Resource Document on Access to Firearms by People with Mental Disorders

The American Psychiatric Association, (“APA”), with more than 36,000 members at present, is the Nation's leading organization of physicians who specialize in psychiatry. APA provides for education and advocacy and develops policy through Position Statements. It promotes enhanced knowledge of particular topics relevant to psychiatric practice and patient care through Resource Documents. Since 1993, the APA has developed various positions and resource materials related to firearms and mental illness, incorporating evolving themes as new issues emerge. This paper reflects the APA's 2014 Resource Document on “Access to Firearms by People with Mental Disorders.” This article is derived from work done on behalf of American Psychiatric Association and remains the property of APA. It has been altered only in response to the requirements of peer review. Copyright © 2015 American Psychiatric Association. Published with permission (original adopted by the American Psychiatric Association 2014).     

A Review of Gerald Caplan's Theory and Practice of Mental Health Consultation

Gerald Caplan's Theory and Practice of Mental Health Consultation (1970), considered to be a classic seminal work in the field of consultation, is reviewed. First, the author presents Caplan's general definition of consultation along with what may be considered the general principles or procedures of consultation. Then the author presents Caplan's procedures and principles as relevant to each type of consultation. Next, each of Caplan's four models of consultation is described. Last, these four models are compared in terms of the professional role of the consultee, the primary goal of consultation, and the target of consultation intervention.     

Community-Based Interventions: A Return to Community Mental Health Centers' Origins

Consultation services offered by community mental health centers (CMHC) have gone through several significant changes since the signing of the Community Mental Health Center Act of 1963 (The President's Commission on Mental Health, 1978). Initially, consultation and education services were an integral part of the CMHC mission. With the passage of additional legislation that promoted a shift in focus, consultation services declined. By 1981, with the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (Cutler, 1992) national mental health policy was adrift. Consultation and education were no longer seen as central components of mental health services, which increasingly were tied to acute care hospitalization. With a renewed focus on consultation and education, a coherent mental health policy can be reintroduced at the community level.     

Latina Mothers' Perceptions of Mental Health and Mental Health Promotion

Latina mothers' perceptions of mental health and factors that promote/restore mental health were explored in this qualitative study. Participants discussed the importance of community, safety, and financial stability in addition to conventional factors that are related to mental health. Implications for working with urban Latinas and their families are discussed. En este estudio cualitativo se exploraron las percepciones de las madres Latinas sobre Salud Mental y los factores que la fomentan/restablecen. Las participantes discutieron acerca de la importancia de la comunidad, la seguridad y la estabilidad financiera además de otros factores convencionales relacionados con la salud mental. Se discuten las implicaciones para el trabajo con Latinas residentes en núcleos urbanos y sus familias.     

Mental disorders,brain disorders,neurodevelopmental disorders: challenges for the philosophy of psychopathology after DSM-5

The publication of DSM-5 has been accompanied by a fair amount of controversy. Amongst DSM's most vocal ‘insider’ critics has been Thomas Insel, Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health. Insel has publicly criticised DSM's adherence to a symptom-based classification of mental disorder, and used the weight of the NIMH to back a rival research strategy aimed at a more biology-based diagnostic classification. This strategy is part of Insel's vision of a future, more preventative psychiatry in which mental disorders are not only understood as biological disorders of the brain, but also as neurodevelopmental disorders. This paper examines the interest and merit of Insel's views of mental and neurodevelopmental disorder for the philosophy of psychopathology, with a special focus of his neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia. Pitman's ‘moderate materialism’ will be used both as a philosophical lens through which to examine Insel's position, as well as an example of a philosophical framework that may require updating and revision in the light of moves towards a neurodevelopmental conception of mental disorder.     

Development of the Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale

The present study describes the development of an instrument to assess the multicultural competencies of mental health professionals in Australia. The scale was developed to assess the effectiveness of a multicultural mental health training program. Mental health professionals from Queensland, Australia (N = 268) participated in the study by completing a questionnaire battery. Items on the new scale were generated to parallel the Queensland Transcultural Mental Health Centre (QTMHC) training program's objectives. The results describe a 35‐item Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale. Factor analysis of the scale indicated three factors of multicultural counselling competencies: Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills. These factors were in line with the Sue et al. (1982) multicultural counselling competencies. The scale has satisfactory internal consistency, test–retest reliability, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the multicultural competency training programs in mental health.     

