The school-age traction patient: toward better behavior patterns

Being confined to bed in traction is a decidedly frustrating experience for the pediatric patient. Following the initial adjustment of the trauma of the accident that precipitated the present limited environment, the patient assumes a behavior pattern that he thinks will enable him to cope with the predicament. One of the following three roles is usually exhibited: 1) reasonable independence, 2) problem dependency, 3) manipulation. The awareness and understanding of these patterns and their variations with a practical response from the hospital staff will help the patient to project his natural personality and to develop an acceptable level of self-sufficiency even during this time of physical restriction.     

Toward building a typology for the evaluation of services in family support programs

This article briefly reviews the history, philosophy, practice principles, and foci of family support programs, examines the typologies currently in use to classify these programs, and discusses the difficulties these classifications pose for program evaluators. The authors introduce a new typology that deconstructs family support programs into their component services and discuss the potential of this typology for evaluation of family support services.     

The surveillant assemblage

George Orwell's 'Big Brother' and Michel Foucault's 'panopticon' have dominated discussion of contemporary developments in surveillance. While such metaphors draw our attention to important attributes of surveillance, they also miss some recent dynamics in its operation. The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is used to analyse the convergence of once discrete surveillance systems. The resultant 'surveillant assemblage' operates by abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings, and separating them into a series of discrete flows. These flows are then reassembled in different locations as discrete and virtual 'data doubles'. The surveillant assemblage transforms the purposes of surveillance and the hierarchies of surveillance, as well as the institution of privacy.     

Risk factors for preterm,low birthweight and small for gestational age births among Aboriginal women from remote communities in Northern Australia

Objective

To identify the risk factors for preterm birth, low birthweight and small for gestational age babies among remote-dwelling Aboriginal women.

When disaster strikes. The concerns of staff nurses

1. This study determined how involvement with an earthquake affected patient care delivery and ascertained what nurses need to continue providing safe and efficient care in future disasters. 2. Although 60% of the staff had experienced a previous disaster, the literature described that learned coping does not automatically "transfer" to present loss experiences. 3. Providing staff with debriefing sessions and other support groups is helpful in the post-trauma period. At all levels, there is a need to communicate concerns and to be involved in disaster drills and other disaster preparedness sessions.     

Becoming married, depression, and alcohol problems among young adults

This paper examines three questions regarding the relationship between marriage and mental health, specifically depression and alcohol problems. First, does marriage lead to improved mental health compared to never marrying? Second, do any mental health benefits of marriage primarily accrue to men? Third, what qualitative aspects of marriage are related to psychological disorder? We explore these questions in a longitudinal sample of young adults sampled at age 21 and again at age 24. We find no indication that marriage reduces depression. Married people do report fewer alcohol problems than the never-married but this could be due to the selection of less problematic drinkers into marriage. We also fail to find that men receive disproportionate mental health benefits from marriage. Finally, we find that marital conflict is associated with problem drinking for men and depression for women. The results indicate the importance of considering stage in the life cycle and gender-sensitive indicators of psychological disorder in studies of marriage and mental health.     

Re-Creational Television: The Paradox of Change and Continuity within Stereotypical Iconography

Speculation abounds regarding the cumulative effect of stereotypical images in the media, especially those effects directed toward ethnic/gender identity. Using images of Black women in the United States as a case study, this paper explores the ways in which three historical stereotypes—Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire—are re-created in current-day television broadcasts. I argue that these recreations influence modern depictions of Black women in important ways. But my analysis differs from other sociological works on stereotypes, as it critically examines three underexplored components of the stereotyping process: (1) the symbolic properties of stereotypical images; (2) the separation of time and space achieved on television; and (3) the use of rigid interpretive frames as means of sustaining stereotypes in this media age.
[b]lack women, still least powerful economically, socially and politically in American society … have been refracted through a prism that tends to project them in one of three extremes: larger than life as matriarchs or sex objects, diminished to insignificance as mammies or maids, or faded into invisibility as irrelevant. (Edwards 1993, p. 217)     

Pitfalls in planning: Contrasting perspectives on mental health and corporate planning

Planning is a management activity that has been linked to high quality services, organizational growth, and in austere times, to organizational survival. The present study was undertaken to identify the critical barriers that inhibit or derail effective planning. It was predicted that human service and corporate managers would generally agree about the most and least important planning pitfalls in their systems. Discrepancies would be related to differences in the structural characteristics of organizations in the two sectors. Rankings made by 57 senior mental health administrators of the most and least important pitfalls in planning were contrasted with those of 159 corporate executives. Substantial agreement between the two groups of executives was found.