A women’s worker in court: A more appropriate service for women defendants with mental health issues?

Aims Court liaison services aim to reduce mental illness in prison through early treatment and/or diversion into care of defendants negotiating their court proceedings. However, liaison services may inadvertently contribute to gender inequalities in mental health in the prison system. This is because women often do not access liaison services. This is attributed to services failing to recognise that women have different needs from men. To address this, it is essential that the needs of women in contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) are clearly articulated. However, there is a dearth of research that considers women’s needs at this stage of their journey through the CJS. This paper aims to identify these needs before women enter prison. It does so through an analysis of a pilot Women’s Support Service based at a Magistrates’ Court, a response to concerns that women were not accessing the local liaison service. Characteristics of women defendants attending the service are described, specifically their home environments, general and mental health needs. Their support needs when in contact with the CJS and the links the service must forge with local community organisations to provide this, are also presented. This knowledge will develop/ tailor existing services available to women defendants to improve their access to these and optimise the benefits they can derive from them. Methods Proformas were completed by a women specialist worker for 86 women defendants assessed in 4 months. Information was collected on characteristics including education, domestic violence, accommodation, physical and mental health.. This specialist worker recorded the range of needs identified by defendants at assessment and the services to which women were referred. Results Access to the Women’s Support Service is high, with only 11.3% of women refusing to use the service. Women attending have high levels of physical and mental health issues. Their mental health issues have not being addressed prior to accessing the service. Women often come from single households and environments high in domestic abuse. Women have multiple needs related to benefits, finance, housing, domestic abuse, education and career guidance. These are more frequent than those that explicitly link to mental health. The women’s worker providing the service referred women to 68 services from a wide variety of statutory and voluntary organisations. Conclusions The Women’s Support Service is accessed by a higher number of women, many more than access the local liaison service. It is suggested that this is due to their multiple and gender specific needs being adequately addressed by the former service and the organisations to whom they are referred. Mental health needs may also be secondary to other more basic needs, that makes the generic service provided but the Women’s support Service more appropriate than a liaison service that deals with mental health support alone

Locating the place and meaning of physical activity in the lives of young people from low-income, lone-parent families

Background: In the United Kingdom (UK), it is predicted that economic cuts and a subsequent increase in child poverty will affect those already on the lowest incomes and, in particular, those living in lone-parent families. As a result, the informal pedagogic encounters within the family that contribute to the development of physical activity-related values, beliefs and dispositions from a very early age will be affected. Therefore, it is vital that we gain an understanding of the place and meaning of physical activity in the lives of young people, as well as the informal pedagogic practices and the socio-cultural forces that influence individual agency. Purpose: Based on Bourdieu's key concepts, this paper explores the interplay of structural conditions and personal agency with regard to physical activity in the lives of young people from low-income, lone-parent families. Methods: This study reports on the voices of 24 participants (aged 11–14) from low-income, lone-parent families in the West Midlands, UK. These participants were engaged in paired, semi-structured interviews to explore issues of personal agency by listening to how they reported on their present lives, past experiences and future possibilities with regard to physical activity. All corresponding interview data were analysed using analytical induction. Findings: This paper suggests that young people exhibited diminished desires to engage in activity due to structural constraints of time, parents' work commitments and a lack of transport that resulted in engagement in sedentary alternatives. Informal pedagogic practices within these families were restricted due to the associated structural conditions of living in a lone-parent family. As such, young people's choice to not seek out physical activities when at home reflected a ‘taste for necessity’ resulting from a lack of cultural and economic capital, placing restrictions on physical activity opportunities that stemmed from their family doxa. Conclusions: To succeed in fostering dispositions and opportunities to participate in physical activity, we must engage with young people from low-income, lone-parent families from an early age. Certainly though, further consideration of the informal pedagogic practices within, and the demands on, lone-parent families is required when designing any intervention or policy that seeks to enhance their current circumstances and provide opportunities for engagement in a variety of contexts

Inferring individual attributes from search engine queries and auxiliary information

Internet data has surfaced as a primary source for investigation of different aspects of human behavior. A crucial step in such studies is finding a suitable cohort (i.e., a set of users) that shares a common trait of interest to researchers. However, direct identification of users sharing this trait is often impossible, as the data available to researchers is usually anonymized to preserve user privacy. To facilitate research on specific topics of interest, especially in medicine, we introduce an algorithm for identifying a trait of interest in anonymous users. We illustrate how a small set of labeled examples, together with statistical information about the entire population, can be aggregated to obtain labels on unseen examples. We validate our approach using labeled data from the political domain. We provide two applications of the proposed algorithm to the medical domain. In the first, we demonstrate how to identify users whose search patterns indicate they might be suffering from certain types of cancer. In the second, we detail an algorithm to predict the distribution of diseases given their incidence in a subset of the population at study, making it possible to predict disease spread from partial epidemiological data

Lack of Mutual Respect in Relationship The Endangered Partner

Violence in a relationship and in a family setting has been an issue of concern to various interest groups and professional organizations. Of particular interest in this article is violence against women in a relationship. While there is an abundance of knowledge on violence against women in general, intimate or partner femicide seems to have received less attention. Unfortunately, the incidence of violence against women, and intimate femicide in particular, has been an issue of concern in the African setting. This article examines the trends of intimate femicide in an African setting in general, and in Botswana in particular. The increase in intimate femicide is an issue of concern, which calls for collective effort to address. This article also examines trends offemicide in Botswana, and the antecedents and the precipitating factors. Some studies have implicated societal and cultural dynamics as playing significant roles in intimate femicide in the African setting. It is believed that the patriarchal nature of most African settings and the ideology of male supremacy have relegated women to a subordinate role. Consequently, respect for women in any relationship with men is lopsided in favor of men and has led to abuse of women, including intimate femicide. Other militating factors in intimate femicide ,are examined and the implications for counseling to assist the endangered female partner are discussed

The association of criminal justice supervision setting with overdose mortality: a longitudinal cohort study.

