‘Stakeholders’ views of legal and advice services for people admitted to psychiatric hospital’

This paper describes a study that used a mixed method approach to elicit the views of a range of stakeholders about experiences of compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital, and the use of the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT). The paper begins with an introduction to the background of the study, one that took place in Northern Ireland, a region in the UK with its own mental health legislation and policy. A review of literature is then presented. This highlights some of the disadvantages that service users and carers face when dealing with professionals during and following compulsory admission to hospital. This section concludes with an overview of literature on the MHRT in the UK. A range of methods was used to gather data from the following stakeholders: five service user and carer focus group interviews (n = 44); interviews with four lawyers experienced in Tribunal work; an interview with a legal member of the Tribunal; a survey of solicitors who identified themselves as equipped to carry out Tribunal work; interviews with three managers of organisations that provided patient advocacy services; letters to hospital managers requesting information provided to patients and carers. The findings reveal a number of themes associated with these experiences of compulsory admission to hospital and subsequent use of the Tribunal. Service users and carers generally found it difficult to access relevant information about rights, information provided by hospital managers was uneven and lawyers were often not familiar with processes associated with compulsory admission. There was a range of views about the Tribunal. Most respondents felt that the Tribunal was necessary and mostly satisfactory in the way it carried out its functions, but stakeholders raised a number of issues. Carers in particular felt that they should be more involved in decision-making processes, whereas lawyers tended to be focused on more technical, legal issues. Problems of regrading prior to the Tribunal and in examining medical evidence were highlighted by lawyers. There was an appeal for better information and advice by service users and carers, and recognition of the need for better training and education for lawyers. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about current mental health law in the UK, arguing that, in this context, professionals should more proactively use information and advice that can enable service users and carers to defend their rights. Keywords: compulsory mental health; law; legal and advice services

Providing Legal Information and Advice to Older People: as much a question of accessibility as affordability

No continent has as high a proportion of older people as Europe. In this paper, we report the findings of an empirical project examining the legal advice needs of older people. An important element of the project also sought information about the capacity of the internet for meeting the legal advice needs of older people. Overall our findings broadly indicate considerable failings in legal information provision for older people from more traditional advice sources. Whilst we have uncovered some examples of individualised good practice, our research in the main revealed an alarming sense of fear, mistrust, uncertainty and ambivalence among older people towards accessing legal advice. The research was funded by the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP). We believe our findings have broad implications and applicability across Europe.

'Law of their own': notes on legal alterity in early nineteenth-century Ireland

This article investigates intersections between legal and literary discourse in Ireland in the early 19th century, and explores how judicial tropes, in particular that of an “alternative judiciary”, shape perceptions of Irish identity as well as cultural expression. Whilst Ireland and the Irish were typically characterized as lawless, this article examines the ubiquitous presence of alternative legal systems, focusing on the writings of Thomas Moore (1779–1852) and William Carleton (1794–1869). These representations, and the questions of authority and legitimacy that they provoke, are considered within critical debates about the development of literary forms in Ireland, and the inherent relationship that legal alterity evokes between textual and judicial authority.

A Socio-Legal Analysis of Jihad

Since many offensive and defensive wars or acts of terrorism, such as the atrocities of 11 September in the United States and the July 2005 bombings in London, are committed under the banner of Islam and the duty of jihad, it is important to shed some light upon the Islamic laws of war in general, and the controversial concept of jihad in particular. This article traces the origins of, and rationale for, the use of force within the Islamic tradition, and assesses the meaning and evolution of the contentious concept of jihad within its historical context. Following an analysis of the opposing doctrinal views on the potential implications of jihad, the study argues that the concept of jihad should not be interpreted literally, but be adjusted in accordance with new historical and international conditions, and conducted by peaceful means, rather than by the sword.

Stability and dynamical behavior in a lake-model and implications for regime shifts in real lakes

A modified abstract version of the Comprehensive Aquatic Simulation Model (CASM) is found to exhibit three types of folded bifurcations due to nutrient loading. The resulting bifurcation diagrams account for nonlinear dynamics such as regime shifts and cyclic changes between clear-water state and turbid state that have actually been observed in real lakes. In particular, pulse-perturbation simulations based on the model presented suggest that temporal behaviors of real lakes after biomanipulations can be explained by pulse-dynamics in complex ecosystems, and that not only the amplitude (manipulated abundance of organisms) but also the phase (timing) is important for restoring lakes by biomanipulation. Ecosystem management in terms of possible irreversible changes in ecosystems induced by regime shifts is also discussed. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

Pattern formation of chevrons in the conduction regime in homeotropically aligned liquid crystals

We report on chevrons (herringbonelike patterns) observed in homeotropically aligned liquid crystals with high electric conductivity. We focus our attention on two types of chevrons observed in the conduction regime. The threshold voltage and the characteristic double periodicity of chevrons (i.e., the short wavelength lambda(1) of the striated rolls and the long wavelength lambda(2) Of the chevron bands) have been measured as functions of the applied electric frequency f. With the aid of a crossed polarizer set, we have, in addition, determined the director field which shows a periodic in-plane rotation for our chevrons (with a wavelength lambda(2)) We arrived at the types of chevrons after qualitatively different bifurcation sequences with increasing voltage. The frequency dependence of lambda(2) also shows a qualitatively different behavior with respect to the two types of chevrons. The experimental results are discussed in terms of recent theoretical investigations.

Radiation-Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams from Nanofoil Targets: The Leaky Light-Sail Regime

A new ion radiation-pressure acceleration regime, the "leaky light sail," is proposed which uses sub-skin-depth nanometer foils irradiated by circularly polarized laser pulses. In the regime, the foil is partially transparent, continuously leaking electrons out along with the transmitted laser field. This feature can be exploited by a multispecies nanofoil configuration to stabilize the acceleration of the light ion component, supplementing the latter with an excess of electrons leaked from those associated with the heavy ions to avoid Coulomb explosion. It is shown by 2D particle-in-cell simulations that a monoenergetic proton beam with energy 18 MeV is produced by circularly polarized lasers at intensities of just 10(19) W/cm(2). 100 MeV proton beams are obtained by increasing the intensities to 2 x 10(20) W/cm(2).

Dependence of the ion energy on the parameters of the laser pulse and target in the radiation-pressure-dominated regime of acceleration

When the dominant mechanism for ion acceleration is the laser radiation pressure, the conversion efficiency of the laser energy into the energy of relativistic ions may be very high. Stability analysis of a thin plasma layer accelerated by the radiation pressure shows that Raleigh-Taylor instability may enhance plasma inhomogeneity. In the linear stage of instability, the plasma layer decays into separate bunches, which are accelerated by the radiation pressure similarly to clusters accelerated under the action of an electromagnetic wave. The energy and luminosity of an ion beam accelerated in the radiation-pressure-dominated regime are calculated.