Suicide Ideation Among US College Students Associations With Other Injury Risk Behaviors

Abstract

Suicide, the endpoint of a continuum that begins with suicide ideation, is the third leading cause of death among the US college-aged population. The first and second leading causes of death among this age group, unintentional injury and homicide, may also be linked to suicide ideation. We used data from the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey to examine the association between suicide ideation and injury-related behaviors among 18- to 24-year-old college students. Students who reported suicide ideation were significantly more likely than students who did not report considering suicide to carry a weapon, engage in a physical fight, boat or swim after drinking alcohol, ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, drive after drinking alcohol, and rarely or never used seat belts. Given this clustering of injury-related risk behaviors, college prevention programs should aim to reduce risks for injuries comprehensively, rather than addressing each risk behavior separately.     

Research in progress

Current proposals for reorganising social work training concentrate too heavily upon initial qualifying training. The greater need is to devise a system for career long development and performance monitoring related to credentials associated with training, experience and responsibilities. Many American states have certification regulations governing social work. Adaptation of such schemes to Britain would have advantages for both public and social workers and could be incorporated into present proposals for the reorganisation of training. A structure is proposed charged with responsibility for monitoring all professional development. Training beyond the initial would become obligatory and reduce the unreasonable expectations placed upon basic training for career long competence.     

And Some of Us Are Braver: Stress and Coping Among African American Women

African American women fulfill many roles within their family and community. Most notably, these women are often defined by their “strength” and rarely seen as “vulnerable.” Many African American women demonstrate strength as they struggle to maintain employment, raise children, and nurture spouses and extended family, but these same women are at risk for a higher rate of health and emotional problems. In this article, the authors use relational cultural, stress and coping, and lifespan theories, along with Black feminist thought to discuss the interlocking effects of race, gender, and class regarding the psychological well-being of African American women 18 to 55 years old. We conclude with a discussion of research, practice, and teaching implications.     

Mothers’ Sexual Identity and Children’s Health

Sexual minority women face a plethora of structural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal disadvantages and stressors. Research has established negative associations between women’s sexual minority identities and both their own health and their infants’ birth outcomes. Yet a separate body of scholarship has documented similarities in the development and well-being of children living with same-sex couples relative to those living with similarly situated different-sex couples. This study sought to reconcile these literatures by examining the association between maternal sexual identity and child health at ages 5–18 using a US sample from the full population of children of sexual minority women, including those who identify as mostly heterosexual, bisexual, or lesbian, regardless of partner sex or gender. Analyses using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N?=?8978) followed women longitudinally and examined several measures of their children’s health, including general health and specific developmental and physical health conditions. Analyses found that children of mostly heterosexual and bisexual women experienced health disadvantages relative to children of heterosexual women, whereas the few children of lesbian women in our sample evidenced a mixture of advantages and disadvantages. These findings underscore that to understand sexual orientation disparities and the intergenerational transmission of health, it is important to incorporate broad measurement of sexual orientation that can capture variation in family forms and in sexual minority identities.

     

Evictions and human rights: land disputes in Bogotá, Colombia

Even though many governments in Latin America, including Colombia, have improved the legalization and regularization of peripheral settlements, recognized the right to housing, and acknowledged the United Nations’ position on evictions as violations of fundamental human rights, urban displacement continues. Forced eviction brings devastation to families and neighborhoods and hampers efforts to improve large areas of the city. Over the past twenty-five years in the hills of eastern Bogotá, growing competition for land combined with the competing claims of squatters, semi-legal settlements, title-holders and government agencies has led to frequent and sometimes violent land disputes. These disputes result either directly or indirectly from public and private development in the area. This paper will document the history of displacement in this sector of Bogotá as a case study in order to evaluate current policy guidelines related to forced displacement.¹ There is a wealth of ethnographic data on the effects of evictions, as documented below, and yet this data, typically in the form of Social Impact Assessment, rarely translates into lasting policy guidelines. Economists, geographers, and other social scientists have also documented the negative effects of forced displacement. This study evaluates current policies from a human rights perspective. I argue that human rights can make land policies not only more equitable but also more efficient in Latin America if our current knowledge about displaced communities can be translated into public policy.     

Acid rain policy in the United States: An exploration of Canadian influence

This analysis evaluates the effectiveness of Canadian efforts to influence the formulation of acid rain policy in the United States. The findings indicate that, despite an imbalance in resources of power and influence favoring the United States, there still may be limited, but nevertheless important, avenues for Canadian influence in the formulation of U.S. policy. This study questions the generality of static models for analyzing U.S.-Canadian relations, and suggests the use of a policy process framework for examining the political dynamics in the relationship.     

The Effects of Children’s Migration on Elderly Kin’s Health: A Counterfactual Approach

Recent studies of migration and the left-behind have found that elders with migrant children actually experience better health outcomes than those with no migrant children, yet these studies raise many concerns about self-selection. Using three rounds of panel survey data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey, we employ the counterfactual framework developed by Rosenbaum and Rubin to examine the relationship between having a migrant child and the health of elders aged 50 and older, as measured by activities of daily living (ADL), self-rated health (SRH), and mortality. As in earlier studies, we find a positive association between old-age health and children’s migration, an effect that is partly explained by an individual’s propensity to have migrant children. Positive impacts of migration are much greater among elders with a high propensity to have migrant children than among those with low propensity. We note that migration is one of the single greatest sources of health disparity among the elders in our study population, and point to the need for research and policy aimed at broadening the benefits of migration to better improve health systems rather than individual health.     

Examining the Impact of Speed of Quality Improvement on Quality-Related Costs

The Fine (1986) quality-based learning curve model is extended to include the consideration of speed of quality improvement. The model demonstrates that under different circumstances rapid quality improvement effects are either beneficial or detrimental to improvement in quality-related costs. Hypotheses are developed from the analysis of this speed of quality improvement model. The hypotheses are tested in an automotive parts manufacturing company with five similar plants. Results show that with an increase in the speed of quality improvement, the rate of growth in prevention and appraisal costs decrease and the rate of growth in failure costs are unaffected. Rapid speed of quality improvement does yield lesser decreases in failure costs than slower, steadier improvement. However, rapid speed of quality improvement does not yield the predicted lesser decrease in prevention and appraisal costs than slower, steadier improvement. Rapid speed of quality improvement might or might not benefit the organization, perhaps an explanation for some Total Quality Management (TQM) failures. A more deliberate, learning organization is suggested from this research.     

A second look at Krackhardt's graph theoretical dimensions of informal organizations

Krackhardt (1994) proposed four dimensions to describe and measure the amount of hierarchy in networks of informal organizations. We examine these conditions, suggest some relaxations and prove that they are both necessary and sufficient to guarantee an arborescence (or out-tree). In addition we suggest situations some of which are outside of informal organizations in which fewer of the conditions can be used to capture the hierarchical tree structure.