Attitude to personality disorder among prison officers working in a dangerous and severe personality disorder unit

BACKGROUND: It is well established that staff attitudes to personality disordered patients are commonly negative, characterised by pessimism and rejection. A recent study in forensic psychiatric hospitals has described the psychological and social factors underlying positive attitudes, and suggested that staff with more positive attitudes perform better and are less stressed. AIM: To assess whether it is possible to predict which staff will adjust positively to working with personality disordered people. More specifically to confirm links between attitude to personality disorder and: job performance; perception of managers; personal well-being; burnout; and interaction rates with inmates. METHODS: The opening of a new Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder unit within a UK prison allowed a longitudinal study of prison officers to be performed, in which a number of measures, including the Attitude to Personality Disorder Questionnaire (APDQ), were collected at three fixed points (at baseline, eight and sixteen months after the opening of the unit). RESULTS: Attitude to Personality Disorder varied over the course of the study, and changes in attitude were linked to events experienced by individual officers. More positive attitude to personality disorder was associated with improved general health and job performance, decreased burnout, and favourable perception of managers. CONCLUSIONS: Attitude to Personality Disorder has important outcomes, and is responsive to the psychosocial environment. Its measurement is not useful for staff selection, because of low stability over lengthy time periods. The APDQ has been demonstrated to be valid measure of attitude to PD, and potentially useful for outcome studies, or benchmarking between units.     

The Social Security Administration's Disability Service Improvement process

Reprinted here in its entirety is Commissioner Jo Anne B. Barnhart's statement of June 15, 2006, to the Subcommittee on Social Security of the House Committee on Ways and Means. In her statement, Commissioner Barnhart outlines the improved disability determination process and how the changes to the process were decided. The key elements are collectively referred to as the Disability Service Improvement (DSI) and represent the most significant changes in the Social Security Administration's 50-year history of determining disability for workers seeking Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. Commissioner Barnhart's statement underscores that while the need for change in the disability determination process was clear, both she and SSA staff listened carefully to all points of view in the decisionmaking process. The end product of this outreach effort and deliberative process is the final rule that was published on March 31, 2006. The new procedures outlined in the final rule will take advantage of the new electronic disability claims system, or eDib, and will shorten times to make disability decisions and will allow benefits to be paid sooner to people who are clearly disabled. Key elements include a new Medical and Vocational Expert System to improve the quality and availability of such expertise at all levels of adjudication, review of state agency determinations by a Federal Reviewing Official to ensure more accurate and consistent decisionmaking earlier in the process, and a newly created Decision Review Board to identify and correct decisional errors and to identify quality issues at all levels. Two improvements underlying the new process at all levels include better documentation of the record and more effective quality feedback loops for continuous improvement. Read Commissioner Barnhart's statement for a further explanation of DSI, how the changes were decided, and her plans for implementation.     

Nexus of armed conflicts and migrations to the Gulf: migrations to the GCC from war-torn source countries in Asia,Africa and the Arab neighbourhood

Majority of temporary labour migrants in the Gulf originate in countries that are not involved in devastating armed conflicts. Migrations from conflict-ridden countries to the Gulf are not negligible, however, and they have been growing in the last decades. The overview of migrations from the major refugee-producing countries suggests that we may distinguish between different categories of mixed migrations; inter alia, migrants who migrated to the Gulf prior to, during and after the armed conflicts in their home countries. We argue that these migrations happened in parallel with the tremendous economic growth that the Gulf countries have experienced in the last decades. Of note, however, is that they also coincide with escalations of armed conflicts in several sending countries, which may indicate that some of these migrations are also the result of war- or security-related push forces. We also contend that the dynamics of migrations from countries in conflict may in addition be related to the foreign policies of the Gulf countries, which are often closely related to their treatment of different migrant groups.     

L'Europe comme ambition puis comme espace: histoire d'un modèle victime de son succès?

On voit mal comment l'on pourrait refuser d'élargir l'Europe aux ex-pays de l'Est. Les arguments qui ont plaidé en faveur de la Grande Bretagne, de la Grèce, de l'Espagne et du Portugal doivent s'appliquer aux Etats d'Europe centrale et orientale. Compte tenu du caractère inéluctable des futurs élargissements, il ne saurait être question de renoncer à l'approfondissement et ce, au risque de la désintégration pure et simple de la Communauté. A n'en pas douter, en effet, les pays d'Europe centrale et orientale rejoindront les rangs des partisans de l'Europe minimale, de "l'Europe des patries". S'il s'agit de renoncer au super Etat fédéral pour rester dans le flou d'un système hybride, mélange de supranationalité et de souveraineté, l'objectif reste celui d'une construction politique, certes respectueuse des différences nationales, mais nécessairement plus intégrée et cohérente. Dans le contexte actuel – qui est aussi celui de l'Union économique et monétaire – on peut dès lors se demander si l'on ne devrait pas voir dans le modèle suisse d'unité (fé-dérale) dans la diversité (nationale) une source d'inspiration.     

Introduction: Continuing the Effort to Understand the Relationship Between Positive and Negative Resource Allocations and How They Affect Our Justice Conceptions

Social Justice Research -     

Discovering Directions for Change in Higher Education Through the Experiences of Senior Women Faculty

The Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an NSF-funded ADVANCE Institutional Transformation project, employed the “discovery interviews” method to characterize the experiences of senior women faculty in science and engineering on campus. This method allowed WISELI to reach its aims of (1) gaining information from senior women that would inform the programs developed by WISELI, and (2) building relationships among the senior women and WISELI. The discovery interview process also had some unintended consequences, including creation of an expectation of advocacy that exceeded the original intent of the project. This method was well-matched to the needs of WISELI as a change agent at the UW-Madison, and has contributed a great deal to its Institutional Transformation efforts, primarily by changing WISELI’s perceptions of what leadership means to senior women faculty.