Creating a ‘psychological nest’ for vulnerable infants and children: an interview with Annette Mendelsohn

This is an edited version of a recent interview with Annette Mendelsohn, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, UK. It aims to make available in published form Mendelsohn's thinking and approach in relation to her work with traumatised children in a hospital setting. Mendelsohn also discusses her work in a neonatal intensive care setting and the way in which approaches to psychosocial care in the hospital setting have changed over the course of her professional life.     

Two boys—one event

The background of this paper is an investigation of child survivors from the Holocaust; in a study of interviews of these survivors, it could be concluded that past traumatic experiences are recovered not as memories (in the usual sense of the word), but as affects invading the present. Accordingly, affects seem to tell the story of the past traumatic experiences. In this paper, the author investigates two accounts (separately told by two survivors) of the same event in the Kielce ghetto. The two accounts present similarities, but also differences, and the author discusses these in relation to the concepts of historical and narrative truth, as well as in relation to construction and reconstruction, concluding that the interviews give a sketch of how the experiences have become idiosyncratically registered in the minds of the interviewees.     

One ‘knows’: self-rated health and telomere length among ex-prisoners of war

Abstract

Objective: Ill-health and early mortality are amongst the most significant ramifications of trauma. Furthermore, trauma alters the subjective perception and experience of the body. The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which deteriorations in perceived health among traumatised individuals are associated with cellular health as manifested in telomere length.

Methods: Specifically, 88 former prisoners of war (ex-POWs) evaluated their health (self-rated health; SRH) at 18 (T1), 35 (T2) and 42 (T3) years after the war, and were assessed for telomere length at T3. Health behaviour, BMI, morbidity and PTSD were also examined at T3.

Results: The findings demonstrated that SRH was cross-sectionally correlated with telomere length. Furthermore, a significant sequential indirect effect was found, in which worse SRH in T1 was associated with shorter telomere length at T3, through worse SRH at T2 and at T3.

Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that long-term deteriorations in the subjective evaluations of health are implicated in actual cellular health among individuals exposed to trauma.     

Generational forgiveness and historical injustices: perspectives of descendants of victims of Apartheid-era gross human rights violations in South Africa

This study explored the issue of generational forgiveness in the political sphere in contemporary South Africa. It is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 20 children and grandchildren (females?=?10, males?=?10) of victims of Apartheidera gross human rights violations. The interview data were interpretively analysed to uncover underlying meaning. The results yielded three main themes namely: the myth of forgiveness in politics; political forgiveness as an inherently difficult human enterprise; and the intrinsic value of political forgiveness. Findings suggest that political forgiveness is likely if solutions are found to persistent poverty and inequality, which are structural legacies of the past.     

Addressing Urgent Community Mental Health Needs in Rwanda: Culturally Sensitive Training Interventions

Rwandan leaders in the health and educational sectors have begun to discuss the necessity for establishing culturally appropriate community-based mental health counselling services in Rwanda, especially trauma counselling. The need for a community psychology approach is anchored in the lingering effects of the genocide and the continuing post-traumatic stress symptoms suffered by many in the population. Capacity building in an effort like this would require the design of multi-level counselling curricula that are sensitive to the social structures within Rwandan culture. These curricular endeavours call for the development of a National Counselling Centre to serve as a structural mechanism for organizing community-based counselling initiatives. We consider the community health services needs in Rwanda here, along with associated challenges and strategies for effective mental health services in a country with a recent history of genocide. A community psychology approach to mental health would benefit Rwandan society by making trauma counselling and recovery services available and accessible to citizens throughout the country.     

Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda's ‘Little Treatise on how to attend Mass‘ (1555): A Translation

Abstract

Presented here is the first English and annotated translation of the Spanish sermon on congregational participation in the Mass delivered by the Dominican Friar, Bartolomé Carranza. It was originally preached at Whitehall, in the first week of Lent, 1555, before King Philip I and Queen Mary I of England. The text was subsequently written down by the preacher at the request of one of those present, the Duke of Medinaceli, and published in Salamanca and Antwerp. After a lengthy historical introduction, bolstered by quotations from Scripture, papal and conciliar documents, as well as from the writings of patristic and medieval theologians, the text is divided into three parts, which reflect the phases of the liturgy. The first covers the service from the entrance of the celebrating priest to the Preface of the Canon of the Mass; the second continues up to the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and the third discusses the conclusion of the Mass. Then follows a short guide to help worshippers unfamiliar with Latin to participate as fully as possible in the service. Carranza rejects the medieval practice of bringing private prayer books to church for use during Mass, and instead urges full participation, as far as the rubrics of the liturgy permit, in the activity of the priest and his assistants at the altar. He also expresses a preference for frequent communion by the laity, which some Catholic reformers were advocating in the mid-sixteenth century. Although first preached in England, the published text was evidently as much directed at the Spanish market, where the writer evidently hoped that a reform of Catholic practice would help stave off Protestantism as well.