Parent–child contact problems and family intensive interventions: The crisis of adolescent suicidality and the role of social media

Although clinicians, educators and parents have been alarmed by the decline in the mental health of children and adolescents commensurate with the Covid-19 pandemic, statistics indicate there has been a downward spiral over the last decade. This has been evident in the overall increase in suicide rates for young people. For legal and mental health professionals working in the Family Court system, this has provided unique challenges. Most vulnerable has been those children and adolescents embroiled in high conflict divorces, especially those exhibiting parent child contact problems. This article focuses upon that population exhibiting parent child contact problems, and their treatment, specifically Family Intensive Intervention. Building Family Resilience is an Intensive family treatment program that has had to address this deterioration in child and adolescent mental health and increase in suicidality. The role of social media in both exacerbating and/or ameliorating mental health issues is explored.     

‘Cashing In’ on curiosity and spectacle: the forensic patient and news media

Health and social care professionals are gatekeepers to, and custodians of, confidential service user information. In the United Kingdom (UK), police investigations have unveiled cases of payments being made to public service officials by journalists in return for service user information. The purpose of this discussion is to investigate such cases in the context of high-security forensic care. This paper provides a discussion drawing upon two UK-based case studies of prosecutions of public service workers relating to the sale of confidential information. The analysis presented here illuminates upon the salient and connected issues at work that have led to the transgression of legal obligations and professional responsibilities/principles of confidentiality. A fuller reading of the context in which these transgressions occur, and motivations that exist, may well serve to inform policy, training, guidance or vigilance in relation to the preserving of service user information in the future.     

To Buy or Not to Buy? Vulnerability and the Criminalisation of Commercial BDSM

This paper examines the interaction of law and policy-making on prostitution, with that of BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism). Recent policy and legal shifts in the UK mark out prostitutes as vulnerable and in need of ??rescue??. BDSM that amounts to actual bodily harm is unlawful in the UK, and calls to decriminalise it are often met with fears that participants will be left vulnerable to abuse. Where women sell BDSM sex, even more complex questions of choice, exploitation, vulnerability, power and agency might be thought to arise. Does the combination of activities take two singular behaviours into the realm of compound harm? Are those who sell BDSM doubly vulnerable in a way that would justify criminal intervention? This paper argues that in imposing categories of vulnerability, the state engages in the heteronormative construction of risky sexual subjects who must be rehabilitated, responsiblised or punished. Through an examination of existing empirical studies on BDSM, the paper offers a feminist critique of the potential criminalisation of commercial BDSM and calls for more research on the lived experiences of those who buy and sell BDSM.     

Reviews

Rachel Rosenthal . Edited by Moira Roth. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories . By Peggy Phelan. Routledge, 1997.

Phaedra in Delirium . Written by Susan Yankowitz, directed by Alison Summers, performed by Kathleen Chalfant, Peter Jay Fernandez and Sandra Shipley. Presented by the Women's Project and Productions and the Classic Stage Company, New York City. January 20‐February 15, 1998.

Face to Face . Performed by Peeling the Banana, Second Stage Theatre. New York City, April 27, May 4, May 11, 1998.

Dancing the Self: the Solo Art Form . Featuring choreographers Terry Hollis, Amy Kail, Mark Kenison, Laura Staton, and Kathy Westwater in new solos. The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, New York City. February 1, 1998.

Jack Smith: Flaming Creature . A museum exhibition at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Museum, Long Island City, NY, October 29, 1997‐March 1, 1998.     

Business responses to environmental and social protection policies: toward a framework for analysis

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process–business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income.