Outcomes of Aggression Replacement Training for U.S. Adolescents in Residential Facilities

A National Survey indicated that 1.6 million adolescents in the U.S. were arrested in 2010 and 1.5 million in 2011 for erratic aggressive behaviors, thus showing a decline from the 2.18 million adolescent arrests in 2007. Residential facilities in the state of Pennsylvania offer a group intervention called Aggression Replacement Training (ART) to help adjudicated adolescents regain control of erratic behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which level of group participation in ART and certain demographic factors (age, gender, ethnicity, family socioeconomic status, parental involvement, and education) predict decreased aggression and increased anger control among these youth. Cognitive theory and change theory were used to guide this causal-comparative investigation. The overarching research question was, does a youth\u27s level of ART group participation (i.e., attentive, inattentive, and resistant) result in a subsequent reduction in risk assessment as measured by post Aggression Questionnaire score differences. Data were collected for the period of 2011-2014 from archival records from 5 residential facilities (n = 160) in Pennsylvania and were statistically analyzed. Findings from an analysis of variance indicate that ART group participation predict decreased erratic aggressive behaviors and increased anger control among adolescents. Findings from multiple regression analyses indicate that parental involvement predicts attentive participation level, whereas ART group participation, gender, and parental involvement predicted a reduction in risk assessment. Study findings may assist other treatment facilities and affiliated agencies in the U.S. with developing and implementing effective interventions for youth who exhibit erratic aggressive behaviors

Whither tobacco product regulation?

Despite decades of industry innovation and regulatory efforts, the harmfulness of conventional cigarettes has not changed. There are several pitfalls in this area, including the long time lag before health impacts of product regulatory changes become apparent, the danger of consumers deriving false reassurance of lesser harm in the interim period, the lack of relevant expertise and the lack of an internationally agreed and evidencebased strategic approach. Articles 9 and 10 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control provide the potential for such a global strategy, and knowledge and research has increased significantly over recent years. However, there are huge opportunity costs in implementing product disclosure and regulatory strategies: most national regulators have very limited human and financial resources, which should be focused on other evidence-based tobacco control interventions. We believe therefore that it is now time to abandon the notion of safe or safer cigarettes while moving consumers towards cleaner nicotine products as soon as possible. In parallel to this, we recommend a number of other strategies be implemented including: reducing the appeal of all tobacco products, forbidding new tobacco products or brand variants being marketed without evidence of reduced harm, appeal or addictiveness, and developing a tobacco industry resourced, but industry independent, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control global repository to assist national regulators in understanding and regulating the products on their markets

Did hardening occur among smokers in England from 2000 to 2010?

Aims To assess trends in the prevalence of ‘hardcore’ smoking in England between 2000 and 2010, and to examine associations between hardcore smoking and socio-demographic variables. Design Secondary analysis of data from the United Kingdom's General Lifestyle Survey (GLF) and the Health Survey for England (HSE). Setting Households in England. Participants Self-reported adult current smokers resident in England aged 26 years and over. Measurements Hardcore smokers were defined in three ways: smokers who do not want to quit (D1), those who ‘usually’ smoke their first cigarette of the day within 30 minutes of waking (D2) and a combination of D1 and D2, termed D3. Multivariable logistic regression was used to explore associations between these variables and calendar year, age, sex and socio-economic status, and P-values for trends in odds were calculated. Findings The odds of smokers being defined as hardcore according to D3 increased over time in both the GLF (P < 0.001) and HSE (P = 0.04), even after adjusting for risk factors. Higher dependence (D2) was noted in men [odds ratio (OR): 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13–1.24], those of 50–59 years (OR: 1.94, 95% CI: 1.80–2.09) and smokers in lower occupational groups (OR: 2.11, 95% CI: (1.97–2.26). Lack of motivation to quit (D1) increased with age and was more likely in men. Conclusions The proportion of smokers in England with both low motivation to quit and high dependence appears to have increased between 2000 and 2010, independently of risk factors, suggesting that ‘hardening’ may be occurring in this smoker populatio

Five Ways of Looking at 'The Penelopiad'

As the lights go down in the great church of St James, Piccadilly, a voice speaks eerily out of the darkness somewhere off to the side: ‘Now that I’m dead I know everything.’ And then a single spotlight reveals centre stage a small grey-haired female figure robed in black sitting on a throne; she begins to speak. This is Margaret Atwood, doubly imaged here in performance as Penelope, for I am describing a staged reading of part of The Penelopiad by the writer herself. The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus is one of the first three books in a new series, The Myths, published by Canongate Press in the United Kingdom and simultaneously in 32 other countries. The other two books are Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth and Jeanette Winterston’s Weight, a retelling of the myth of Atlas and Heracles. It is Canongate’s intention to publish one hundred of these myth revisions by 2038. Atwood has been rewriting classical myths ever since her first privately published volume of poems Double Persephone back in 1961, and in this context her recent comments on myth are significant: Strong myths never die. Sometimes they die down, but they don’t die out. They double back in the dark, they re-embody themselves, they change costumes, they change key

