Ah, Independence Day — July 4th. A good day to celebrate, enjoy some family time, and have an outdoor barbeque. Or try to, if only the darned kids would get off their Nintendos and cell phones!

It’s a day for family and friends, for celebrating our independence from another country who tried to dominate our lives through intrusive government and taxation without proper representation. But with each passing year, it sometimes feels like the lessons of past centuries are being lost. Our government increasingly seeks to intrude in our private lives in the name of “security,” forgetting that our nation is founded on the grounds of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” Taxes rise every year and while I’m sure we’re better off than our colonial counterparts, most individual Americans feel the rising burdens of government more than government itself feels them.

Of course government cannot “feel” anything (since it’s a faceless, ever-growing bureaucracy). But we the people do.

Families today face many more challenges than problems with government, though, or rising taxes. The face of the family is changing, as it has changed with the advance of every new technology in the past. People who haven’t studied history think all of this change is new and exciting. And while it is exciting, it is nothing new.

There are dozens of milestones in recent history where technology has played a major role in shifting the course of society. Technology used in the Revolutionary War, such as the printing press, faster warships, and more reliable muskets, helped alter the face of society forever across the world. It spun the idea of democracy and freedom from aristocracy, which spread across Europe. Steam-powered sawmills in the 18th century sped the ability to build new structures across our fledgling country, helping to fuel the creation of towns in the westward expansion to the Pacific.

With the industrial age brought all sorts of significant changes to the family. The mass production and affordability of mainstream goods, including the automobile, led to a burgeoning middle class and greater mobility for families. America was moving from a rural, land-based society to an industrialized, urban society. The radio brought entertainment from around the country right into our homes, and families would crowd around the radio every night to listen to their favorite shows.

The World Wars helped us refine the art and technology of killing one another. With tens of millions dead and hundreds of towns and cities burned to the ground, nothing has probably been as society- and family-changing as the combination of these two wars.

So while computers and the Internet and video games and text messaging can be annoying and seem to be dividing some families, know that the burden you face today is nothing equivalent to the burden faced by millions of parents that came before you. By those who risked everything to settle in the New West. By those who sent their sons off to fight for our independence over 200 years ago. By those who lost an arm in an industrial accident, and became homeless because not being able to work meant no pay, and no pay meant no food or home. By those who suffered through the Great Depression on nothing more than a piece of bread a day and some water. By those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the one of the Great Wars.

I’m not going to minimize the impact of technology on today’s families. But I do think it should be put into some kind of perspective. Because while it may seem like a ‘big deal’ that your teen would rather text her friends than talk to you, in the grand scheme of our country’s history, it’s a pretty small thing (and one fairly easily dealt with by setting limits and some discipline).

Happy Independence Day, from everyone here at Psych Central, we hope you have an enjoyable holiday!

In 1941, brain specialist Russell Brain published an article about the brain in the brain science journal Brain. Owing to Brain's extensive work on the brain, he later became editor of Brain. His work treating brain disorders and his editorship of Brain were some of the reasons he was made Baron Brain, in 1962.

Last year, Brain published a tribute to Brain's brain article in Brain, owing to its massive impact on our understanding of the brain.

It was written by Alastair Compston.

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Scientific American looks at the neuroscience of dance, and includes one of my favourite studies on ballet dancers and capoeira artists.

War on Drugs bulletin: a World Health Organisation study finds the USA leads the world, by quite a wide margin, in per capita consumption of illegal drugs. Globally, there seems no relation between drug consumption and legal restriction. $500 billion well spent then.

Sharp Brains rounds up some of their recent brain enhancement articles by the SB team and guest scientists.

Separated at birth: celebrity psychologists Linda Papadopoulos and Robi Ludwig. That's just spooky isn't it?

A 2005 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis reports on a man with phantom limb who finds it involuntarily responds to hypnotic suggestions.

The Neurocritic finds the 'watermelon works like viagra' nonsense is, well, nonsense.

The NYT Freakanomics blog has a fascinating piece on why people lie on social welfare applications, in the opposite direction than you'd think.

From deceiving others to a great piece on self-deception, in the International Herald Tribune.

Mixing Memory is doing an excellent in-depth review of Lakoff's new book 'The Political Mind'. Just check the blog and look for the past pieces and forthcoming updates.

Cypress Hill vindicated! Cognitive Daily reports on a study finding that high-pitched voices are generally rated as more attractive.

The BPS Research Digest tracks down a fascinating book on the history and philosophy of jokes.

Enhancing your cognitive ability with electricity makes a comeback. Technology Review looks at transcranial direct current stimulation.

Developing Intelligence has another fascinating piece - this time on how the cognitive benefits of meditation are likely to be available to everyone.

The excellent Advances in the History of Psychology finds a interesting paper on an seemingly apocryphal 1868 dust-up between Paul Broca and John Hughlings Jackson.

News out today has drawn attention to reported high levels of women and children trafficked into prostitution in the UK.

