Is Managed Mental Health Treatment Psychotherapy?

The corporate takeover of mental health treatment has dramatically affected mental health treatment. Two essential constituents of psychotherapeutic process, the relationship between patient and therapist and the special communicative process associated with a talking treatment, have been significantly compromised. Therapists and patients are being forced to consider whether in the absence of confidentiality, self determination, and a secure treatment partnership managed mental health care can be called psychotherapy. Drawing on several detailed sessions from the managed treatment of a young woman, the writer concludes that the answer is no.     

Sexual health education group for adolescents with mental problems

1. Providing sexual health education for adolescents with mental health problems presents a difficult but important clinical task. 2. Using a group format for this task is an effective way to provide information about sexual health and promote positive coping strategies related to relationships and sexual issues. 3. Group leaders need to be aware of their own values related to sexual issues and have the ability to be frank and nonjudgmental.     

Effects of suicidal behavior on a psychiatric unit nursing team

1. Suicide of a psychiatric inpatient can have significant, although diverse, effects on the emotions and behavior of both individual nurses and team functioning. 2. The majority of participants in this study felt there was a need for formal debriefing or counseling for themselves and their colleagues after a critical incident, although there was less consensus about the timing and structure of such an intervention. 3. This research highlights the need for advanced training of critical incident stress management team members and for flexibility in the application of critical incident stress management techniques.     

Material hardship and self-rated health among low-income households in South Korea

Concerns over poverty and health inequality are growing in South Korea. Using advanced statistical methods including lagged-dependent variable and fixed-effects approaches, we investigated whether experiencing material hardship (MH) was associated with self-rated health (SRH) among low-income households in South Korea. This study found that the experience of MH was positively associated with higher likelihood of reporting poor SRH (OR = 1.42, p < .05) and that experiencing two or more items of MH presented more harmful influence on SRH (OR = 2.02, p < .001). This study also found that the negative association between MH and SRH was stronger among the unemployed households.     

Evaluating Application Service Provisioning Using System Dynamics Methodology

Despite the hype surrounding the value‐added potential of e‐business for contemporary firms, the recent technology downturn was marked by poor customer satisfaction from investment in e‐business initiatives. An apparent mismatch between customer expectations and vendor offerings suggested a lack of appropriate methods and techniques for evaluating e‐business. This article draws from a longitudinal research study on the deployment, hosting and integration of application service provisioning (ASP), an e‐business model targeted mainly at small and medium‐sized businesses (SMBs). Using system dynamics as a methodology that addresses the inherent complexity of the ASP model, the article demonstrates how a series of complex inter‐relationships between key performance indicators (KPIs) will impact the business value for customers from ASP vendor products and services. The lessons from this research will be particularly relevant for existing and future ASP vendors and customers.     

What's wrong is right: A response to the state of the discipline

In the June issue ofSociological Forum, several authors addressed the question, What's Wrong with Sociology. Answers included increased fragmentation of the discipline, and the lack of an identifiable cumulative core of sociological knowledge. This paper examines many of the claims made by the contributors to the June 1994Sociological Forum, reframes their arguments, and by placing debates regarding the problems in sociology in a broader perspective, identifies many of the recent advances made by the discipline. Focusing on such notable contributions to the field as feminist and postmodern scholarship, we locate the positive side of multiple perspective research.Feminist Scholars in Sociology is a collective of researchers and teachers at the University of Colorado interested in exploring and sharing feminist theory and methodology.     

Partnership Working in Public Policy Provision: A Framework for Evaluation

Partnership working has emerged as a key feature of New Labour's approach to social policy. However, although the theoretical benefits of partnership have been well rehearsed, agencies charged with fostering partnerships lack "evidence" about how best to proceed in bringing about organizational change. This paper describes the development and implementation of a practical approach to capturing the strategies that can be used to establish, strengthen and sustain local partnerships. To this end, it presents a conceptual framework for the evaluation of partnership working and demonstrates the application of the framework to an investigation of partnership working in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, and Plymouth Health action zones.