BRITISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

BRITISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
Gerry Stoker and David Wilson (eds)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 304 pp., £50.60 (hb), £18.99 (pb) ISBN: 1403918724     

Psychological correlates of teenage motherhood

The social and economic consequences of adolescent motherhood are known, yet the psychological associates are largely unstudied. Clinical studies point to distressing reactions to adolescent pregnancy, and do not reflect changes in social attitudes about teenage parenting. In this study, adolescent mothers (n=62), pregnant teenagers (n=63), and non-pregnant and nonparenting (n=60) adolescents enrolled in public high schools completed measures of socioeconomic status, depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-esteem, and social supports. Findings suggest that adolescent mothers and pregnant teenagers are less distressed by their situation than was once thought. Social supports and socioeconomic status predicted psychological well-being better than parenting status. Expanded school programs for teenage mothers and renewed efforts to enhance young mothers' social and socioeconomic resources are called recommended.Funding was provided by the William T. Grant Foundation of New York.Received his D.S.W. from the University of California, Berkeley. Major interests are adolescent parenthood, child welfare services, social and cognitive skills training, and social supports.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Current research interests are primary prevention, adolescent pregnancy and parenthood, and teenaged alcohol and drug abuse.Current interests are adolescent pregnancy and social supports.     

Threat mail and forensic science: DNA profiling from items of evidence after treatment with DFO

Two cases of threatening letters with their accompanying envelopes were received to the Division of Forensic Identification unit of the Israel Police. The envelopes, including the stamps, and the letters were initially examined for latent fingerprints by the DFO reagent, known to cause degradation of DNA. Although no latent fingerprints could be visualized on any of the items, the biology laboratory using organic DNA extraction, was successful in defining genetic profiles from all the items employing six STR loci, even after treatment with DFO. In a controlled experiment, a known donor attached a stamp, by licking, to an envelope. This item was treated with DFO and then profiled using STR loci. The results showed that previous DFO treatment on the control stamp before DNA analysis had no negative effects on obtaining the DNA profile of the known donor using STR loci.     

The Baha’i minority in the State of Israel, 1948–1957

This article examines the virtually unexplored topic of the Baha'i religious minority in Israel's early statehood period based mainly on primary source documentation. It will be argued that while the number of Persian Baha'is in Israel after 1948 was minuscule — even smaller than the similarly minuscule Circassian and Armenian populations — the non-Arab and non-Muslim identity of the Baha'is, the lack of any historical antagonism between the Baha'is and the Jews, a shared history of marginalization in the modern Middle East, the Baha'is' principled commitment to non-violence as a basic tenet of their religious faith, their complete neutrality leading up to and including the 1948 War, (and their support for Jewish statehood after it), their lack of proselytizing in the state of Israel, and the fact that nearly all of their high-ranking administrators in post-independence Israel hailed from the United States — whose support Israel sought — led the state to cultivate this minority to a degree few other minorities experienced in post 1948 Israel.

A study of the flight and return of most (excommunicated) Baha'i adherents during and after the 1948 War, respectively, will form part of a separate, forthcoming article.     

Involuntary outpatient treatment as “desintitutionalized coercion”: The net-widening concerns

In American jurisprudence, two justifications have traditionally been put forth to support the government's social control of persons with mental illness: police power and parens patriae. As public mental hospitals became less available as loci in which to exercise these functions, governments sought alternative means to achieve the same ends. One prominent but quite controversial means is involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT). While the concerns about IOT have been myriad, one often alluded to but never documented is that of “net-widening.” That is, once IOT became available, it would be applied to an ever greater number of individuals, progressively expanding the margins of the designated population to whom it is applied, despite the formal standard for its application remaining constant. We tested the net-widening belief in a naturalistic experiment in Massachusetts. We found that net-widening did not occur, despite an environment strongly conducive to that expansion. At this time, whatever the arguments against IOT might be, net-widening should not be one of them.     

Involuntary administration of medication in the community: the judicial opportunity

In a state in which patient refusal of antipsychotic medication in all nonemergency situations must be respected, lawyers and psychiatrists in western Massachusetts have employed probate court decisions as involuntary outpatient treatment orders. The legal, administrative, and clinical issues in sustaining court-ordered outpatient treatment are discussed by focusing on case examples demonstrating some successes, some challenges, and some failures. Judicially sanctioned involuntary outpatient treatment presents an alternative model to statutorily based outpatient commitment.     

Sudden death in an adolescent due to undiagnosed classic Hodgkin lymphoma

Few cases of natural sudden death presenting as an undiagnosed lymphoma have been reported in the literature, especially in adolescents. Herein we provide a report of sudden death caused by undiagnosed classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). We describe an 18-year-old female who collapsed after several weeks of weight loss, decreased appetite, and dyspnea. At autopsy, a bulky mass arising in the mediastinum and neck compressed the esophagus and trachea, surrounded the great vessels, obliterated the pericardial sac, and infiltrated the myocardium. The lungs were collapsed and large pleural effusions were present. The tumor burden, which weighed at least 2710 g in aggregate, was entirely above the diaphragm. Microscopic examination of the masses showed features typical for nodular sclerosis cHL including large bands of sclerosis, numerous Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells, and an eosinophil-rich mixed inflammatory cell infiltrate. Immunohistochemical stains showed the HRS cells to be uniformly positive for CD30 and CD15 and negative for CD3, CD20, CD45, and PAX5. This case exemplifies a rare sudden natural death due to previously undiagnosed cHL in a young patient.