Leaping in the Dark

The paper describes some of the pathology of seriously disturbed young people. It implies that the residential setting can be designed to accomplish psychotherapy, to which those people would usually be too resistant. Its primary discussion concerns the problem of how changes to the comrnunity-especially changes of leadership-affect the youngsters once they have become necessarily dependent on it. It suggests that the staff group has an essential transitional task, which is to maintain contact wth the residents' emotional world and to withstand the youngsters' increased testing out of the staff's reliability. It describes how dificult it is for staff not to get emotionally embroiled in the residents' issues and how essential good consultancy is to help the staff maintain their professional focus. The paper is optimistic though it emphasises how stessful such changes are.     

Associations between alcohol-related concerns,normative perceptions of peer alcohol use,and veterans’ drinking behavior over six months

Abstract

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has implemented initiatives to increase rates of brief alcohol counseling (BAC). Half of eligible veterans do not receive such care. Understanding patient characteristics associated with drinking behavior may identify patients for whom BAC may be acceptable. Data collected from veterans between January 2010 and September 2011 (N?=?167) were examined. Results find that alcohol-related concerns and perceptions of peer alcohol consumption are associated with reduced drinking behavior. These findings suggests that assessing drinking concerns and perceptions of peer alcohol use may help to identify patients interested in changing drinking behavior, receiving care, and assist providers in delivering appropriate counseling.     

The social ecology of girls' bullying practices: exploratory research in two London schools

This exploratory study adopts a socio‐ecological approach to examine the context of school bullying. It asks: (1) what are students' accounts of bullying practices?; (2) how are these enabled and constrained by the school‐environment?; (3) how is gender implicated? Qualitative data were collected from girls in two schools in London via focus groups (one in each school; students aged 12‐15) and seven semi‐structured interviews (in one school; students aged 16‐18); and from school policy documents. Our interpretation of girls' accounts, informed by Giddens' structuration theory, suggests that bullying practices were spatially patterned in the schools and often characterised by the regulation of girls' sexuality and sexual‐harassment. Repeated acts of aggression were fluid with regard to the bully and victim role, challenging the dominant view of bullying as characterised by consistent disparities in power between individuals. Schools structured bullying behaviour via policies and practices that ignored these forms of abuse and which focused on and may have been complicit in the making of stable ‘bully’ and ‘victim’ roles, thus indirectly contributing to the reproduction of unhealthy relationships between students. In terms of gender, traditional gendered and sexual discourses appear to structure the identities of the schools and girls in our study.