Suicide Risk Factors In Alcohol Abuse

ABSTRACT: The “clinical model” approach to estimating suicide risk assumes that persons sharing specific attributes will also share certain indicators of vulnerability to suicide. This would warrant an empirically derived risk assessment scale applicable only to persons with those attributes. Nine hundred seventy eight persons at risk for suicide who met our criteria for alcohol abuse were interviewed at length and followed for two years, during which 53 (5.5 percent) committed suicide. Eleven variables which best differentiated those who suicided from those who did not in an index set were then applied to an independent validation set. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Surveying Environmental Perspectives among Faculty at an Institution of Christian Higher Education

Abstract

Environmental degradation and climate change are frequently in the news, but the Christian perspective is often absent or varied. In this study, faculty at an institution of Christian higher education were surveyed to better understand their perspective and to assess if any particular factor (e.g., gender, school affiliation, or political party) can be linked to a particular environmental worldview. Although faculty held neutral positions on half of the questions, they also reported strong agreement to both pro-environment and pro-human statements. Tensions between prioritizing loving ones’ neighbor (anthropocentrism) and embracing Creation stewardship (ecocentrism) can be resolved with a God-centered theocentric worldview.