Global Mental Health: Five Areas for Value-Driven Training Innovation.

OBJECTIVE: In the field of global mental health, there is a need for identifying core values and competencies to guide training programs in professional practice as well as in academia. This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary discussions fostered during an annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture to develop recommendations for value-driven innovation in global mental health training. METHODS: Participants (n = 48), who registered for a dedicated workshop on global mental health training advertised in conference proceedings, included both established faculty and current students engaged in learning, practice, and research. They proffered recommendations in five areas of training curriculum: values, competencies, training experiences, resources, and evaluation. RESULTS: Priority values included humility, ethical awareness of power differentials, collaborative action, and "deep accountability" when working in low-resource settings in low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries. Competencies included flexibility and tolerating ambiguity when working across diverse settings, the ability to systematically evaluate personal biases, historical and linguistic proficiency, and evaluation skills across a range of stakeholders. Training experiences included didactics, language training, self-awareness, and supervision in immersive activities related to professional or academic work. Resources included connections with diverse faculty such as social scientists and mentors in addition to medical practitioners, institutional commitment through protected time and funding, and sustainable collaborations with partners in low resource settings. Finally, evaluation skills built upon community-based participatory methods, 360-degree feedback from partners in low-resource settings, and observed structured clinical evaluations (OSCEs) with people of different cultural backgrounds. CONCLUSIONS: Global mental health training, as envisioned in this workshop, exemplifies an ethos of working through power differentials across clinical, professional, and social contexts in order to form longstanding collaborations. If incorporated into the ACGME/ABPN Psychiatry Milestone Project, such recommendations will improve training gained through international experiences as well as the everyday training of mental health professionals, global health practitioners, and social scientists.

Cooperative or collaborative learning: Is there a difference in university students’ perceptions?

The hypothesis that the same educational objective, raised as cooperative or collaborative learning in university teaching does not affect students’ perceptions of the learning model, leads this study. It analyses the reflections of two students groups of engineering that shared the same educational goals implemented through two different methodological active learning strategies: Simulation as cooperative learning strategy and Problem-based Learning as a collaborative one. The different number of participants per group (eighty-five and sixty-five, respectively) as well as the use of two active learning strategies, either collaborative or cooperative, did not show differences in the results from a qualitative perspective.

Egyptian Pagans through Christian Eyes

Construction of Christian identity in Egypt proceeded in pace with construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other” between the second and sixth centuries. Apologies, martyrdoms, apocalypses, histories, sermons, hagiographies, and magical texts provide several different vantage points from which to view the Christian construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other”: as the agent of anti-Christian violence, as an intellectual rival, as an object of anti-pagan violence, as an obstacle to salvation, and—perhaps most dangerously—as but another participant in a shared religious experience. The recent work of social scientists on identity, deviance, violence, social/cultural memory, and religiosity provides insight into the strategies by which construction of the “Other” was part of a larger project of fashioning a “proper” Christian religious domain.

Charla de la Master Rita Jiménez funcionaria de la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos

Estoy aquí para compartir mi experiencia como bibliotecaria en la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, donde he trabajado durante 6 años. También voy a exponer el impacto que tiene la tecnología en nuestro trabajo -bases de datos e Internet.Mi división se llama "Servicio de Investigaciones del Congreso" y presta servicio de apoyo exclusivo y directo a los miembros del Congreso y a sus funcionarios. En este servicio trabajamos casi ochocientas personas -como abogados, expertos en ciencias sociales, economistas, y por supuesto bibliotecarios-. El ambiente de nuestra división es de una pequeña biblioteca dentro de la biblioteca más grande del mundo -con mucho trabajo y con fechas límites- para entrega de la información.

"Os Conflitos ambientais em Portugal (1974-2015): uma breve retrospectiva"

In this chapter, the authors made a survey of the research undertaken by social scientists and their reflections on environmental conflicts in Portugal. In these, a critical discourse has emerged concerning, on the one hand, the weak public environmental awareness, and, on the other, the progressive obliteration of environmental movements and their institutionalization throughout the creation of different environmental groups and the incorporation of the “environment” in legislation and in political discourse. In a brief retrospective, we review several conflicts taking into account different relevant factors: level of mobilization, media attention received, organization, impact, and ideological reference they have had in Portugal since the seventies. We have particularly highlighted the movement against nuclear energy and the construction of dams, the pollution caused by intensive breeding, the expansion of eucalyptus plantations, the conflicts against “wild” forms of mining, the business of toxic waste, the expansion of the economy of the concrete, the installation of landfills, and the defense of the natural heritage. This survey has considered three periods: the 1970s, marked by the emergence and performance of ecological movements of different ideological extraction; the second half of the 1980s, marked by the institutionalization of the environment and the imposition of a new legal framework with impact on environmental policies resulting from the integration into the European Economic Community; and finally, a third period, from the 1990s to present, marked by increasing environmental media coverage, with a particular emphasis on environmental conflicts in a context of an increasing liberalization of economic activities and the expansion of extraction and of the concrete economy. This is also the period where the environment emerges in disputes over the uses of the territory as economic and asset value. Most of these conflicts arise from the activities of local agents or national environmental groups that quickly gain strong local roots and sometimes even have some success. However, their impact on the national and Community legislation seems to be less relevant.

