Dealing with the Unsuccessful Cases: An Assessment of the Experiences and Process of Coping with Patient Suicide in Mental Healthcare Professionals

Mental health care professionals will inevitably encounter all types of “unsuccessful cases” in their line of work. Patient suicide is the extreme of these cases and can have a negative impact on their personal and professional life. This study sought to continue and expand research in this area by investigating the experiences and impact of patient suicide on all mental health professionals, the services available to them, and their opinions on best practice methods. Twenty- eight in-patient and five out-patient mental healthcare workers in Rhode Island were surveyed for this study. Analysis confirmed the impact of patient suicide on professionals and revealed that a systemic plan and/or group of support is crucial in helping them to cope with a patient suicide effectively and appropriately. These findings can serve as evidence for social workers who may need to advocate that these necessary support services be provided for all mental healthcare professionals, with their profession being included. This study also offers helpful information on methods utilized successfully by professionals, which can be used by others for guidance on how to deal with similar difficult experiences and encourages further investigation on the subject

Optimal Foraging By Bacteriophages Through Host Avoidance

Optimal foraging theory explains diet restriction as an adaptation to best utilize an array of foods differing in quality, the poorest items not worth the lost opportunity of finding better ones. Although optimal foraging has traditionally been applied to animal behavior, the model is easily applied to viral host range, which is genetically determined. The usual perspective for bacteriophages ( bacterial viruses) is that expanding host range is always advantageous if fitness on former hosts is not compromised. However, foraging theory identifies conditions favoring avoidance of poor hosts even if larger host ranges have no intrinsic costs. Bacteriophage T7 rapidly evolved to discriminate among different Escherichia coli strains when one host strain was engineered to kill infecting phages but the other remained productive. After modifying bacteria to yield more subtle fitness effects on T7, we tested qualitative predictions of optimal foraging theory by competing broad and narrow host range phages against each other. Consistent with the foraging model, diet restriction was favored when good hosts were common or there was a large difference in host quality. Contrary to the model, the direction of selection was affected by the density of poor hosts because being able to discriminate was costly.Integrative Biolog

Doing Good Science Without Sacrificing Good Values: Why the Heuristic Paradigm is the Best Choice for Social Work

Social work today faces a crucial watershed: Will the field continue to promulgate unsound and detrimental beliefs about social work research and knowledge, or will the field fully embrace the heuristic paradigm and thereby realize its true potential as a first-rate science committed to humanistic ideals? Proponents of unsound and detrimental beliefs have obscured the choice for social workers by systematically and thoroughly misrepresenting the heuristic paradigm, making unwarranted and misleading claims for the paradigms to which it is opposed (logical empiricism and relativism), and confusing the issues at stake for the field. Accordingly, this article helps social workers recognize the tenets and implications of each of the three paradigms for research that social work has available to it—the heuristic paradigm, logical empiricism, and relativism—so that social workers can make a truly informed choice about the best approach to knowledge in their field

Session B-4: Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and the Sources of Social Change

Abraham Lincoln argued that all knew slavery was “somehow the cause of the war”. And every student knows that one of the most significant outcomes of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery. But how did this happen? Who actually freed the slaves? In this session, we’ll model a lesson that teachers can use, rooted in historical thinking and primary sources that helps students engage in authentic historical inquiry about a turning point in our nation’s past