The insanity sentence: Oregon's psychiatric security review board

In response to the dilemma of management of mentally ill persons who commit crimes, Oregon has created the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) to administrate the supervision and treatment of insanity acquittees. This paper presents an overview of the PSRB structure and examines the quasi-criminal justice features of Oregon's Insanity Sentence. The primary goal of the PSRB is the protection of societý. The maximum sentence, had the individual been found guilty, becomes the PSRB's jurisdictional period for that former defendant. A review of the administrative rules for conditional release and revocation of release that the PSRB is now in the process of adopting are described. The authors conclude that the PSRB is a promising approach which offers better community protection and better treatment for mentally ill offenders (NGRIs) than does the present prison parole system.     

Oregon's Gun Relief Program for Adjudicated Mentally Ill Persons: The Psychiatric Security Review Board

This article describes the State of Oregon's implementation of two programs designed to comply with federal gun laws regarding reporting individuals who have received mental health adjudications in criminal and civil courts. One mandate requires that states submit names of adjudicated individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) while the second requires that the state establish a qualifying gun restoration program for those disqualified from gun ownership. In 2009, Oregon's Legislature developed an administrative approach to gun restoration and assigned the responsibility for conducting these hearing to the Oregon Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB). The PSRB is a state administrative board that has existed since 1977 and has been primarily focused on the supervision and treatment of adult and juvenile insanity acquittees. The gun restoration program began in 2010, but to date has only received three completed petitions requesting restoration of firearm rights. The article concludes with a discussion that surmises why very few of the Oregonians who are listed in NICS have submitted petitions for relief. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sexual Health Research Among Youth Representing Minority Populations: To Waive or Not to Waive Parental Consent

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) significantly burden youth 13–24 years of age in the United States. Directly engaging youth in sexual health research is a public health priority and urgently needed to develop targeted, youth-friendly, and culturally relevant HIV/STI prevention interventions. Controversies arise, however, regarding informed assent and consent, parental permission or consent, and the definition of “child”/“minor” as it relates to medical, legal, and ethical issues. In this article, we describe challenges in the human subjects review processes that were undertaken before beginning an HIV/STI prevention research project with sexually active youth in an urban setting. These findings provide important contextual information to facilitate youth sexual health research and care, and Institutional Review Board approval processes with fewer delays.     

Impact of Institutional Review Boards on cancer research

The concepts of informed consent and surveillance of human research designed to protect human subjects is commendable. The regulations of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) are having a major impact on clinical cancer research. There is greater administrative time needed of the investigator, the mechanisms of patient care have become cumbersome and some patients reject optional medical management that could be life saving. IRB regulations must be flexible to meet the needs of human subjects as well as those of the clinical investigator.     

The intersubjective responsibility of durational trauma: Contributions of Bergson and Levinas to the philosophy of trauma

Continental Philosophy Review - In public discourse trauma is predominantly framed as an overwhelming event undergone by the individual. In this article I first provide a brief genealogy to trace...     

‘The less I trust,the less I contribute (or not)?’ The effects of trust,accountability and self‐monitoring in social dilemmas

The present research examined the influence of trust, accountability, and self‐monitoring on individual decision makers' willingness to contribute in a give‐some game and in an experimental public goods dilemma. Previous research has shown that trust and contributions are positively related such that high trusters generally contribute more than low trusters. The present research questions the pervasiveness of this relation by arguing that low trusters may increase their contributions to the same level as those of high trusters, but only under circumstances where their decisions are highly identifiable to their interaction partner(s). Both studies showed that strong perceptions of trust, high accountability and high self‐monitoring influenced contributions positively. In line with predictions, individuals low in trust contributed up to the same level as high trusters when accountability was high rather than low. Moreover, this interaction between trust and accountability was only found among those classified as high self‐monitors. Our results suggest that the well‐known positive relation between trust and contributions may take a different form when situational cues and individual predispositions are taken into account. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

情境公开性与印象管理动机对建议采纳的影响

实验1和实验2分别探讨在公开和匿名条件下期望印象和印象标签对建议采纳的影响。结果表明：（1）期望印象会影响建议采纳，在公开情境中，当个体期望形成温暖的印象时，会更多采纳建议；当个体期望形成能力印象时，建议采纳程度更低。（2） 印象标签会影响建议采纳，在公开情境中，当个体期望维持原有的温暖印象时，会更多采纳建议；个体期望维持原有的能力印象时，建议采纳程度更低。本研究证明建议采纳过程中存在印象管理机制。     

Suicide intervention and non-ideal Kantian theory

Philosophical discussions of the morality of suicide have tended to focus on its justifiability from an agent's point of view rather than on the justifiability of attempts by others to intervene so as to prevent it. This paper addresses questions of suicide intervention within a broadly Kantian perspective. In such a perspective, a chief task is to determine the motives underlying most suicidal behaviour. Kant wrongly characterizes this motive as one of self–love or the pursuit of happiness. Psychiatric and scientific evidence suggests that suicide is instead motivated by a nihilistic disenchantment with the possibility of happiness which, at its apex, results in the loss of the individual's conception of her practical identity. Because of this, methods of intervention that appeal to agents' happiness, while morally benign, will prove ineffective in forestalling suicide. At the same time, more aggressive methods violate the Kantian concern for autonomy. This apparent dilemma can be resolved by seeing suicide intervention as an action undertaken in non–ideal circumstances, where otherwise unjustified manipulation, coercion, or paternalism are morally permitted.     