Atwood’s Reinventions: So Many Atwoods

In The Malahat Review (1977), Canadian critic Robert Fulford described Margaret Atwood as “endlessly Protean,” predicting “There are many more Atwoods to come.” Now at eighty, over forty years later, Atwood is an international literary celebrity with more than fifty books to her credit and translated into more than forty languages. This essay focuses on the later Atwood and her apparent reinvention since 2000, where we have seen a marked shift away from realistic fiction towards popular fiction genres, especially dystopias and graphic novels. Atwood has also become increasingly engaged with digital technology as creative writer and cultural critic. As this reading of her post-2000 fiction through her extensive back catalogue across five decades will show, these developments represent a new synthesis of her perennial social, ethical and environmental concerns, refigured through new narrative possibilities as she reaches out to an ever-widening readership, astutely recognising “the need for literary culture to keep up with the times.

The presentation of emotion in the English Gothic novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with particular reference to Ann Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho", M. G. Lewis's "Monk", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", C. R. Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer", Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", and works by the minor Minerva Press novelists Regina Maria Roche and Mary Anne Radcliffe

This thesis is an examination of values and craftsmanship in the Gothic novel, and sets out to demonstrate that the changes which occurred between 1790 and 1820 constituted a series of experimental attempts to present new areas of emotional and imaginative awareness in fiction. Though it is not a historical survey, some attention has been given to location. The studies of particular novels are related to the aesthetic tastes of the age, and an attempt is made to show how the Gothic novelists1 preoccupation with emotion and fantasy distinguished their work from earlier fiction. The discussion follows chronological lines which reflect the developmental nature of the changes. The characteristic emphasis in Gothic fiction is on irrationality and subjective experience. Though it is invariably melodramatic, there is a gradual movement away from conventionalised abstractions of feeling and character towards more precise analysis and description of individual emotional states. The novels I have chosen mark significant stages in this progress. The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk established the pattern and the enthusiasm for Gothic fiction. In Mrs. Radcliffe's sentimental Gothic and Lewis's "horror" Gothic there is an insistence on sensational incidents and emotional crises which characterises the pre-Romantic ambivalent attitude towards irrational experience. Frankenstein and Melmoth the Wanderer mark the assimilation of Gothic into the imaginative literature of Romanticism. Both are recognisably Gothic in their obsessional fantasies and their sensationalism, but both authors use external dramatics as techniques for realising inner states and motivations rather than as ends in themselves. In conclusion, Jane Byre shows the full realisation of the potential of Gothic, where fact and fantasy are fused into a realistic statement of total experience. It marks the break-through into the everyday world which the earlier Gothic novelists had rejected or failed to achieve. Jane Byre places the value of the earlier Gothic novels in perspective. In addition to expressing late eighteenth century emotional reactions against rationalist conventions, they can be seen as necessary experiments in working out a new emotional and imaginative vocabulary in fiction.<p

Towards a Recognition of Being: Tomson Highway's Kiss ofthe Fur Queen and Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach

Este ensayo realiza un análisis de dos novelas recientes de autores nativos canadienses, Tomson Highway, el dramaturgo nativo más conocido en Canadá, y Eden Robinson, una joven escritora de British Columbia. Se analizan las novelas como textos híbridos que operan en la dislocación entre las culturas nativas y la educación y los modelos literarios blancos. Ambos novelistas realizan complejos ejercicios de traducción transcultural, y el análisis se centra en cómo usan los géneros europeos para conseguir sus propios objetivos, para reivindicar una tradición cultural propia y reconstruir la identidad nativa. El ensayo reconoce la calidad y el valor de los términos literarios convencionales blancos (de los que los autores son muy conscientes), a la vez que subraya su potencial como crítica social y aboga por un reconocimiento de las culturas aborígenes en el discurso canadiense cultural y nacional.This essay concerns two recent novels by Canadian Aboriginal writers, Tomson Highway, Canada’s best known Native playwright, and Eden Robinson, a young writer from British Columbia. These novels are discussed as hybridised texts, working across dislocations between Native cultures and white literary education and white fictional models. Both novelists are engaged in complex cross-cultural translation exercises, and the discussion focuses on adapting European genres for Aboriginal writers’ own purposes to reclaim Native cultural inheritances and to reconstruct Native identities. I am arguing for quality in conventional white literary terms (of which both writers are very conscious), while speaking about social inequality, and making a case for equality in the recognition of Aboriginal peoples within contemporary Canadian cultural and national discourse