Charlie Place, Andy Scally, Laura Gow, Amy Wade, Rob Barrowcliff, Iram Nasim and Miriam Nyamuchiwa
Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) – often known as “legal highs” – are a varied group of substances that are causing concern due to their possible effects on mental health…
Abstract
Purpose
Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) – often known as “legal highs” – are a varied group of substances that are causing concern due to their possible effects on mental health. Particular concerns have been raised about synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists often known as “Spice”. The purpose of this paper is to identify the prevalence of NPS use and explore any association with acute psychological disturbance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reviewed the case notes for 153 admissions to a male acute inpatient ward. Prevalence of reported NPS use and admissions to psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) were recorded.
Findings
In total, 18.9 per cent of individuals admitted to acute inpatient care were reported to have used NPS. NPS users were almost ten times as likely as their non-NPS using peers to require care in PICU. This result was statistically significant (Fisher exact test: p<0.001). Although caution is required given the limitations of this study, the data and clinical experience suggest that synthetic cannabinoids may be the specific type of NPS that is being used by this group.
Practical implications
Mental health professionals can expect to care for people using NPS in acute inpatient environments, and so they need to understand the nature and effects of these substances. It is possible that NPS use may be associated with sustained acute psychological disturbance.
Originality/value
There have been few studies on the prevalence of NPS use in inpatient environments and none of them have published that explore the association with PICU admission. Despite the limitations of this study, it has significant value by identifying an urgent need for comprehensive research in this area.
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Increasing research evidence highlights the importance of recognising a person's learning disability early in their journey through the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and…
Abstract
Purpose
Increasing research evidence highlights the importance of recognising a person's learning disability early in their journey through the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and highlights the need for liaison and diversion schemes. This practice paper seeks to raise awareness of the importance of mental capacity and its alignment (or lack there of) with the issue of fitness to plead.
Design/methodology/approach
The Law Commission's recent consultation has highlighted the disparity of the Pritchard Test and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and has considered several provisional proposals for consideration. As a learning disability nurse within a Youth Offending Service, the author encounters young people on court Orders who struggle to understand the criminal justice process. To highlight the significance of this, and its relationship to practice, the paper proposes to discuss a young person's case.
Findings
Early recognition of a person's needs and mental capacity are crucial to ensure the right pathway is taken through the criminal justice system. Whether this be supporting the person to undertake their Order and delivery of an appropriate and understandable intervention or diversion away from the criminal justice system into services. Information sharing and working together are key factors to success.
Originality/value
This paper seeks to highlight the difficulties and dilemmas facing staff working within the criminal justice system in relation to the identification and support needs of people with learning difficulties. Learning disability nurses and those professionals working within learning disability services have a significant part to play in this area of work and can help to ensure that people with learning disabilities do not face double jeopardy and injustice.
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The vigilante subgenre represents one of the more problematic trends in American action cinema, as it inherently boasts reactionary sentiments through the promotion of violence as…
Abstract
The vigilante subgenre represents one of the more problematic trends in American action cinema, as it inherently boasts reactionary sentiments through the promotion of violence as an adequate means of asserting one's masculinity. As will be argued in this chapter, American vigilante films can be categorised into three distinct historical waves: the 1970s, the 2000s and the 2010s. The products of each wave present themes of masculinity relevant to their respective cultural period, specifically, anti-counterculture sentiments, post-9/11 anxieties and a growing cultural awareness of toxic masculinity. The third wave of vigilante films is particularly noteworthy in that it correlates with the prospective emergence of metamodernism, a cultural movement that, in contrast to postmodernism's use of apathy as response to trauma, opts for a cautiously optimistic return to metanarratives. Consequently, third wave vigilante films provide more deconstructive portrayals of vigilante figures through metamodernism's oscillation between irony and optimism. This chapter will outline the history of these three waves of vigilante cinema and provide textual analysis of Blue Ruin (2013) and You Were Never Really Here (2017), two third wave films that demonstrate self-reflexive portrayals of vigilante violence in correlation with metamodern masculinity. The results of these analyses indicate that vigilante films, and perhaps American action cinema in its entirety, are moving towards narratives that seek to challenge the more reactionary sentiments of films from years prior.
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Although research on reproductive technologies such as IVF and egg freezing has traditionally been rather separated from the work on contraceptives and abortion, analysing…
Abstract
Although research on reproductive technologies such as IVF and egg freezing has traditionally been rather separated from the work on contraceptives and abortion, analysing reproductive and nonreproductive technologies together, as this volume proposes, can provide the basis for a broader contemporary politics of reproductive control. This chapter analyses this politics of integrating reproductive and nonreproductive technologies by focusing specifically on IVF-based fertility (preservation) treatments and (medical) abortion. More specifically, it explores both technologies' interrelated research trajectories and the financial and platformised dimensions of their clinical implementation. With a dual focus on egg freezing and medical abortion, this project seeks to explore how processes of platformisation and financialisation shape the clinical and commercial infrastructures that govern twenty-first-century reproduction. The chapter's broadened analytic scope that incorporates both reproductive and nonreproductive technologies highlights how a contemporary biopolitics of reproductive control may be expressed through these technologies' interrelated regulatory practices, shared politicised reference points (e.g. the embryo), opposite investment practices and mutually reinforcing social effects.
