Reichenbach’s Posits Reposited

Reichenbach’s use of ‘posits’ to defend his frequentistic theory of probability has been criticized on the grounds that it makes unfalsifiable predictions. The justice of this criticism has blinded many to Reichenbach’s second use of a posit, one that can fruitfully be applied to current debates within epistemology. We show first that Reichenbach’s alternative type of posit creates a difficulty for epistemic foundationalists, and then that its use is equivalent to a particular kind of Jeffrey conditionalization. We conclude that, under particular circumstances, Reichenbach’s approach and that of the Bayesians amount to the same thing, thereby presenting us with a new instance in which chance and credence coincide.     

Probabilistic Justification and the Regress Problem

We discuss two objections that foundationalists have raised against infinite chains of probabilistic justification. We demonstrate that neither of the objections can be maintained. Presented by Hannes Leitgeb     

A relativistic Zeno effect

A Zenonian supertask involving an infinite number of identical colliding balls is generalized to include balls with different masses. Under the restriction that the total mass of all the balls is finite, classical mechanics leads to velocities that have no upper limit. Relativistic mechanics results in velocities bounded by that of light, but energy and momentum are not conserved, implying indeterminism. The notion that both determinism and the conservation laws might be salvaged via photon creation is shown to be flawed.     

Using Creative Writing Techniques to Enhance the Case Study Method in Research Integrity and Ethics Courses

The following article explores the use of creative writing techniques to teach research ethics, breathe life into case study preparation, and train students to think of their settings as complex organizational environments with multiple actors and stakeholders.     

Zur Dynamik der Interaktion in der Supervision

The manifold functions of a supervisor in following the course of complex processes together with the trainee, are: ? to keep the goals of the supervision in view, ? to establish a teaching alliance and to support the wish and ambitions of the candidate to learn, ? to build a platform for the complex interactions with the trainee with regard to the dynamics of the training situation and keeping in mind the institutional influences, ? to lay down the setting for the work, ? to explore and to reflect how transference and counter-transference influence the interaction between patient and analyst as well as between trainee and supervisor, ? to examine these interactions together focussing continuously on the interaction between candidate and patient, and to encourage the candidate to do the same on his own, ? to continuously formulate hypotheses about the core conflict, the transference phenomena and resistance of the patient, ? to explore and reflect on the cooperative work.     

The Relationships Between Mexican American Acculturation,Cultural Values,Gender, and Help‐Seeking Intentions

This study examined the relationships between Mexican acculturation, cultural values, gender, and help‐seeking intentions among Mexican American community college students. Findings suggest that as Mexican Americans lose their culture of origin and increase their generational status, their attitudes toward help seeking become less favorable. This contradicts cultural barrier theory as an explanation for underuse of mental health services by Mexican Americans. Furthermore, adherence to traditional Mexican culture and cultural values may actually encourage help seeking.     

Characteristics of a French African Caribbean Epidemiological Psychiatric Sample with a History of Suicide Attempt

Research on vulnerability factors among ethnic groups, independent of primary psychiatric diagnosis, may help to identify groups at risk of suicidal behavior. French African Caribbean general psychiatric patients (N = 362) were recruited consecutively and independently of the primary psychiatric diagnosis. Demographic and clinical characteristics and lifetime history of suicide attempts were recorded. Sixty‐five patients (18%) had a history of at least one suicide attempt. Presence of professional qualifications, children, poor social contacts, treatment with benzodiazepine at inclusion, and poor treatment compliance were all associated with a lifetime history of suicide attempts.     

Do Geographic Regions with Higher Suicide Rates also have Higher Rates of Nonfatal Intentional Self‐Harm?

Fatal and nonfatal intentional self‐harm events in eight U.S. states were compared using emergency department, hospital, and vital statistics data. Nonfatal event rates increased by an estimated 24.20% over 6 years. Case fatality ratios varied widely, but two northeastern states' total event rates (fatal plus nonfatal) were very high (New Hampshire 206.5/100,000 person years; Massachusetts 166.7/100,000). Geographic context did not uniformly impact the likelihood of self‐harm across event types. The state‐level public health burden posed by such acts cannot, therefore, be accurately estimated from either mortality or morbidity data alone.     

The Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS): Cross‐Cultural Validation in Estonia,Malaysia, Romania,the United Kingdom,and the United States

The genetics of suicide is increasingly recognized and relevant for mental health literacy, but actual beliefs may lag behind current knowledge. We examined such beliefs in student samples (total N = 686) from Estonia, Malaysia, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States with the Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale. Cultural effects were small, those of key demographics nil. Several facets of construct validity were demonstrated. Marked differences in perceived plausibility of evidence about the genetics of suicide according to research design, observed in all samples, may be of general interest for investigating lay theories of abnormal behavior and communicating behavioral and psychiatric genetic research findings.     

Negative and positive cognition in depressed and nondepressed chronic-pain patients

Several studies have suggested that depressed pain patients evidence more cognitive distortion than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Although these studies have generally supported notions relating cognitive distortion to depressive functioning, other aspects of dysfunctional cognition have not been assessed in the chronic-pain population. The present study examined negative and positive automatic thoughts and attributional style in depressed pain patients, nondepressed pain patients, and healthy controls. Depressed chronic-pain patients were found to exhibit significantly more negative automatic thoughts than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Conversely, nondepressed chronic-pain patients reported significantly more positive automatic thoughts than did depressed patients and healthy controls. No significant differences were found for attributional style. These results suggest that different cognitive-behavioral interventions might be considered for depressed compared to nondepressed chronic-pain patients.