Those Who Hesitate are Lost: The Case for Setting Behavioral Health Treatment and Disability Standards, Part III

The first and second articles in this 3-part series discussed systematic issues related to multiple standardization problems and their compounding impact on the state and federal disability systems. In addition, the lack of standardization negatively influencing the behavioral health (BH) training and treatment processes may have the potential to cause harm not only to the individual receiving professional care but also to the clinician providing the treatment. In the final article of the series, I make recommendations for systemic changes for the field as well as for potentially revising previous models toward moving the Behavioral Health treatment and disability systems into more of a biopsychosocial approach. However, conclusions emphasize that successful implementation of recommendations and models require the involvement of all of the stakeholders in promoting better outcomes and in facilitating individuals; return to the workplace.     

Those Who Hesitate Are Lost: The Case for Setting Behavioral Health Treatment and Disability Standards, Part I

There are multiple factors that impede the implementation of standards into the behavioral health (BH) treatment and disability processes. The combination of physical and psychological conditions as well as the influence of psychosocial issues has consistently been identified as having negative effects on treatment and treatment outcomes. Further, the wide-spread lack of standardization causes a multitude of problems throughout both BH processes. The focus of this first article in a three-part series will examine the explosion of behavioral health claims and the major factors, such as comorbid physical conditions and psychosocial issues, associated with these types of claims. In addition, the overarching theme of lack of standardization will begin to be explored in regard to the problematic definition of disability, communication difficulties between treating professionals and disability insurers and agencies as well as the introduction of bias into the BH treatment and disability processes.     

Women in contemporary Soviet society

What enables democracies to succeed has much in common with what enables other forms of modern rule to succeed: notably the capacity for effective military selfdefence and the reasonably efficient functioning of a domestic economy. When the factors favouring the success of any form of modern regime are broken down, most of them may readily be secured for a time under autocratic rule, and none is strucurally ensured by democratic rule. At present there is good reason to believe that the special advantages of democratic rule - above all the heuristic merits of open and competitive political deliberation - at least offset the inherent disadvantages long ago identified by its enemies. The distinctive preconditions for the success of democratic regimes are furnished, if at all, only by the workings of democracy itself. They are both instances and products of success in learning how to live freely as, and within, a large collectivity. That outcome can be menaced or precluded by the causal properties of ill-conceived institutions. But it can only be brought about by free and practically intelligent political action. This is a task for citizens and career politicians, not a potential gift from the social sciences.     

Beyond the Blame Game: Political Strategies for State Funding Reform

There is growing concern that intergovernmental financial relations in the Australian federation are becoming increasingly acrimonious and dysfunctional. This paper argues that it is necessary to analyse State funding as a whole, including the critical relationship between State‐level taxation and its reform and the broader Commonwealth Grants Commission regime, if we are to establish a system of State funding which is financially sustainable, promotes economic efficiency and is broadly congruent with established norms of Australian federalism. Above all, based on international experience, we argue Commonwealth leadership is required to achieve this goal. We conclude with a case study concerning resource taxation which demonstrates how the Commonwealth could provide leadership using a ‘bundled’ approach to policy reform. It is argued that such an approach has the potential to alleviate wider intergovernmental conflicts which currently afflict Australian federalism.     

Civil liberties and the left

Mzwanele Mayekiso, Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa. Monthly Review Press: New York. 1996. pp. 288. (foreword by Mel King)

Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England, Edited by Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995)

Modernization and the Production of Power

Kevin A. Yelvington, Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 286 pp.

Milagros Pena, Theologies and Liberation in Peru: The Role of Ideas in Social Movements (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 222 pp.

Partha Chatterjee (ed), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 220 pp.

Carol A. Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in South Asia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 261 pp.

Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right‐Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995. pp. 445. $19.95.)     

Novel technique for the combined recovery, extraction and clean-up of forensic organic and inorganic trace explosives samples.

This paper describes a simple processing and analysis scheme for explosives trace swab samples which deals both with organic and inorganic materials. Swabs, wetted with ethanol or ethanol/water mixture, were extracted with ethanol/water mixture. The extract was passed directly through a simple column containing an acrylonitrile/styrene copolymer adsorbent. The adsorbent retained common organic explosives, which were recovered with an efficiency of 30-50% as a relatively clean ethyl acetate solution. The concentrated ethyl acetate eluate was analysed using gas chromatography with chemiluminescence or mass spectrometric detection. The unretained inorganic ions and sugars, which were recovered with generally high efficiency as an ethanol/water solution, could be directly analysed using ion chromatography and/or capillary electrophoresis. Minor difficulties encountered in the analysis of sugars, fluoride and phosphate were examined.     

A symptom level examination of the relationship between Cluster B personality disorders and patterns of criminality and violence in women

The psychometric properties and structure of the Cluster B Personality Disorder criteria (Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic) are examined in a sample of 261 female inmates using a self-report screen followed by a full diagnostic interview. The results of the structural analyses in this sample demonstrated good internal consistency and convergence, but poor discriminant validity between disorders. An exploratory factor analysis found that the structure of these disorders was best accounted for by a four-factor solution that paralleled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; APA, 2000) classification scheme with some significant and notable exceptions. Using the factor scores generated from the factor analysis, the personality profiles of the women were compared with several behavioral indices, including instant offense, institutional infractions, and self-report violence and victimization within the prison. Of particular importance was the consistent relationship observed between narcissistic personality traits and threatening and violent behavior within the prison combined with the impulsive but less malignant presentation of antisocial personality traits among this sample of women. Results are discussed as they inform our understanding of the structural integrity of the four Cluster B diagnostic categories and the relationship of these personality disorders to different types of criminality and violence.     

Lord of Your Domain, But Master of None: The Need to Harmonize and Recalibrate the Domain Name Regime of Ownership and Control

The world has seen three waves of property. The first hark backcenturies and relate to ‘real and personal property’such as land and chattel, also known as immovable and movableproperty. The second gained recognition around the nineteenthcentury and relates to propertization of the ‘laboursof the mind’ or ‘intellectual property’. Thethird wave came within a much shorter period and starting togain recognition and it is what is known as ‘virtual property’.The law and policy-makers have had to surmount not only a steeplearning curve but also in some cases a foundation that is wroughtwith mistakes when it comes to the treatment that should begiven to virtual property. The Domain Name System (DNS) is thebest example of a form of virtual property that has given riseto challenges in law making and administration. The ‘landgrab’ of domain names in the World Wide Web (WWW) havegiven rise to a virtual tsunami of registrations and this hasled to the subsequent erection of levees in the form of a challengeregime. This paper will identify and consider the problems thatthe DNS is facing and suggest the changes that have to be madeto it in order for it to withstand the forces of what will bean increasingly rising sea of domain names on the WWW. This paper will begin with a look at the fissures in the seabedof the DNS by comparing how the management and policies relatingto domain name registration and challenge have shifted and divergedin different jurisdictions as well as by examining the inadequaciesof the original registration regime (ICANN) and challenge policy(UDRP). After identifying the problem, suggestions will be madeto resolve them in the best possible way, which require a revisitof the stakeholder and policy interests in the Internet andthe ownership and control of domain names that essentially functionas an important gateway to the WWW in order to rebalance theseinterests in an attempt to achieve greatest equilibrium. Amendmentswill be proposed to both the registration and challenge regimesas well as to the structure and hierarchy of domain name administrationwhich should be a globally coordinated effort just as the DNSis a common entryway to the global property that is the WWW.