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This chapter examines how lawmakers had to grapple with whether and how to regulate medically assisted reproduction after the 1988 Baby M court case in the United States propelled…
Abstract
This chapter examines how lawmakers had to grapple with whether and how to regulate medically assisted reproduction after the 1988 Baby M court case in the United States propelled surrogate motherhood and related reproductive technologies onto the public policy stage. The chapter compares the public policy approaches of two countries, France and Germany, with the regulatory structures in the United States where the Baby M court case that garnered international attention took place. Specifically, the chapter provides an in-depth examination of the legal and historical contexts of each country's policy approaches in the form of existing national marriage, family, and adoption laws as well as policies regulating human reproduction. Lawmakers' task became even more pressing once citizens began using the court system and traveled abroad to either gain access to proscribed technologies or use them for a lesser fee elsewhere. As a result, Germany developed one of the most restrictive national laws in the world while France established certain legal proscriptions, which are still more far-reaching than the regulatory structures in the United States. Along the way, this developing policy area contributed to the creation of international frameworks governing medically assisted reproduction and the development of national bioethics advisory councils.
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Amy Lynch, Hayley Alderson, Gary Kerridge, Rebecca Johnson, Ruth McGovern, Fiona Newlands, Deborah Smart, Carrie Harrop and Graeme Currie
Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding…
Abstract
Purpose
Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding has been directed towards organisations to pilot innovations to support transition, with accompanying evaluations often conducted with a single disciplinary focus, in a context of short timescales and small budgets. Recognising the value and weight of the challenge involved in evaluation of innovations that aim to support the transitions of young people leaving care, this paper aims to provide a review of evaluation approaches and suggestions regarding how these might be developed.
Design/methodology/approach
As part of a wider research programme to improve understanding of the innovation process for young people leaving care, the authors conducted a scoping review of grey literature (publications which are not peer reviewed) focusing on evaluation of innovations in the UK over the past 10 years. The authors critiqued the evaluation approaches in each of the 22 reports they identified with an inter-disciplinary perspective, representing social care, public health and organisation science.
Findings
The authors identified challenges and opportunities for the development of evaluation approaches in three areas. Firstly, informed by social care, the authors suggest increased priority should be granted to participatory approaches to evaluation, within which involvement of young people leaving care should be central. Secondly, drawing on public health, there is potential for developing a common outcomes’ framework, including methods of data collection, analysis and reporting, which aid comparative analysis. Thirdly, application of theoretical frameworks from organisation science regarding the process of innovation can drive transferable lessons from local innovations to aid its spread.
Originality/value
By adopting the unique perspective of their multiple positions, the authors’ goal is to contribute to the development of evaluation approaches. Further, the authors hope to help identify innovations that work, enhance their spread, leverage resources and influence policy to support care leavers in their transitions to adulthood.
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Joel Gehman, Michael Lounsbury and Royston Greenwood
This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. The papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional…
Abstract
This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. The papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional approach enables, as well as how such research has the potential to influence policies relevant to critical institutional changes unfolding in the world today. In Volume 48A, the focus is on the micro foundations of institutional impacts. In Volume 48B, the focus is on the macro consequences of institutional arrangements. Our introduction provides an overview to the two volumes, identifies points of contact between the papers, and briefly summarizes each contribution. We close by noting avenues for future research on how institutions matter. Overall, the volumes provide a cross-section of cutting edge institutional thought and empirical research, highlighting a variety of fruitful directions for knowledge accumulation and development.
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Thomas J. Roulet, Lionel Paolella, Claudia Gabbioneta and Daniel Muzio
The authors investigate an institutional change as the co-occurrence of deinstitutionalization and institutionalization, while accounting for its determinants at multiple levels…
Abstract
The authors investigate an institutional change as the co-occurrence of deinstitutionalization and institutionalization, while accounting for its determinants at multiple levels of analysis to further our understanding of how individual characteristics aggregated at the organizational level and organizational characteristics together account for the erosion and emergence of practices within the field. The authors empirically explore this question in a multilevel dataset of UK law firms and their employees, looking in particular at how the practice of equity partnership faded away and how non-equity partnership emerged as a new practice. The results contribute to the literature on institutional change and the microfoundation of institutions.
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A recent study reported Black women are frequently labeled unprofessional due to hair presentation, 1.5 times more likely to be sent home citing “unprofessional hair,” and 80…
Abstract
A recent study reported Black women are frequently labeled unprofessional due to hair presentation, 1.5 times more likely to be sent home citing “unprofessional hair,” and 80% likely to alter their natural hair texture (Dove, 2019) through chemicals or heat to fit into organizational norms. Meanwhile, conversations about hair discrimination and bias remain whispers in The Ivory Tower. Despite this study, contemporary research regarding higher education and the politics of Black women, Black hair, and hair texture is sparse. The lack of representation in higher education organizations and lack of literature suggest that Black, higher education professional women are at risk of experiencing chilly work environments that could impact belonging, career trajectory, and earning potential. Some individuals outside the African Diaspora may consider the notion of a physical characteristic, like hair, to be insignificant, let alone a salient identity for Black women. However, my experience as a higher education practitioner and scholar states differently. I assert higher education institutions continue to perpetuate and reproduce oppressive dynamics that specifically target Black women and Black hair when hair discrimination and bias are left out of the conversation to address diversity and inclusion concerns. This chapter introduces a historical context of Black hair discrimination; explores my lived experiences navigating Black hair, hair texture, and professionalism in higher education; outlines challenges for higher education institutions and prioritizes Black women alongside diversity and inclusion efforts.