Familicide, depression and catathymic process

A case of familicide by a 36-year-old male is reported. After years of stable marriage, exemplary military service, and steady employment, the subject developed his first episode of depression triggered, in part, by his inability to solve a problem associated with completion of a home improvement project. As the depression intensified, and dormant conflicts regarding his competency and self-esteem were rekindled, he experienced pronounced feelings of failure. After an extended period of agonizing about his problem, the idea suddenly emerged that his only recourse was to kill his family and himself, in order to spare everyone the humiliation of his perceived inadequacy. Such a fixed idea, along with a mounting pressure to act, is characteristic of the (chronic) catathymic process, in which a subject, without apparent motive, resorts to extreme violence directed at someone close to him. A detailed discussion of this case within the framework of catathymic process adds to our knowledge of family mass murder and refines the profile of potentially familicidal men.     

Policy feedback and public opinion: the role of employer responsibility in social policy

This study extends the literature on policy feedback and explores the extent to which public attitudes reflect learning from past government initiatives. We analyze the ways in which feedback mechanisms affecting public attitudes may differ from those earlier identified in the literature. We apply this general analytic framework to help explain variation in public attitudes toward private employer involvement in health care, explore possible causal pathways, and offer some preliminary empirical tests of these hypotheses. There are different levels of public support for the notion of employer obligation involving medical care, long-term care, and the treatment of substance abuse. Our evidence suggests that lessons about the performance of institutions in each of these policy domains represent the most important effect of existing policy on public attitudes. Furthermore, these differences correspond to what one would expect based on our model of policy feedback and cannot be explained by other plausible sources of policy legitimacy.     

Police officers who commit suicide by cop: a clinical study with analysis

Suicide by cop has become a familiar topic among members of law enforcement, mental health professionals, and the general public. This paper presents two cases where police officers chose to commit suicide by getting other police officers to kill them. The two police officers studied, by examination of closed case files, were found to be similar to civilians who committed suicide by cop on several demographic (gender, age, history of mental illness, and suicide attempts), and situational (stress factors, trigger) variables. The cases help us to understand possible motives and management for individuals who choose to end their life in this manner.     

Inside a Cultural Agency: Team Ethnography and Knowledge Exchange

This article undertakes an auto-critical analysis of the research team's ethnographic study of Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO), a Scottish creative business support agency. We discuss the team's composition and how this relates to other analyses of ethnographic teamwork. Our research is situated in the wider policy context of the “creative-economic” turn in the UK's research funding. This has been accompanied by increased emphasis on “knowledge exchange” and “impact” in the drive for greater accountability in higher education. The team's evolution in the course of undertaking research is illustrated by reference to four “pivotal moments,” which illustrate how we “performed” knowledge exchange.