Understanding engagement in the Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) from the perspectives of individuals receiving treatment

ABSTRACT

Engagement of individuals with serious mental illnesses in community mental health services is a significant challenge. The Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) is an individual-centered and self-contained mental health program that provides psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation, and support services to persons with serious mental illness who have a history of or likelihood of disengagement with services. Understanding what helps and hinders consumers’ involvement in PACT services may provide information on how to tailor engagement strategies to individuals based on their treatment needs and preferences. The current study builds on existing studies by exploring factors that help and hinder engagement in PACT services from the perspectives of individuals receiving treatment. We conducted open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 17 individuals receiving PACT services. Nine themes were identified through thematic analysis: Desirable qualities of PACT, Focusing on positive outcomes, PACT as a safety net, Recovery orientation, Practical barriers, Conflictual relationships, and Medication side-effects. We conclude that the development of a trusting, therapeutic relationship that is collaborative and person-centered and that is facilitated by both practical and emotional support is critical to engaging individuals in treatment and maximizing positive outcomes.     

A fresh approach for intercession of nonresponse in multivariate longitudinal designs

The occurrence of nonresponse is very much plebeian in surveys, which troubles the analysis, and hence, an inappropriate inference is left out. To counterbalance the sour effects of the incompleteness, fresh imputation techniques have been proposed with the aid of multi-auxiliary variates for the estimation of population mean on successive waves. Properties of the proposed estimators have been elaborated, and they have been compared with the work of Priyanka et al. (2015). Detailed simulation study is carried out to substantiate the empirical and theoretical results. Several possible cases have been addressed in which nonresponse can occur.     

Peer paradox: the tensions that peer relationships raise for vulnerable youth

The contribution peer relationships make to positive adolescent development is well recognized. Accordingly, peer problem measures typically assess youth with few age‐appropriate peers as having peer problems. Yet, youth facing high levels of personal and/or social adversity may reduce their association with antisocial peers as part of coping or risk mitigation strategies. While such strategies will result in higher scores on peer problem measures, they may also facilitate resilience and constitute a resource social workers can draw on in their work with youth. To test this proposition of peer adaptation as a risk mitigation strategy, mixed‐methods data relating to two groups of youth who were exposed to different levels of adversity were compared on a standardized peer problem measure and a range of risk measures. Qualitative interviews extended this data and explored vulnerable youth perceptions of social withdrawal as a coping strategy. Results from the survey and qualitative data indicated that a subgroup of youth facing high levels of adversity restricted association with antisocial peers to reduce their behavioural risks. However, without adequate support from adults in both formal support systems and youths' social ecologies to compensate for the loss of peer friendships, this strategy did not reduce behavioural risk in the medium term. The social withdrawal strategy also appeared to heighten mental health concerns for these youth. The implications of this finding for the development of policy and practice with vulnerable youth are discussed.     

Analysis of Blogs,Forums, and Social Networks

It is impossible to imagine the contemporary Internet without social media. Government agents, commercial, state, and social organizations, the opposition, and other citizens use social media as a giant turbine. Unfortunately, this turbine can also be used to spread disinformation as well as hostile propaganda on a mass scale. In this article we show how vulnerable social media are to infiltration by botnets with the goal of launching information attacks.     

Who Is to Blame?

We present the results of a content analysis of communications related to the act of terrorism at Domodedovo airport. They show that mass media plays a significant role as a source of factual, undigested information. The theoretical value of the results is that they show a significant number of cases where an actor is accused with no reference to his actions or nonactions. The range of types of complicity in terrorist activity was substantial.     

