Defending internalists from acquired sociopaths

People who suffer brain damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM patients) have a puzzling psychological profile: they seem to retain high intellect and practical reasoning skills after their brain injuries, but continually make poor decisions in many aspects of their lives. Adina Roskies argues that their behavior is explained by the fact that, although VM patients make correct judgments about what they ought to do, they are entirely unmotivated by those judgments. Roskies thus takes VM patients to be real-world counterexamples to motivational internalism: the thesis that, necessarily, if S judges that she ought to φ in circumstances C, then S is somewhat motivated to φ in C. In this paper, however, I argue that the neuropsychological evidence that Roskies appeals to does not actually show that VM patients are entirely unmotivated by their normative judgments. Rather, I argue, the evidence suggests that VM patients form weaker normative judgments than normals during practical deliberation. And this affords the internalist with a plausible explanation for VM patients’ behavior: because VM patients form weaker normative judgments than normals, they are less motivated by their normative judgments than normals, which allows their decision-making to be overruled by their standing desires for greater and more immediate rewards.     

Loneliness and psychological health of orthopaedic patients’ caregivers: does gender make a difference?

Although research evidence indicates that loneliness is detrimental to mental health in diverse populations, impact of loneliness on psychological distress of orthopaedic patients’ caregivers has been given little research attention. The present study examined the association of loneliness with psychological health, and explored gender differences in the loneliness and psychological health association among orthopaedic patients’ caregivers. Participants were 250 patients’ caregivers drawn from a national orthopaedic hospital in eastern Nigeria. Data was collected by means of self-report measures translated into the local dialect of the caregivers. Multiple regression results showed that loneliness positively predicted psychological distress in the total sample. Loneliness did not predict psychological distress of male caregivers, but it positively predicted psychological distress of female caregivers. In order to promote orthopaedic patients caregivers’ mental health, gender-based differentials in the link between loneliness and psychological distress should be addressed by researchers and healthcare practitioners.     

艾滋病羞辱和歧视的概念及研究工具发展状况

艾滋病相关羞辱和歧视量表的研制是对其进行评价和采取有效干预措施的先决条件。阐述了艾滋病相关羞辱和歧视的定义和分类,重点介绍和分析了目前应用较广泛的艾滋病羞辱和歧视量表,并指出这些量表主要由发达国家研制,缺少适合中国文化背景的量表;对艾滋病高危人群所经历的双重羞辱和歧视,全世界还没有相应的测量工具。研制和修订适合中国文化背景的艾滋病羞辱和歧视量表是该研究领域亟待解决的难题     

乡村医生发现可疑结核病症状者研究综述

结核病仍然是严重危害我国人群健康的传染病,如何有效发现结核病病例是制约目前结核病控制项目是否成功的瓶颈。乡村医生在结核病病例发现方面具有至关重要的作用,如何提高其作用已成为研究的热点。本文对现阶段乡村医生发现可疑结核病症状者的方式及现状进行综述,并提出提高乡村医生在结核病病例发现中作用的措施。     

音乐治疗在消化内镜室的应用研究

在精神科领域,精神病患者及家属对精神疾病的认识存在许多误区。诸如：对精神疾病诊断、治疗的认识误区,对精神疾病病因的认识误区;对人际关系与社会功能的认识误区;对仪器设备检查过度迷信的认识误区等。为了保证精神病患者的诊断、治疗、康复的顺利进行,必须消除对精神疾病的认识误区,必须重视与加强精神科医患之间全方位有效沟通。     

What’s the 411? Assessing the Feasibility of Providing African American Adolescents with HIV/AIDS Prevention Education in a Faith-Based Setting

This study examines African American faith based leaders’ attitudes and beliefs about providing HIV prevention education and services to adolescents. Using a convenience sample, we identified priority adolescent health issues, attitudes about abstinence messages, and willingness to provide and participate in HIV prevention. Leaders identified drugs, gangs, alcohol, sex, and pregnancy as priority health issues affecting youth in their institutions. Leaders’ strongly preferred to emphasize abstinence messages. Although leaders were willing to provide youth with health education, they were not willing to discuss specific behaviors associated with HIV transmission. African American churches provide a venue to reach African American youth; however, there are limitations to relying on faith-based HIV prevention services. HIV prevention education should continue to be supplemented via parents, schools, and public health agencies.

Words that touch2

In this paper the author examines her own use of language as a psychoanalyst and asks: what is the best way to help analysands to find the words to express not only what they are thinking but also what they are feeling and experiencing? In common with other psychoanalysts, the author has observed that each of us simultaneously utilises both advanced psychic mechanisms that are accessible to symbolism and more archaic ones, which are less so. However, she draws a distinction between people who are able to tolerate the perception of their own heterogeneity, even if it is sometimes a source of suffering, and those whom she terms ‘heterogeneous patients’. Patients in the latter category, whose lack of internal cohesion causes them anxiety, are afraid of losing their sense of identity. The author asks how we can understand their language and how we should speak to them. She uses several clinical examples to demonstrate that ‘heterogeneous patients’ need to be touched with a language that does not confine itself to imparting thoughts verbally but also conveys feelings and the sensations that accompany those feelings. It is also an ‘incarnated’ language because the words pronounced by the analyst can awaken, or reawaken, bodily fantasies in the patient. These words may enable him to find an emotional meaning in forgotten sensory or bodily experiences, which may then become a starting point for his work of thinking and of symbolisation.     

HIV: How Science Shaped the Ethics

AIDS is a debilitating and fatal disease that was first identified as an infectious disease syndrome in the 1970s. The discovery of a nearly universally fatal infectious and rapidly spreading disease in the post–antibiotics era created apprehension in the medical community and alarm in the general population. Questions about how patients should be handled in medical and nonmedical settings resulted in the ostracizing of many AIDS patients and inappropriate patient management. Scientific investigation into modes of disease transmission and control helped to shape the management of AIDS patient care in such a way that ethical and protective practices could be developed. In this article I discuss some of the ethical questions that were addressed by appropriate scientific inquiry.     

The Prospect of a Global Ethic on HIV/AIDS: The Religions and the Science–and–Religion Dialogue

This article introduces essays from a 2001 symposium on a global ethic and the issue of the spread of HIV/AIDS. The symposium began with the assumption that we can determine the possibility for such a global ethic if we both explore the potential of an interreligious dialogue and do so in the context of a science–and–religion dialogue. I argue that while the possibilities for a global ethic, in particular addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS, may be debated, the results of this symposium suggest that the dialogue ought to be continued and that there is significant potential in the interfaith dialogue for creating models for both an ethic and specific strategies for action.     

现代医学的有限与无奈

在充分肯定现代医学在取得巨大进步的同时,分别从疾病病因、发病机制、早期诊断、疗效和预后等8个方向阐述了现代医学在防治人类疾病中的局限性,并简要分析了产生这种局限性的原因。