Integrated Treatment Programmes for Mothers with Substance Use Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Interventions to Prevent Out-of-home Child Placements

Approximately half of mothers receiving substance use treatment are involved with childcare proceedings. This review aims to determine whether integrated treatment programmes for mothers with substance use problems are effective in preventing out-of-home placement (temporally/permanent) and influencing other maternal factors such as patterns of substance use, treatment completion and parenting behaviours. Six trials were identified—two randomised controlled trials and four non-randomised controlled studies. The pooled sample of participants was 1717. The results showed that mothers who participated in integrated treatment programmes were significantly less likely to have the children removed from their care (Odds Ratio (OR)?=?0.40, 95% CI?=?0.27, 0.61), more likely to complete substance use treatment (OR?=?3.01, 95% CI?=?1.79, 5.06), and more likely to reduce their alcohol consumption (Standardised Mean Difference (SMD)?=??0.40, 95% Cl?=??0.78, ?0.01) and drug use (SMD?=??0.30, 95% CI?=??0.53, ?0.07). However, non-significant reductions were observed for parent–child conflict (SMD?=??0.35, 95% CI?=??0.72, 0.03) and child abuse risk (SMD?=??0.03, 95% CI?=??0.36, 0.31). While the findings from this review suggest that mothers involved in integrated treatment programmes could potentially be less likely to experience out-of-home child placements and more likely to improve substance use treatment outcomes, little evidence exists for the effectiveness of these interventions. Further research, particularly high-quality RCTs, is required to demonstrate and persuade health and public policy on the far-reaching value of the integrated approaches.

     

How Academic Community and an Ethic of Care Can Shape Adjunct Work Environments: A Case Study of a Community College

This article presents a qualitative case study that explores how faculty and administrators at one community college conceptualized and experienced academic community within their institution and how that conceptualization helped shape the part-time faculty work environment. Using a combined framework of academic community and care ethics, this study utilizes data from 55 interviews with full-time and part-time faculty and administrative leaders from a large community college. Findings from this study indicate that defining membership, a sense of belonging, and shared mission and goals are key components to their understanding of academic community. From these three components, the study found that when participants included adjunct faculty as members of their academic community, they also reported a sense of responsibility or obligation to supporting them.

     

Perceived discrimination is associated with poorer health and well‐being outcomes among Pacific peoples in New Zealand

Our study investigated the association between perceived discrimination and outcomes related to health and well‐being for Pacific adults in New Zealand. We examined personal and group discrimination from the 2013 wave of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (n = 429 women and 196 men). Personal discrimination was associated with poorer health and well‐being outcomes (higher psychological distress and lower self‐esteem, subjective evaluation of health, satisfaction with life and personal well‐being). Group discrimination, in contrast, was associated with poorer well‐being but not health outcomes (lower subjective evaluation of health and personal well‐being). These findings corroborate previous research and highlight the corrosive effect of discrimination towards health and well‐being among Pacific communities in New Zealand.     

An agenda for psychological distance apart from construal level

Mental life is not confined to physical reality. Instead, anchored in the here and now, people can conjure worlds set in other locations, in other times, from other people's perspectives, and with otherworldly odds. These routes away from immediacy represent different dimensions of psychological distance—space, time, social distance, and probability—in that they all provide a means by which targets of consideration can feel psychologically distant. Though largely developed under the theoretical banner of construal level theory, psychological distance benefits from consideration in its own, independent right. This review proposes that prominent characteristics of it inform an agenda for translational insights across the four dimensions of psychological distance.     

The Knowledge Argument and Objectivity

In this paper I argue that Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument is better considered not as an argument against physicalism, but as an argument that objective theories must be incomplete. I argue that despite the apparent diversity of responses to the knowledge argument, they all boil down to a response according to which genuine epistemic gains are made when an individual has an experience. I call this the acquaintance response. I then argue that this response violates an intuitive stricture on the objectivity of theories. Therefore, the knowledge argument does show that objective theories cannot provide a complete understanding of the world. The result, however, is that both objective dualism and objective physicalism are refuted by the argument. In the end it is suggested that the notion of “subjective physicalism” is one that should be pursued.     

How Wittgenstein Defeated Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment

In 1913 Wittgenstein raised an objection to Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment that eventually led Russell to abandon his theory. As he put it in the Tractatus, the objection was that “the correct explanation of the form of the proposition, ‘A makes the judgement p’, must show that it is impossible for a judgement to be a piece of nonsense. (Russell’s theory does not satisfy this requirement,” (5.5422). This objection has been widely interpreted to concern type restrictions on the constituents of judgment. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken and that Wittgenstein’s objection is in fact a form of the problem of the unity of the proposition.     

THE USE OF REBT PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES IN LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Training, coaching, and consulting with people in leadership roles can be a primary consulting function for clinicians. In this paper, the authors describe their model of leadership, and what they believe to be the central personality or character components of leadership necessary for producing extraordinary results. Throughout they will show where and how REBT skills can make a significant contribution.