Determinants and Predictive Value of Clinician Assessment of Short‐Term Suicide Risk

We examine the interrelations among clinicians' judgment of patients' suicide risk, clinicians' emotional responses, and standard risk factors in the short‐term prediction of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Psychiatric outpatients (n = 153) with a lifetime history of suicide ideation/attempt and their treating clinicians (n = 67) were evaluated at intake. Clinicians completed a standard suicide risk instrument (modified SAD PERSONS scale), a 10‐point Likert scale assessment of judgment of patient suicide risk (Clinician Prediction Scale), and a measure of their emotional responses to the patient (Therapist Response Questionnaire‐Suicide Form). The Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation were administered at a one‐month follow‐up assessment (n = 114, 74.5%). Clinician judgment of risk significantly predicted suicidal thoughts and behaviors at follow‐up. Both the standard suicide risk instrument and clinician emotional responses contributed independently to the clinician assessment of risk, which, in turn, mediated their relationships with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Our findings validate the importance of clinical judgment in assessing suicide risk. Clinical judgment appears to be informed both by concrete risk factors and clinicians' emotional responses to suicidal patients, highlighting emotional awareness as a promising area for research and training.     

Conditionals and inferential connections: toward a new semantics*

Abstract

In previous published research (“Conditionals and Inferential Connections: A Hypothetical Inferential Theory,” Cognitive Psychology, 2018), we investigated experimentally what role the presence and strength of an inferential connection between a conditional’s antecedent and consequent plays in how people process that conditional. Our analysis showed the strength of that connection to be strongly predictive of whether participants evaluated the conditional as true, false, or neither true nor false. In this article, we re-analyse the data from our previous research, now focussing on the semantics of conditionals rather than on how they are processed. Specifically, we use those data to compare the main extant semantics with each other and with inferentialism, a semantics according to which the truth of a conditional requires the presence of an inferential connection between the conditional’s component parts.     

The Ethics of Price Gouging

An analysis of the contemporary moral debate over price gouging can advance multiple readings of the challenging biblical episode which depicts Jacob's purchase of the birthright. Ethical considerations, such as the maximization of welfare, preservation of choice, and promotion of virtue are evaluated and then applied to the biblical text recounting the sale of Esau's birthright. Did Jacob act ethically in his purchase of ravenous Esau's birthright, or did he seize a propitious opportunity to exploit Esau's predicament? Is Esau responsible for spurning his birthright, or was he misled as he claims Jacob had “supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he has taken away my blessing” (Genesis 27:36)? An ethical analysis of Jacob's and Esau's intentions and actions in the transaction uncovers the Bible's position on the sale and on the larger moral debate.     

Trauma is not the whole story: Trajectories of responses to childhood disasters intertwining with Life following the Indian Ocean tsunami

In an era of global threats, understanding the implications of disasters on young people's life course is of central importance. A particular emphasis should be placed on non-Western economically developing societies that are considered as vulnerable and are less studied, and on social groups within these societies that are underrepresented. The present study focuses on young Sri Lankan women who experienced the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as children. Thirteen young women generated their life stories in semi-structured interviews, 12 years after the disaster had elapsed. Holistic narrative analysis revealed new variations and in-depth meanings in disaster response trajectories and presented the intertwining courses of the responses to the Potentially Traumatic Event (PTE) with ecological aspects throughout development, as in Trajectories intertwining with Life (TiL). This study provides empirical, methodological, conceptual and practical innovations to the study of human development throughout the life course, within the interdisciplinary fields of trauma and disasters.

Highlights

• This research is interested in how childhood disaster response trajectories among an understudied population are understood through an ecological-developmental perspective.
• Life stories uncover Trajectories intertwining with Life (TiL) among Sri Lankan women who were children during the Indian Ocean tsunami.
• The TiL unique outcomes, integrating trauma responses as inseparable from ecological and developmental aspects, offer various theoretical and applied implications.