Pediatrics: The emerging psychosocial challenges of the AIDS epidemic

HIV has a pervasive and profound effect on the psychological, social and neuropsychological functioning of infected infants, children and their families. This article discusses direct and indirect psychological manifestations of HIV in children. Direct effects are the outcome of the virus acting on the central nervous system and can result in compromised cognitive, language, motor, socio-emotional and motivational functioning. Indirect effects involve psychological responses to the stress of living with a life threatening illness, the social ostracism, disruption in life goals and undergoing frequent invasive and protracted medical procedures. A major focus of this article is to outline and describe a model comprehensive psychosocial support system developed within the Pediatric Branch of the National Cancer Institute. This includes early intervention issues and strategies for working with families during the introductory phase of the treatment program that also provides the framework for a care management approach, salient mental health problems that frequently occur in this group, and appropriate interventions for individuals and families. Attention is also given to dealing with anticipatory loss and bereavement, implementing traditional innovative intervention techniques, and for providing advocacy services concerning possible legal, financial, housing, and educational issues.     

Tightening the focus: moral panic, moral regulation and liberal government

The purpose of this article is to tighten the focus of moral panic studies by clarifying and elaborating on an analytical framework that conceptualizes moral panic as a form of moral regulation. The first part of the article explains why moral panic should be conceptualized as a form of moral regulation. The second part presents a rejoinder to Critcher's (2009) critique of the widening focus of moral panic studies. The third part elaborates on the conceptual relationship between the sociologies of moral panic and moral regulation by offering fresh insights into the sociological and political importance of moral panic as a technique of liberal government.     

AIDS:

A questionnaire assessing AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors was distributed in written form and administered by telephone interviews in 1988 and again in 1990. Data were collected from members of minorities throughout Alabame. The telephone survey was based on a random sample, while the written form was distributed at targeted locations including community health centers, community action agencies, state prisons, vocational schools, and predominantly black colleges. Ninety-four percent of respondents in the telephone survey were African-American, while 84% in the written sample indicated they were African-American indicated they were African-American. Over the entire sample, knowledge and AIDS transmission was relatively accurate and increased from 1988 to 1990. Knowledge was higher in the written sample than the telephone sample at both times. The youngest and oldest age groups were least knowledgeable. In addition to knowledge, other variables including concern about contracting AIDS, behavior change, interest in learning about AIDS, and issues related to stigmatization were investigated. Implications for educational and prevention programs are discussed.     

AIDS:

No abstract available for this article.     

AIDS:

No abstract available for this article.     

Dissecting moral judgements: Using moral foundation theory to advance the contingency continuum

Incorporating Moral Foundation Theory, this study introduces an enhanced Contingency Continuum to advance the Contingency Theory of Strategic Conflict Management by dissecting the origins of conflict formation. The enhanced Contingency Continuum treats conflict as a function of moral judgment based on which people judge right and wrong. This study explores how an event’s moral implication could be deconstructed into the enhanced Contingency Continuum and contribute to the formation of a conflict through a case study of Harvey Weinstein’s scandal. Our analysis and findings of the case were then validity-tested in an extensive verification interview with a practitioner/educator who has been in the PR field for more than 40 years. Three attributions of how the enhanced Contingency Continuum could advance the Contingency Theory are identified and summarized as a three-step-cyclic model, Moral Attitude Dynamic Model (MADM) to fully exploit the potential of the enhanced Contingency Continuum on managing not only moral conflicts but also conflicts that lack resolution such as long-standing social controversial issues.     

SUD-PTT unionists: moral entrepreneurs?

Since its founding in 1988, the SUD-PTT union [Solidarité, Unité, Démocratie at the Poste, Télégraphe et Téléphone] has made using the courts a frequent mode of action in its dealings with the two French public-sector companies in which it is present, La Poste and France Télécom. Legal action is now fully part of SUD-PTT practices. This is surprising for a union so strongly attached to the protest tradition and hostile in both practice and discourse to any form of institutionalization. After considering possible explanations for SUD-PTT's heavy use of legal institutions, the article looks at how the type of conflict it engages in, which may be called “conflit de règles” [conflict about and by means of rules] can be linked to a major trend in contemporary social conflictuality: the fact that the “antagonistic posture” is no longer limited to collective action but is now operative in a more institutionalized approach. The thesis is that this sort of action is not just technical or instrumental but aims to exert pressure on norms, and thereby on the codification of social relations and ways of “living together”.     

Perinatal AIDS:

Increasing attention must be given to the psychosocial needs of families with HIV-infected mothers, especially as it relates to permanency planning for children who survive their infected parent(s). Since these families are disproportionately African-American, developing culturally-appropriate services is paramount. Norwood (1988) projected between 52,272 and 72,000 uninfected children will be orphaned in New York City. In Michigan, to understand this problem better, a retrospective chart review utilizing Norwood's model was performed of the families of the 83 infants whose cord blood was positive for maternal HIV antibodies or who were congenitally infected with HIV.     

Values: the curriculum of moral education

Against the background of public concern over the moral education of the young, the contemporary constructions imposed upon schools by politicians, the intellectual forces arising from post-modernism and the pressures of a pluralistic society are examined. The deep structures and slow-growing processes which can cultivate a sense of moral values in a human community are related to how some schools have successfully achieved a moral community, in which all are valued and can make a contribution. The personal vocation and professionalism of teachers are fundamental.     

Tools from moral psychology for measuring personal moral culture

Moral culture can mean many things, but two major elements are a concern with moral goods and moral prohibitions. Moral psychologists have developed instruments for assessing both of these and such measures can be directly imported by sociologists. Work by Schwartz and his colleagues on values offers a well-established way of measuring moral goods, while researchers using Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory have developed validated measures of moral prohibitions. Both values and moral foundations are distributed across the social landscape in systematic, sociologically interesting ways. Although typically measured using questionnaires, we show that values and moral foundations also can be used to analyze interview, archival, or “big data.” Combining psychological and sociological tools and frameworks promises to clarify relations among existing sociological treatments of moral culture and to connect such treatments to a thriving conversation in moral psychology.     

Small-fiber neuropathy: answering the burning questions

Small-fiber neuropathy is a peripheral nerve disease that most commonly presents in middle-aged and older people, who develop burning pain in their feet. Although it can be caused by disorders of metabolism such as diabetes, chronic infections (such as with human immunodeficiency virus), genetic abnormalities, toxicity from various drugs, and autoimmune diseases, the cause often remains a mystery because standard electrophysiologic tests for nerve injury do not detect small-fiber function. Inadequate ability to test for and diagnose small-fiber neuropathies has impeded patient care and research, but new tools offer promise. Infrequently, the underlying cause of small-fiber dysfunction is identified and disease-modifying therapy can be instituted. More commonly, the treatments for small-fiber neuropathy involve symptomatic treatment of neuropathic pain.