Gender differences in correlates of recent physical assault among untreated rural and urban at-risk drinkers: role of depression

This study examined gender-specific correlates of past 6-month physical assault victimization among 468 men and 229 women at-risk drinkers recruited from both urban and rural settings. Both alcohol dependence and depression were associated with physical assault, but there were differences for women and men in the pattern of significant correlates. Specifically, for women the presence of alcohol dependence, depression or their comorbidity all were associated with physical assault. For men, depression by itself was not associated with physical assault, but alcohol dependence and especially alcohol dependence comorbid with depression were significant predictors. Further, there were stronger relationships between demographics and physical assault for men. The results have implications regarding identification of risk factors for physical assault victimization among at-risk drinkers. Overall, the results of this study suggest that screening and prevention interventions for physical assault among at-risk drinkers should target both alcohol use disorders and depression.     

Violence against psychiatric nurses. An untreated epidemic?

1. Psychiatric nurses frequently are targets of assault by their clients. 2. Psychiatric nurses often experience emotional and physical injuries after being assaulted by their clients. 3. An interaction of individual, social-psychological, interpersonal, situational, and sociocultural factors lead to increased rates of workplace assaults by clients. 4. Nursing staff need to take an active role in preventing violent episodes from occurring.     

Developing a framework for identifying individual and organizational risk factors for the prevention of violence in the health-care sector

The problem of violence at work has received considerable attention in recent years. According to Swedish statistics, personnel in the health-care sector are the most affected. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework or model for studies of workplace violence, and to demonstrate its application to the analysis of violence in health-care settings. The model treats violence as a process comprising of several stages/sub-events, and shows how this process is influenced by underlying structural (rather permanent) and situational (generally temporary) risk factors. Understanding the diversity in the process provides a basis for analysis of connections between interacting factors at different stages. Risk management (hazard identification, risk analysis, and preventive counter-measures) should be integrated into the work situation and operations of an organization.     

The conditions for state action in Florida's health-care market.

Despite the lack of confidence in government agencies to operate a nationalized health-care system in the United States, government agencies have significantly influenced the distribution and financing of health-care services in the market. Using the State of Florida as a case study, we examine the conditions under which a state health-care agency can consistently influence health-care market arrangements. We examined records from Florida's legislative sessions between 1965 and 1993 focusing on 27 legislative initiatives to involve the state's health-care agencies in the health-care services market. Using Boolean qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), we examined the conditions that facilitated or inhibited legislative policy initiatives for state action in Florida's health-care services market. The cohesiveness of state administrative agency and legislative leadership is of primary importance. Fragmented interests among health-care providers and fiscally legitimate policy positions, whether those of state agencies or health-care providers, are important enabling factors for state action.     

Assaultive behavior. Does provocation begin in the front office?

1. Provocation is an important risk predictor because these issues can be recognized, assessed, and appropriate interventions can be implemented to reduce the associated risks. It is only by the reduction of such "non-fixed" risk factors that any reduction of assaults can be accomplished. 2. Involuntary admission, patients with dementia or organic brain disorder, physical or verbal limits, staff attitude, denial of the possibility of assaults, and the educational level and clinical experience of the staff may help provoke an assaultive episode. 3. An important step is assessing the assault to identify provocation due to certain medical causes, and to document the extent of degeneration in patients with dementia or organic brain disorder. Medical intervention would be indicated and would appropriately address the causes of some violent episodes.     

Bystander Attitudes to Prevent Sexual Assault: A Study of College Students in the United States,Japan, India,Vietnam, and China

College women are at a high risk of sexual assault. Although programs that aim to change bystander behaviors have been shown to be potentially effective in preventing sexual assault on campuses in the United States, little is known about bystander behaviors outside of the United States. The purpose of this study was to explore and compare factors affecting bystander behaviors regarding sexual assault intervention and prevention among undergraduate students in the United States, Japan, India, Vietnam, and China. A total of 1,136 students participated in a self-reported survey. Results demonstrate substantial variations across countries. Bystander behaviors are associated with multilevel factors, including gender, knowledge of individuals who have experienced a sexual assault, and knowledge about campus or community organizations.     

College men as perpetrators of acquaintance rape and sexual assault: a review of recent research.

This article reviews literature since 1980 on college men as perpetrators of acquaintance rape and other forms of sexual assault. Topics include (1) the definition and incidence of acquaintance rape and sexual assault; (2) perpetrator characteristics; (3) situations associated with sexual assault; and (4) men's misperception of women's sexual intent. An integrated theory of sexual assault is proposed, along with implications for the development of effective rape-prevention programs for men.     

Routine activities and sexual assault: an analysis of individual- and school-level factors

The efficacy of routine activities theory is examined to explain sexual assault on the college campus. Although many research studies have utilized routine activities theory to predict sexual assault using individual-level factors, little is known about the effect of school-level factors on a student's risk of sexual assault. Based on interviews from 3,036 randomly selected students and surveys from 11 randomly selected colleges in the United States, a hierarchical linear model was created to predict student victimizations by school characteristics. For the individual, results reveal that being female, drug use, and marital status are statistically significant for predicting the probability of a sexual assault. At the institutional level, however, none of the variables are significant in predicting sexual assault among college coeds. Policy implications for prevention measures on college campuses are discussed.     

