A cross-cultural investigation of the communication of suicidal intent in Swedish and Turkish adolescents

A recent study found that Swedish adolescents were more disapproving of a suicidal disclosure by a fictional friend than their Turkish counterparts. Given this finding, the present study investigated whether or not more adolescents in Turkey than in Sweden disclose their own suicidal thoughts to someone, to whom adolescents disclose their suicidal thoughts, what reactions such disclosures produce, and reasons for not disclosing suicidal feelings among 966 Swedish and 956 Turkish high school students. A questionnaire was used to collect information about different aspects of suicidal disclosures. More Turkish than Swedish adolescent suicide ideators disclosed their thoughts. More Turkish than Swedish students believed also that young people thinking about and planning suicide tell others of their plans and thereby ask for help. An overwhelming majority of adolescents in both groups revealed their thoughts to peers. The social reactions to suicidal disclosures in both samples were mainly positive. The two most common reasons for not disclosing in both groups involved interpersonal hopelessness. Adolescents who disclosed their past suicidal thoughts to someone reported having lower current suicidal ideation than those who had not. In line with favorable social attitudes towards suicidal disclosures and lower suicidal mortality rates in Turkey compared with Sweden, more Turkish than Swedish adolescents reported having disclosed their own suicidal thoughts to someone in their social milieu.     

Interrater reliability and coding guide for nonpsychotic formal thought disorder

Reliable and valid assessment of abnormal speech patterns may enable earlier recognition of nonpsychotic disorders through characteristic speech patterns. This study sought to establish interrater reliability using a standardized guide for scoring. A scoring guide defining 27 elements (e.g., inappropriate self-reference, simple loss of goal, circumstantiality) of disordered thought was developed. The seminal work of Andreasen's and Holzman's groups provided 12 elements, and 15 new elements were suggested by clinical literature. Audiotaped interviews with 12 psychiatric inpatients, adults of both sexes and various ages hospitalized for acute management of nonpsychotic psychiatric disorders, provided speech samples for observation of disordered thought by two independent raters. Using the guide's definitions and accompanying examples of elements of disordered thought, reliability in scoring was high (kappa of .85 for agreement on the presence of any abnormal speech element and kappa values from .66 to 1.00 for agreement on the presence of individual elements).     

Causal,A Priori True,and Explanatory: A Reply to Lange and Rosenberg

Sober [2011 Sober, E. 2011. A Priori Causal Models of Natural Selection, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89/4: 571–89.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] argues that some causal statements are a priori true and that a priori causal truths are central to explanations in the theory of natural selection. Lange and Rosenberg [2011 Lange, M. and Rosenberg, A. 2011. Can There Be A Priori Causal Models of Natural Selection? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89/4: 591–9.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] criticize Sober's argument. They concede that there are a priori causal truths, but maintain that those truths are only ‘minimally causal’. They also argue that explanations that are built around a priori causal truths are not causal explanations, properly speaking. Here we criticize both of Lange and Rosenberg's claims.     

Relationship of posttraumatic growth to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression: A pilot study of Iraqi students

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) and psychopathology are common outcomes following exposure to adversity and trauma. We examined the relationship of PTG to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression in a group of young Iraqi students with war trauma exposure. These young Iraqis had experienced an average of 13 different war‐related adversities. The prevalence of probable PTSD was 17.2% and probable depression 23.1%. PTSD was associated with higher and depression with lower PTG. In addition, the relationship between PTG and PTSD was stronger among males than females. Although PTSD and depression were relatively common, they were related to PTG in opposite directions.     

