Factorial ecology in space and time: an alternative method

An experiment conducted by Taylor and Parkes (1975) to investigate the factorial ecology of a city within a time - space framework is reexamined by means of an alternative method. The original experiment used common-factor analysis (a two-mode procedure) in a three-mode problem. Using the published data of this experiment, the new method, Individual Differences Scaling (INDSCAL), identifies two major dimensions and defines their importance for each of the time periods being considered. INDSCAL has a greater potential as such a method, since it is capable of analyzing problems of up to seven-mode in nature.

Proximity and the formation of public attitudes towards mental illness

This paper investigates the effect of proximity on attitudes towards mental illness. One outcome of the policies referred to as deinstitutionalization is an overall reduction in the social and geographical distance between members of the public and the mentally ill. For deinstitutionalization to be successful, it is important that residents in impacted communities become more accepting, both in a passive and in an active sense. A survey was made of residents in two neighborhoods of the city of Norman, Oklahoma, one of which was adjacent to a large mental health facility. In a causal model framework, the relationship between proximity and public attitudes is investigated; and the results suggest an important and significant relationship. The implications of the study for public education campaigns about mental illness, and for facility location strategies, are discussed.

Mental health, nature work and social inclusion

In this paper the powerful relations between mental health and nature are explored with reference to past asylum horticultural practices and to contemporary community gardening schemes for people with mental-health problems in the United Kingdom. Through the use of archival evidence, alongside contemporary voices of experience, understandings of the therapeutic and social dimensions to nature work are outlined and deconstructed. It is argued that particular discourses concerning the powers of nature (work) in managing madness and mental-health problems are largely consistent across time and space (from the asylum to the community). However, in the contemporary era it is particular types of nature work that arguably contribute most directly to state agendas for social inclusion, and therefore to securing the place of people with mental-health problems in mainstream society. By briefly profiling the voices of staff and ‘volunteers’ from two urban garden schemes in England and Scotland, different experiences of garden work as ‘restorative’ and as ‘interventionist’ will be discussed. I conclude by evaluating how embodying and enacting gardening work act as a sustainable vehicle for new versions of social citizenship for people traditionally marginalised in mainstream society