Asylanten auf der Saualm

The following article deals with the question of how socio-political questions such as integration and asylum policy can be processed within a self-organised project and which concomitances, irritations and difficulties may be encountered; it is exemplified through a regionally based case study. The basic assumption is that topics which are relevant to current social political topics require processes which can function across systems. These processes must be sensitively steered, have a concrete application and involve structures of self-organisation. The authors outline how self-initiated projects can be supported professionally and how accompanying phenomena need to be taken up and considered as well in order to ensure that they can at least be partially steered. At the same time the authors look at social and emotional influences, including both emotions which determine the actors’ capacity to act within the project and emotions which must be considered as “environment” outside the project. The article draws analytical distinctions in order to make the complexity of the topic comprehensible. However, in actual practice all these topics interweave continuously and must be balanced accordingly.     

USE OF THE DSM IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY PROGRAMS: CURRENT PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES

The DSM has largely become the common language of behavioral health which its authors intended. Although family systems theory resulted in part from the study of major mental illness, it later became distanced from considerations of individual psychopathology. No studies have assessed current practices and views within the field of family therapy on teaching students the use of the DSM. Member training programs of the Education and Training Council of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy were surveyed regarding their practices in teaching the DSM. Seventy-nine of 177 surveys (45%) were returned. Ninety-one percent of these programs offered training in the DSM, and in 93% of those such training was mandatory. Written comments indicated that pragmatic concerns about students being able to speak a common language with other behavioral health providers were among the primary reasons for teaching the DSM.     

USING PATIENT NARRATIVES TO TEACH PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Psychopathology courses are usually taught using a biomedical perspective and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM IV) as the primary text. This can result in students developing little empathy for their patients and objectifying them as disorders rather than people with problems. Using narrative, music, and art in teaching psychopathology can balance the scientific, objective style of the DSM IV. Resources and suggestions for ways to humanize a psychopathology course are given.     

Computer systems in addiction treatment programs: Availability and implications for program evaluation

Addiction treatment programs have been slow to adopt computerized information systems. Little systematic data exist on programs' technological infrastructures and use of electronic databases to store and analyze client information. Likewise, there is little information available on counselors' access to and use of the Internet for learning about new treatment techniques. Drawing upon data obtained in 2002–2003 from nationally-representative samples of publicly- and privately-funded addiction treatment centers and their counselors, this article describes the current state of the field in terms of data system availability and Internet usage. The availability of client-level databases is variable but continues to evolve. Programs maintaining electronic client data appear to be at an advantage for implementing outcomes monitoring activities. While counselors' access to computers is high, their use of the Internet and the NIDA website is low. The implications of these findings, and directions for future research, are discussed.     

Women in Denmark - why do they die so young? Risk factors for premature death

In Denmark the life expectancy of women has been declining since 1980, and is now the lowest of all OECD countries. Based upon analyses of the different trends in mortality of 35–64-year-old women in Denmark compared to women in Norway and Sweden, national differentials in external determinants of morbidity and premature mortality are described. The excess mortality of women in Denmark is linked to lifestyle factors: tobacco smoking, alcohol and drug consumption. We discuss the possible impact of other external factors: full-time employment, work load, job insecurity, unemployment, single motherhood, and social isolation. The main hypothesis is that the daily life of women in Denmark has deteriorated over the years, and that changes in lifestyle and behaviour in part can be explained by evolved strategies in order to cope with anxiety and strain. Contrary to conditions in Sweden, the welfare system in Denmark has not facilitated the combination of child-bearing and paid work. The analysis points to the importance of including data of external stressors in discussions of national variances in lifestyle factors linked to premature mortality.     

Counselor Turnover in Substance Abuse Treatment Centers: An Organizational-Level Analysis

This article draws on institutional and ecological perspectives on work and organizations to develop a workplace level model of variation in voluntary counselor turnover rates across privately funded substance abuse treatment centers in the United States. Results show that participatory management structures reduce turnover rates principally by promoting organizational commitment. The analysis also tests hypotheses regarding the effects on turnover rates of other relevant theoretic domains of treatment center structure and organization. We discuss theoretical implications of the findings and suggest directions for future research.     

Simple random sampling with over-replacement

There are several ways to select units with replacement and an equal inclusion expectation. We present a new sampling design called simple random sampling with over-replacement. Its interest lies in the high variance produced for the Horvitz-Thompson estimator. This characteristic could be useful for resampling methods.     

Sect,Church, and Organizational Change

Abstract

Advances in research on national and local influence structures suggest that comparative study of the relationships among the influential in the context of the centralization of power and decision-making is both possible and fruitful. Techniques based on graph theory may be used to operationalize the concept of centralization. We applied Nieminen's (1973) index of centrality to a sample of the elite of the Valle region of Columbia.

Positional, reputational and decisional methods were combined to select the sample, and relationships among respondents in a regionally active core of the elite were mapped from the organizational affiliations they had in common. The adjacency matrix produced by these data showed that direct links among the leaders were structured by organizational brokers in several of the seven cities in the region. The derivative distance matrix and index of centrality incorporate the indirect relationships that exist. All but one person in the sector are closely interrelated in a network, or one clique. An individual's centrality to the network appears to be associated with indicators of status rather than class, but the possibility that differences within this sector of the elite may arise from the interplay of class and status in an industrializing society disappears when the effects of the one deviant case are removed. Reinforced by this finding, we conclude instead that this subset of the elite forms a group of people likely to be in the kind of contact and communication with one another from which consensus emerges. Centrality to a network therefore becomes an indicator of centralization.