A Community’s Response to Suicide Through Public Art: Stakeholder Perspectives from the Finding the Light Within Project

Suicide is a preventable public health problem and a leading cause of death in the United States. Despite recognized need for community-based strategies for suicide prevention, most suicide prevention programs focus on individual-level change. This article presents seven first person accounts of Finding the Light Within, a community mobilization initiative to reduce the stigma associated with suicide through public arts participation that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 2011 through 2012. The stigma associated with suicide is a major challenge to suicide prevention, erecting social barriers to effective prevention and treatment and enhancing risk factors for people struggling with suicidal ideation and recovery after losing a loved one to suicide. This project engaged a large and diverse audience and built a new community around suicide prevention through participatory public art, including community design and production of a large public mural about suicide, storytelling and art workshops, and a storytelling website. We present this project as a model for how arts participation can address suicide on multiple fronts—from raising awareness and reducing stigma, to promoting community recovery, to providing healing for people and communities in need.     

Doing Dialogue: Genre and Flexibility in Public Engagement with Science

‘Public engagement with science’ is an increasingly important but contested practice. In this study of London's Dana Centre I look at dialogue events carried out there as a case study of public engagement, performing a detailed analysis in order to examine their nature and practice. The analysis suggests that event framings (as found in the discourse of events) are multiple, varying from lecture to open debate. Furthermore the genre of events is flexible, with participant involvement organised through the use of genres derived from education, talkshows and news interviewing as well as more traditional genres such as lectures. While it seems there is flexibility in the practice of these informal dialogue events, they are, however, not open to reinvention by all participants equally. The fluidity of practice observed may be due to the newness of these kinds of processes in most people's experiences. We are therefore observing, on the ground, the traces of contrasting discourses of the right relationship between science and society.     

An application of the stress-diathesis model: A review about the association between smoking tobacco,smoking cessation,and mental health

BackgroundWorldwide, approximately 24% of all adults smoke, but smoking is up to twice as prevalent in people with mental ill-health. There is growing evidence that smoking may be a causal risk factor in the development of mental illness, and that smoking cessation leads to improved mental health.MethodsIn this scholarly review we have: (1) used a modern adaptation of the Bradford-Hill criteria to bolster the argument that smoking could cause mental ill-health and that smoking cessation could reverse these effects, and (2) by considering psychological, biological, and environmental factors, we have structured the evidence to-date into a stress-diathesis model.ResultsOur model suggests that smoking is a psychobiological stressor, but that the magnitude of this effect is mediated and modulated by the individual's diathesis to develop mental ill-health and other vulnerability and protective factors. We explore biological mechanisms that underpin the model, such as tobacco induced damage to neurological systems and oxidative stress pathways. Furthermore, we discuss evidence indicating that it is likely that these systems repair after smoking cessation, leading to better mental health.ConclusionBased on a large body of literature including experimental, observational, and novel causal inference studies, there is consistent evidence showing that smoking can negatively affect the brain and mental health, and that smoking cessation could reverse the mental ill-health caused by smoking. Our model suggests that smoking prevention and treatment strategies have a role in preventing and treating mental illness as well as physical illness.     

Use of public information when foraging: effects of time available to sample foods

It has been proposed that use of socially acquired information by animals should increase as the time available for individual resource sampling decreases. We gave Norway rat “observers” either 2 or 5 h day^–1 to sample four foods. Three of these foods were relatively palatable, but protein-poor; the fourth was relatively unpalatable, but protein-rich. We found that observer rats that for 2 h day^–1 both sampled foods and interacted with demonstrators eating only the protein-rich food ate more of the protein-rich food than did observers that sampled for 2 h day^–1 but had no opportunity to interact with demonstrators. On the other hand, observer rats that could sample foods for 5 h day^–1 ate equal amounts of protein-rich food whether they interacted with a demonstrator fed protein-rich food or not. Subsequent analyses showed that the time available to observers to sample foods, rather than the opportunity to interact with demonstrators determined whether such interaction influenced observers’ food choices. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that animals increase their use of public information in response to temporal constraints on opportunities for resource sampling. Received: 22 December 1998 / Accepted after revision: 27 February 1999     

