The effectiveness of counselling with older people: results of a systematic review

In 2003 the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) commissioned a systematic review of the research evidence relating to counselling older people. This paper reports on some of the findings of this review, particularly those which address the effectiveness of counselling with this population. Electronic searches of the research literature spanned six databases and were supplemented by hand-searches of reference lists and key journals, along with an extensive search of the “grey” literature. The location of papers testing interventions which fall within a definition of counselling set out by the BACP, with samples aged 50 years of age or above resulted in the inclusion of 47 relevant studies. Studies investigated a variety of mental health problems in older people, particularly depression, anxiety, dementia and the psychological impact of physical conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Of the 47 studies, eight tested counselling as a generic treatment, 15 tested cognitive behavioural therapy, 13 tested reminiscence therapy, and 11 tested various other specific approaches. The review concluded that counselling is efficacious with older people, particularly in the treatment of anxiety and depression and outcomes are consistent with those found in younger populations. Evidence as to the efficacy of counselling interventions in the treatment of dementia is weak

Holding strategies in a bus-route model

A major source of delays in public transportation is the clustering instability, which causes late buses to become progressively later while the buses trailing it become progressively earlier. In this paper, we study this instability and how to neutralize it using the common practices of holding and schedule slack. Starting with an on-time route, we delay one or more buses at a single stop, and determine how these delays grow over time. We compare the effects of two different types of holding on the stability of the system, and briefly investigate how our results change with the use of timepoints.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures v2 has been moderately copyedited, but has no new content Paper has been submitted to Physical Review

Do You See What I See - Reflections on How Bias Infiltrates the New York City Family Court - The Case of the Court Ordered Investigation

That the Family Court is ill-equipped to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of cases handled therein is not news. Exploding caseloads, complex problems, and minimal resources are just a few of the ingredients that combine to undermine the Court\u27s ability to fulfill its promise. What has been given less attention until very recently is the extent to which the Family Court\u27s failures disproportionately impact low-income families of color. Any analysis of the Court\u27s impact or efficacy must consider the context I have described in my observations of the Court- the images of black and brown litigants hurrying through courtrooms where they are often disrespected. These images raise questions about the role of bias in the Court and the extent to which the Court\u27s failings disproportionately impact people of color. The historic failure to consider the disproportionate impact of Family Court\u27s ills upon black and brown litigants may have set the groundwork for practices that unwittingly perpetuate bias. In the midst of the hurried pace, huge caseloads, and inadequate resources that define Family Court, a number of quick fixes and shortcut practices have emerged. These practices include officially sanctioned shortcuts like the ever-expanding use of court attorney referees to preside over cases, and unofficially sanctioned practices like ex parte communications between certain judges and some institutional providers. While the failures of Family Court create myriad problems for parties who seek justice there, I limit my focus here to examining the officially sanctioned practice of using New York City Administration for Children\u27s Services (ACS) caseworkers to conduct court-ordered investigations in private child custody proceedings as one example of how a seemingly innocuous practice might countenance bias. In many ways, a telling representation of how the norms of practice in Family Court deviate from accepted norms of practice and how that deviation is not just tolerated, but embraced. The standard explanations advanced to justify these deviations focus on the nature of the cases and the enormity of the docket in Family Court - the cases do not lend themselves to traditional adversarial processing; the dockets are crushing and these practices are stop gap measures. I posit an additional explanation: these deviations represent a not-so-subtle case of the kind of differential treatment that gets institutionalized when the consumer is poor and of color, and, as a consequence, disenfranchised

Why Didn’t Subprime Investors Demand a (Much Larger) Lemons Premium?

The subprime crisis would never have occurred had investors not been such enthusiastic consumers of subprime securities. The investors now say, somewhat self-servingly (but probably correctly), that they did not understand the securities -- securities for which they were willing to pay very high prices. Investors\u27 willingness to purchase these securities on terms that were favorable to the sellers, and unfavorable to them, presents a considerable puzzle. Investors do not want to miss out on the next big thing