Trafficking is always an emotive issue, as to question any aspect of it means you are automatically branded as someone who denies any abuse within the sex industry, or who does not care about anyone harmed within prostitution. Tragic stories from ex sex workers, along with celebrity endorsement of well-publicised anti trafficking campaigns can often hide the fact that the data supporting the prevalence of trafficking is not always clear, and the agendas driving the anti trafficking campaigns may not always be agreed upon as beneficial to sex workers.

Unfortunately it is rare that the media ever questions stories about trafficking. Why would the press do so? It allows for salacious reporting, public revulsion, blaming of foreigners and shady gangland activity. No point in questioning anything that gives you such dramatic story angles.

Which is why it’s depressing but not surprising that with today’s excited headlines about thousands of trafficked children and women, no journalist appeared to ask questions that might have shown a different story.

It isn’t difficult; all you need to do is look at the data presented in the story and ask yourself if it makes any sense.

Media reports state between 6000-18000 trafficked girls and women are forced to work as prostitutes in the UK. Operation Pentameter Two – a six month nationwide police campaign against trafficking gangs resulted in 528 arrests of suspected traffickers and 167 victims of trafficking identified (154 women and 13 children - some as young as 13). Data suggests 822 premises were visited during the operationwhich led to 24 convictions.

Now it’s not clear whether it’s 6000, 18000 or an average of the two. It is not clear whether this is a six month figure (meaning that annually 12000-36000 women and girls are trafficked), or whether it spans some other time period. We have no idea whether it means there are anywhere between 6000-18000 victims of trafficking in the UK at any one time, or whether this is a figure that has increased or decreased.

It’s also confusing because at the close of 2007 politicians claimed there were 25000 sex slaves in the UK. So does this mean there has been a reduction of (a minimum of 7000) victims of trafficking?

The data is also sketchy around the total number of sex workers identified within this operation. Did all 167 victims identified come from the 822 brothels and homes visited or were there some homes/brothels where there was more than one victim, or did victims work in more than one location? Who else was working in the other 822 premises? What were their stories/experiences – were they charged or questioned?

How does the headline of 6000 to 18000 women and children trafficked into the UK for the sex trade translate into only 167 victims identified? It either means there are fewer women and children trafficked, or that around 5833 to 17833 victims remain unaccounted for.

The records indicated that 528 suspected traffickers were identified and 167 victims. Which means there is a huge disparity between victims and traffickers – roughly three traffickers per victim. This figure surely does no justice to those women and children, who are genuine victims as it must make us wonder if trafficking is such a lucrative trade with so many active traffickers, based on this data why aren’t there more victims? Did the operation simply not uncover them?

Of the traffickers arrested it seems only 4% were convicted – which means either there weren’t that many people involved in trafficking as first seems, or the prosecution of this operation was way off beam.

Perhaps the answer is simple. In any legal case there will always be more arrests made than prosecutions. Sometimes this is because people are innocent and will be let go, sometimes it’s because there’s not enough evidence to convict them. We have no idea with this data whether the low conviction rate is down to most people arrested being innocent, or a lack of evidence to prosecute all 528 suspects. It would also be helpful to have some comparison with an average legal case, since it’s not obvious whether the 24 convictions following 528 arrests equals a better than average prosecution rate or not.

Most of the headlines have focused on two key pieces of data. That 6000-18000 women and children are working in UK brothels, and that many are as young as 13 years old. This gives the impression that many of the victims of trafficking are children, whereas this data indicates that it’s around 8% of victims identified who were children. Now that’s clearly 8% too many children being abused, but press coverage has suggested that child trafficking is the norm, not the exception.

We are told that 24 of the 528 traffickers were charged, but we are told nothing about the fate of the women and children concerned in this case, apart from them being ‘freed’. But set free how? 85% of the women and children identified within this case were from outside the UK. So were they allowed to remain in the UK? Were they given leave to remain along with psychological support and access to healthcare services? Were they imprisoned here before being repatriated? Or were they deported?

What happened to the 167 women and children? Are they okay? Why did nobody check?

Critics of the current focus on trafficking argue that it is really a means of immigration control. Although the focus appears to be on the wellbeing of victims, their fate may well be being deported or imprisoned.

There are also concerns this approach is part of the current government’s problematic approach to prostitution, which is often to accept misleading or unintelligible data while ignoring the evidence base on this area and favouring passionate rhetorical campaigns that allows them to push for legal changes around sex laws that may end up harming, not helping, prostitutes.

So what was the story here? Was it really that thousands of women and children are being abused? Looking at the data it seems that while it’s suspected many women are trafficked, the numbers identified are very small in reality. Suspected traffickers outweigh suspected victims, and less than 5% of arrested traffickers are convicted. Nobody has been told what happened to the women and children identified through Operation Pentameter Two.

The data simply doesn’t match the headlines. It’s all very well the media making out they are concerned about victims of trafficking, but you can tell nobody really cares about the wellbeing of prostitutes because nobody asked questions about this data. If they had done they may have realised the scourge of trafficking we’re constantly being warned against is not as dramatic as we may think – but tragically there are still missing victims here.

