‘You Can't Have Well‐being If You're Dead…or Can You?’ Children's Realistic and Logical Approach to Discussing Life,Death and Wellbeing

Well‐being is a popularised and regularly considered aspect of an individual's life. Whilst frequently theorised across disciplines interested in childhood, children's perspectives on well‐being are often missing. This article presents children's views on well‐being, focussing on the extent they consider well‐being to exist after death or near‐death experiences. Through focus‐group discussion, children's conversations reflect their ability for deep philosophical, abstract thinking and contributing to clearer understandings of well‐being across different contexts. Children's pragmatic responses about death when considering well‐being provide a valuable contribution to understanding fear of death whilst arguing for collaborative approaches between adults and children when considering complex issues.     

Health of Carers of Young People with Early Psychosis: A Biopsychosocial Approach

Despite widespread recognition of the usefulness of a biopsychosocial approach in social work, there are limited studies exploring how social workers can use this approach to support the health and wellbeing of carers of young people with first episode psychosis (FEP). Validated questionnaires and anthropometric measures were used to assess the physical health and wellbeing of 42 carers of young people with FEP. Carers had moderate levels of negative caregiving consequences, quality of life, and health status. More than half (52.4%) of carers were experiencing social isolation. Many carers were overweight (78.6%), had a high risk for type 2 diabetes (39.0%), and had hypertension (33.3%). Practical implications of a biopsychosocial approach to social work that supports both clients and their carers are discussed.     

Cycles of shame: Menstrual shame,body shame,and sexual decision‐making

Although numerous factors have been implicated in women's sexual decision‐making, less attention has been focused on how their feelings about their bodies and reproductive functions affect these processes. Recent findings link menstrual shame to lower levels of sexual activity and higher levels of sexual risk; however, the mechanisms behind these relations remain unexplored. Accordingly, this study investigates the contributions of menstrual shame and global body shame to sexual decision‐making among 199 undergraduate women. Using structural equation modeling, we evaluated a mediated model, whereby menstrual shame is indirectly associated with sexual decision‐making via body shame. As expected, women who reported feeling more comfort about menstruation also reported more body comfort and, in turn, more sexual assertiveness, more sexual experience, and less sexual risk.     

Social work direct practice with women prisoners

Abstract

A general awareness of destructive cults is increasing with a number of groups self-destructing in recent years. What is generally less well known is the phenomenon of smaller, but no less destructive groups that are found in society. From the author's experience, few health professionals are knowledgable about cult dynamics and the variegated approach needed to address the therapeutic concerns of those who leave such groups. This paper will highlight some of the difficulties for the individual who leaves an abusive group, and will offer guidelines for the social worker who attempts to understand the needs of the ex-cultist. It will briefly outline some of the thought reforming processes that an individual can undergo in certain groups, and explore various facets of assessment and intervention.     

A Review of Risk Matrices Used in Acute Hospitals in England

In healthcare, patient safety has received substantial attention and, in turn, a number of approaches to managing safety have been adopted from other high‐risk industries. One of these has been risk assessment, predominantly through the use of risk matrices. However, while other industries have criticized the design and use of these risk matrices, the applicability of such criticism has not been investigated formally in healthcare. This study examines risk matrices as used in acute hospitals in England and the guidance provided for their use. It investigates the applicability of criticisms of risk matrices from outside healthcare through a document analysis of the risk assessment policies, procedures, and strategies used in English hospitals. The findings reveal that there is a large variety of risk matrices used, where the design of some might increase the chance of risk misprioritization. Additionally, findings show that hospitals may provide insufficient guidance on how to use risk matrices as well as what to do in response to the existing criticisms of risk matrices. Consequently, this is likely to lead to variation in the quality of risk assessment and in the subsequent deployment of resources to manage the assessed risk. Finally, the article outlines ways in which hospitals could use risk matrices more effectively.     

Women and the work of caring

In the U.S., care for chronically dependent people is done mostly by family and friends, with only sporadic community support. Though such unpaid caregiving work--the bulk of it performed by women--constitutes an enormous subsidy to the national welfare, the contribution is undervalued, and the negative practical consequences for caregivers seldom recognized.     

Correction to: Assessing recall bias and measurement error in high-frequency social data collection for human-environment research

Population and Environment - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The name of “Md. Ehsanul Haque Tamal” is now corrected in the author group of this...     

Assessing recall bias and measurement error in high-frequency social data collection for human-environment research

Population and Environment - A major impediment to understanding human-environment interactions is that data on social systems are not collected in a way that is easily comparable to natural...