An agenda for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience

Young people who are currently or were previously in state care have consistently been found to have much higher rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the general youth population. While a number of high-quality reviews highlight what research has been undertaken in relation to the mental health of young people with care experience and the gaps in our knowledge and understanding, there is, until now, no consensus, so far as we aware, as to where our collective research efforts should be directed with this important group. Through a series of UK wide workshops, we undertook a consultative process to identify an agreed research agenda between those with lived experience of being in care (n = 15), practitioners, policy makers and researchers (n = 59), for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience, including those who are neurodiverse/have a neurodevelopmental difficulty. This consensus statement identified 21 foci within four broad categories: how we conceptualize mental health; under-studied populations; under-studied topics; and underused methodologies. We hope that those who commission, fund and undertake research will engage in this discussion about the future agenda for research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience.     

Improving OpenURL Menus: User Testing of Revisions to SFX® Menus

Twenty-one volunteers tested the usability of revisions to the Texas A&M University Libraries' SFX® OpenURL link resolver menus, including the addition of Ex Libris' new bX™ recommendation service and a plug-in which pulls additional information about the journal into the menu. The volunteers also evaluated the quality and desirability of the bX recommendations and discussed their preferences for help options and full-text format. Results of the usability testing are reported along with the resultant menu changes. This study will be of interest to librarians implementing or redesigning OpenURL menus as well as those interested in the user experience.     

The experience of gender dysphoria for pre‐pubescent children and their families: a review of the literature

In recent years, the experience of gender dysphoria has gained public prominence through an explosion of sensationalized interest in the popular media. However, childhood gender dysphoria remains poorly understood and both parents and children often find themselves having to educate professionals around them. This not only creates a sense of disconnect between family and professionals, but also means that social workers can often be unaware of the myriad of competing perspectives that seek to explain gender variance. This review of the literature seeks to provide interested social workers with an overview of gender dysphoria, current research in the field and theoretical paradigms, with a view to promoting understanding and better practice with families in this little understood field.     

Memory's Pillar and the Experience of Sexual Trauma Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

In Pillar of Salt, Janice Haaken questions the claims of the advocates of recovered memory by exploring memory through a psychoanalytic lens as a process of reconfiguring the past in the light of present needs and desires. Resisting reductive formulations, she examines contemporary stories of abuse and concludes that, whether factual or not, the recovered-memory syndrome that has so starkly emerged in the past 20 years is true to women's experience of oppression within an abusive patriarchal culture. Read within the framework of subjectivity and meaning, recovered memories provide women with dramatic self-representations that give narrative structure to the truths of their lives.     

Increasing Child Serving Professionals’ Awareness and Understanding of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

ABSTRACT

Child serving professionals need increased understanding of the identification and therapeutic needs of child victims of commercial sexual exploitation. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a training program aimed to increase awareness of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) among professionals likely to encounter victims in their work. Professionals’ (N = 227) knowledge level was examined prior to the training, immediately thereafter, and in a 6–12 month follow-up. Despite professional position or years of experience, participants had similar levels of CSEC knowledge before the training and all showed a significant improvement in their knowledge after the training. However, follow-up testing on a smaller subsample demonstrated that knowledge gains were not maintained. The analysis of the participants’ responses to how their behavior would change subsequent to the training revealed important themes including: (1) greater ability to identify/assess or recognize CSEC victims, (2) greater understanding and knowledge of CSEC, (3) increased ability to communicate, interact, and engage with CSEC victims, and (4) heightened desire to educate others and raise awareness about CSEC. Results also indicated that participants were very satisfied with the training and found it highly relevant to their work.     

One of the Boys?

This article argues that American media reports of the Jessica Lynch case illustrate some of the ways in which gender has been reordered, policed and disciplined within the United States (and North America more broadly) in the wake of 9/11 and in the context of war. The study of a key gendered representation of the war – and of the way gender interlocks with race, class, nationality and sexuality in these representations – tells us not only about how the war was sold to the American public, but also about the degree to which normative and disciplinary gender roles can be stretched, or not, within domestic society and the ways in which contemporary media portrayals of foreign adventures serve to reinforce these gender norms. Ultimately we argue that media portraits of Jessica Lynch demonstrate how little the simple inclusion of women in the military acts to disrupt sexist systems of power and meaning.     

Michelle Bachelet's Liderazgo Femenino (Feminine Leadership)

Evidence of military involvement in sexual exploitation and aggression against civilians on peacekeeping operations has led many feminists to question the appropriateness of using soldiers to create peace. They argue that the problems stem from a particular form of military masculinity, hegemonic within western militaries, associated with practices of strength, toughness and aggressive heterosexuality. Masculinities, however, are multiple, dynamic and contradictory. As they are constructed in relation to the contexts men find themselves in, involvement in peacekeeping may itself play a role in the construction of alternative military masculinities. Examining autobiographical accounts of soldiers involved in peacekeeping in Bosnia in the 1990s, I argue that there is evidence of an alternative discourse of ‘peacekeeper masculinity’, but question whether it fully challenges the hegemony of the warrior model. I acknowledge that peacekeeper masculinity is also problematic because although it disrupts elements of the traditional linkages between militarism and masculinity, it still relies on a feminized and racialized ‘Other’. Yet, I suggest that this is not the only way in which peacekeeper masculinity can be viewed. It can alternatively be considered part of a ‘regendered military’, which may be a necessary component of successful conflict resolution.     

A Single Man and a Tragic Woman

Depicting the fraught relationship between a gay man and his straight female best friend, Tom Ford's A Single Man (2009) offers a complex, and often contradictory, depiction of its leading female character, Charley. At once glamorous and troubled, stunning and damaged, Charley reproduces a number of problematic stereotypes regarding women, in general, and fag hags, in particular. At the center of these problems is the film's insinuation that Charley has a melancholic attachment to George, her gay male companion. At first glance, A Single Man reproduces Freudian constructs of melancholy as a pathological response to traumatic loss; this essay argues, however, that the film's many ambivalences also offer opportunities for critical consideration of melancholy as a tactical response to heteronormativity.