Have you ever seen Singin' in the Rain? One of the movie's most hilarious moments is when the beautiful silent movie star Lina Lamont is asked to start making "talking pictures." As soon as this gorgeous screen siren opens her mouth, the illusion of her beauty is shattered: her squeaky voice instantly transforms her from a glamorous leading lady into a cartoonish boor. Threatened with losing their box-office cash-cow, the studio chiefs frantically enroll her in voice and etiquette lessons, but nothing helps, and eventually they're forced to substitute the voice of the attractive and lovely-voiced Kathy Selden.

But what makes one voice attractive and another unattractive -- and how much effect does a voice have on our overall perception of attractiveness? Recent research has found that women with attractive faces also tend to have attractive voices (which may explain why Lamont's hideous voice in Singin' in the Rain is so surprising).

In general we perceive higher voices as more feminine. Faces with exaggerated feminine features are also perceived as more attractive. Can we say the same about feminine voices?

A group of researchers led by David Feinberg recorded the voices of 123 young women as they pronounced five vowel sounds: ah, ee, eh, oh, and oo. Then ten male volunteers rated each voice for attractiveness. Here are the results:

Apparently after you’ve made it as a tenured professor at Harvard University, your first job is to secure some more funding for your research (despite Harvard being the richest school in the world). And what better way to do this than to ask for a little industry support?

Critics have typically focused on the potential for a conflict of interest when researchers are funded by the pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they study. But there are many deep pockets in the world, and gambling companies have some of the deepest.

Just ask Howard Shaffer, a world-renown researcher on compulsive gambling and a Harvard professor. Bloomberg pointed out yesterday how he has received over $9 million in industry money since 1996, in support of his research initiatives into gambling and gambling problems.

Shaffer’s research, however, is extensive in this field and his reputation is impeccable. The primary difference seems to be that the media (in this case, Bloomberg specifically) is on a bit of a witch hunt now, looking for anyone who gets industry money and does research on that same industry (regardless of whether there has been any failure to disclose the support).

To be clear, Shaffer is not under any type of investigation for failure to disclose financial support from the industry, a point not clearly made until you’re nine paragraphs into the article:

Shaffer’s research complies with Harvard’s guidelines for receiving funding from industry, David Cameron, a spokesman for Harvard Medical School, said in an emailed statement June 25.

Shaffer, 59, said his funding sources are fully disclosed, his findings are published in peer-reviewed journals and casino companies haven’t interfered with his research.

Far before this point is made, the Bloomberg author trots out guilt by association, bringing up the other three Harvard-associated researchers who actually did something wrong — they failed to disclose industry-received money.

That’s the point. It is perfectly legal and acceptable to receive such money and has been for decades, as long as it is fully disclosed to all — the university, the journals, and the public.

Now, whether it’s right or not is entirely another question (one the article skirts around and never really frames properly). Whether one’s research actually does become biased, despite one’s best efforts to keep it fair and balanced, is a good question for a study or two.

Common wisdom suggests that funding sources will eventually exert an influence — even a subtle influence — especially when one’s livelihood is dependent upon it. Alternatively, a researcher’s reputation is virtually priceless and few researchers would put theirs at stake even to receive virtually unlimited research funding.

That’s why good studies need to be replicated by other researchers. If a bias existed, it should come out in other studies that don’t find the same results or come to the same conclusions. So eventually, time will tell.

Read the full article: Harvard Proves Gaming’s Best Friend With Casino-Funded Research

Johns Hopkins University researchers have released two follow-up papers to their fascinating 2006 study in Psychopharmacology, in which 36 healthy volunteers were given psilocybin (also known as “magic” or “sacred” mushrooms) under controlled laboratory conditions.

Subjects in the original study were screened to rule out any predisposition toward psychosis or other serious mental illnesses, which can be exacerbated by hallucinogenic drug experiences. The rigorous process involved two different 8-hour laboratory visits, during which subjects received psilocybin on one occasion and a placebo (Ritalin) on the other. The study was double-blind, meaning neither the participants nor their highly trained “monitors”, who were present for safety reasons during the trials, knew who was getting what. These precautions ensured that nobody entered the psilocybin experience with any prior expectations.

For the first follow-up paper, researchers checked back in with subjects fourteen months after their hallucinogenic experiences:

[Lead investigator Dr. Roland] Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study — along with a specially designed set of follow up questions — to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about [two thirds] of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

“This is a truly remarkable finding,” Griffiths says. “Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We’re eager to move ahead with that research.”

This is all well and good, but I’m sure many of you are wondering about safety. Enter the researchers’ second paper, also published recently in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, which discusses “best practices” for safety, standardization, and “providing psychological support during and after the hallucinogen experience”:

“With appropriately screened and prepared individuals, under supportive conditions and with adequate supervision, hallucinogens can be given with a level of safety that compares favorably with many human research and medical procedures,” says that paper’s lead author, Mathew W. Johnson, Ph.D., a psychopharmacologist and instructor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

That’s “under supportive conditions” and “with adequate supervision”, mind you. Consuming mushrooms at home without proper supervision has more potential for harm than good; even under the controlled conditions of the Johns Hopkins study, for example, some volunteers reported short-term fear or anxiety following their psilocybin experiences, and they had mental health professionals and trained monitors around to help them. Psilocybin mushrooms are also illegal in every U.S. state except Florida unless you have a special DEA license.