Stability and Change in Female and Male Violence across Rural and Urban Counties, 1981–2006

Two durable criminological patterns have been higher violence rates in urban compared to rural areas and by males compared to females. To derive and evaluate hypotheses related to correspondence across place and sex groups in changes in violence trends, we draw on a spatial‐inequality perspective that attends to the geographic distribution of inequalities at the subnational scale, as well as to recent extensions of social‐disorganization theory to variation in rural and female violence rates. Our study's focus is on systematically delineating the extent and timing of change in female and male violence trends, the rural‐urban violence gap, and the gender gap. We apply epidemiological joinpoint techniques to Uniform Crime Reports arrest data from completely rural to highly urbanized settings for several violent offenses (homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and misdemeanor assault) between 1981 and 2006. Female and male violence rates in rural to urban settings generally followed the same course over 25 years. Analyses generally indicated parallel violence trends of rural and urban females and males and only subtle changes in the rural‐urban and gender gaps in serious violence. Serious violence became somewhat less concentrated in urban centers owing to more sizable urban rate declines after the mid‐1990s. In all contexts, the gender gap in assault arrests narrowed, but the female share of serious violence (homicide, robbery) remained much the same; this result suggests change in the social control of minor violence by females across rural and urban settings.     

Correlates of wife assault in Hong Kong Chinese families

The objective of this study was the risk factors of wife assault in Hong Kong Chinese families. The sample included 107 battered women from a refuge for battered women. Factor analysis revealed risk factors like dominance, stress, poor anger management, aggressive personality, conflict, lack of empathy, masculine gender role stress, sense of insecurity, relationship distress, and violent socialization. Correlation analysis indicated that dominance, spousal conflict, and sense of insecurity increase the likelihood of carrying out minor physical assault and using psychological aggression, while aggressive personality predicts severe physical assault and injury. The risk factors were explained in terms of traditional Chinese concepts of gender role expectations of men and women and face orientations. The present study provides some evidence relating to the risk factors of wife assault in Chinese families.     

Expressing pain: The communication and interpretation of facial pain signals

This article reviews recent theory and research on the origins, nature, and meaning of facial expressions of pain. A general model of pain expression, distinguishing experiential, encoding, and decoding processes involved in pain episodes, is proposed. Variables which are known to or may affect these processes are reviewed. Relationships between elements of the model and clinical phenomena of interest to health-care workers are discussed. The implications of findings in this area for health-care workers are examined. Areas in need of research are identified.The authors' research reported in this paper was supported by research grants to K. M. Prkachin from the Medical Research Council of Canada and to K. D. Craig from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Medical Research Council, and the British Columbia Health Care Research Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments on earlier drafts of Mark Costanzo, Sherry Beaumont, Linda LeResche, and Glenda Prkachin, and the issue editor, Val Derlega.     

Social cognitions about adult male victims of female sexual assault

Although men are far less likely than women to be victims of heterosexual assault, such cases have been reported with increasing frequency in recent years. We compared social judgments about male and female victims of heterosexual and homosexual rape and tested hypotheses concerning social cognitions that are assumed to underlie a male rape mythology. In a 2 × 2 × 2 design, 77 male and 89 female subjects made a series of judgments about a sexual assault case in which sex of victim and sex of assailants were manipulated. Consistent with the hypotheses, the male victim of sexual assault by females was judged more likely to have initiated or encouraged the sex acts, and more enjoyment and less stress were attributed to him. This pattern of results was more pronounced among male subjects. The results are discussed in relation to stereotypic beliefs concerning male sex roles, sexual motivation, and sexual functioning that are likely to affect the social cognitions of both observers and male victims of heterosexual assault.     

Demographic and situational factors affecting injury, resistance, completion, and charges brought in sexual assault cases: what is best for arrest?

This study examines demographic and situational factors in an effort to predict whether or not a complainant was injured, used resistance, experienced a completed assault, and whether charges were brought against the offender. If the accused had consumed alcohol or drugs, he was almost seven times more likely to be arrested. The complainant was six times more likely to report rape completion if she had consumed alcohol or drugs and if the complainant fell unconscious at any time during the attack she was significantly less likely to use a resistance strategy. The complainant's use of a compliance strategy at any time during the assault positively predicted not using a physical resistance strategy and sexual assault completion. The reporting of injury positively predicted use a physical resistance strategy and sexual assault completion. If the assault was completed, it was less likely that charges were pressed. Implications of these findings are discussed, and directions for future research are offered.     

