Suicide prevention training outside the mental health service system: evaluation of a state-wide program in Australia for rehabilitation and disability staff in the field of traumatic brain injury

The training needs of staff working in mainstream (i.e., noncrisis) health settings with client groups that have moderate levels of suicide risk have not been extensively addressed. An initiative to train rehabilitation and disability staff working in the field of traumatic brain injury (TBI) is described. A program was adapted from a generic state health department training program, and disseminated by means of established training networks within the brain injury field. Program efficacy was evaluated as the training was provided across the state of Victoria in a series of 1-day workshops. Participants (n = 86) completed two evaluation measures designed for this purpose (objective knowledge test, self-rating of knowledge and skills) on three occasions (pre- and postworkshop, 6-month follow-up). Compared to a control group of rehabilitation and disability workers who did not receive the training (n = 27), the workshop participants made significant gains in objective knowledge and reported skills, and maintained these gains at the 6-month follow-up. The Suicide Interview Response Inventory-2 (Neimeyer & Pfeiffer, 1994) was administered to a subgroup of participants as a validating measure, and correlated significantly with scores from the objective knowledge test. This process may provide a template for developing more fine-grained suicide prevention strategies among other health-related at-risk groups.     

Partisan Differences in Opinionated News Perceptions: A Test of the Hostile Media Effect

The proliferation of opinion and overt partisanship in cable news raises questions about how audiences perceive this content. Of particular interest is whether audiences effectively perceive bias in opinionated news programs, and the extent to which there are partisan differences in these perceptions. Results from a series of three online experiments produce evidence for a relative hostile media phenomenon in the context of opinionated news. Although, overall, audiences perceive more story and host bias in opinionated news than in non-opinionated news, these perceptions—particularly perceptions of the host—vary as a function of partisan agreement with the news content. Specifically, issue partisans appear to have a “bias against bias,” whereby they perceive less bias in opinionated news with which they are predisposed to agree than non-partisans and especially partisans on the other side of the issue.     

Making Order Out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Politics in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands

Jurisdictional fluidity was a central feature of early modem Iberian law, and jurisdictional tensions were exacerbated by overseas conquest and colonization. Contests over the legal status of conquered peoples featured both jurisdictional jockeying among colonial factions and widespread preoccupation with the symbols and rituals marking cultural and legal difference. This article examines the dynamics of jurisdictional politics in seventeenth-century New Mexico, where church and state officials carried on a bitter feud over legal authority during most of the century. Rather than viewing this contest as either transparently political or a mask for deeper processes defining hegemony, the article argues that seemingly dry legal distinctions were the focus of passionate and persistent struggle precisely because they merged institutional and cultural concerns of missionaries, settler elites, and Indians. The analysis leads to broader, more speculative claims about the role of jurisdictional fluidity in creating an "orderly disorder" that spanned diverse regions within Spanish America and, more broadly, across colonial regimes in the early modern world.     

Problems of neutrality: Swiss diplomatic documents, 1939–45

Documents Diplomatiques Suisses/Diplomatische Dokuments der Schweiz/Documenti Diplomatici Svizzeri 1848–1945, Vol.13 (1939–1940), edited by Jean‐François Bergier and André Jäggi (with the collaboration of Marc Perrenoud). Berne: Benteli Verlag, 1991. cvii + 1098 pp. 6 annexes. Sw.Fr.150. ISBN 3–7165–0725–3.

Documents Diplomatiques Suisses/Diplomatische Dokuments der Schweiz/Documenti Diplomatici Svizzeri 1848–1945, Vol.14 (1941–1943), edited by Antoine Fleury, Mauro Cerutti and Marc Perrenoud. Berne: Benteli Verlag, 1997. cxxxi + 1400 pp., 3 annexes. Sw.Fr.165. ISBN 3–7165–0849–7.

Documents Diplomatiques Suisses/Diplomatische Dokuments der Schweiz/Documenti Diplomatici Svizzeri 1848–1945, Vol.15 (1943–1945), edited by Philippe Marguerat and Louis‐Edouard Roulet with Roland Blättler, Catherine Krüttli‐Tüscher, Marc Perrenoud and Maurice Peretti and Marie‐Jeanne Steiner. Berne: Benteli Verlag, 1992. cv + 1200 pp. 3 annexes. Sw.Fr.160. ISBN 3–7165–0843–8.

Das Archiv für Zeitgeschichte und seine Bestände, edited by Klaus Urner, Marie‐Claire Däniker, Thomas Ehrsam and Claudia Hoerschelmann. Zurich: Neue Zürcher Zeitung Verlag, 1999. 360 pp. Sw.Fr. 40. DM52. ISBN 3–85823–763–9.     

Dimock's naturalistic ethics

Between 1937 and 1958 Marshall Dimock developed a naturalistic account of the administrative function. This account emphasized an organic and instrumentalist account of ethics which was akin to American pragmatism in its ontological assumptions, vocabulary, and conceptualization. His theory was self-consciously aimed at identifying and responding to the problems of an administrative theory and practice plagued by dichotomies. Through an organizational leadership comprised of a moral elite, Dimock hoped to integrate the processes of administration and value creation.     

Stereotypes influence beliefs about transfer and sentencing of juvenile offenders

Despite sharp drops in juvenile crime since the mid-1980s, punitive policies regarding juveniles who commit serious offenses still exist. We assessed beliefs about two such practices: transferring offenders from the juvenile justice to the criminal justice system, and subjecting them to sentences of life without parole (LWOP). We examined whether stereotypes about juvenile offenders – the extent to which people believe they are dispositionally violent superpredators versus economically and socially impoverished wayward youth – influence support for these policies. We measured 321 participants’ beliefs about the causes of juvenile crime and juveniles’ potential for recidivism and rehabilitation. Using vignette methodology and actual case facts, we described a 13-, 17-, or 21-year-old offender who murdered a stranger or abusive parent, and asked whether he should be transferred to criminal court and sentenced to LWOP. As endorsement of the superpredator stereotype increased, so did support for these practices. Offenders who murdered an abusive parent were shown more leniency. Older offenders were generally treated harsher, except by people with strong superpredator stereotypes who, on the issue of LWOP appropriateness, did not distinguish among juveniles of different ages. Findings suggest that stereotypes can influence judgments in cases involving juveniles and indirectly affect policy-making about juvenile offending.