Neurobıology of Repressıon: A Hypothetıcal Interpretatıon

Freud lived in a time when technology was incapable of explaining the biological correlates of the mental processes he described in psychoanalytic theory. During the last two decades, advances in neuroimaging methods and neuroscience have provided new insights for understanding mind-brain collaboration. Neurobiological underpinnings of psychoanalytical concepts have been an area of interest in recent years. This paper will suggest a new hypothesis for neurobiology of repression. This hypothesis will be discussed with the help of our knowledge about neurobiological mechanisms underlying perception of the emotional significance of an event, memory formation of an emotionally arousing stimulus, role of prefrontal cortex in modulation of subcortical information, neural mechanisms of suppression and molecular mechanisms of memory erasure. We suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and especially its caudal part plays a major role for repression of childhood traumatic events. Possible molecular mechanism of memory erasure in repression is long term depression of glutamatergic neurotransmission between prefrontal cortex- thalamus- limbic system.     

Exploring the Relationship between Psychopathy and Helping Behaviors in Naturalistic Settings: Preliminary Findings

This study examined the helping behavior of participants with high (High-P; 15 males, 13 females) and low (Low-P; 14 males, 16 females) psychopathic traits without their awareness. In the first of three tests, we found Low-P participants offered more help to an apparently lost female confederate than High-P participants. In the second test, High-P compared to Low-P males offered more help to an “injured” female experimenter, the reverse was true for females. In the third test, High-P compared to Low-P females offered more help to a female confederate who had apparently dropped papers they were carrying; whereas the reverse was true for males. Our preliminary findings indicate that context, gender and psychopathic traits interact and impact helping behavior.     

The effects of individualistic‐collectivistic value orientations on non‐fatal suicidal behavior and attitudes in Turkish adolescents and young adults

This study aimed at investigating the effects of individualistic‐collectivistic value orientations on non‐fatal suicidal behavior and attitudes in Turkish adolescents and young adults. A questionnaire containing measures of individualism, collectivism (INDCOL), non‐fatal suicidal behaviors and suicidal attitudes was used to collect the data. The results showed that both suicidal ideation and attempts were significantly more frequent in participants classified as individualist than those who were classified as collectivist on the basis of INDCOL scale scores. Participants with individualistic tendencies displayed more permissive attitudes toward suicide than those with collectivistic tendencies but collectivists believed to a greater extent than the individualists that people should communicate suicidal problems to others. Participants with collectivistic tendencies showed more accepting and helping reactions to an imagined suicidal friend than those with individualistic tendencies. Suicidal ideation and attempts were more common among adolescents than young adults. The findings suggest that individualistic and collectivistic value orientations and developmental status specific stressors play a role in the distribution of nonfatal suicidal behavior and the nature of suicidal attitudes.     

The Soul,as an Uninhibited Mental Activity,is Reduced into Consciousness by Rules of Quantum Physics

This paper is an effort to describe, in neuroscientific terms, one of the most ambiguous concepts of the universe—the soul. Previous efforts to understand what the soul is and where it may exist have accepted the soul as a subjective and individual entity. We will make two additions to this view: (1) The soul is a result of uninhibited mental activity and lacks spatial and temporal information; (2) The soul is an undivided whole and, to become divided, the soul has to be reduced into unconscious and conscious mental events. This reduction process parallels the maturation of the frontal cortex and GABA becoming the main inhibitory neurotransmitter. As examples of uninhibited mental activity, we will discuss the perceptual differences of a newborn, individuals undergoing dissociation, and individuals induced by psychedelic drugs. Then, we will explain the similarities between the structure of the universe and the structure of the brain, and we propose that consideration of the rules of quantum physics is necessary to understand how the soul is reduced into consciousness.     

Handedness and footedness: relations to differences in sprinting speed and multiple sprints performance in prepubertal boys

Physical performance and movement skills are differentiated by brain hemispheric dominance. Relations of handedness and footedness to differences in sprint speed and multiple sprints performances were investigated in 362 prepubertal, male, novice wrestlers. Participants with two months of irregular training experience were grouped by hand and foot preferences and matched on age and anthropometry. Mean running speed was associated with the number of sprints and handedness, but not with footedness. The decrease in sprint speed was less for right-handed subjects, who also had better sprinting speed and multiple sprint performance. Symmetrical arm and leg strength development for left-handers should be emphasized.     

Complex Governance to Cope with Global Environmental Risk: An Assessment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this three-tier framework. While the two-first requisites are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots.