Bringing back the Kaibab deer story: A complete case study for land stewardship

The classic story of predator control, deer population explosion, and habitat degradation on the Kaibab Plateau was a cornerstone of population ecology and natural resources through the 1960s. The story has almost disappeared from natural resources, following several papers in the 1970s that questioned the quality of the evidence and the truth of the overall story. We reexamined the classic story from the viewpoint of habitat impacts of large deer populations; if the story were true, aspen regeneration should have been severely reduced in the 1920s. We also evaluated other lines of evidence, including the secondary irruption of the deer population in the 1950s

Taking Nothing for Granted in Management Education: A Systemic Perspective on the Role of Reflective Questioning

Questioning is one of the most critical behaviors in management education and learning. In this article we explore the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of reflective questioning, as a key element of management learning and education. Reflective questioning involves raising tentative, nonrhetorical questions. By reviewing and synthesizing the literature, we develop a model of reflective questioning in the form of a causal loop diagram. This model implies that reflective questioning can be taught through particular forms of management education, but is also contingent on the psychological safety of the group setting, the individual need for cognition, and challenging tasks and experiences

Making sense of voices: a case series

The current evidence-base for the psychological treatment of distressing voices indicates the need for further clinical development. The Maastricht approach (also known as Making Sense of Voices) is popular within sections of the Hearing Voices Movement, but its clinical effectiveness has not been systematically evaluated. The aim of the approach is to develop a better understanding of the role of the voice, in part through opening a dialogue between the voice hearer and the voice. The current study was a (N=15) case series adopting a concurrent multiple baseline design. The Maastricht approach was offered for up to 9-months. The main outcome, weekly voice-related distress ratings, was not statistically significant during intervention or follow-up, although the effect size was in the moderate range. The PSYRATS Hallucination scale was associated with a large effect size both at the end of treatment, and after a 3-month follow-up period, although again the effect did not reach statistical significance. The results suggest further evaluation of the approach is warranted. However, given the large variance in individual participant outcome, it may be that a better understanding of response profiles is required before conducting a definitive randomised controlled trial

Assessing the Impact and Effectiveness of Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Groups

The Hearing Voices Network (HVN) is an influential service-user led organisation that promotes self-help as an important aspect of recovery. This study presents the first systematic assessment of the impact and effectiveness of HVN self-help groups. A customized 45-item questionnaire, the Hearing Voices Groups Survey, was sent to 62 groups affiliated with the English HVN. 101 responses were received. Group attendance was credited with a range of positive emotional, social and clinical outcomes. Aspects that were particularly valued included: opportunities to meet other voice hearers, provision of support that was unavailable elsewhere, and the group being a safe and confidential place to discuss difficult issues. Participants perceived HVN groups to facilitate recovery processes and to be an important resource for helping them cope with their experiences. Mental health professionals can use their expertise to support the successful running of these groups

‘We’re not all dangerous and crazy’. Negotiating the voice hearing identity: A critical discursive approach

A critical discursive approach examined how the voice hearing identity is negotiated. Conflicting constructions identified voice hearing not only as distressing but also as a normal experience. The discursive strategies reveal that when individuals who hear voices construct their identity, they must either disavow their own distress to avoid stigma or accept the stigmatising accounts of their identity imposed on them if they are to have their distress recognised. The study points to the value and importance of discursive approaches in uncovering unspoken distress in individuals and society, and towards the need to address identity issues in clinical and social interventions

Madness decolonized?: Madness as transnational identity in Gail Hornstein’s Agnes’s Jacket

The US psychologist Gail Hornstein’s monograph Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness (2009) is an important intervention in the identity politics of the mad movement. Hornstein offers a resignified vision of mad identity that embroiders the central trope of an “anti-colonial” struggle to reclaim the experiential world “colonized” by psychiatry. A series of literal and figurative appeals make recourse to the inner world and (corresponding) cultural world of the mad, as well as to the ethno-symbolic cultural materials of dormant nationhood. This rhetoric is augmented by a model in which the mad comprise a diaspora without an origin, coalescing into a single transnational community. The mad are also depicted as persons displaced from their metaphorical homeland, the “inner” world “colonized” by the psychiatric regime. There are a number of difficulties with Hornstein’s rhetoric, however. Her “ethnicity-and-rights” response to the oppression of the mad is symptomatic of Western parochialism, while her proposed transmutation of putative psychopathology from limit upon identity to parameter of successful identity is open to contestation. Moreover, unless one accepts Hornstein’s porous vision of mad identity, her self-ascribed insider status in relation to the mad community may present a problematic “re-colonization” of mad experience