Background and aimsDespite the high prevalence of substance use among people in the US criminal justice system, little is known about the incidence of overdose mortality by use patterns, drug convictions and supervision setting. We examined the associations between these characteristics and overdose mortality.DesignRetrospective cohort study.Setting and participantsIndividuals sentenced to prison, jail, probation or jail plus probation for a felony conviction in Michigan, USA from 2003 to 2006.MeasurementsUsing the National Death Index, we assessed overdose mortality to December 2012. We calculated overdose mortality rates by pre-sentence opioid use, drug convictions and supervision setting. Multivariable analyses were conducted using competing risks regression with time-varying covariates.FindingsAmong 140 266 individuals followed over a mean of 7.84 years [standard deviation (SD) = 1.52], 14.9% of the 1131 deaths were due to overdose (102.8 per 100 000 person-years). Over the follow-up, more than half of overdose deaths occurred in the community (57.7%), nearly a third (28.8%) on probation and 12.8% on parole. The adjusted risk of overdose death was lower on probation [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.71, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.60, 0.85] than in the community without probation or parole (HR = 1.00) but not significantly different on parole (HR = 1.13, 95% CI = 0.87, 1.47). Pre-sentence daily opioid use (HR = 3.54, 95% CI = 3.24, 3.87) was associated with an increased risk. Drug possession (HR = 1.11, 95% CI = 0.93, 1.31) and delivery convictions (HR = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.77, 1.09) were not significantly associated with overdose mortality.ConclusionsBased on the absolute or relative risk, parole, probation and community settings are appropriate settings for enhanced overdose prevention interventions. Ensuring that individuals with pre-sentence opioid use have access to harm reduction and drug treatment services may help to prevent overdose among people involved with the criminal justice system

Ophthalmic statistics note 8: missing data - exploring the unknown

Medical research is conducted to answer uncertainties and to identify effective treatments for patients. Different questions are best addressed by different types of study design—but the randomised, controlled clinical trial is typically viewed as the gold standard, providing a very high level of evidence, when examining efficacy. While clinical trial methodology has advanced considerably with clear guidance provided as to how to avoid sources of bias, even the most robustly designed study can succumb to missing data. In this statistics note, we discuss strategies for dealing with missing data but what we hope emerges is a very clear message that there is no ideal solution to missing data and prevention is the best strategy

Does religion make a difference? : assessing the effects of Christian affiliation and practice on marital solidarity and divorce in Britain, 1985-2005

Marital breakdown rates were examined among 15,714 adults from the British Social Attitudes dataset for 1985-2005. Separation and divorce peaked at around 50 years of age, and increased significantly over the period of study. Ratios of separation or divorce were compared between respondents who had no religious affiliation and (a) Christian affiliates who attended church at least once a month, (b) Christian affiliates who attended church, but less than once a month, and (c) Christian affiliates who never attended church. The results showed that active Christians were 1.5 times less likely to suffer marital breakdown than non-affiliates, but there was no difference between affiliates who never attended church and those of no religion. Christians who attended infrequently were 1.3 times less likely to suffer marital breakdown compared to non-affiliates, suggesting that even infrequent attendance at church may have some significance for predicting the persistence of martial solidarity

Being Healthy: a Grounded Theory Study of Help Seeking Behaviour among Chinese Elders living in the UK

The health of older people is a priority in many countries as the world’s population ages. Attitudes towards help seeking behaviours in older people remain a largely unexplored field of research. This is particularly true for older minority groups where the place that they have migrated to presents both cultural and structural challenges. The UK, like other countries,has an increasingly aging Chinese population about who relatively little is known. This study used a qualitative grounded theory design following the approach of Glaser (1978). Qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 33 Chinese elders who were aged between 60 and 84, using purposive and theoretical sampling approaches. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method until data saturation occurred and a substantive theory was generated. ‘Being healthy’ (the core category) with four interrelated categories: self-management, normalizing/minimizing, access to health services, and being cured form the theory. The theory was generated around the core explanations provided by participants and Chinese elders’ concerns about health issues they face in their daily life. We also present data about how they direct their health-related activities towards meeting their physical and psychological goals of being healthy. Their differential understanding of diseases and a lack of information about health services were potent predictors of non�help seeking and ‘self’ rather than medical management of their illnesses. This study highlights the need for intervention and health support for Chinese elders

Educational outcomes in extremely preterm children : neuropsychological correlates and predictors of attainment

This study assessed the impact of extremely preterm birth on academic attainment at 11 years of age, investigated neuropsychological antecedents of attainment in reading and mathematics, and examined early predictors of educational outcomes. Children born extremely preterm had significantly poorer academic attainment and a higher prevalence of learning difficulties than their term peers. General cognitive ability and specific deficits in visuospatial skills or phoneme deletion at 6 years were predictive of mathematics and reading attainment at 11 years in both extremely preterm and term children. Phonological processing, attention, and executive functions at 6 years were also associated with academic attainment in children born extremely preterm. Furthermore, social factors, neonatal factors (necrotizing enterocolitis, breech delivery, abnormal cerebral ultrasound, early breast milk provision), and developmental factors at 30 months (head circumference, cognitive development), were independent predictors of educational outcomes at 11 years. Neonatal complications combined with assessments of early cognitive function provide moderate prediction for educational outcomes in children born extremely preterm