NR Madhava Menon: The guiding light for global clinical legal education

The late NR Madhava Menon, known widely as ‘the father of modern legal education in India’, was also a leading voice for global legal education reform by championing ‘socially relevant legal education’ through clinical legal education throughout the world. This article concentrates on his seminal role in the founding of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) and the crafting of its mission statement. Drawing on a number of key moments in Dr Menon’s lifelong dedication to the twin causes of legal education and social justice, it highlights how he brought an international perspective to his critical work on legal education reform in India by enlisting international collaborators, how he motivated international colleagues to bring similar reforms to their countries, and how he mentored new generations of legal educators in what has become a true global clinical movement. The article focuses specifically on how the guiding principles of GAJE’s inaugural conference, which Dr Menon co-chaired in 1999, reflect his vision of global clinical legal education that continues to guide GAJE and the global clinical movement today.

     

Adolescents’ Suicidal Thinking and Reluctance to Consult General Medical Practitioners

Appropriate help-seeking is widely recognized as a protective factor, and vital for early treatment and prevention of mental health problems during adolescence. General medical practitioners (GPs), that is, family doctors, provide a vital role in the identification of adolescents with mental health problems and the provision of treatment as well as access to other specialists in mental health care services. The current study examined the association between suicidal ideation and intentions to seek help from a GP for suicidal thoughts, emotional problems and physical health problems, using a sample of 590 Australian high school students that was 56.7% female and aged 13–18 years (M = 15.56 years, SD = .66 years). Higher levels of suicidal ideation and general psychological distress were related to lower intentions to seek help from a GP for suicidal and physical problems. The results suggest that even at subclinical levels, increases in suicidal ideation or psychological distress may lead to help avoidance. School personnel and other gatekeepers need to be aware of this trend in order to be more assertive in encouraging and supporting appropriate help-seeking for mental health problems. School health promotion programs should consider including information to explicitly address the help-negation process.     

Help-Negation and Suicidal Ideation: The Role of Depression,Anxiety and Hopelessness

Help-negation is expressed behaviorally by the refusal or avoidance of available help and cognitively by the inverse relationship between self-reported symptoms of psychological distress and help-seeking intentions. The current study examined the association between suicidal ideation and intentions to seek help from friends, family and professional mental health sources in a sample of 302 Australian university students. Participants were 77.5% female and aged from 18–25 years old, with 85.4% aged 21 years or younger. Higher levels of suicidal ideation were related to lower help-seeking intentions for family, friends, and professional mental health care, and higher intentions to seek help from no one. Moderation effects indicated that higher levels of depressive symptoms strengthen the help-negating effect of suicidal ideation for seeking help from friends, family and no one. The results indicate that, even at subclinical levels, suicidal ideation impedes the cognitive help-seeking process at the decision making stage. The results also highlight the importance of improving our understanding of why young people become reluctant to seek help as their levels of suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms increase. Raising awareness that the experience of suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms can promote intentions to avoid help might reduce the help-negation effect when symptoms are first recognized.     

Extending a Life with Meaning

This essay questions Callahan’s criticism of people’s aspiration to extend their life. It argues that ideas about life are subject to historical variations and the question at issue is whether society can give meaning to aging. It also questions the claim that the radical extension of human life will jeopardize the welfare of future generations. It suggests that the application of the precautionary principle to the question of aging avoid facing up to question how society should value the old.

Punctuated Equilibrium in Comparative Perspective

We explore the impact of institutional design on the distribution of changes in outputs of governmental processes in the United States, Belgium, and Denmark. Using comprehensive indicators of governmental actions over several decades, we show that in each country the level of institutional friction increases as we look at processes further along the policy cycle. Assessing multiple policymaking institutions in each country allows us to control for the nature of the policy inputs, as all the institutions we consider cover the full range of social and political issues in the country. We find that all distributions exhibit high kurtosis values, significantly higher than the Normal distribution which would be expected if changes in government attention and activities were proportionate to changes in social inputs. Further, in each country, those institutions that impose higher decision-making costs show progressively higher kurtosis values. The results suggest general patterns that we hypothesize to be related to boundedly rational behavior in a complex social environment.     

Rich man’s solution? Climate engineering discourses and the marginalization of the Global South

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Numerous recent studies project that ‘climate engineering’ technologies might need to play a major role in the...     

Access and coverage: which farmers do plant clinics reach in Uganda?

This article reports on a study that assessed farmers’ access to, and coverage of, five plant clinics operating from market places in two districts of Uganda. Despite the noticeable geographic and thematic coverage of the services, placing plant clinics at markets did not automatically ensure equitable access and high farmer attendance. Clinic users were predominantly middle-aged male farmers and overall attendance was relatively low. Uganda has taken plant clinics to scale in recent years due to their potential to strengthen the country’s responsiveness to pests and diseases. Optimising farmer reach and ensuring equity in access requires reviewing clinic placement, timing, and mobilisation strategies.