Mental models of learning in distance education

Background. Interview‐based research has shown that students in higher education hold a number of different conceptions of learning and of themselves as learners. There is debate about whether these conceptions constitute a developmental hierarchy. Aims. This study evaluated the Mental Models section of Vermunt and van Rijswijk's (1988) Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS) as a measure of students' conceptions of learning and sought to identify conceptions of learning as qualitatively different patterns of scores. Sample. A random sample of 1,000 students who were taking courses by distance learning with the Open University in the UK. Method. A translated and adapted version of the Mental Models section of the ILS was administered in a postal survey. Complete data were obtained from 441 students and were subjected to principal component analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis. Results. The five scales in the Mental Models section of the ILS were homogeneous and achieved a satisfactory level of internal consistency, but two of the five scales could not be differentiated from each other in the students' responses. A cluster analysis identified four subgroups of students who had different patterns of scores on two discriminant functions. Conclusion. The four mental models identified in this study were broadly similar to those identified by Vermunt (1996) in an interview‐based study. However, these do not seem to constitute a developmental hierarchy, and, following Vermunt, it is suggested that they are better interpreted as aspects of four over‐arching ‘learning styles’ or ‘learning patterns’.     

Frege Puzzles and Mental Files

This paper proposes a novel conception of mental files, aimed at addressing Frege puzzles. Classical Frege puzzles involve ignorance and discovery of identity. These may be addressed by accounting for a more basic way for identity to figure in thought—the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. This manifests itself in rational inferences that presuppose the identity of what the beliefs are about. Mental files help to provide a functional characterization of a mind capable of this presupposition, but more must be said to show how it may be rational. I argue that this can be done by drawing out the way in which mental files interact with a thinker's motivational states and so come to have normative functional properties. I show how this theory works better than some other treatments of mental files.     

Review of Ethics in Mental Health Research by James M. DuBois

The burgeoning field of medical ethics raises complicated questions for mental health researchers. The critical issues of risk assessment, beneficence, and the moral duties researchers owe their patients are analyzed in James DuBois's well written Ethics in Mental Health Research.     

复杂任务中共享心智模型间的缓冲作用

共享心智模型（SMM）指队员对于团队的共享心理表征。复杂任务下高的一致性难以获得且易造成小集体意识,SMM的作用在于相互间的调节及共享信念对低一致性的调节作用。为了验证这些假设对9名不同行业创业者进行访谈,对访谈材料进行内容分析得到心智模型关键概念,经过概化理论分析后得到了4个SMM：任务、队友、团队协作以及团队精神。使用心智模型问卷在ERP模拟实验中测量31个团队的绩效和SMM一致性。结果发现团队协作模型一致性是预测绩效的有力指标;团队构成不影响各个SMM一致性;任务模型一致性正向缓冲了团队协作模型一致性对绩效的作用;团队精神模型一致性正向缓冲了团队协作模型一致性对绩效的作用。研究提示SMM对冲突的引导及增进团队成员相互理解方面的作用。     

Mapping Men's Mental Health

The central theme of this paper is that men are at one and the same time both damaged and damage-doing. The process of being damaged through the agency of masculinity predisposes men to exploit, dominate and abuse—not only as boys, as partners and fathers, but as priests, teachers, therapists, lawyers, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists. Mental health services need to see both aspects of this male equation: a focus on male abuse alone leads to punishment, containment and, very likely, the continuation of abuse; a focus on male damagedness alone preserves the ideology of male unaccountability. However, evidence reviewed here suggests that most traditional psychiatric services fail to acknowledge the impact of inequalities on men's mental health as comprehensively as they fail to acknowledge the impact of these inequalities on the mental health of women. This is a significant problem, and we suggest ways that a gendered analysis of masculinity can be used to help address this deficit. This analysis is used to develop a map of men's mental health that not only accommodates traditional categories of mental health difficulty, but other important consequences of the close association between masculinity and sexuality inequality, especially the use of violence and the capacity to do harm. This analytical framework also invites consideration of the invisibility of male distress, the disallowing and desensitizing of ‘vulnerability, and their submersion in a kind of psychology of entitlement. Finally, we consider the implications of this mapping exercise for mental health services and for working with men.     