However, this research certainly opens up some exciting possibilities concerning the therapeutic use of psilocybin and other hallucinogenic compounds.

With the question of how to pay for good psychotherapy (nevermind how to find or get “good” psychotherapy in the first place) not far from many people’s minds, researchers are spending more time looking at alternatives to traditional but expensive face-to-face psychotherapy. While some therapists are exploring alternative realities, researchers are still focused on far more accessible, some might even say “mundane,” approaches.

CBT4CBT is one such approach. It stands for computer-based training (CBT) for cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) (get it?). It basically teaches the components of cognitive behavioral therapy sans therapist using an approach “based on elementary-level computer learning games, and the presentation of material was done in a range of formats, including graphic illustrations, videotaped examples, verbal instructions, audio voiceovers, interactive assessments, and practice exercises.” In other words, the researchers tried to make it engaging and interactive, and not too dry — a failing of previous attempts to make CBT interesting via computer.

In this particular study, the researchers wanted to assess its effectiveness in the treatment of cocaine addiction. So it consisted of six lessons, or modules, using content based closely on a CBT manual published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The researchers wanted to use this manual (which anyone can read, download and use on their own) because it had been used in several previous randomized, controlled trials in a range of substance-using populations. This makes the results more comparable across studies.

According to the researchers, the modules covered the following core concepts: 1) understanding and changing patterns of substance use, 2) coping with craving, 3) refusing offers of drugs and alcohol, 4) problem-solving skills, 5) identifying and changing thoughts about drugs and alcohol, and 6) improving decision-making skills.

Although the treatment numbers were relatively small (N = 48, 22 in CBT4CBT, the rest in treatment as usual group), the researchers did find the people who took the computer-based training program produced half as many positive urine specimens at follow-up. They did not find a significant difference between periods of abstinence between the two groups (although there was a slightly longer period for those who were in the CBT4CBT group).

There’s still a ways to go. Subjects in the CBT4CBT group on average completed only 4 of the 6 sessions, and session length averaged 38 minutes (compared to the expected length of 45 minutes, suggesting either the initial estimate was off or some patients “rushed through” the exercise). Treatment attrition rates with substance abuse users is usually fairly high, so some of this can be accounted for because of the population being treated.

The good news is that as these CBT programs become more interactive and engaging, as this one was, the costs of delivering treatment to individuals can approach zero. Zero? Yes, zero. The costs of offering these programs can be defrayed through sites like Psych Central and other organizations offering the programs for free (and picking up the tab of the costs themselves). We will gladly offer such programs here once they become more widely available online.

Will these programs replace face-to-face psychotherapy any time soon? No, of course not. They are just one more modality of possible help that people can use, just as as there are dozens of other modalities, such as self-help books, support groups, e-therapy, and more.

And with more and more of these modalities becoming available, we hope the cost of treatment decreases, opening it up to more and more people.

Read the editorial on the study: A Promising Debut for Computerized Therapies
Read the study itself (click on the “Full Text” link on the article page): Computer-assisted delivery of cognitive-behaviorial therapy for addiction: a randomized trial of CBT4CBT

Reference

Carroll, K.M. et al. (2008). Computer-Assisted Delivery of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Addiction: A Randomized Trial of CBT4CBT. Am J Psychiatry, 165, 881-888.

It’s common wisdom that pets help confer certain physical and emotional health benefits to their owners. An advice column from The Times last month, in fact, suggested that the health benefits of pet ownership are global and generalized — that owning a pet has a positive correlation with wellbeing in most people. The research tells a different story, however — pet ownership can cause problems or be a burden for some.

Allen (2003) conducted a valuable review of the literature to-date about the benefits of pet ownership and concluded:

Several epidemiological and experimental studies have demonstrated that having a pet cat or dog can have significant cardiovascular benefits. Although the idea that a pet serves as social support may appear peculiar to some people, pet owners talk to and confide in their pets and describe them as important friends. […]

An important consideration, however, is that media reports of the ability of pets to lower blood pressure are often highly inflated and misrepresent actual research.

Pets can be a healthy pleasure and provide social support to their owners. But the effects and benefits are not global in nature, nor do they apply to all people all the time. Pets appear to have a social facilitation effect on their owners, helping their owners perform tasks better and with less stress. They also appear to have a stress buffering effect — when a person is in need of unrestricted positive regard, pets provide such to their owners.

But not everyone benefits from pet ownership.

For instance, in one study of 2,551 individuals aged 60 to 64 years old, the researchers found that those who had a pet in their home reported more depressive symptoms (Parslow et al., 2005). The study also found that female pet owners who were married also had poorer physical health. The researchers discovered that caring for a pet was associated with negative health outcomes including more symptoms of depression, poorer physical health and higher rates of use of pain relief medication. This study suggested that pet ownership amongst many older people is more of a burden than a benefit.

What about for younger folks? In a 2006 survey of 2,291 adults in the U.S., researchers found that unmarried women who live with a pet have the fewest depressive symptoms, and unmarried men who live with a pet have the most (Tower et al., 2006). The researchers concluded, “single women benefit from pet companionship, whereas single men may be burdened by it.”

