology, as well as social psychology and address the relationship between ecological emotions and individual engagement in climate action. While these studies suggest building on individual resilience if concerned by ecological emotions, we argue that this only addresses their acute symptoms and not the social causes. Based upon our literature research, we show that in an individualistic society such as the liberal ones, feelings of individual responsibility are fostered, and this also applies to climate activism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:About and Beyond Comorbidity:Does the Crisis of the DSM Bring on a Radical Rethinking of Descriptive Psychopathology?Massimiliano Aragona (bio)Keywordscomorbidity, nosography, phenomenology, philosophy of scienceThe problem of psychiatric comorbidity is part of a series of difficulties of the current diagnostic system which at once were considered as a consequence of the way the system itself is organized (Aragona 2006). It was then believed that a Kuhnian reformulation of the (...) contemporary debate on the problems of the psychiatric diagnosis was very useful because it allowed clarification in a comprehensive picture of the many rivulets of conceptual research in that field.In their comments Zachar (2009) and Banzato (2009) seem to agree with my analysis of psychiatric comorbidity (Aragona 2009a) when it stresses that abnormally high frequencies of co-occurrence are to be explained, in important respects, as a consequence of the way mental disorders are operationalized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; also showing the importance of conceptual clarification to deal with this sort of only apparently pure factual problems). On the contrary, they are both unconvinced of the appropriateness and/or fruitfulness of the use of the Kuhnian technical terms and theory in this context.It could be said that the major aim of the paper was to let clinicians understand the effect of conceptual decisions on what would otherwise seem as a simple empirical finding (in this case, high levels of comorbidity), and that this result seems to be achieved in any case, thus minimizing the importance of a disagreement about the philosophical terms as a pure terminological dispute. Nevertheless, in my work the Kuhnian model had a significant role in the clarification of this matter and it also suggests to the reader a range of possible consequences that are not trivial (Zachar, for example, says to be skeptical about the possibility of a crisis and also about the possibility that a new paradigm could eliminate what I call the [End Page 29] comorbidity anomaly). As a consequence, some of the Kuhnian concepts that seemed to be at odds in this context have to be considered in detail to justify my analysis and its consequences. For reasons of space, I avoid a point-by-point reply to all the comments and I concentrate my discussion on three main points. First, I discuss the background of Kuhn's definition of terms such as anomaly and paradigm, as well as my own reasons for using them. In doing so the details of the psychiatric items under study that I wanted to highlight through the use of these philosophical concepts should emerge more clearly. Second, I discuss the problem of having distinguished between artifactual and real comorbidity. Third, I reconsider some of these problems, looking for their implications for future psychopathological research.Anomalies and ParadigmsBanzato (2009) stresses that comorbidity cannot be a truly Kuhnian anomaly because it is an anticipated side effect of the initial setup of the DSM, and not some unexpected discovery that violates the paradigm-induced expectation. This is a basically correct account of the most known version of Kuhnian anomalies; that is, the tale of some evident nature's failure to conform to clear paradigm expectations, which immediately forces researchers to recognize its importance as a possible source of crisis. However, as is the case for many other Kuhnian terms, he discussed anomalies in several scripts and there are other possible versions of its meaning. In particular, Kuhn (1977, XVII) highlighted that only in very rare cases are anomalies completely unexpected and come out of blue to announce an imminent crisis that leads to a large revolution. More frequently, scientific revolutions are much more smaller, like the discovery of oxygen, and in these cases the process is so gradual that historians find it difficult to say exactly when a discovery was made and who did it. Even in these much smaller cases the usual prelude to changes of this sort is the awareness of anomaly, but here anomalies are not extraordinary events; rather, they are "countless discrepancies between theory and experiment [that] during the course of his career, every natural scientist again and again notices and passes by" (Kuhn... (shrink)

Unaccompanied refugee youth, who as children fled their countries to seek asylum in a foreign country without the company of an adult legal caretaker are described as being in a vulnerable situation. Many of them struggle with mental reactions to traumatic events experienced pre-migration, and to the daily hassles they face after being granted asylum and residence. Despite continuous high levels of mental health problems URY demonstrate remarkable agency and social mobility in the years after being granted asylum (...) in their destination countries. A sense of subjective well-being may enable resilient outcomes in people exposed to past or ongoing adversities. To fill the gap in the research literature about positive psychological outcomes among URY, the overall aim of this study was to explore the longitudinal associations between SWB and two taxing acculturation hassles: perceived discrimination and ethnic identity crisis. Three annual waves of self-report questionnaire data were collected from a population-based sample of URY; n = 581, Mage = 20.01, Mlength of stay = 4.63, 82 % male, mainly from Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka. The longitudinal associations between SWB, perceived discrimination and ethnic identity crisis across time were analyzed using auto-regressive cross-lagged modeling. The results revealed that perceived discrimination, but not ethnic identity crisis, negatively predicted subsequent levels of SWB. More importantly, high levels of SWB at one timepoint predicted decreases in both discrimination and ethnic identity crisis at subsequent timepoints. Further, increases in SWB from one timepoint to the next was associated with significant co-occurring decreases in both discrimination and ethnic identity crisis, and vice versa. Despite the negative effect of perceived discrimination on SWB, promoting SWB in URY can protect them from future hazards of acculturation hassles in complex ways. We underscore the need for more research on SWB among URY and other refugee youth. We further discuss the potential of SWB to foster resilient outcomes in young refugees and suggest that interventions to strengthen SWB among them should consider their transnational and multicultural realities and experiences. (shrink)

Summary Leading scholars offer perspectives from the philosophy of science on the crisis in psychiatric research that exploded after the publication of DSM-5. -/- Psychiatry and mental health research is in crisis, with tensions between psychiatry's clinical and research aims and controversies over diagnosis, treatment, and scientific constructs for studying mental disorders. At the center of these controversies is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which—especially after the publication of DSM-5—many have found (...) seriously flawed as a guide for research. This book addresses the crisis and the associated “extraordinary science” (Thomas Kuhn's term for scientific research during a state of crisis) from the perspective of philosophy of science. The goal is to help reconcile the competing claims of science and phenomenology within psychiatry and to offer new insights for the philosophy of science. -/- The contributors discuss the epistemological origins of the current crisis, the nature of evidence in psychiatric research, and the National Institute for Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria project. They consider particular research practices in psychiatry—computational, personalized, mechanistic, and user-led—and the specific categories of schizophrenia, depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Finally, they examine the DSM's dubious practice of pathologizing normality. (shrink)