Subjective evaluations of employer attributes by administration students

The paper is an application of the conjoint measurement methodology. An exploratory study was conducted of the trade-off relationships among four organizational attributes—dynamism, societal concern, functional/administrative emphasis, and relative size—as they relate to the selection of an employer by students of administration. Preference ranks of 36 employer concepts obtained from 86 graduate students of business, public, and hospital administration were analyzed according to the additive conjoint measurement model yielding implicit rank-ordering of the four organizational attributes as choice criteria. Irrespective of the program of study, dynamism and societal concern emerged as the most important determinants in employer selection, but differences existed among programs, year of study, and explicitly vs implicitly elicited weights.     

Locus of control,perceived responsibility for prior fate,and helping behavior

One-hundred-and-sixty adolescents participated in two studies designed to investigate the relationship between $\text{I}\text{E}$ and helping behavior as mediated by the perceived cause of another's need. In the first study, Ss were given the opportunity to help, either “indirectly” or “directly,” a supervisor who had been over- or underpaid in a prior similar task. Internals helped more in the “direct” help than the “indirect” help conditions but their helping behavior and their perceptions of their supervisors were not consistent. The perceptions of the externals were relatively consistent with their greater help of the “overpaid” supervisor. In study 2, the Ss were given additional information to increase the possibility of their making causal attributions as a function of the supervisor's prior fate. Once again, the external subjects' helping behavior reflected their perception of their supervisor's merit. The internal subjects exhibited relatively little helping behavior regardless of their supervisors' prior fate or perceived competence.     

上海公众心理健康观的初步调查研究

本研究初步调查了上海公众的心理健康观,发现①上海公众对心理健康的认识总体上与生物心理社会医学模式一致,多数人认识到心理健康的重要性;②公众对心理健康内容及心理异常表现的认识与心理学家的标准近似;③“早期教育和家庭环境”、“生活事件与环境变迁”及“心理冲突”等三项是影响上海公众心理健康的主要因素;④公众对目前心理医生的认可率不高;⑤约三分之二的公众认为自己的心理健康状况良好;⑥提出广泛开展心理健康教育和咨询工作的迫切性。     

Relationships between SVIB nonoccupational scales and achievement for six Holland personality types

The subjects were 432 male freshmen at the University of North Dakota who completed the Vocational Preference Inventory and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank. Backward stepwise multiple regression was used to determine the relationships of eight SVIB nonoccupational scales to first semester GPA for the total research population and for each Holland personality type. Personality types were determined by using the highest T score among the first six VPI scales. Significant multiple correlations between the SVIB nonoccupational scales and GPA were found for the total research population and for five of the six personality types. For the Enterprising type, the eight SVIB scales failed to predict GPA significantly. The results were discussed in terms of the differential patterns of multiple correlations for the total research population and for the personality types.     

Factors of acceptability,acceptance and usage for non-rail autonomous public transport vehicles: A systematic literature review

Non-rail autonomous public transport vehicles have emerged over the last few years. Technical progress in automation has resulted in a growing number of autonomous shuttle pilot experiments. Although these systems are technologically feasible, determining the extent to which they correspond to users’ needs and expectations remains a major issue. In order to answer that question, we conducted a systematic review which synthesizes the literature regarding the acceptability and willingness to use this type of autonomous public transport. This literature review allowed us to identify 39 documents addressing 70 factors of acceptability, acceptance and usage of non-rail autonomous public transport vehicles. The most cited factors in the literature concern service characteristics (times, schedules, fares) and safety issues (road-safety, on-board security). Factors related to automation level, comfort and access to the vehicle feature appear to a lesser extent. Acceptance is also related to personal factors, such as socio-demographics, travel habits, and personality. This review could be of interest to designers and manufacturers of non-rail autonomous public transport vehicles, as well as policy makers, and assist with the successful implementation of autonomous public transport services which are better adapted and meet the needs of all potential users.