Children's recall and source monitoring of a repeated event using a timeline as an interview aid

Investigators sometimes use timelines (visual depictions of time) to help children identify temporal information from experienced events or details from a particular instance of a repeated event. However, little is actually known about the efficacy of this visual aid on children's memories. Six‐ to 9‐year‐olds participated in four occurrences of a repeated event and were later interviewed with or without the use of a timeline. Children in the timeline condition were less accurate and made more source‐monitoring errors than those in the control condition. For items that appeared consistently throughout the events, a suggestibility effect was more evident for older children who used the timeline than those who did not. Overall, there was no clear evidence in support of the visual aid. Despite its popularity, our findings suggest that timelines should be further examined to establish whether, and under what circumstances, they might be used in investigative contexts.     

The Secrecy Heuristic: Inferring Quality from Secrecy in Foreign Policy Contexts

Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of U.S. foreign policy decision making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the Department of State and the National Security Council as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a National Security Council document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others' decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts.     

Essential Elements of Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment, Counseling, and Testing: Updated Recommendations of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

Updated from their original publication in 2004, these cancer genetic counseling recommendations describe the medical, psychosocial, and ethical ramifications of counseling at-risk individuals through genetic cancer risk assessment with or without genetic testing. They were developed by members of the Practice Issues Subcommittee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors Familial Cancer Risk Counseling Special Interest Group. The information contained in this document is derived from extensive review of the current literature on cancer genetic risk assessment and counseling as well as the personal expertise of genetic counselors specializing in cancer genetics. The recommendations are intended to provide information about the process of genetic counseling and risk assessment for hereditary cancer disorders rather than specific information about individual syndromes. Essential components include the intake, cancer risk assessment, genetic testing for an inherited cancer syndrome, informed consent, disclosure of genetic test results, and psychosocial assessment. These recommendations should not be construed as dictating an exclusive course of management, nor does use of such recommendations guarantee a particular outcome. These recommendations do not displace a health care provider's professional judgment based on the clinical circumstances of a client.     

Collective and Individual Duties to Protect the Environment

ABSTRACT Many environmental harms are produced by the consequences of too many people doing acts which taken together have collective bad consequences, e.g. overuse of an underground aquifer or acid rain ‘killing’ a lake. If such acts are wrong, what should a conscientious moral agent do in such circumstances? Examples of such harms have the general feature that they are produced by individual acts, which taken by themselves may be innocent and morally permissible, but which have disastrous consequences when too many people perform them. Philosophers once thought that the generalisation argument (GA), “If the consequences of everyone's doing acts of kind a are undesirable, then no one ought to do a,” was the appropriate principle to guide a conscientious moral agent in such circumstances. However, there has been considerable literature discussing the shortcomings of this principle. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the GA suggests that whole groups of people have collective duties to prevent such harms, which duties then provide clues to individual duties to protect the environment. In this paper I consider some major deficiencies of the generalisation argument, the collective duty which follows from the salvageable part of the argument, and the distribution of individual duties a conscientious moral agent has with regard to such environmental harms as a consequence. These duties turn out to be peculiarly political in nature with the result that conscientious moral agents may have a number of political duties to protect the environment heretofore unrealised.     

Premenstrual syndrome as scientific and cultural artifact

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been defined in a variety of scientific and cultural ways over the years, but there is no consistent or agreed upon definition. For some women, the public legitimization of PMS and its symptoms as a real and natural part of the female body have led to a positive sense of vindication. However, a more negative image of PMS as something that controls women once a month, that makes them “crazy” and subject to their hormones, is much more pervasive in our contemporary Western culture. In this essay, the author explores the various definitions: PMS as a medical condition, as a social scientific and feminist issue, as an explanation for women's behavior and moods in the popular culture, and, finally, as something bought or sold in a market. The author shows how PMS is real because, if for no other reason, various people in different situations choose to define it as such. Reprinted from Figert, Anne E.Women and the Ownership of PMS: The Structuring of a Psychiatric Disorder. Aldine Transaction.     

The Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale: Is it a valid measure?

The Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale (PIRS) was introduced as part of the Workcover legislation in NSW and has since been adopted in other States. There has been significant criticism of its validity and structure, but no supporting research. This study was undertaken to examine the validity of the use of the PIRS to assess psychiatric impairment. This study assesses the concurrent validity of the PIRS by comparing it with the Comcare and Social Security scales and the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale, together with two self‐report measures. It also examines the relationship between the PIRS subscales. A high level of ordinal concordance was demonstrated between all scales although the ratings obtained had major systematic variations between scales in both level and distribution. The scoring technique in the PIRS transforms normally distributed scores to a skewed distribution with a preponderance of low scores. The PIRS is a valid scale for ordering the severity of psychological disability but it measures disability rather than impairment. The form of scoring does not provide a proportionate or statistically meaningful measure.     

