Social-ecological research in urban natural areas: an emergent process for integration

Urban Ecosystems - Understanding the structure and function of urban landscapes requires integrating social and ecological research. Here, we integrate parallel social and ecological assessments of...     

Symptoms of Mental Health Problems: Children’s and Adolescents’ Understandings and Implications for Gender Differences in Help Seeking

Amidst concerns that young people’s mental health is deteriorating, it is important to explore their understandings of symptoms of mental health problems and beliefs around help seeking. Drawing on focus group data from Scottish school pupils, we demonstrate how they understood symptoms of mental health problems and how their characterisations of these symptoms as ‘rare’ and ‘weird’ informed participants’ perceptions that peers, teachers and parents would respond to disclosure in stigmatising ways. Consequently, participants suggested that they would delay or avoid disclosing symptoms of mental health problems. We highlight subtle gender and age differences and outline implications for policy and practice.     

The Role of a Clinical Social Worker in a Changing Society

This paper reviews the anomaly that seems currently to exist within the profession of social work — on the one hand a denigration of the value and utility of individualized services, and on the other, the increased anonymity of life in today's technological society. It is suggested that the need for individualized services will continue to exist regardless of institutional change and that clinical social work will remain an essential and specialized part of the social work profession. It is postulated that if the clinicians look elsewhere for education and recognition this will be a loss for social work.     

Aging with HIV: Historical and Intra-Community Differences in Experience of Aging with HIV

Gay men living with HIV/AIDS face a complex of health issues, including those associated with the aging process, long-term HIV infection (25 years or more), and side effects from Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART). If aging can increase marginalization, this is more likely for the aging HIV positive gay man, who is already marginalized for being queer and living with a stigmatizing disease. This article presents findings from a study of a long-running HIV support group. It locates the members, all gay men living with HIV, in a specific historical and political context to explore how feelings of loss and the struggle to sustain community affect long-term survivors and other older HIV+ gay men. We identify specific challenges presented by aging for men who contracted HIV early in the epidemic, contrasting them with those faced by men infected with the virus later in life. While both groups appear to struggle with a vision of what life could have been, had AIDS not forced loss and change, they also celebrate the community their shared plight has enabled.     

Impacts of the Triple Global Crisis on Growth and Poverty: The Case of Yemen

Yemen is an oil‐exporting and food‐importing country with the highest levels of poverty in the Middle East and North Africa. The impacts of the triple crisis are likely to further complicate pre‐existing conditions of conflict, oil depletion and governance failure. Using a dynamic CGE model, this article finds that oil‐driven growth in 2008 dominated the negative growth impacts of the food crisis, but that growth was not pro‐poor. The financial crisis of 2009 slowed growth sharply and raised the poverty rate to 42.8%, up from 34.8% in 2005/6. Poverty continues to be higher in rural areas, where almost half the population live in poverty.     

“Try to make it seem like we're regular kids”: Youth perceptions of restrictiveness in out-of-home care

While there are several measures of living environment restrictiveness, none has used the youth perspective in conceptualizing and operationalizing restrictiveness. The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain the perspectives of child welfare involved youth who have lived in out-of-home care. Using focus group methodology, 40 youth were asked to define restriction and give examples of how it is operationalized in practice. Youth defined restriction as “rules”. The rules were about what youth can do, where they can go, who they can be with and how and with whom they can communicate. These rules were primarily characterized as inconsistent, arbitrary, non-individualized and developmentally inappropriate, although some characterized them as beneficial in the long term. Rules were mostly attributed to adult need for power and avoidance of legal responsibility for the youths. Typical feelings about the rules were anger, resentment, feeling labeled, isolated and stigmatized. Relationships influenced perceptions: within a positive relationship, youth understood and tolerated the rules that limited independence. The perception of what were normal restrictions for other youth not in out-of-home care was another influencing factor. These findings are examined in light of cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Recommendations for improving the measurement of living environment restrictiveness as well as enhancing child welfare services are proposed.