Health Research in Complex Emergencies: A Humanitarian Imperative

Health researchers, research trainees, and ethics reviewers should be prepared for the special application of research ethics within complex humanitarian emergencies. This paper argues that as a precursor to published ethical guidelines for conducting research in complex emergencies, researchers and research ethics committees should observe the following primary ethical considerations: (1) the research is not at the expense of humanitarian action; (2) the research is justified in that it is needs-driven and relevant to the affected populations; and (3) the research does not compromise the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. These primary considerations are in harmony with the humanitarian goals of saving lives, alleviating suffering, and témoignage. Furthermore, there is an important role for research in supporting humanitarian action, and the extreme vulnerability of research participants in complex emergencies demands intense research ethics scrutiny. It is important to discern which ethical considerations are essential, and which are merely desirable, as excessive research ethics requirements may impede life-saving research.     

Male Melancholia, Identity-Loss, and Religion

This essay posits a relationship between male melancholia, defined as a complicated form of grief that resists compensatory consolation, and experiences of identity-loss. I draw especially from pastoral psychologist Donald Capps’s views on male melancholia. Concurring with Capps’s claim that melancholic men seek relief from melancholia in religion, I also draw from the psychology of Erik H. Erikson to add this emphasis: that both the roots of melancholia and subsequent experiences of melancholic loss link with experiences of perceived threats to or loss of one’s identity. I also suggest how religious rituals may ameliorate melancholia.     

An Examination of Historical Loss Thinking Frequency and Rumination on Suicide Ideation in American Indian Young Adults

No research has empirically investigated whether frequency of historical loss thinking is a potential risk factor for suicide ideation in American Indians. Results of this study demonstrated that the frequency of historical loss thinking was positively associated with brooding and reflection at a small magnitude, but was not directly related to suicide ideation. Bootstrapping analyses indicated small indirect effects of historical loss thinking frequency on suicide ideation through brooding and reflection individually, but only through brooding when analyzed in a parallel mediation model. These findings suggest that American Indians who more frequently engage in historical loss thinking may be susceptible to suicide ideation via an increase in ruminative tendencies, specifically brooding.     

The Incremental Utility of Emotion Regulation But Not Emotion Reactivity in Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

This study assessed the incremental utility of emotion reactivity and emotion regulation in relation to nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI). Participants included 379 college students aged 18–22 who completed self‐report measures of emotion regulation, emotion reactivity, and NSSI. Emotion regulation was significantly related to NSSI both ignoring and controlling for reactivity, but the reverse was not true. Participants' use of NSSI for affect regulation appeared to moderate this relation. Findings support emotion regulation deficits as a target for intervention over and above heightened emotion reactivity, especially in those who use NSSI to regulate negative affect.     

TORTURE AND JUST WAR

I offer an argument for why torture, as an act of state‐sponsored force to gain information crucial to the well‐being of the common good, should be considered as a tactic of war, and therefore scrutinized in terms of just war theory. I argue that, for those committed to the justifiability of the use of force, most of the popular arguments against all acts of torture are unpersuasive because the logic behind them would forbid equally any act of mutilating or killing in battle. I will also argue that looking at torture through the perspective of the just war tradition forces us to place strictures on the practice that make it hard to justify, helps us to see why torture should never be legalized, helps us to clarify when circumstances might justify torture, and suggests what sort of character is required to recognize when those circumstances have occurred.     

Control of multimovement coordination: sensorimotor mechanisms in speech motor programming

The present paper provides some hypotheses concerning the role of sensorimotor mechanisms in the coordination and programming of multimovement behaviors. The primary database is from experiments on the control of speech, a motor behavior that inherently requires multimovement coordination. From these data, it appears that coordination may be implemented by calibrated, sensorimotor actions which couple multiple movements for the accomplishment of common functional goals. The data from speech and select observations in other motor systems also reveal that these sensorimotor linkages are task-dependent and may underlie the intermovement motor equivalence that characterizes many natural motor behaviors. In this context, it is hypothesized also that motor learning may involve the calibration of these intermovement sensorimotor actions. These observations in turn provide some alternative perspectives on the concept of a motor program, primarily suggesting that individual movements and muscle contractions are not wholly prespecified, but shaped by sensorimotor adjustments.     

An empirical investigation of adolescent suicidal ideation.

Four hundred nine high school students were surveyed to determine the percentage who had experienced suicidal ideation. The sample was then divided into high- and low-suicidal-risk groups. High-risk subjects were found to have significantly poorer quality friendships, lower self-esteem, and had experienced more life stress in the previous year.     

Olfactory aversion conditioning and overeating: a review and some data

The present study evaluated the efficacy of olfactory aversion conditioning in the management of overeating problems. 42 overweight female subjects were assigned to one of three treatment conditions: olfactory aversion therapy, attention placebo control, and no-contact control. One experimenter administered the 8-wk. treatment phase. The aversion therapy procedure entailed the pairing of selected target foods (CSs) with noxious odors (UCSs). There were 25 pairings of the CS and UCSs during each weekly session. Four noxious odors were employed, one each week, to prevent habituation to the UCS. The attention-placebo control procedure was identical except that "air" was substituted for the putative UCS of the aversion therapy condition. At the end of the treatment period the aversion therapy group had lost 4.7 lb.; the attention placebo controls had lost 3.6 lb. and the no-contact controls 0.5 lb. The difference between the aversion therapy group and the no-contact controls was significant and that between the attention placebo group and the no-contact controls approached significance. At a follow-up 8 wk. after the end of the treatment period the weights of all groups had risen to pretreatment levels and there were no differences between them. These results indicate that olfactory aversion therapy is not an efficient technique in promoting weight-loss.