A dissertation published in 2004 by Amanda Smith examined 38 married couples, half of which who owned dogs and half who did not. She found no significant differences between the two groups on marital communication, stress levels, constructive communications, marital satisfaction, or consideration of divorce. In other words, the dog didn’t help (or hurt) the marriage.

If you’re considering a pet for help with your health or stress levels, keep in mind that pets are a responsibility (just like a child), not toys or “playthings.” You must take care of them, have them spayed or neutered, and ensure they are healthy with regular veterinarian visits at least once every other year (if not every year). And for many people, pets become important, actual members of their family, with all that entails.

Read the full article: Can a pet ease depression?

References

Allen, K. (2003). Are Pets a Healthy Pleasure? The Influence of Pets on Blood Pressure (PDF). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(6), 236-239.

Parslow, R.A., Jorm, A.F., & Christensen, H. (2005). Pet Ownership and Health in Older Adults: Findings from a Survey of 2,551 Community-Based Australians Aged 60-64. Gerontology, 51(1), 40-47.

Smith, A.D. (2004). Marital functioning and dog ownership: An exploratory study. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 65(1-B), 453.

Tower, R.B. & Nokota, M. (2006). Pet companionship and depression: Results from a United States Internet sample. Anthrozoös, 19(1), 50-64.

In a study published in the medical journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery recently (and profiled in this May 28 New York Times article), Yale University researchers examined how features of the eye and eyebrow affect our facial expressions and, in turn, how other people use this information to guess our mood at the time.

Study participants were shown 16 digitally altered versions of the same face (check them out here), each with different eyebrow placement, lid shape, and level of wrinkling. For each photograph, they were asked to rank on a scale of one to five the presence of tiredness, happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust and fear.

The results might surprise you:

“…many of the pictures that mimicked various plastic surgery procedures, such as eyelid surgery or brow lifts, actually generated worse scores, with study participants rating those faces as looking angry or tired.

For instance, drooping of the upper eyelid was the biggest indicator of tiredness, but a picture that simulated a type of eyelid surgery — involving the removal of excess skin from the upper eyelid — made the woman look even more tired and sad, the study participants reported. Raising the upper eyelids produced an increase in the perception of surprise and fear.

“A significant number of plastic surgery patients opt for eyelid surgery, forehead lifts and face-lifts not only for rejuvenative reasons, but to change an unattractive facial expression as well,” said Dr. John A. Persing, one of the study authors. “Our findings indicate that moderation is best when removing excess skin in the upper eyelid. You do not want to create an overdone look that actually makes you look more tired.”

It’s about time researchers conducted a study like this, and I’m impressed with the ethics at play here: plastic surgeons telling people to scale back on plastic surgery? Yet another good reason to save your money and avoid going under the knife, if you ask me.

If the extra money in your pocket isn’t enough to make you smile, though, remember – photographs with crow’s feet added around the eyes were ranked as particularly happy. So swallow any self-consciousness and smile wide!

The below hospital surveillance video shows a dying woman while people around her, including a hospital security guard, did nothing to help. Apparently hospitals aren’t good places for people with mental illness to be (click here to read the full entry and view the video):

After a full hour, another patient alerted hospital staff of the woman dead on the floor. But it gets better:

Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment provided Esmin Green before she died.

And while I’d like to say this is a rare, unfortunate accident, indifference among staffers at hospitals toward people with mental illness is actually fairly common.

This is not the first time this hospital has had troubles, either:

A federal suit filed last year in Brooklyn alleged neglect and abuse of mental patients at the hospital. The suit sparked an investigation by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s civil rights unit before the June 19 death.

Why their psych ward is even allowed to remain open is beyond me. And while 6 staffers have been fired, including 2 security guards who saw the woman and did nothing, it still leaves a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth who watches this tape. The loss of a job just doesn’t seem sufficient punishment for the death of a person with mental illness — in a hospital.

Read the full story: Hospital video shows no one helped dying woman

I don’t mean to be insensitive to the potential for destructive nature of a gun in the home, but there was a spate of news articles yesterday regurgitating a statistic which is neither new nor news — that more than half of firearm deaths in the U.S. are suicides. From the Associated Press:

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

This isn’t news, however, as for the past 25 years, 80% of the time suicide has outranked homicides and accidents as the number one handgun killer.

Why do so many people turn to a handgun when they want to end their lives?

Perhaps it’s because nothing else in this world is quite like a handgun. A handgun’s only purpose is to kill or hurt someone. So it has an allure to many people to use it for its purpose. (A knife or rope or drugs, while all potential tools of suicide, also serve many other ordinary purposes, such as cutting up celery, tying down some luggage on the car rack, and treating a headache.) Also, in the throes of depression and suicidal thinking, the easiest, most lethal option may seem like a good choice.

But research notwithstanding, the right to bear arms is guaranteed by our Constitution, which the Supreme Court upheld as a fundamental right in this country last Thursday. Whatever public health concerns public health officials might have with firearms have to be weighed and balanced against that right. (And to be clear, this right wasn’t some reactionary amendment tacked on a few decades ago. It is a core element of our history for fear of being ruled once again by a repressive government.)