Application of a Bivariate Probit Model to Investigate the Intended Evacuation from Hurricane

With evidence of increasing hurricane risks in Georgia Coastal Area (GCA) and Virginia in the U.S. Southeast and elsewhere, understanding intended evacuation behavior is becoming more and more important for community planners. My research investigates intended evacuation behavior due to hurricane risks, a behavioral survey of the six counties in GCA under the direction of two social scientists with extensive experience in survey research related to citizen and household response to emergencies and disasters. Respondents gave answers whether they would evacuate under both voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders. Bivariate probit models are used to investigate the subjective belief structure of whether or not the respondents are concerned about the hurricane, and the intended probability of evacuating as a function of risk perception, and a lot of demographic and socioeconomic variables (e.g., gender, military, age, length of residence, owning vehicles).

Carers in the welfare state : on informal care and support for carers in Sweden

  The general aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse patterns of informal care and support for carers in Sweden. One specific aim is to study patterns of informal care from a broad population perspective in terms of types of care and types of carer. A typology of four different care categories based on what carers do revealed that women were much more likely than men to be involved at the ‘heavy end’ of caring, i.e. providing personal care in combination with a variety of other caring tasks. Men were more likely than women to provide some kind of practical help (Study I). Another aim is to investigate which support services are received by which types of informal caregiver. Relatively few informal caregivers in any care category were found to be receiving any kind of support from municipalities or voluntary organizations, for example training or financial assistance (Study II). The same study also examines which kinds of help care recipients receive in addition to that provided by informal carers. It appears that people in receipt of personal care from an informal caregiver quite often also receive help from the public care system, in this case mostly municipal services. However, the majority of those receiving personal, informal care did not receive any help from the public care system or from voluntary organizations or for-profit agencies (Study II). The empirical material in studies I and II comprises survey data from telephone interviews with a random sample of residents in the County of Stockholm aged between 18 and 84. In a number of countries there is a growing interest among social scientists and social policymakers in examining the types of support services that might be needed by people who provide informal care for older people and others. A further aim of the present dissertation is therefore to describe and analyse the carer support that is provided by municipalities and voluntary organizations in Sweden. The dissertation examines whether this support is aimed directly or indirectly at caregivers and discusses whether the Swedish government’s special financial investment in help for carers actually led to any changes in the support provided by municipalities and voluntary organisations. The main types of carer support offered by the municipalities were payment for care-giving, relief services and day care. The chief forms of carer support provided by the voluntary organizations were support groups, training groups, and a number of services aimed primarily at the elderly care recipients (Study III). Patterns of change in municipal carer support could be discerned fairly soon. The Swedish government’s special allocation to municipalities and voluntary organisations appears to have led to an increase in the number of municipalities providing direct support for carers, such as training, information material and professional caregiver consultants. On the other hand, only minor changes could be discerned in the pattern of carer support services provided by the voluntary organizations. This demonstrates stability and the relatively low impact that policy initiatives seem to have on voluntary organizations as providers (Study IV). In studies III and IV the empirical material consists of survey data from mail questionnaires sent to municipalities and voluntary organizations in the County of Stockholm. In the fields of social planning and social work there appears to be a need to clarify the aims of support services for informal carers. Should the support be direct or indirect? Should it be used to supplement or substitute caregivers? In this process of reappraisal it will be important to take the needs of both caregivers and care recipients into account when developing existing and new forms of support. How informal caregivers and care recipients interact with the care system as a whole is undeniably a fertile field for further research.

Análisis crítico a los agro(bio)combustibles

Industry, governments, and scientists that promote biofuels think these will become an alternative to oil, which is running out. These new fuels are supposed to help in containing climate change through greenhouse gas emission reduction, increasing farmers´ incomes, and promoting rural development. However, rigorous research and analyses undertaken by serious ecologists and social scientists suggests that the current boom in biofuels industry will be disastrous for farmers, the natural environment, the preservation of biodiversity, and particularly for poor consumers.