Functional Mental Representation of Volleyball Routines in German Youth Female National Players

The purpose of this study was to examine the overhand volleyball service routines of the German Youth Female National Team. Mental representations of this movement were reconstructed using the Structure Dimensional Analysis-Motoric method. The Routine Questionnaire was administered to collect self-report data. Results indicated that the mental representations of routines are organized in a hierarchical, tree-like structure. The movement mental representations of players not selected to the national team were organized in a less hierarchical manner. The coach's performance ranking was significantly correlated to the athlete's mental representation invariance values (structure quality), indicating a close relationship between mental representation and performance.     

Mental health,self-esteem,and influences on sexual values and attitudes among black South African adolescent males

This study investigated the relationships between sexual values and attitudes, self-esteem, and mental health among black South African adolescents. Adolescent males (n = 522) aged between 13 and 21 years participated in the study. They completed the Mathteck Sexuality Questionnaire for Adolescents: Attitude and Value Inventory, the Rosenburg Self-esteem Scale, and the Mental Health Continuum. Structural Equation Modelling (Mplus 7.31) was computed to identify an explanatory model for sexual values and attitudes as correlated to self-esteem and mental health of black adolescent males. Results suggest the youth's self-esteem significantly mediate the relationship between mental health and sexual values and attitudes. Specifically, mental health had indirect effects on values about sexuality and on healthy attitudes towards aspects of intimacy, through the teenagers’ self-esteem.     

The American Mental Health Counselors Association: Reflection on 30 Historic Years

The American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) celebrated its 30th anniversary in May 2006. This article provides a synopsis of AMHCA's illustrious history, from its urgent beginnings in 1976 to its current status as the premier organization attending to the needs and representing the interests of mental health counselors in the United States and elsewhere.     

Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Mental Health Perspective

Despite their wealth of relevant clinical and research experience, mental health professionals have contributed relatively little to the active and ongoing debate about physicians assisting in the suicide of their patients. Methodologies developed for the study of completed suicide, the knowledge they have revealed, and the complex questions that remain unanswered, all must be considered. Similarly, psychiatry's extensive contributions to our understanding of the doctor-patient relationship, fundamental to the practice of psychodynamically informed treatments, have been almost completely ignored. Mental health care providers have much to contribute to, and should become actively involved in, this important public health and policy debate.     

Mental contrasting turns positive feedback on creative potential into successful performance

In two studies employing a creativity test (i.e., solving insight problems), we hypothesized and observed that mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) transforms positive feedback into strong performance. Participants received positive or moderate bogus feedback on their creative potential and then engaged either in mental contrasting, indulging in the desired future, dwelling on present reality, or irrelevant contrasting with respect to taking a creativity test. Mental contrasting participants who received positive feedback performed better than those who received moderate feedback. They also performed better than indulging, dwelling, and irrelevant contrasting participants, regardless of the feedback received. By manipulating expectations of success through bogus feedback, the present research adjusts for confounding variables and validates previous findings showing that mental contrasting produces expectancy-dependent goal commitments and performance. Implications for designing interventions to enhance people's creativity are discussed.     

Mental and Motor Switching in Parkinson's Disease

Switching difficulties in Parkinson's disease (PD) are expressed in both mental and motor tasks. The authors of the present study investigated whether those deficits coexist in the same patient and are positively correlated. They tested 8 nondemented PD patients and 6 age-matched control participants by using the modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and a motor switching paradigm that is based on the task of reaching toward visual targets, the location of which could unexpectedly be altered within the reaction time. In both mental and motor tasks, patients performed significantly worse than controls. There were no significant correlations between the two types of pathology in individual patients. Mental and motor switching deteriorate in PD patients, but the deficits are not necessarily of parallel severity.

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