Surviving the suicides of significant others: a case study

Psychological pain has been reported to be major contributing factor for completed suicide, and classical suicidology based its wisdom on this construct. In this paper we report the case of a patient whose family experienced a high number of suicides apparently due to an escalation of psychological pain in the family members after the successive suicides. We also briefly discuss the problem of helping survivors after the suicide of loved one.     

Suicide among indigenous peoples: the usefulness of the Human Relations Area Files

The present note describes the resource for studying suicide in indigenous peoples provided by the Human Relations Area Files and describes three ways in which these files can illuminate suicidal behavior: testing theories of suicide, exploring the linguistics of suicide, and challenging myths about suicide.     

Models of E‐Government: Are They Correct? An Empirical Assessment

Research into e-government is relatively new. Nevertheless, much contemporary thinking and writing about e-government is driven by normative models that appeared less than a decade ago. The authors present empirical evidence from three surveys of local e-government in the United States to test whether these models are accurate or useful for understanding the actual development of e-government. They find that local e-government is mainly informational, with a few transactions but virtually no indication of the high-level functions predicted in the models. Thus, the models do not accurately describe or predict the development of e-government, at least among American local governments. These models, though intellectually interesting, are purely speculative, having been developed without linkage to the literature about information technology and government. The authors offer grounded observations about e-government that will useful to scholars and practitioners alike.     

Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection

The salience of judicial appointments in contemporary American politics has precipitated a surge of scholarly interest in the dynamics of advice and consent in the U.S. Senate. In this article, we compare alternative pivotal politics models of the judicial nominations process, each capturing a different set of potential veto players in the Senate. We use these spatial models to guide empirical analysis of rejection patterns in confirmation contests for the lower federal courts. Using data on the outcomes of all nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts between 1975 and 2006, we show that models incorporating the preferences of the majority party median and the filibuster pivots best account for confirmation patterns we observe at the appellate and trial court levels, while advice and consent for trial courts has more recently been influenced by home-state senators.