The relationship between manual coordination and mental health

Motor coordination impairments frequently co-occur with other developmental disorders and mental health problems in clinically referred populations. But does this reflect a broader dimensional relationship within the general population? A clearer understanding of this relationship might inform improvements in mental health service provision. However, ascertainment and referral bias means that there is limited value in conducting further research with clinically referred samples. We, therefore, conducted a cross-sectional population-based study investigating children’s manual coordination using an objective computerised test. These measures were related to teacher-completed responses on a behavioural screening questionnaire [the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)]. We sampled 298 children (4–11 years old; 136 males) recruited from the general population. Hierarchical (logistic and linear) regression modelling indicated significant categorical and continuous relationships between manual coordination and overall SDQ score (a dimensional measure of psychopathology). Even after controlling for gender and age, manual coordination explained 15 % of the variance in total SDQ score. This dropped to 9 % after exclusion of participants whose SDQ responses indicated potential mental health problems. These results: (1) indicate that there is a clear relationship between children’s motor and mental health development in community-based samples; (2) demonstrate the relationship’s dimensional nature; and (3) have implications for service provision

Four monuments and a funeral:established pathological mourning and collective memory in contemporary Hungary

In this chapter, I suggest that the rhetoric of the Hungarian far right largely resembles what Vamik Volkan has called Established Pathological Mourning. In such circumstances, mourning becomes extended, whereby an individual – or in the present case, a collective – cannot adaptively work through the loss of a loved object. Mourning rituals are extended, whereby the repetition of mourning is an attempt to ‘keep alive’ the lost object. Rather than being a recognition of loss, these complicated mourning rituals forestall the work of living on without the lost object. I suggest that, similar to the re-grief therapy that Volkan promotes, collective cultural mourning may offer an adaptive way forward in working through the issues of loss and control for a larger segment of a society

New Beginnings between Public and Private: Arendt and Ethnographies of Activism

We explore Arendt’s idiom of ‘new beginnings’ which, for her, constitute the very heart of the political in the light of two case studies. Drawing on examples of political action in the human rights organization of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and among sex workers in London, this article engages with the complex and productive interface of what Arendt calls praxis and poiesis. We suggest that it is precisely through this interface that these women activists have articulated ‘a new beginning’. Their actions call into question the distinctions that Arendt also makes between private and public insofar as these are given beforehand or assumed independently of such action. They also, we hope, contribute to a broader consideration of activism and ethnography