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.     

An integrative framework for studying sustainable practices and its adoption in the AEC industry: A case study

The diversity of priorities and differing awareness of sustainable practices among stakeholders in the architecture, engineering and construction industry is critically shaping the adoption of green technology, and the rate at which the industry is shifting towards more sustainable practices. In this paper, we develop an integrated framework that allows reorganization and integration of existing sustainability research in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, emphasizing the perspective of decision-makers and stakeholders. Further, an agent-based model is introduced that allows study of the decision-maker with the decision context, thus making them an integral part of the decision-making process rather than independent of it. The coupled system is adaptive and dynamically organizes itself to reflect complex bottom-up interactions between individual stakeholders, their contexts and the constraints driving their decisions even as they implement or respond to top-down decisions pertaining to the adoption of sustainable practices. The contention of this research is that an integrative systems approach to top-down decision-making and an understanding of bottom-up influences in stakeholder decisions is critical to the understanding sustainable practices and decisions that lead to their adoption in the AEC industry.     

Telling a Good Story: Using Narratives in Vocational Rehabilitation With Veterans

Because of the high chronicity of work-related problems in a Veterans Administration Medical Center population, many of the traditional methods of career assessment, counseling, and placement have proven ineffectual. In this article the authors detail the development of an intervention based on narrative or storytelling principles. They describe efforts to introduce this model to patients as well as to relate patients' stories to vocational outcomes. The usefulness of stories as an organizing principle for counselors and clients is discussed, and suggestions are offered for further uses of storytelling interventions.     

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.     

Orphanhood and Completion of Compulsory School Education Among Young People in South Africa: Findings From a National Representative Survey

We examined the association of orphanhood and completion of compulsory school education among young people in South Africa. In South Africa, school attendance is compulsory through grade 9, which should be completed before age 16. However, family and social factors such as orphanhood and poverty can hinder educational attainment. Participants were 10,452 16–24‐year‐olds who completed a South African national representative household survey. Overall, 23% had not completed compulsory school levels. In univariate analyses, school completion was lower among those who had experienced orphanhood during school‐age years, males, and those who reported household poverty. In multivariate analyses controlling for household poverty, females who had experienced maternal or paternal orphanhood were less likely to have completed school; orphanhood was not independently associated with males' school completion. Findings highlight the need for evidence‐informed policies to address the education and social welfare needs of orphans and vulnerable youth, particularly females, in South Africa.     

The Devil is in the Detail: Clinicians,Academics and Researchers Resolving the Problems of Clinical Research

The difficulties associated with conducting valid family therapy research within a clinical practice discourage many potential researchers. This article will describe collaboration between a group of academics, researchers and clinicians who decided to explore the process and efficacy of systemic family therapy conducted within a working private practice. The specific questions we are addressing are, whether the requests clients bring to their first session of therapy can be reliably classified by practitioners, whether these requests change over time, and whether the nature of the request is associated with therapist and client ratings of therapeutic outcome. Additional questions about the form and nature of the therapeutic alliance as experienced by both client and practitioner are also being explored. This paper will map the passage of the work from inception to its current state where over 140 clients are active participants. In doing so attention will be paid to the obstacles encountered: practical, financial and ethical, and the solutions devised to address these.