Researchers argue that if less lethal means are available, then less people’s suicide attempts will end in death. You can’t argue with that reasoning.

But to make this argument on the heels of the Supreme Court decisions seems to suggest that D.C.’s ban on private ownership of handguns was to stem the tide of suicides committed by handguns. However, that was not the case for the D.C. ban in the first place — it was to curb that city’s out-of-control murder rate (earning it the nickname of “the murder capital of the U.S.”). While suicide is a tragic component of handgun ownership, this news story is simply riding the coattails of the Supreme Court decision apparently in order to increase public awareness of this 25-year concern.

I think that’s okay (sometimes you need to find a “hook” to grab people’s attention), but I also think it’s stretching the point of “news” to package this as something new or different.

One of the most important components of the article was buried at the end:

The CDC traditionally was a primary funder of research on guns and gun-related injuries, allocating more than $2.1 million a year to such projects in the mid-1990s.

But the agency cut back research on the subject after Congress in 1996 ordered that none of the CDC’s appropriations be used to promote gun control.
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Vernick said the Supreme Court decision underscores the need for further study into what will happen to suicide and homicide rates in the district when the handgun ban is lifted.

Today, the CDC budgets less than $900,000 for firearm-related projects, and most of it is spent to track statistics. The agency no longer funds gun-related policy analysis.

This is the real outrage — that politics are used to drive a public health agency’s agenda. Research-driven prevention agencies like the CDC really should not be directed by the whims of ever-changing politics. They, and agencies like the NIH, should be shielded from any direct (or indirect) politics directing what studies they should or shouldn’t pursue. That’s scientists’ jobs, not politicans’.

Read the full article: More than half firearm deaths are suicides

In a newly published report on “Global Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use” from the World Health Organization’s series of Mental Health Surveys, Americans’ levels of cocaine and marijuana use were highest among the 17 countries on six different continents surveyed. Researchers found that 16.2% of U.S. survey respondents had at least tried cocaine in their lifetime; New Zealanders were next at 4.3%. Kiwis caught up with their American counterparts in cannabis use, however: in both countries, 42% of the population sample had tried marijuana.

According to the report, global drug use “is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.” For example, in the Netherlands, a country whose drug policies are quite liberal compared to those in the U.S., only 19.8% of people reported cannabis use and a mere 1.9% had tried cocaine.

Researchers did find sex differences — males were more likely to have used drugs than females — but the gap appears to be closing.

These results are nothing to sneeze at, considering the hefty sample size of 85,052 people. Still, the 16% rate of cocaine use sounds awfully high to me, although the latest (2006) results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health name a rate of 14.3% for lifetime use across all ages.

All this makes me wonder: what might contribute to such high rates of drug use in the U.S., if drug policies are not necessarily a factor? Is it a question of “forbidden fruit”, perhaps, where overly stringent drug policies somehow make drugs more attractive?

What do you think?

For more information: The Of Two Minds blog has a good post up summarizing the main findings, as does eurekalert.org; read the entire study here.

In this blog post a few days ago, John mentioned an April 2008 literature review by researchers at Boston University who wanted to explore the efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in treating anxiety. The authors of the review concluded that CBT, a short-term treatment technique, is generally effective for anxiety orders.

In a related article from the June 2008 BUforward Alumni e-newsletter, a study taking place at the University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders is discussed in more detail. Associate Professor of Psychology Donna Pincus is currently conducting a five-year, NIMH-funded study looking at the effectiveness of intensive, short-term CBT on adolescent patients with severe anxiety problems such as agoraphobia and panic disorder.

Patients don’t get any medication during the therapy; “interoceptive exposure” (placing people in the same situations that cause them to panic) is more than enough. Pincus explains:

“In order to overcome anxiety, adolescents have to actually experience the physical sensations that are caused by panic… The first time it’s scary — terrifying, even. But by the second or third time, habituation occurs. By allowing patients to experience sensations of panic in a controlled setting, they learn that it takes only a few minutes for those sensations to dissipate, because our bodies like to stay at homeostasis… And once a patient stops responding to the sensations with fear, the sensations go away.”

Sixteen-year-old study participant Lindsey Lanouette suffered from panic attacks and anxiety before participating in Pincus’ cutting-edge program:

“…Lindsay…appeared to have it all. Tall and lithe, with long blonde hair and striking blue eyes, she had lots of friends, got along well with her parents and sister, earned good grades, and played varsity soccer.

But sometimes, while wandering the aisles of a shopping mall or eating in a dimly lit restaurant, things would start to go wrong. She’d become dizzy, her heart would race, and before long, she could barely breathe. “It just felt as if the walls were closing in,” the Falmouth, Massachusetts, teenager recalls, “and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Sometimes I thought I was dying.”

During the eight-day treatment series at Boston University, in order to induce panic attacks in a controlled environment, clinicians had her

“…[Shake] her head from side to side to induce dizziness, [run] in place to make her heart race, [breathe] through a cocktail straw to make her feel light-headed, and [stare] at a bright light to cause disorientation.”