Co-Authorship of scientists in the energy field: an exploratory study of the ETDE World Energy Database (ETDEWEB) using Social Network Analysis

Paper presented at the 5th European Conference Economics and Management of Energy in Industry, Vilamoura, Algarve. Apr. 14-17, 2009, 11p. URL: http:// www.cenertec.pt/ecemei/

Co-Authorship of scientists in the energy field: a study of the ETDE World Energy Database (ETDEWEB) using social network analysis

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Informação

The Next Generation of Scientists: Examining the Experiences of Graduate Students in Network-Level Social-Ecological Science

By integrating the research and resources of hundreds of scientists from dozens of institutions, network-level science is fast becoming one scientific model of choice to address complex problems. In the pursuit to confront pressing environmental issues such as climate change, many scientists, practitioners, policy makers, and institutions are promoting network-level research that integrates the social and ecological sciences. To understand how this scientific trend is unfolding among rising scientists, we examined how graduate students experienced one such emergent social-ecological research initiative, Integrated Science for Society and Environment, within the large-scale, geographically distributed Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Through workshops, surveys, and interviews, we found that graduate students faced challenges in how they conceptualized and practiced social-ecological research within the LTER Network. We have presented these conceptual challenges at three scales: the individual/project, the LTER site, and the LTER Network. The level of student engagement with and knowledge of the LTER Network was varied, and students faced different institutional, cultural, and logistic barriers to practicing social-ecological research. These types of challenges are unlikely to be unique to LTER graduate students; thus, our findings are relevant to other scientific networks implementing new social-ecological research initiatives.

Compared trajectories of agro-ecology in Brazil and France: The role of scientists and social movements.

2009

Interpreting social enterprises

Institutional and organizational variety is increasingly characterizing advanced economic systems. While traditional economic theories have focused almost exclusively on profit-maximizing (i.e., for-profit) enterprises and on publicly-owned organizations, the increasing relevance of non-profit organizations, and especially of social enterprises, requires scientists to reflect on a new comprehensive economic approach for explaining this organizational variety. This paper examines the main limitations of the orthodox and institutional theories and asserts the need for creating and testing a new theoretical framework, which considers the way in which diverse enterprises pursue their goals, the diverse motivations driving actors and organizations, and the different learning patterns and routines within organizations. The new analytical framework proposed in the paper draws upon recent developments in the theories of the firm, mainly of an evolutionary and behavioral kind. The firm is interpreted as a coordination mechanism of economic activity, and one whose objectives need not coincide with profit maximization. On the other hand, economic agents driven by motivational complexity and intrinsic, non-monetary motivation play a crucial role in forming firm activity over and above purely monetary and financial objectives. The new framework is thought to be particularly suitable to correctly interpret the emergence and role of nontraditional organizational and ownership forms that are not driven by the profit motive (non-profit organizations), mainly recognized in the legal forms of cooperative firms, non-profit organizations and social enterprises. A continuum of organizational forms ranging from profit making activities to public benefit activities, and encompassing mutual benefit organizations as its core constituent, is envisaged and discussed.

The importance of environmental exposures to physical, mental and social well-being

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" states the WHO. However, the current focus in this important area seems to be on reducing diseases, while less attention is paid on aspects how to increase the well-being of populations. This paper reviews three examples where well-being has drawn attention of the public and policy makers, and compares the policies of two wealthy countries. The first example is noise. Noise can reduce sleep quality and cause physiological, mental, and social effects. In Switzerland, noise receives a lot of attention by the public. Swiss laws are extensive, e.g., they prohibit trucks and planes from traveling at night. In the USA, there is little public attention and no national strategy against environmental noise. The second example is aesthetics and recreation. Many humans seek contact with the beauty of nature. The USA and Switzerland have similar strategies for achieving clear waters, while the protection of scenic views is approached very differently. Lifestyle is the last example. In the USA, the desire for individual freedom is a leading cause for suburban sprawl, a car-dependent sedentary lifestyle resulting in obesity, asthma and loss of community spirit. In Switzerland, a strict land use planning seeks to balance individual and public interests and stresses public transportation, which seems to be a more promising approach. Paying attention to aspects of well-being while developing political strategies might be a promising model to tackle environmental problems. Successful strategies employed so far seem to include the public, local authorities, politicians and scientists in this process, which might have been a key for their success. [Authors]

SocialPosition : Social Position Indicators Construction Toolbox

This R package provides to sociologists (and related scientists) a toolbox to facilitate the construction of social position indicators from survey data. Social position indicators refer to what is commonly known as social class and social status. There exists in the sociological literature many theoretical conceptualisation and empirical operationalization of social class and social status. This first version of the package offers tools to construct the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI) and the Oesch social class schema. It also provides tools to convert several occupational classifications (PCS82, PCS03, and ISCO08) into a common one (ISCO88) to facilitate data harmonisation work, and tools to collapse (i.e. group) modalities of social position indicators.