Maximizing therapeutic effects in treating sexual offenders in an Australian correctional system

In Australia, the community response to sexual offenders is marked by uncertainty as to whether offenders should be incarcerated as punishment or provided treatment in order to reduce the likelihood of re-offense. The incarceration of sexual offenders results in particular management, ethical, and political issues. Nevertheless incarceration can provide leverage to encourage the offender to participate in treatment while delivering punishment for wrongdoing and acting to protect the community. In the state of Victoria the CORE Sex Offender Programs have developed a statewide strategy in the public correctional system in order to assess, manage, and treat male sexual offenders. However, such offenders are notoriously reluctant to engage in treatment to address offending behaviors. A critical element of the strategy has been the Victorian Adult Parole Board, an entity that can determine that an offender needs to engage in treatment before he is considered for parole. Using the therapeutic jurisprudence framework as outlined by Wexler (1990), strategies to minimize the anti-therapeutic effects of the Victorian Adult Parole Board and maximize the therapeutic effects of the CORE Sex Offender Programs are highlighted.     

Do individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty affect health monitoring?

Researchers have postulated that individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) may affect people's health behaviours. Study 1 (N?=?147 university students) supports this proposition showing that higher IU is associated with higher monitoring (seeking threat-relevant information). Study 2 (N?=?117 university students) experimentally manipulated IU to ensure that the association is not due to other related constructs such as anxiety or worry. Results show that inducing high IU led to increased monitoring as reflected by higher scores on an index of monitoring measures. Wanting information about the health threat in order to reduce their uncertainty was an independent predictor of monitoring and did not mediate the relationship between IU and monitoring. Findings suggest that high IU induces people to increase their monitoring; an adaptive strategy when the health threat can be reduced through this behaviour.     

Orphan Sunday: Narratives of Salvation in Transnational Adoption

Abstract : The article is a critical analysis of public narratives about transnational adoption that equate adoption with the salvation of “orphans.” The stories I weave together from in‐depth interviews, social science and humanities research, law and policy, and public dialogues make visible the scaffolding of power that shapes families’ lives. I tell a specific story about Korean American adoption that speaks to the power inequalities shaping the transnational transfer of children from developing countries all over the world. These stories reframe the circumstances of adoptees’ births and relinquishments as issues of social inequality rather than as individual choice.     

Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment and Counseling: Recommendations of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

These cancer genetic counseling recommendations describe the medical, psychosocial, and ethical ramifications of identifying at-risk individuals through cancer risk assessment with or without genetic testing. They were developed by members of the Practice Issues Subcommittee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors Cancer Genetic Counseling Special Interest Group. The information contained in this document is derived from extensive review of the current literature on cancer genetic risk assessment and counseling as well as the personal expertise of genetic counselors specializing in cancer genetics. The recommendations are intended to provide information about the process of genetic counseling and risk assessment for hereditary cancer disorders rather than specific information about individual syndromes. Key components include the intake (medical and family histories), psychosocial assessment (assessment of risk perception), cancer risk assessment (determination and communication of risk), molecular testing for hereditary cancer syndromes (regulations, informed consent, and counseling process), and follow-up considerations. These recommendations should not be construed as dictating an exclusive course of management, nor does use of such recommendations guarantee a particular outcome. These recommendations do not displace a health care provider's professional judgment based on the clinical circumstances of a client.     

Claiming Depressive Symptoms as a Self-Handicap: A Protective Self-Presentation Strategy

This experiment addressed circumstances in which greater characterological depression is associated with public disclosures of depressive symptoms. Participants first completed a "social accuracy" test where they believed that an experimenter was either aware or unaware of the performance outcome. One half of them were told that a negative mood could handicap their performance on an upcoming test. When receiving such information, more depressed participants were more likely to claim negative mood when they believed that the experimenter was aware of an initial success or was unaware of an initial failure. Under both of these conditions, the self-presentational benefit of a self-handicap should be high because public success may produce a pressure to maintain a positive impression and private failure may produce a pressure to protect oneself from revealing negative attributes.     

The benefits of being disadvantaged: performance‐related circumstances and consequences of intergroup comparisons

People are likely to evaluate their group's standing on an ability dimension by comparing the performance level of their own group with that of an outgroup. However, in addition to contrasting performance outcomes, they may also compare the specific circumstances under which both groups have performed. From a related attributes perspective, we argue that the outcome of such a comparison is a crucial determinant of the extent to which the relative success or failure of one's group can be ascribed to its superior or inferior ability respectively, and hence of the degree to which the relative position of one's group on the performance dimension in question can be perceived as legitimate and stable (i.e. as justified and unlikely to change). Accordingly, the present research shows that information concerning performance‐related circumstances has an impact on a wide range of reactions to the relative performance of one's group, varying from the experience of positive and negative affect, to motivational responses such as changes in collective efficacy beliefs for performance improvement, individual effort on behalf of the ingroup, and the tendency to hinder the future performance of an outgroup. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.