Managing Black Guys: Representation, Corporate Culture, and the NBA

This article explores the intersection of representation, management, and race in the National Basketball Association (NBA) through a larger question on the relationship between corporate strategies for managing racialized subjects and popular representations of race. The NBA “brand” is situated in terms of recent developments in corporate and popular culture and then analyzed as an example of diversity management. Relying on original interviews with NBA corporate employees, as well as business and marketing industry reporting, the article analyzes the NBA as simultaneously an organization and a brand. As such, the NBA helps to “articulate” the corporate with the popular, largely through an implied racial project that manages race relations by continuing to equate corporate interests with Whiteness. The analysis contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of sports in perpetuating social disparities based on race at a time when “colorblindness” remains the paradigm of White approaches to race

Revisiting the Men Problem in Introductory Women\u27s Studies Classes

Outside women\u27s studies classrooms, discourses of white masculinity under siege are proliferating with devastating consequences for women and people of color. Indeed, in each of the most reactionary domestic political events and trends of the past five or so years the social group most united in the support of reaction has been young white men, from the 1994 Republican revolution, to California\u27s propositions 187 and 209. Yet, against the backdrop of globalized labor markets and diffusing corporatization, the manifest destiny of being young, white, and male in the United States now seems to many like a cruel promise; in the face of this uncertainty, it makes a kind of sense that white guys could feel powerless, experiencing social policies like affirmative action and political projects like feminism (and identity politics generally) as antagonistic to their self-actualization. Nor is it any surprise that Hollywood films like Falling Down, the four Lethal Weapon movies, and Die Hard depict the angry return of the vanquished white male (usually at the hands of affirmative action, immigration/ greedy foreigners, or an uppity woman). At the same time, though, a new, highly commodified, kick-ass feminism has emerged on the popular culture horizon. Here, seemingly more transgressive images like those in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Terminator 2 blend with the Spice Girls and Nike ads to imply that liberation requires only individualistic attitude adjustment as opposed to reconfiguring institutional power relations.1 These are just some of the features of gender relations as they appear in a few registers of contemporary U.S. social life, but they are enough to evoke the daunting stakes faced by students and teachers of women\u27s studies

Racial Justice, Hegemony, and Bias Incidents in U.S. Higher Education

Formal administrative protocols for responding to bias incidents are now the norm in higher education. This article considers these developments by posing critical questions about racial justice work on campus, identifying key features of an under-acknowledged institutional racism, and contributing to discussions about ways that diversity and social justice efforts often reproduce rather than challenge systemic inequities

Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes: a systematic review

Summary Background Whether cannabis can cause psychotic or aff ective symptoms that persist beyond transient intoxication is unclear. We systematically reviewed the evidence pertaining to cannabis use and occurrence of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes

Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes: a systematic review

Summary Background Whether cannabis can cause psychotic or aff ective symptoms that persist beyond transient intoxication is unclear. We systematically reviewed the evidence pertaining to cannabis use and occurrence of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes

Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes: a systematic review

Summary Background Whether cannabis can cause psychotic or aff ective symptoms that persist beyond transient intoxication is unclear. We systematically reviewed the evidence pertaining to cannabis use and occurrence of psychotic or aff ective mental health outcomes

Clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of collaborative care for depression in UK primary care (CADET): a cluster randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Collaborative care is effective for depression management in the USA. There is little UK evidence on its clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. OBJECTIVE: To determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of collaborative care compared with usual care in the management of patients with moderate to severe depression. DESIGN: Cluster randomised controlled trial. SETTING: UK primary care practices (n = 51) in three UK primary care districts. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 581 adults aged ≥ 18 years in general practice with a current International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition depressive episode, excluding acutely suicidal people, those with psychosis, bipolar disorder or low mood associated with bereavement, those whose primary presentation was substance abuse and those receiving psychological treatment. INTERVENTIONS: Collaborative care: 14 weeks of 6-12 telephone contacts by care managers; mental health specialist supervision, including depression education, medication management, behavioural activation, relapse prevention and primary care liaison. Usual care was general practitioner standard practice. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blinded researchers collected depression [Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)], anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder-7) and quality of life (European Quality of Life-5 Dimensions three-level version), Short Form questionnaire-36 items) outcomes at 4, 12 and 36 months, satisfaction (Client Satisfaction Questionnaire-8) outcomes at 4 months and treatment and service use costs at 12 months. RESULTS: In total, 276 and 305 participants were randomised to collaborative care and usual care respectively. Collaborative care participants had a mean depression score that was 1.33 PHQ-9 points lower [n = 230; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.35 to 2.31; p = 0.009] than that of participants in usual care at 4 months and 1.36 PHQ-9 points lower (n = 275; 95% CI 0.07 to 2.64; p = 0.04) at 12 months after adjustment for baseline depression (effect size 0.28, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.52; odds ratio for recovery 1.88, 95% CI 1.28 to 2.75; number needed to treat 6.5). Quality of mental health but not physical health was significantly better for collaborative care at 4 months but not at 12 months. There was no difference for anxiety. Participants receiving collaborative care were significantly more satisfied with treatment. Differences between groups had disappeared at 36 months. Collaborative care had a mean cost of £272.50 per participant with similar health and social care service use between collaborative care and usual care. Collaborative care offered a mean incremental gain of 0.02 (95% CI -0.02 to 0.06) quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) over 12 months at a mean incremental cost of £270.72 (95% CI -£202.98 to £886.04) and had an estimated mean cost per QALY of £14,248, which is below current UK willingness-to-pay thresholds. Sensitivity analyses including informal care costs indicated that collaborative care is expected to be less costly and more effective. The amount of participant behavioural activation was the only effect mediator. CONCLUSIONS: Collaborative care improves depression up to 12 months after initiation of the intervention, is preferred by patients over usual care, offers health gains at a relatively low cost, is cost-effective compared with usual care and is mediated by patient activation. Supervision was by expert clinicians and of short duration and more intensive therapy may have improved outcomes. In addition, one participant requiring inpatient treatment incurred very significant costs and substantially inflated our cost per QALY estimate. Future work should test enhanced intervention content not collaborative care per se. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN32829227. FUNDING: This project was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) (G0701013) and managed by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) on behalf of the MRC-NIHR partnership

Cost-Effectiveness of Collaborative Care for Depression in UK Primary Care: Economic Evaluation of a Randomised Controlled Trial (CADET)

Background: Collaborative care is an effective treatment for the management of depression but evidence on its cost-effectiveness in the UK is lacking. Aims: To assess the cost-effectiveness of collaborative care in a UK primary care setting. Methods: An economic evaluation alongside a multi-centre cluster randomised controlled trial comparing collaborative care with usual primary care for adults with depression (n = 581). Costs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) were calculated over a 12-month follow-up, from the perspective of the UK National Health Service and Personal Social Services (i.e. Third Party Payer). Sensitivity analyses are reported, and uncertainty is presented using the cost-effectiveness acceptability curve (CEAC) and the cost-effectiveness plane. Results: The collaborative care intervention had a mean cost of £272.50 per participant. Health and social care service use, excluding collaborative care, indicated a similar profile of resource use between collaborative care and usual care participants. Collaborative care offered a mean incremental gain of 0.02 (95% CI: –0.02, 0.06) quality-adjusted life-years over 12 months, at a mean incremental cost of £270.72 (95% CI: –202.98, 886.04), and resulted in an estimated mean cost per QALY of £14,248. Where costs associated with informal care are considered in sensitivity analyses collaborative care is expected to be less costly and more effective, thereby dominating treatment as usual. Conclusion: Collaborative care offers health gains at a relatively low cost, and is cost-effective compared with usual care against a decision-maker willingness to pay threshold of £20,000 per QALY gained. Results here support the commissioning of collaborative care in a UK primary care setting