Healing broken hearts

1. Posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression have a significant negative effect on the physical functioning of individuals with coronary artery disease. 2. A diagnosis of major depression is recognized to be an independent risk factor for cardiac events. 3. Preoperative and postoperative interventions can increase individuals' compliance with cardiac and psychiatric self-care after discharge.     

Service Learning and Community Engagement: A Comparison of Three National Contexts

One of the presumptions of a well-functioning, viable democracy is that citizens participate in the life of their communities and nation. The role of higher education in forming actively engaged citizens has long been the focus of scholarly research, but recently an active debate has emerged concerning the role of service as a third core function of institutions of higher learning. Service learning (SL), a teaching approach that extends student learning beyond the classroom, is increasingly seen as a vehicle to realize this third core function. By aligning educational objectives with community partners’ needs, community service is meant to enhance, among other objectives, reciprocal learning. Although the term and its associated activities originated in the United States (US), theoretical debates linking civic engagement and education extend far beyond the US context. Nevertheless, research on SL as a distinctive pedagogical approach remains a nascent field. A significant gap exists in the literature about what this pedagogical approach seeks to achieve (in nature and in outcomes) and how it is construed in non-western contexts. Using a comparative analysis across three widely different contexts, this article explores the extent to which these differences are merely differences in degree or whether the differences are substantive enough to demand qualitatively different models for strengthening the relationship between higher education and civil society.     

A Normative Approach to Parent-Young Adult Child Communication in the Context of Substance Use Disorders: Explicating Parents’ Communication Challenges and Strategies

ABSTRACT

Despite a decrease in substance use among teens, alcohol and substance use has remained high among young adults. Young adult use of illicit substances is particularly concerning. Parents can play an important role in substance use intervention and prevention, but their efforts are sometimes unsuccessful. Therefore, it is important to consider how parents respond to and communicate about their young adult children’s substance use disorder. Most research has privileged confrontation and direct communication as effective coping responses, but evidence suggests that effectiveness hinges on the meanings interactants ascribe to behavior. Through qualitative interviews, the current study develops normative theory regarding parents’ communication challenges and strategies in response to their young adult child’s substance use disorder. Parents’ challenges center on the intersection of support with their own substance use history; others’ divergent views on substance use; uncertainty in illness; relational closeness and harmony; and illness features. Results are discussed in terms of implications for helping parents respond to their young adult child’s substance use disorder.     

Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates: Trafficking Victims?

This paper is a response to R. Jureidini's “Trafficking and contract migrant workers in the Middle East”, published in International Migration. Jureidini discusses the difficulty of establishing whether migrant domestic workers are victims of trafficking. He discusses the questions of (i) whether trafficking can be determined ex post or whether it must also be ex ante, and (ii) whether there must be a proven intent to engage in trafficking. On the basis of data concerning domestic workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, I argue that they often are victims of trafficking. In these two countries, forced confinement and exploitation do not concern individual cases, but standard labour conditions. Agents in the countries of origin regularly misinform or even deceive domestic workers, while agents in the countries of destination actively stimulate confinement and exploitation. Furthermore, the lack of prosecution of traffickers is not caused by legal obscurities, but by societal issues. The paper concludes with some policy suggestions to better address the issue of trafficking.     

Military Brides and Refugees: Vietnamese American Wives and Shifting Links to the Military, 1980 – 2000

Since the immigration legislation of 1965, marriage to American citizens and resident aliens has been one of the primary paths for migration to the United States. Despite the rapid growth of the Asian American population over the course of the late twentieth century, Asian Americans had still reached only 3 per cent of all Americans by 2000, meaning that Asian marriage migration to the United States has been largely through marriage to non‐Asians. In this study, we look at exogamy among Vietnamese Americans using U. S. Census data (1980, 1990, and 2000) from 5 per cent PUMS sets made available through the IPUMS project. We ask: (1) What are the predictors of exogamy among Vietnamese Americans? (2) How do the rates of exogamy of Vietnamese American women compare to those of Vietnamese American men? (3) How have the predictors of exogamy and the apparent characteristics of the exogamously married changed over the decades of refugee movement from Vietnam to North America? We review data from the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. In the assimilationist view of immigration associated with the classic work of Milton M. Gordon, exogamy is the final stage of immigrant incorporation into a host country. Migration through marriage, which has become a major source of immigration to the United States since the Immigration Act of 1965, reverses this assimilationist pattern, placing marriage before immigration and incorporation, or at the earliest stages of immigration and incorporation. Our findings are relevant to understanding the specific Vietnamese experience in the United States. They highlight the continuing but declining importance of the Vietnam War in creating close connections between Vietnamese and other people in the United States, even after the war had ended. The findings also suggest how these connections changed as a result of Vietnamese mass migration to America.     

The post-1994 transformation of social work in South Africa

This article examines the transformation of social work in South Africa in response to the transition to a developmental welfare approach. Always moulding and shaping itself in response to its social context, social work in South Africa, as elsewhere, is a reflection of the broader political landscape. In South Africa the social work profession has struggled to assert its independence and become self-regulating. It is unique in the Western world in that since 1978 it has been regulated by a legislatively constituted statutory council. While the profession has tried to transform itself in the new democracy, outside pressures have found it wanting and deeply divided. Thus, despite progress in other areas social workers have not yet been successful in forming a strong, united professional association and this severely limits its ability to lobby politicians and advocate on behalf of clients. It seems, however, that the tide is turning and social workers are gaining recognition but, once again, the challenge remains deciding on the extent to which the profession cooperates with the government's agenda for change. Social work educators took the lead in setting education standards in response to higher education policy and are also playing a part in devising practice standards through their involvement in the social work board which falls under the umbrella of the Council for Social Service Professions. However, education and practice are somewhat out of step and professional unity remains a pressing issue on social work's transformation agenda.     

Widowhood practices in West Africa: the silent victims

This article discusses the plight and suffering of widows in terms of their social, economic, psychological and human rights violations in three West African societies. The article describes the situation of the widows as silent victims who suffer cruel and dehumanising cultural and ritual practices as a mourning process for their dead spouses. The article also examines the gender inequalities suffered by the widows and makes some recommendations as to how these practices could be minimised or eliminated from those societies.