Although a session of interoceptive exposure therapy like Lanouette’s certainly sounds unorthodox, the approach appears to be working so far. Pincus claims “very positive” results in one-year follow-ups with former patients and “significant decreases in both the number of weekly panic attacks they are experiencing and the severity of their panic from pretreatment to post-treatment.” Of course, it’s too early in the game to draw any firm conclusions from Pincus’ work just yet, but it’ll be interesting to see what she comes up with when her five-year research period is done and the statistics have been calculated.

In our discussions of violence associated with video game play, we've frequently noted that there appear to be different effects depending on the type of video game. Some games are more violent than others, and some games reward violence while others discourage it. All this has an impact in terms of real-world behavior and attitudes. Some games have positive effects.

One type of game -- one of the most popular types, in fact -- hasn't been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type of game seemed to find that players weren't more aggressive because the games foster cooperation between players.

But we've also heard -- and seen, with Jim's game-play, that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft can be more engaging and distracting than other games, sucking away hours and hours in seemingly endless online quests. Even if it turns out these games don't promote violent behavior, is it possible that they have other detrimental effects?

Joshua Smyth recruited 100 college students to play one of four randomly-assigned video games free for a month. They played the games on their own time, in a campus "game laboratory" (or in an arcade for the arcade group). The only requirement was that they play the game for at least an hour a week. The arcade group could play any of the games in the arcade; one group played Gauntlet: Dark Legacy on a PlayStation 2; one group played Diablo II on a computer, and the final group played the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. So did the type of game had any impact on how much the games were played? You bet it did -- here are the results:

I took a seat at a large conference table in the university’s counseling center. I looked around nervously. I kept my hands in my lap, fingers (figuratively) crossed, hoping that I wouldn’t recognize a single face that walked through the door and into the Anxiety and Stress Management Class that I’d signed up for. It was a six-week class that I’d discovered via a flier posted on a bulletin board outside of my second home, the university library. As I sat and waited, my heartbeat felt large and uncomfortable. No doubt, I was anxious.

I was a first-semester graduate student at the time, trying to keep up with the 200+ pages I needed to read each week for my classes. It was just too much reading. (I hadn’t yet fully realized the fine art of skimming and scanning.) Theories would blend together and famous philosophers like Hume and Locke would inch their way into my dreams, uninvited. Even during the waking hours, I couldn’t relax. I’d try to zone out by watching a sitcom; instead, I’d find myself thinking about how little I know about designing research studies — and I needed to know for that exam on Monday! — and I’d only end up flustered and feeling unproductive when the credits rolled by. I couldn’t keep my anxiety level in check. Not even through the traditional notion of relaxing — sitting on the couch, remote control in hand, pleasant faces and canned laughter on the screen. Nope. Didn’t work.

I held my breath as a handful of fellow students began filtering into the conference room. “He looks unfamiliar,” I thought, as I eyed up the other anxious twenty-somethings walking through the door. “And that girl looks friendly…maybe. Wait, maybe not.”

I had been nervous enough while walking up the stairs to the Counseling Center, and I’d tried to hide my face in an issue of the school’s weekly newspaper while I was in the Center’s waiting room, eight long minutes early. This was almost too much for my anxiety-ridden self. I never had a problem with social anxiety before — my anxieties have always been a result of workload issues — but I suddenly felt like I’d had a new diagnosis. I just didn’t want anyone else to know that I was having a problem. I was excited for the content of the class, which advertised cognitive and behavioral techniques that promised to get me through my first semester, but not for the company. Sitting in that conference room, I felt stigmatized. It was like I had a banner flying over my head that read “Yes, I do have a problem with anxiety!” There was no going back.

Students continued to walk in. “Oh no, I’ve seen him before. Somewhere in the library, maybe? A student worker at the circulation desk?” I couldn’t remember. My heart felt like it was vibrating.

One of my professors would open each evening class by asking our class where we fell on the 1-to-10 “How ready are you to quit this program?” scale. That week, I was running on a 9.5…only because I was scared to admit the truth and give myself a 10. I had already been dressing my own academic grave and calling around for quotes on health insurance. Meanwhile, my classmates had all reported scores of 5 or below for that week. How could they be keeping their heads so level while I’m slowly cracking up from the pressure? How could they sit and watch television in the evening, or read a book for pleasure, or go for a walk knowing that there was a major amount of work to be done?

The halfway point of the semester was upon us, and the same professor with that brilliant scale idea had described the next seven weeks as a “downhill train ride” with no brakes. Oh, and the train was full of explosives. And there was a baby tied to the tracks ahead. (I’m not kidding; he actually said that!) How could the rest of my cohort sleep at night? Everyone knew that grad school wasn’t a walk in the park, but honestly? Explosive downhill trains to terror & babies tied to the tracks? I didn’t understand how everyone else projected such an A-OK, hunky-dory, we’ll-get-through-this image.

As we read our way through the detailed, insightful articles of The American Prospect’s special issue on the politics of mental health, we’ll share interesting tidbits from them.

