A Survey of Hospital Services for Suicidal Persons

ABSTRACT: A person who threatens or attempts suicide, arriving for treatment at any 1 of 10 hospitals serving a suburban area in the Bay Area of California, will be met with a variety of responses by different kinds of personnel, depending on the hospital to which he comes. In half of the hospitals, he could be subsequently discharged without psychiatric consultation of any kind. Follow-through on any outpatient referral would usually be left up to him. Although a few hospitals attend to the problem of suicidal persons in many important respects, other hospitals pay little attention to these same aspects. Because of the important role of the hospital in the prevention of suicide, it is recommended that the hospital's function in dealing with suicidal patients be better defined, extended, and made more consistent.     

Consciousness Raising: From Revolution to Re-Evaluation

Consciousness raising was developed in the radical feminist wing of the women's liberation movement. It was originally envisioned as a means of creating revolution. The reform wing of the movement took up consciousness raising after 1970 partially in response to grassroots pressure and partially to attract members. As consciousness raising spread, the political content began to disappear. Ultimately, consciousness raising moved into the orbit of the group therapy movement. The transformation of consciousness raising from its revolutionary origins to convergence with group therapies is tied to the history of radical feminism and to a change in its practitioners. The history of consciousness raising reflects not only the power of the therapeutic view, but more significantly, brings into question the value of the process both for the movement and for individuals, as long as political content is left out.     

Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Using Story Completion Methods in Qualitative Research

ABSTRACT

What is story completion? How come I’ve never heard of it? Can it be useful for me as a qualitative researcher? A relatively unknown method for qualitative data collection, story completion has a long history of use in psychotherapy practice and (quantitative) developmental psychology research. We believe it has untapped, exciting potential as a qualitative technique in and beyond psychology, offering something quite different to many of the popular methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups). In this article, an introduction to an exciting Special Issue that discusses and demonstrates the potential of story completion, we provide a brief history of the development of story completion as a qualitative technique and an overview of design, sampling, and data analysis in story completion research. We finish by highlighting potential pitfalls of story completion, alongside a discussion of the possibilities it offers, and briefly introduce the empirical papers in the Special Issue.