Adolescent nutritional and psychological patterns and risk for the development of an eating disorder

A group of 256 female and 248 male adolescent students were assessed regarding nutritional practices and psychological attitudes associated with the development of eating disorders. While the majority showed adequate nutritional practices, there was a high prevalence of dieting and the consumption of low-calorie foods among the girls. For boys, there was no relationship between a strong desire for thinness and restriction of foods high in calories; boys tended to report that hunger and positive affective states were related to overeating. A risk factor conception of nutritional and psychological precursors to the later development of an eating disorder was discussed.This research was supported in part by a Biomedical Research Support Grant to Dr. Cheryl Perry.     

A Narrative Approach to the Practice of Mediation

Thinking in narrative terms is proving useful in a number of disciplines. Such thinking has already contributed to a growing body of work in the family therapy field. Here, we seek to demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the ideas developed by Michael White and David Epston (among others) to the practice of mediation. Distinctions are drawn from the problem-solving approach with regard to both basic theoretical assumptions and method. A transcribed mediation scenario is used to illustrate and comment on the techniques of narrative mediation in action.     

In the Service of Power: The Global Political Economy of Citizenship and Human Rights

This article investigates how the idea of universal human rights has been co-opted by the prevailing (neo)liberal consensus in support of processes associated with capitalist globalization. So-called “civil and political” rights form the core of (neo)liberal values upon which free market, laissez-faire economics are based, but the idealism of the dichotomy of first and second generation rights is profoundly ideological. Through an examination of the idea of the international citizen, it is argued that the attempt to introduce a duty to promote the widest possible social good falls far short of an obligation to respond to claims for alternative conceptions of “economic and social” rights; far less alternative models of social affairs. Drawing on empirical evidence from Africa, the article contends that the dominance of (neo)liberal rights is integral to the emerging (neo)liberal constitution of the global order effected in the name of “human rights”, “democratization”, “citizenship”, “good governance” and “civil society”.

Never in the recent past have the founding principles of universal rights been so instrumentalized in the service of power, to such an extent that … in the opening years of the twentieth-century, we can speak of a veritable apogee of hegemony and an unprecedented crystallization of the hatreds that it arouses. (Bessis, 2003 Bessis, S. 2003. Western Supremacy: The Triumph of an Idea?, London: Zed.  [Google Scholar])     

Alternatives to Custody for High-Risk Young Offenders: The Multisystemic Therapy Approach

This article describes the implementation of randomised trials in Ontario, Canada, of a community-based, therapeutic intervention for youths who would be candidates for custodial sentences because of the severity or persistence of their criminal behaviour. Many recognise the need to reduce custody stays but the realisation of that goal requires the creation of community-based programs which judges believe will not put the public at risk. Reviews of the empirical literature indicated that Multisystemic Therapy could be a cost-effective, individualised, community-based alternative to custody that reduces long and short-term recidivism of high-risk youths.     

Death by obstruction: sudden death resulting from impromptu ingestion of drugs

Over an 18-month period, the department of Forensic Medicine and Science at the University of Glasgow investigated four rather unusual drug-related deaths. In all cases, death was due to the obstruction of the airway by a foreign body after an attempt to evade arrest. In all cases, the obstruction was drug packages of various shapes and sizes. Results of toxicology revealed levels of drugs that may have had a significant respiratory effect on the deceased in three of the cases. Rupturing of the packages and hence leakage of drugs being conducive to death was obvious in only one case.     

Images of Nyongo amongst Bamenda Grassfielders in Whiteman Kontri

This paper discusses the experiences and discourses of transnational migrants from the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon. It uses Nyongo, a popular form of witchcraft that privileges zombification over instant gratification through instant and total death, to seek to illustrate how the tensions occasioned by everyday witchcraft offer migrants and their communities the opportunity to interrogate, adapt to, reject or appropriate new ideas of being acquired through encounters with difference. The paper thus attempts to capture not only what it means to see oneself as a victim of Nyongo, but to detail the contradictions involved with inhabiting spaces that conjure images of Nyongo. While not primarily about potent witchcraft fears, violence and afflictions, the paper does point to how the metaphorical and sometimes joking self-image of zombiehood by Bamenda Grassfielders in the diaspora offers a discursive resource among others for ongoing negotiations of belonging, personal success and expectations. The paper argues that the collectivist notions of success from which migrants and their home communities draw are such as to warrant accusations, counter-accusations, and images of Nyongo as a way of seeking a healthy balance between marginalization and exploitation, social responsibility and personal success, home of origin and home of refuge. The accusatory language of victimhood employed by migrants to describe their subjection and ultra-exploitation by forces at home and in the host countries is evidence that, to them, home is neither simply to be found “at home” or “away from home”.     

Heroin addiction, crime and economic cost: A critical analysis

The conceptual framework for measuring the economic cost of crime is reviewed. Although this framework is generally accepted, specific applications are shown to contain conceptual errors. In the drug abuse area, where the greatest number of applications have been made, serious misapplications are documented. Because of these conceptual flaws and careless extrapolation of estimates that are hardly more than guesses, the total economic cost of drug-related crime has been greatly overestimated. The result has been to reinforce the policy emphasis on law enforcement and to mislead the public as to the important sources and magnitude of the total economic cost of drug abuse.