Correlates of women's sexual assault disclosure to informal and formal support sources

Deciding which people to tell about sexual assault is an important and potentially consequential decision for sexual assault survivors. Women typically receive many different positive and negative reactions when they disclose sexual assault to social support sources. A diverse sample of adult sexual assault survivors in the Chicago area was surveyed about sexual assault experiences, social reactions received when disclosing assault to others, attributions of blame, coping strategies, and PTSD. Analyses were run to identify demographic, assault, and postassault factors differentiating women disclosing to informal support sources only from those disclosing to both informal and formal support sources. Women disclosing to both formal and informal support sources experienced more stereotypical assaults, had more PTSD symptoms, engaged in less behavioral self-blame, and received more negative social reactions than those disclosing to informal support sources only. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Supporting Transmasculine Survivors of Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence: Reflections from Peer Support Facilitation

Data show that trans individuals experience disproportionately high rates of sexual assault compared to their cisgender peers, yet very few survivor support spaces are accessible to trans men. Using autoethnography to reflect on the experiences of serving as a peer facilitator of a grassroots peer support group for transmasculine and non-binary survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence in the United States, this article illuminates issues frequently iterated by trans survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence within peer support group settings. From these experiences, common themes are highlighted that reveal new insights and considerations for those who work with transmasculine survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence.     

Contributions of Child Sexual Abuse,Self-Blame,Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms,and Alcohol Use to Women’s Risk for Forcible and Substance-Facilitated Sexual Assault

Child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault have been linked to increased self-blame, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and alcohol use. The current study aims to examine (a) whether these constructs explain women’s risk for later adult sexual assault and revictimization, (b) whether such factors differentially confer risk for specific types of adult sexual assault (i.e., substance-facilitated and forcible), and (c) if self-blame confers risk indirectly through other risk factors. Multiple types of self-blame, posttraumatic stress, and alcohol use were examined among 929 female college students as serial mediators of the relationship between child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault and as risk factors for sexual revictimization among child sexual abuse survivors. In the model predicting risk for substance-facilitated adult sexual assault, child sexual abuse indirectly predicted greater risk for substance-facilitated adult sexual assault mediated through two separate paths: global blame-to-posttraumatic-stress and global blame-to-alcohol use. In the model predicting risk for forcible adult sexual assault, child sexual abuse directly predicted greater risk for forcible adult sexual assault, and this relation was mediated by the global blame-to-posttraumatic-stress path. Among child sexual abuse survivors, child sexual abuse specific characterological and behavioral self-blame directly predicted greater risk for forcible and substance-facilitated revictimization, but the pathways were not mediated by posttraumatic stress or alcohol use. Results emphasize the importance of assessing different types of self-blame in predicting posttraumatic stress symptoms as well as examining risk for sexual victimization and revictimization. Findings did not support hypotheses that increased posttraumatic stress would predict increased alcohol use but did indicate that heightened self-blame is consistently associated with heightened posttraumatic stress and that heightened global self-blame predicts increased alcohol use. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Do it yourself. Medication management for community based clients

1. Nurses in mental health-care settings have many opportunities to influence and promote health-care behaviors through the use of long-term education programs for their clients. 2. Acquisition and mastery of client-centered medication management skills increases the likelihood of client participation in treatment at the community level. 3. Psychiatric impairment among clients may require modification of usual teaching strategies. A variety of approaches enhances the success of an education program for this client population. 4. Psychiatrically impaired clients have the right to information and education. Nurses need to continue to develop skill with regard to patient education for this challenging group.     

Internet-Initiated Sexual Assault Among U.S. Adolescents Reported in Newspapers, 1996–2007

This article provides an assessment over time of the incidence of newspaper-reported Internet-initiated sexual assaults among U.S. adolescents undergoing adjudication from 1996 to 2007. Of 812 newspaper reports of adjudicated Internet-initiated sexual assault, most (79.2%) victims were female, and the median age was 14 years. The incidence rate of these reports increased over the 12-year period for females but remained steady for males. The frequency of these assaults was much less than reported for other types of sexual assaults in this age group. These estimates hopefully will assist in a greater understanding of these assaults, aid in interventions to decrease their occurrence, and guide effective policymaking that will reduce all types of sexual assault among adolescents.     

The effects of children's presence on woman abuse

The association between the presence of children and woman abuse was investigated. Data were collected from 419 women who had called the police because of an abusive incident involving their male partner. Minor children were present in the home in 3/4 of the cases and were frequent witnesses to the abusive incident. In more than 1/2 of the cases, children had witnessed the assault according to the victims; 2/3 of the victims reported that children had seen the police when they arrived. There was almost no association between the presence of children in the home and assault on women: the presence of children was not associated with cumulative incidence of abuse, severity of abuse, degree of injury, or the victim's decision-making process in calling the police. However, police were more likely to provide information and referrals to shelters when children were present.     

Abstracts and reviews

Although men are far less likely than women to be victims of heterosexual assault, such cases have been reported with increasing frequency in recent years. We compared social judgments about male and female victims of heterosexual and homosexual rape and tested hypotheses concerning social cognitions that are assumed to underlie a male rape mythology. In a 2 × 2 × 2 design, 77 male and 89 female subjects made a series of judgments about a sexual assault case in which sex of victim and sex of assailants were manipulated. Consistent with the hypotheses, the male victim of sexual assault by females was judged more likely to have initiated or encouraged the sex acts, and more enjoyment and less stress were attributed to him. This pattern of results was more pronounced among male subjects. The results are discussed in relation to stereotypic beliefs concerning male sex roles, sexual motivation, and sexual functioning that are likely to affect the social cognitions of both observers and male victims of heterosexual assault.