A Preliminary Report of Psychiatric Diagnoses in a Scottish County Sample of Persons of National Security Concern

Increasing anecdotal, empirical, and research evidence indicates mental disorder history is one of the several factors associated with increased risk of involvement in lone-actor terrorist activities. Currently, few studies have been conducted on the mental disorder histories of individuals assessed as at risk of involvement in terrorist activities (Meloy, J Threat Assess Manag 2019;6:93). This pilot study describes demographic, psychiatric, and criminal characteristics of a sample of Scottish individuals identified by the Prevent element of the U.K. national counterterrorism strategy, and outcome data after follow-up at 2 years. Twenty-three individuals were referred to Prevent as posing a national security risk from a county in Scotland. Their records were studied for psychiatric and criminal histories. Nine (39%) had previous psychiatric contact, all were “lone actors”, and none were embedded with organized terrorist groups. The most common diagnoses were substance use disorder, personality disorder, depression, and psychotic disorder. The sample displayed factors associated with increased risk of violence including previous offending, early behavioral difficulties, school problems, substance misuse, cluster B personality disordered traits. After 2 years, 44% of the mentally disordered group had re-offended. The offense types were generally similar to those prior to the individual being involved with the Prevent counter terrorism program. Only one of the mentally disordered group committed a further national security offense. In this sample, mental disorder history is overrepresented in individuals who come to the attention of the U.K. Prevent counter terrorism strategy. Further empirical studies with additional power are required to develop the empirical evidence base in this under-researched area.     

Verbal Aggression Among Male Alcoholic Patients and Their Wives in the Year Before and Two Years After Alcoholism Treatment

Our earlier reports on 88 male alcoholics and their wives showed that domestic violence decreased significantly in the first and second year following a behavioral marital therapy (BMT) alcoholism treatment program. The present study examined verbal aggression in this same sample. In the year before BMT, verbal aggression was significantly greater—being five to seven times more prevalent for clinically elevated aggression and substantially more frequent—for the alcoholic husbands and their wives than for a demographically matched, nonalcoholic comparison sample. In the two years after BMT, both alcoholic men and their wives showed significant and substantial reductions in verbal aggression as compared with the year before BMT. Despite these significant reductions from the year before BMT, verbal aggression in the two years after BMT remained significantly elevated relative to demographically similar nonalcoholic controls. As predicted, relapsed alcoholics and their wives showed more verbal aggression in the 2 years after BMT than both couples with a remitted alcoholic husband and demographically similar nonalcoholic controls, whereas remitted alcoholics and their wives had similar levels of verbal aggression to the nonalcoholic controls. Further, frequency of drinking was positively correlated with verbal aggression in the 2 years after BMT; verbal aggression was greater when the alcoholic husband drank more frequently.     

ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR COST EFFECTIVE POLLUTION ABATEMENT: THE NEED FOR IMPLEMENTATION ANALYSIS

After examining policies and proposals designed to achieve cost-effective pollution abatement, the authors argue that design of economically elegant solutions to pollution control problems needs implementation analysis if the policies are to be successfully carried out. They review some institutional obstacles to implementation and conclude that these impediments should not prevent adoption.     

Persons and available identities: Gender in Hegel's philosophy of law

Conclusion There is certainly a paradox in all this but it is not that of the constitution and the counterfactual beliefs it demands of us. It is rather that in the absence of Hegel's inspiration and of the actual closure on the dialectic of freedom that justifies his claims, his accomplishment, the logical reconstruction of modern Western ideas of right, would not have been possible. Some will cry irony in the face of this paradox and well they might. My argument,vis a vis Hegel isad hominem. But it is not made for the purpose of irony. It is made in the hope of recovering Hegel's sense of the ambiguity of tautology from the straitjacket of our legal and ethical thought. I would hope then to use this paradox to subvert anidée fixe — that right is right — and develop, from the lives of those whom the constitution has stripped bare, our understanding of its wrong.     

Rumours from the cauldron: Competition among feminist writers

Why have feminists been silent about competition among women? Most of us feel a personal distress and a political confusion when we acknowledge such rivalry. Is competition antithetical to feminism? Competition among women writers is a highly charged topic because literature is a peculiarly public project from a particularly private endeavor. This paper is written to open the issue for discussion within the larger feminist forum.Here I suggest that women cannot win by competing in an androcentric system. To clearly understand competition, we will want to distinguish between competitive feelings and the process or competition, between suffering and virtue, between criticism and conflict and between competition for patriarchal fame and status and an internal competition for artistic excellence. I suggest that many of us get caught in envy or our own fears of ambition or our skewed ideas about literary criticism. In addition, the essay criticizes the notion of art as magic. I discuss writing as labor, suggesting that writers confront publishers about wages and working conditions rather than compete with each other for limited resources.Having examined competitiveness within the androcentric system more clearly, can we find any ways for competition to serve us? Is it possible to go back to the Latin root of compete (to meet, to strive together) and develop a ‘feminist competition’ which allows for both individual and collective progress?