Emergency conflict-related psychosocial interventions in Sierra Leone and Uganda: lessons from Médecins Sans Frontières

Médecins Sans Frontières has been involved in emergency mental health or psychosocial programmes since 1990. In this article the intervention model developed for emergency settings is shared. Psychosocial programmes distinguish two elements. The 'psycho'-component facilitates the reconnection of the affected individual to his environment. The 'socio'-element aims to create an environment that facilitates the individual to re-integrate. The nature of mental health and psychosocial programmes requires a multidisciplinary approach. Emotional support can also be provided by regular medical staff and does not always require a specialist. The years ahead of us are important for the development of psychosocial interventions. Fundamental issues such as programme evaluation need systematic research

Exposure to violence and PTSD symptoms among Somali women

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, exposure to traumatic stressors, and health care utilization were examined in 84 women attending a primary health care clinic in Mogadishu, Somalia. The Somalia-Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale was used in this active warzone to measure symptoms. Nearly all women reported high levels of confrontations with violence; half described being exposed to a potentially traumatizing event. Nearly one third had significant PTSD symptoms. Compared to those who did not, women who reported exposure to a traumatic stressor reported more confrontations with violence (7.1 vs. 3.3; p < . 001), health complaints (3.8 vs. 2.9; p = .03), and nearly 3 times as much (p = .03) health service utilization. A potentially traumatizing event was found to be a simplified proxy for assessing mental health distress in women attending a primary health care facility in highly insecure, unpredictable, resource-limited settings

Personal characteristics of World War Two survivor offspring related to the presence of indirect intrusions

Background: A substantial proportion of clinical World War Two survivor offspring reports intrusions about war events they did not experience themselves. Objective: To help identify factors that contribute to the development of such indirect intrusions (i.e. intrusions about non-self-experienced traumatic events), we examined the personal characteristics of survivor offspring that were related to the presence of indirect intrusions. To explore the specificity of these relationships, we compared characteristics related to the presence of indirect and direct intrusions (i.e. intrusions about self-experienced traumatic events). Methods: Participants (N = 98) were post-war offspring of World War Two survivors in treatment in one of two clinics specialized in mental health services for war victims. We assessed the presence of indirect and direct intrusions as well as the following personal characteristics: gender, education level, trait dissociation, affect intensity, attentional control, mental imagery, fantasy proneness, and current psychopathology. Results: Reports of indirect intrusions were more frequent in individuals high in fantasy proneness, trait dissociation, and current psychopathology. Reports of direct intrusions were more frequent in women, individuals scoring high on trait dissociation, affect intensity, and current psychopathology. Fantasy proneness was a unique correlate of indirect intrusions. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with the idea that intrusions are the result of (re)constructive processes affected by several factors including personal characteristics. HIGHLIGHTS Offspring of World War Two survivors often experience indirect intrusions. We examined personal characteristics related to indirect and direct intrusions. Fantasy proneness was the best predictor of indirect intrusions. Gender was the best predictor of direct intrusions

Міфологізм у символістській прозі Клима Поліщука

The particularities of mythology in symbolist prose by Klym Polishchuk are explained in the article. There are two time planes of plot evolvement in fantastic stories by Klym PolishchukG past and present. Fantastic events in the past have continuation in

Transient tunneling effects of resonance doublets in triple barrier systems

Transient tunneling effects in triple barrier systems are investigated by considering a time-dependent solution to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with a cutoff wave initial condition. We derive a two-level formula for incidence energies $E$ near the first resonance doublet of the system. Based on that expression we find that the probability density along the internal region of the potential, is governed by three oscillation frequencies: one of them refers to the well known Bohr frequency, given in terms of the first and second resonance energies of the doublet, and the two others, represent a coupling with the incidence energy $E$. This allows to manipulate the above frequencies to control the tunneling transient behavior of the probability density in the short-time regim

Exclusive measurement of coherent eta photoproduction from the deuteron

Coherent photoproduction of eta mesons from the deuteron has been measured from threshold up to incident photon energies of 750 MeV using the photon spectrometer TAPS at the tagged photon facility at the Mainz microtron MAMI. For the first time, differential coherent cross sections have been deduced from the coincident detection of the eta meson and the recoil deuteron. A missing energy analysis was used for the suppression of background events so that a very clean identification of coherent eta-photoproduction was achieved. The resulting cross sections agree with previous experimental results except for angles around 90 deg in the photon-deuteron cm-system where they are smaller. They are compared to various model calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Exact boundary conditions at finite distance for the time-dependent Schrodinger equation

Exact boundary conditions at finite distance for the solutions of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation are derived. A numerical scheme based on Crank-Nicholson method is proposed to illustrate its applicability in several examples.Comment: Latex.tar.gz file, 20 pages, 9 figure

Polymers with attractive interactions on the Husimi tree

We obtain the solution of models of self-avoiding walks with attractive interactions on Husimi lattices built with squares. Two attractive interactions are considered: between monomers on first-neighbor sites and not consecutive along a walk and between bonds located on opposite edges of elementary squares. For coordination numbers q>4, two phases, one polymerized the other non-polymerized, are present in the phase diagram. For small values of the attractive interaction the transition between those phases is continuous, but for higher values a first-order transition is found. Both regimes are separated by a tricritical point. For q=4 a richer phase diagram is found, with an additional (dense) polymerized phase, which is stable for for sufficiently strong interactions between bonds. The phase diagram of the model in the three-dimensional parameter space displays surfaces of continuous and discontinuous phase transitions and lines of tricritical points, critical endpoints and triple points.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure