Risk Factors for Men’s Intimate Physical Aggression in Spain

This study tests a model of physical aggression in a sample of 194 men being treated for physical or psychological aggression in the greater Madrid area of Spain. The prevalence of aggression in this sample was lower than in a US batterer sample. In the path model highlighted here, borderline personality traits and alcohol problems were identified as risk factors for physical aggression perpetration and the role of borderline traits was mediated by psychological aggression. A reciprocal relationship was found between psychological perpetration and victimization but not physical perpetration and victimization. These findings are discussed within a cross-cultural context; conceptual and treatment implications are also addressed.     

Social determinants and risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in South Asian migrant populations in Europe

In Europe, policies, strategies and interventions to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases have generally neglected to take into consideration the impact of migration on health outcomes of increasingly multicultural and diverse societies. Research has shown that migrants of South Asian origin living in Europe are more at risk of acquiring non-communicable diseases than their counterparts in their country of origin or than the host European population. Using the example of migrants of South Asian origin, this paper highlights the migration-related social determinants of health and risk factors for non-communicable diseases. This paper calls for a more integrated, multi-sectoral approach to promote migrant-friendly health and social services to address non-communicable diseases in South Asia and Europe.     

Ethical and legal dilemmas surrounding bio-banking

The interaction of medical technology and advancements in human life and biological tissue offers many possibilities and issues, for example the area of assisted conception and the identification and treatment of disease. However, hand-in-hand with these, ethical dilemmas arise. The overarching ethical issue surrounding cryo-preserved embryos is： Should an embryo be accorded the status of ＇life＇ or should it be labeled nothing more than ＇property＇？ This question is the interaction between frozen embryos and divorce, adoption, research and terminal incidents; it is a legal and ethical quagmire that cannot be readily resolved. This issue is of particular moral importance when one contemplates the fact that the scientific definition of life is dealt with on a continuum ranging from the metabolic view to the emergence of self-consciousness. The question must become property versus life or, in essence, sale or destruction of property versus sale or destruction of life. As this paper will show, the underlying attitudes of the progenitors involved in cryogenics can be driven by the darker side of our species; that side being the possible exploitation of those individuals or those capable of becoming individuals for personal and community gain while denying or rationalizing that point of view to society as a whole.     

Students’ Feeling of Safety in School: Does Frequency of Victimization Matter?

One consistent finding in the area of school violence is that students that have been victimized at school are more likely to feel unsafe. This finding is based primarily on analysis of dichotomous measures of victimization. Little attention has been given to the effect of repeated victimization experiences on the feeling of safety. We used a nationally representative sample of 2199 Israeli Jewish and Arab students to explore this issue with reference to multiple experiences with the same type of victimization as well as experiences with different types of school violence. Our study confirms that being a victim of school violence decreases the feeling of safety, but suggests that a single experience may be more significant for this relationship than multiple victimizations.