Empowerment and the Transition to Housing for Homeless Mentally Ill People: An Anthropological Perspective

Often lacking in scholarly and policy-oriented discussions of homelessness are contextualized understandings of the problems faced, and the values held, by homeless mentally ill people. This article, using an anthropological perspective, examines issues that arise for homeless mentally ill individuals in making the transition from shelter living to permanent residences. The transition occurs as part of a housing initiative driven by the philosophy of consumer empowerment. Project participants are placed in independent apartments or evolving consumer households (ECH) — shared, staffed residences designed to transform themselves into consumer-directed living situations over time. The effects of an empowerment paradigm on the organization of space, the nature of social relations, and the management of economic resources in the ECHs are discussed to show that consumers and staff sometimes have contrasting views of what empowerment entails. It is suggested that anthropological research can help to illuminate the issues at stake in determining policy for homeless people with major mental illness

Assessment of an undergraduate psychiatry course in an African setting

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>International reports recommend the improvement in the amount and quality of training for mental health workers in low and middle income countries. The Scotland-Malawi Mental Health Education Project (SMMHEP) has been established to support the teaching of psychiatry to medical students in the University of Malawi. While anecdotally supportive medical educational initiatives appear of value, little quantitative evidence exists to demonstrate whether such initiatives can deliver comparable educational standards. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of an undergraduate psychiatry course given by UK psychiatrists in Malawi by studying University of Malawi and Edinburgh University medical students' performance on an MCQ examination paper.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An undergraduate psychiatry course followed by an MCQ exam was delivered by the SMMHEP to 57 Malawi medical students. This same MCQ exam was given to 71 Edinburgh University medical students who subsequently sat their own Edinburgh University examination.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were no significant differences between Edinburgh students' performance on the Malawi exam and their own Edinburgh University exam. (p = 0.65). This would suggest that the Malawi exam is a comparable standard to the Edinburgh exam. Malawi students marks ranged from 52.4%–84.6%. Importantly 84.4% of Malawi students scored above 60% on their exam which would equate to a hypothetical pass by UK university standards.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The support of an undergraduate course in an African setting by high income country specialists can attain a high percentage pass rate by UK standards. Although didactic teaching has been surpassed by more novel educational methods, in resource poor countries it remains an effective and cost effective method of gaining an important educational standard.</p

Yolmo aesthetics of body, health and 'soul loss'

To date, little attention has been paid to the cultural philosophies of experience which shape human behavior. The present paper contends that a culturally constituted 'aesthetics' of everyday life underlies moments of health, illness and healing among Yolmo Sherpa of Helambu, Nepal. The author examines cultural understandings of bodily and social experience to show how implicit aesthetics--from values of harmony and balance to fears of loss and decay--shape the ways in which Yolmo manage and evaluate their lives and how they construe and experience incidents of 'soul loss.' An analysis of shamanic ritual suggests, in turn, that while themes of imbalance, fragmentation and deficiency haunt the body in illness, healing works to reinstate a visceral sense of harmony, completion and vitality. These values reflect pressing political concerns. The paper concludes that a phenomenology of embodied aesthetics requires an analytic approach distinct from current semiotic, intellectualist, or psychological paradigms.aesthetics soul loss healing Nepal

Sensory biographies: lives and deaths among Nepal's Yolmo Buddhists

Robert Desjarlais's graceful ethnography explores the life histories of two Yolmo elders, focusing on how particular sensory orientations and modalities have contributed to the making and the telling of their lives. These two are a woman in her late eighties known as Kisang Omu and a Buddhist priest in his mid-eighties known as Ghang Lama, members of an ethnically Tibetan Buddhist people whose ancestors have lived for three centuries or so along the upper ridges of the Yolmo Valley in north central Nepal. It was clear through their many conversations that both individuals perceived themselves as nearing death, and both were quite willing to share their thoughts about death and dying. The difference between the two was remarkable, however, in that Ghang Lama's life had been dominated by motifs of vision, whereas Kisang Omu's accounts of her life largely involved a "theatre of voices." Desjarlais offers a fresh and readable inquiry into how people's ways of sensing the world contribute to how they live and how they recollect their lives

Sacred, Alive, Dangerous, and Endangered: Humans, Non-humans, and Landscape in the Himalayas

The landscape we inhabit is haunted by its own past. In its present form, in fact, it is just the actual, and temporary, reconfiguration and re-positioning of its constitutive elements. Reconfiguration is the direct outcome of those transformative processes defined, in human terms, as calamities and disasters. In the Himalayas, according to indigenous ontological views, these recursive processes of reconfiguration allegedly happened at the hands of cosmic forces, gods and goddesses, sages and wizards of old, and are often thought of as reaction to human misbehavior. The category of human misbehavior may include active and mechanical processes of pollution and desecration, or more subtle dynamics of ethical and moral corruption. More often than not, among the indigenous collectivities of the Himalayas, these two dimensions appear to be strictly intertwined. The process is not over: minor adjustments continuously take place here and there, as automatic reactions set in motion by individual and collective, human and non-human, patterns of interaction

Optimization of a Potent Class of Arylamide Colony-Stimulating Factor-1 Receptor Inhibitors Leading to Anti-inflammatory Clinical Candidate 4-Cyano-<i>N</i>-[2-(1-cyclohexen-1-yl)-4-[1-[(dimethylamino)acetyl]-4-piperidinyl]phenyl]-1<i>H</i>-imidazole-2-carboxamide (JNJ-28312141)

A class of potent inhibitors of colony-stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF-1R or FMS), as exemplified by <b>8</b> and <b>21</b>, was optimized to improve pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties and potential toxicological liabilities. Early stage absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion assays were employed to ensure the incorporation of druglike properties resulting in the selection of several compounds with good activity in a pharmacodynamic screening assay in mice. Further investigation, utilizing the type II collagen-induced arthritis model in mice, culminated in the selection of anti-inflammatory development candidate JNJ-28312141 (<b>23</b>, FMS IC₅₀ = 0.69 nM, cell assay IC₅₀ = 2.6 nM). Compound <b>23</b> also demonstrated efficacy in rat adjuvant and streptococcal cell wall-induced models of arthritis and has entered phase I clinical trials