Stressed,depressed, or bewitched?

Mental illness is an important cause of disability in sub-Saharan African countries and is rarely covered in health-related development activity. This article examines the close relationship between mental illness, religion, and culture, referring to the authors' experiences in Zimbabwe as an example. They emphasise the importance of gaining a sympathetic understanding of the religious beliefs and social contexts of psycho-social distress states, rather than simply translating concepts and ideas developed in the societies of Europe and North America.     

Academic-community collaboration,gender research,and development: pitfalls and possibilities

Collaboration has become a watchword for development practitioners and theorists. Yet collaboration or partnerships between academics and community-based researchers and activists have often proved difficult. This is particularly true for partnerships with smaller, grassroots community researchers, who are generally less resourced than their academic partners. This paper focuses on such partnerships in gender research, with the aim of reflecting on past problems as well as successes in order to develop strategies for making such projects more truly collaborative, rather than a minefield of broken promises and unspoken (and sometimes spoken) resentments.     

Advocating Democracy: The Role of Lawyers in Taiwan's Political Transformation

Litigation hm not been a significant strategy in Taiwan for chauenging injustice due to the use of the Civil Law tradition as a model for the Republic of China legal system and the diminished autonomy of the ROC legal profession and legal system under martial law and authoritarian rule. Individual lawyers, however, were amang the leading proponents of reform during Taiwan's recent transition to democratic rule. Furthermore, one of the significant liberaliring refonnr ushered in by the democratic transition has been the reform of the ROC legal profession. We examine the contribution of some lawyers to democratization and consider what role the reconstituted ROC legal profession may play in the political economy of Taiwan in the future.     

Relationship between reported crime rates and victimization survey results: An empirical and analytical study

Changes over time in crime as measured by reported crime counts and victimization survey counts are compared. A simple analysis is done using data from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration's (LEAA) National Crime Survey for the years 1973, 1974, and 1975. These data are used to provide some understanding of why Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) results for these years show a much greater increase in crime than the LEAA/Census Bureau National Crime Surveys. A mathematical model is constructed to determine whether changes in the proportion of victimization reported to the authorities produces systematic bias in reported crime estimates of changes in actual victimizations. It is found that reported crime counts: (1) either exaggerate the amount of changes in victimizations or, (2) tend to misrepresent the direction of change in victimizations. It is highly likely that the amount of measurement error in changes in reported crime is significantly large in comparison with, if not larger than, the normal amounts of change in reported crime.     

Book Reviews

Book Review in This Article:
L aw and E thics in the P ractice of P sychiatry . Edited by Charles K. Hofling, M.D.
M ale P ractice : H ow D octors M anipulate W omen . By Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.
N urse P ower . By Karen O'Rourke and Salley Barton