The Othering of Muslims: Discourses of Radicalization in the New York Times, 1969–2014

In this article, I engage with Edward Said's Orientalism and various perspectives within the othering paradigm to analyze the emergence and transformation of radicalization discourses in the news media. Employing discourse analysis of 607 New York Times articles from 1969 to 2014, this article demonstrates that radicalization discourses are not new but are the result of complex sociolinguistic and historical developments that cannot be reduced to dominant contemporary understandings of the concept or to singular events or crises. The news articles were then compared to 850 government documents, speeches, and other official communications. The analysis of the data indicates that media conceptualizations of radicalization, which once denoted political and economic differences, have now shifted to overwhelmingly focus on Islam. As such, radicalization discourse now evokes the construct radicalization as symbolic marker of conflict between the West and the East. I also advanced the established notion that the news media employ strategic discursive strategies that contribute to conceptual distinctions that are used to construct Muslims as an “alien other” to the West.     

iConstruct: virtual disabilities in online settings

The present study focused on cultural constructions of disability in virtual settings, examining specifically how cultural constructions of disability were mediated through the use of online technology. This was accomplished by identifying and analyzing Greek Cypriot online news media articles and online readers’ posts in response to these articles. Findings indicated that disability in these online settings mainly reproduced traditional models of disability, with the charity model being more prevalent. However, there were instances in which dominant discourses of disability were ruptured through the introduction of counter-narratives in users’ posts which echoed the human rights model of disability. Implications for the fields of media, education and disability studies are discussed in relation to the possibility of using digital media to contribute to the challenge of critical media literacy to address issues of diversity and disability.     

Roma and the politics of double discourse in contemporary Europe

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the politics of ‘double discourse’ in relation to Roma that has evolved in contemporary neoliberal Europe. On the one hand, the double discourse promotes the integration, rights and equal opportunities of Roma, on the other, it denies recognition of, and ways to address, enduring structural violence and rising social insecurity. The article argues that the politics of ‘double discourse’, as a neoliberal approach towards Roma, is structured by two contradictory discourses that speak to different audiences, using duplicitous approaches to create anti-Roma consensus and maintain the critical difference and subordinated position of the racialised Romani populations in Europe. By studying the representation of Roma in the cases of so-called 'child theft' in Greece and Ireland, and in the recent ‘refugee crisis’, the paper identifies and discusses three dimensions of contemporary neoliberal double discourse: racialised de-Europeanisation, neoliberal undeservingness and (dis)articulation of citizenship.     

Digital media,subcultural activity and youth participation: the cases of protest rap and graffiti in Portugal

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of an academic debate surrounding the relationship between youth and the ‘new media’, with a particular emphasis on the social uses of different digital technologies within the sphere of youth activity. A specific area of research has been dedicated to studying the use of digital media in the context of the so-called youth subcultures. With this article we expect to contribute to this ongoing debate, by examining the problem through an analysis of two interconnected case studies: protest rap and illegal graffiti. Both cases may be defined as subcultures, insofar as they are characterized as alternative, subterranean, and to a certain extent, subversive movements. The empirical ground for this discussion is based on several investigations, with a qualitative basis, carried out by the authors in the course of over a decade in Portugal. This extended time frame allowed ample access to a diversified and matured analytical material and enabled a better perspective of the developments and the mutations involving the appropriation of the digital media. Our researches have shown that digital media and technologies have been gradually integrated in these urban youth subcultures, accomplishing several strategic roles.     

Who is leading the campaign charts? Comparing individual popularity on old and new media

Attention in the mass media is seen as crucial for electoral success. However, most ordinary candidates hardly get any attention in the news. With social media outlets becoming ever more popular, the question is whether the overall asymmetry in attention for candidates still holds today. Do candidates who dominate the traditional media during the campaign also dominate the social media? Or can candidates make up for a lack of mass media coverage by attracting attention on these new media platforms? This paper aims to answer these questions by pairing Twitter activity and Twitter popularity with newspaper attention for a large number of individual candidates in the 2014 Belgian election campaign. We expand the normalization versus equalization debate by not only looking at how much a new medium is used, but also at its success in terms of popularity and audience reach. Our findings show that the two platforms are indeed related, mainly because a small political elite dominates both old and new media. Twitter popularity and Twitter activity (albeit to a lesser extent) are higher among powerful politicians. We elaborate on why these findings are so much in line with the normalization hypothesis.