Risk Factors for Attempting Suicide in Prisoners

We wished to examine determinants of suicidal behavior in prisoners. 903 male prisoners had a psychiatric interview which included various psychometric tests. Suicide attempters were compared with prisoners who had never attempted suicide. Significantly more of the attempters had a history of psychiatric disorder, substance abuse, a family history of suicidal behavior, convictions for violent crime, had exhibited aggressive behavior in jail, and had higher BGLHA aggression scores. A similar pattern of risk factors was found for prisoners with suicidal ideation. A lifetime history of attempting suicide, or of having suicidal ideation, is frequent in prisoners. Risk factors include family, developmental, aggression, personality, psychiatric, and substance abuse factors.     

When worlds collide: Engineering students encounter social aspects of production

To design effective and socially sensitive systems, engineers must be able to integrate a technology-based approach to engineering problems with concerns for social impact and the context of use. The conventional approach to engineering education is largely technology-based, and even when additional courses with a social orientation are added, engineering graduates are often not well prepared to design user- and context-sensitive systems. Using data from interviews with three engineering students who had significant exposure to a socially-oriented perspective on production systems design, this paper argues that engineering students may have difficulty integrating in their own practice the technology-based and the socially-oriented perspectives on production. To enhance engineering students' ability to create systems that integrate both perspectives, and to relieve the intense cognitive and emotional pain that can be experienced by students exposed to both perspectives but unable to reconcile them, this paper reinforces the importance of teaching students the meta skill, design. A design perspective can help students integrate varied, sometimes conflicting, perspectives, and reach beyond customer-defined constraints to consider workplace and social impact.     

INCREASING RURAL HEAD START CHILDREN'S CONSUMPTION OF MIDDLE-CLASS MEALS1

Rural black, economically impoverished Head Start children, whose normal diets were deficient in nutritional requirements, were not consuming the nutritional breakfasts of, to them, unfamiliar foods provided by the county school system. This study investigated a positive simple method to increase the amount of food consumed and thereby ensure proper nutrition. Teachers dispensed sugar-coated cereal and small candies paired with praise contingent on eating behaviors and rewarded children who finished the entire meal with additional treats and praise. Substantial increases were produced in the proportion of meals consumed and in the number of children observed engaged in eating behaviors. These simple traditional behavioral procedures are readily available for any staff working with economically impoverished children as one method of increasing their sampling and consumption of unfamiliar nutritious foods.     

The Holy Spirit,Eco‐Justice,and an African Lutheran Response to Ecological Peril

In response to the environmental degradation that is taking place right now in much of Africa—and in light of a traditional African emphasis on interdependence—this article seeks to provide an African Lutheran “eco‐pneumatological” contribution to the ongoing conversation about eco‐justice. To do so, it draws on classic Lutheran understandings of creation and grace, even as it calls for a more expanded—and more deeply biblical—understanding of the Holy Spirit's presence and activity throughout all of creation.     

Comparison of the Effects of Telephone Suicide Prevention Help by Volunteers and Professional Paid Staff: Results from Studies in the USA and Quebec,Canada

Research since the 1960s has consistently found that lay volunteers are better at helping suicidal callers than professionals. Yet, professional degrees are increasingly becoming requirements for helpline workers. In our first study, we conducted post hoc comparisons of U.S. helplines with all professional paid staff, all lay volunteers, and a mix of both, using silent monitoring and standardized assessments of 1,431 calls. The volunteer centers more often conducted risk assessments, had more empathy, were more respectful of callers, and had significantly better call outcome ratings. A second study of five Quebec suicide prevention centers used silent monitoring to compare telephone help in 1,206 calls answered by 90 volunteers and 39 paid staff. Results indicate no significant differences between the volunteers and paid employees on outcome variables. However, volunteers and paid staff with over 140 hours of call experience had significantly better outcomes. Unlike the United States, Quebec paid employees were not required to have advanced professional degrees. We conclude from these results and previous research that there is no justification for requiring that suicide prevention helpline workers be mental health professionals. In fact, the evidence to date indicates that professionals may be less effective in providing telephone help to suicidal individuals when compared to trained lay volunteers.     

Fetal Risks,Relative Risks,and Relatives' Risks

Several factors related to fetal risk render it more or less acceptable in justifying constraints on the behavior of pregnant women. Risk is an unavoidable part of pregnancy and childbirth, one that women must balance against other vital personal and family interests. Two particular issues relate to the fairness of claims that pregnant women are never entitled to put their fetuses at risk: relative risks and relatives' risks. The former have been used—often spuriously—to advance arguments against activities, such as home birth, that may incur risk; the latter implicate the nature of relationships in determining the acceptability of coercing or precluding activities. Motivated reasoning by clinicians and judges leads to inaccurate risk assessments, and judgments based on false claims to objectivity. Such judgments undermine the moral and legal standing of pregnant women and do not advance the interests of fetuses, pregnant women, families, or states.     

The role of consumer ethical beliefs in product‐harm crises

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumer reaction during a product‐harm crisis by examining the interdependencies that exist among their ethical beliefs as consumers, their attributions of blame, their feelings of anger and finally their purchase intentions towards the affected company. To test the five research hypotheses, a questionnaire containing a hypothetical crisis scenario of a fictitious company was distributed to 277 consumers. Respondents were asked to read the scenario and answer questions regarding their attribution of responsibility to the company, their feelings of anger and their purchase intentions. In order to investigate consumers' ethical beliefs, a Consumer Ethics Scale was also included in the questionnaire. Structural equation modelling revealed a significant, positive correlation between attributions of blame, anger and ethical beliefs. Moreover, anger negatively affects purchase intentions, whereas the attribution of blame was not found to be significantly connected to purchase intentions. In spite of the rational connection between ethics and crisis, there is lack of research correlating these two concepts. Based on this gap in the literature, the current research attempts to connect ethical beliefs with consumer reactions and emotions during product‐harm crises. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.