Veteran social network: peer support impact on mental health service utilization

Of the 20 million US Veterans, approximately 30% receive health care benefits from the Veterans Affairs system. Research confirms that these Veterans are less likely to seek professional mental health services as a result of a belief that mental illness equates with weakness. Research on peer support with Veterans suggests that Veteran social networks reduce stigma and facilitate help seeking behavior. Most studies on Veteran help seeking for mental health services use subjects who receive health care from the Veterans Health Administration or Department of Defense. The purpose of the current study is to gain an understanding of Veterans who are outside of the VA health care network; specifically, how their social networks influence help seeking for mental health symptoms. This study will examine the relative influence of stigma and social networks on a Veteran’s help seeking behavior. The research findings indicate that Veterans in the cohort perceived greater stigma related to talking to a counselor (M = 3.07; SD = 1.17) than [talking to] a fellow Veteran (M = 2.90; SD = 0.68). Also, the researcher established that the size of a Veteran’s network of Veteran peers (M =2.49, SD=3.23) was significantly smaller than that of their civilian [network of] peers (M =10.52, SD=7.39). The research found that the size of a Veteran’s social network was a significant and a positive predictor of health seeking behavior among the Veterans. Keywords: peer support, help seeking, Veteran social network, social network diversit

The Other America:White working class views on belonging, change, identity and immigration

This report presents an analysis of white working-class communities’ perspectives on belonging, change, identity, and immigration. Recent studies about the white working class focus on national politics, religion, and immigration; this study tells a national story from a grassroots perspective with an eye toward the prospects for cross-racial coalition building between working-class white communities and communities of color. The project’s goals were to increase understanding about white working-class communities in America, to disrupt the negative narrative about the white working class by contextualizing its issues and challenges, and to put forward practical ideas for cross-racial coalition building. The study was guided by the following research questions: 1. How do current definitions of white working class fit with the experiences and views of this group of people? 2. To what extent do national representations of the white working class—as a disconnected and racist segment in American society—reflect reality? 3. What are the possibilities of building cross-racial coalitions between the white working class and communities of color, as the country transitions from majority white to minority white?Open Society Foundations, US ProgramsOpe

Discount Points, Effective Yields and Mortgage Prepayments

Lenders use discount points to vary effective yields from stated contract rates. In the past, this practice resulted from interest-rate regulation. In market, however, there seems to be an absence of economic rationale as to how points are applied in individual cases. This paper provides an economic rationale for the use of points. An option pricing model is used to derive some basic rules for determining the relationship between changes in the contract rate and the payment of points. This explains current practices by lenders in that the option value effect could justify a reduction in the contract rate of well over one-eighth of a percent and shows that lenders are justified in varying the size of the trade-off between points and contract rates based on risk of prepayment. Lenders must charge a premium for providing the prepayment option; however, the payment of points provides a means whereby this call provision can be retained but reduced in value to suit the preferences of individual borrowers.

Health Information Seeking Behaviors of Young Adult African Americans

As consumers are becoming more proactive about their health they are introduced into a boundless world of health information. This information may be searched and received through different information channels and may be tailored to a specific disease or condition, age group, or ethnicity. This research surveys young adult African Americans to discover their health information seeking behaviors. The results of this study indicate that this population is more susceptible to information primarily focused on African Americans, and use the Internet, doctors and family as their first information source

Dose response severity functions for acoustic disturbance in cetaceans using recurrent event survival analysis

This work was financially supported by the U. S. Office of Naval Research grant N00014‐12‐1‐0204, under the project “Multi‐study Ocean acoustics Human effects Analysis” (MOCHA). . L. Tyack received funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. The case study data were provided by the 3S project, which was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, the Netherlands Ministry of Defense, and WWF Norway.Behavioral response studies (BRSs) aim to enhance our understanding of the behavior changes made by animals in response to specific exposure levels of different stimuli, often presented in an increasing dosage. Here, we focus on BRSs that aim to understand behavioral responses of free-ranging whales and dolphins to manmade acoustic signals (although the methods are applicable more generally). One desired outcome of these studies is dose-response functions relevant to different species, signals and contexts. We adapted and applied recurrent event survival analysis (Cox proportional hazard models) to data from the 3S BRS project, where multiple behavioral responses of different severities had been observed per experimental exposure and per individual based upon expert scoring. We included species, signal type, exposure number and behavioral state prior to exposure as potential covariates. The best model included all main effect terms, with the exception of exposure number, as well as two interaction terms. The interactions between signal and behavioral state, and between species and behavioral state highlighted that the sensitivity of animals to different signal types (a 6–7 kHz upsweep sonar signal [MFAS] or a 1–2 kHz upsweep sonar signal [LFAS]) depended on their behavioral state (feeding or nonfeeding), and this differed across species. Of the three species included in this analysis (sperm whale [Physeter macrocephalus], killer whale [Orcinus orca] and long-finned pilot whale [Globicephala melas]), killer whales were consistently the most likely to exhibit behavioral responses to naval sonar exposure. We conclude that recurrent event survival analysis provides an effective framework for fitting dose-response severity functions to data from behavioral response studies. It can provide outputs that can help government and industry to evaluate the potential impacts of anthropogenic sound production in the ocean.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The longevity of para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP) wild dog baits and the implications for effective and safe baiting campaigns

Considerable effort goes into mitigating the impacts caused by invasive animals and prohibiting their establishment or expansion. In Australia, management of wild dogs (Canis lupus dingo and their hybrids) and their devastating impacts is reliant upon poison baiting. The recent release of baits containing the humane toxin para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP) offers potential improvements for control of wild dogs, but little is known about the environmental persistence of PAPP in manufactured baits that could be used to inform best practice guidelines. We investigated the degradation rate of PAPP wild dog baits (DOGABAIT™) under typical field usage and storage conditions in north-eastern Australia and calculated optimal deployment and withholding periods. The PAPP content of buried baits declines faster than surface-laid baits, but both presentations retained lethal doses to wild and domestic dogs for considerable periods (6–16 weeks). Domestic or working dogs should be suitably restrained or excluded from baited areas for extended periods, particularly under dry conditions, to minimise poisoning risk. The period of persistence of PAPP baits may provide opportunities to improve the duration or longer term efficacy of baiting campaigns, but care is needed to protect domestic and working dogs to ensure responsible and safe use

Prospectus, September 12, 1990

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1990/1020/thumbnail.jp

On Care-fulness: Critical Creative Expressions of Care in a Feminist Theatre Research Project

In early 2020, as the first of many COVID lockdowns began across Australia, a collective of feminist and queer performance scholars and artists embarked on the research project Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art. Our aim was to document contributions of womxn theatre makers, while conducting a feminist analysis of strategies used to deal with gender inequality and oppression, on stage and off. While pivoting to the digital and the virtual, we recognised a need to support womxn theatre makers whose lives and livelihoods are thrown into further precarity by the pandemic. This paper speaks to our commitment to bringing together critical theory, arts practices and everyday life in ethical forms and encounters that make visible, recognise and express care for one another and for the work

Self-harm and suicidal ideation among young people is more often recorded by child protection than health services in an Australian population cohort

OBJECTIVE: We investigated patterns of service contact for self-harm and suicidal ideation recorded by a range of human service agencies - including health, police and child protection - with specific focus on overlap and sequences of contacts, age of first contact and demographic and intergenerational characteristics associated with different service responses to self-harm.METHODS: Participants were 91,597 adolescents for whom multi-agency linked data were available in a longitudinal study of a population cohort in New South Wales, Australia. Self-harm and suicide-related incidents from birth to 18 years of age were derived from emergency department, inpatient hospital admission, mental health ambulatory, child protection and police administrative records. Descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression were used to examine patterns of service contacts.RESULTS: Child protection services recorded the largest proportion of youth with reported self-harm and suicidal ideation, in which the age of first contact for self-harm was younger relative to other incidents of self-harm recorded by other agencies. Nearly 40% of youth with a health service contact for self-harm also had contact with child protection and/or police services for self-harm. Girls were more likely to access health services for self-harm than boys, but not child protection or police services.CONCLUSION: Suicide prevention is not solely the responsibility of health services; police and child protection services also respond to a significant proportion of self-harm and suicide-related incidents. High rates of overlap among different services responding to self-harm suggest the need for cross-agency strategies to prevent suicide in young people.</p