Taxpayers historically hate having to pay for public services through increased taxes of any kind. Many of us believe we are taxed enough as it is, and so finding funding for things that should be available in most states — like affordable mental health care — can be challenging. In the Pete Earley article about this topic, he reviews some creative strategies for funding mental health treatment these days, and recounts this amusing story of how difficult funding for public health concerns can be:

Historically, mental-health funding has been a low political priority. In Wyatt v. Stickney, the country’s first major civil-rights battle about mental illness, attorneys sued Alabama and introduced horrific evidence that showed how patients in state asylums in the 1970s were being abused, neglected, and, in some cases, tortured. Yet, when a disgusted Alabama judge ordered the state legislature to overhaul its shameful system by pumping in millions of new tax dollars for improvements, legislators balked. They cried poor. There was no money, they insisted, until an enterprising attorney released state financial records that revealed Alabama was spending more each year to host the Alabama Junior Miss Pageant and swine shows at county fairs than it spent caring for people with mental illnesses. Red-faced legislators approved limited funds. Such legislative priorities proved typical. When choosing between new highways, more police, bigger jails, and improved schools, legislators always pushed mental-health treatment aside.

I mean, we’re talking about our government here and while we may believe this would never happen in this modern age (hey, that was over 30 years ago, right?), I have my doubts that legislatures care much more today than they did 30 years ago. After all, this kind of mental health care — like homelessness — is what other people need, not me, says the average taxpayer. Roads, police, schools — they are things virtually everyone uses.

So one of the creative funding strategies occurred in California, where they successfully passed a proposition that taxed 1% on anyone making over $1 million (what they refer to as the dot.com tax, because the dot.com boom in California produced many millionaires). Why target these rich folks? One of the reasons was because they had no organized lobby that would fight the proposition (while liquor and cigarette makers did). Since the suggestion of raising property taxes is akin to the suggestion of bathing in battery acid these days, they turned to this particular group of taxpayers to help fund mental health treatment. Naturally, it worked:

The proposal appeared on the November 2004 ballot. The publicity before the vote focused on the success of AB2034 programs. There was no opposition from the dot-com millionaires. The only organized opposition came from the Scientologists. Proposition 63 passed with 54 percent of the vote in favor and 46 percent against.

Before the election, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office had estimated that if enacted, Proposition 63 would generate $800 million yearly. But because many incomes in the upper tax brackets increased significantly during 2005, revenues from the millionaires’ tax hit an astonishing $1.3 billion.

Sadly, not every state has an economy that can churn out new millionaires as quickly as California’s does, so one must look to other means or initiatives to help fund this treatment. But the idea is important — look for creative funding sources that others haven’t yet discovered. Because such novel ideas may reap a bigger reward than trying to go through the traditional, tone-deaf legislative channels.

Read the full article: Finding Funding

The June/July issue of the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (Volume 31, Issue 3) is a special issue on psychopathic traits and risk assessment in children and adolescents, edited by Theo Doreleijers and Robert Vermeiren. A range of articles deals with identifying psychopathic traits, prediction of violence and risk assessment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is probably the most well-known and most-practiced form of modern psychotherapy. Even therapists who don’t identify themselves as a CBT therapist likely uses at least a handful of CBT techniques in their practice. And while much of CBT’s popularity is centered around its use for depression and related mood disorders, it’s also useful for many other disorders, including anxiety.

But to-date, there has been no systematic review of the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy in randomized placebo-controlled research trials for anxiety. Until now.

In April, researchers from Boston University conducted an extensive literature review on CBT studies that reviewed the efficacy of CBT versus a placebo for anxiety disorders. Out of an original 1,165 studies identified, they found 27 that met their inclusion criteria.

They found support for the use of CBT in anxiety disorders. Specifically, the severity of anxiety symptoms was decreased for people who took CBT over placebo, and the effect of this decrease was most significant for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and acute stress disorder. The smallest effect size the researchers found was for the use of CBT in panic disorder.

The researchers also noted that while they did find CBT effective for many anxiety disorders, there is considerable room for improvement for future research in this area. CBT is not a cure-all, but when wielded by an experienced therapist, it can provide helpful, beneficial results for most people suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Reference

Hofmann SG & Smits JA. (2008). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for adult anxiety disorders: a meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials. J Clin Psychiatry, 69(4), 621-32.

An article that caught my eye in the latest issue of Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice:

Although there has been intense interest in the application of the construct of psychopathy among juveniles, few studies have investigated psychopathic traits among adolescent females. To redress this, this study examines psychopathic features and tests their utility in predicting violent behavior, theft, and drug abuse in a statewide survey of 94 female juvenile offenders. Results indicate that interpersonal and affective facets of psychopathy, specifically narcissism and carefree nonplanfulness were significantly associated with violence and theft. Psychopathy features were not significantly associated with drug abuse. Study limitations and implications for future research are delineated.

I do like the term “carefree nonplanfulness”. It’s part of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, which “is one of several self-report psychopathy measures available for research purposes” (Long & Titone, 2007, p.124). Carefree nonplanfulness “measures the tendency to live in the moment and ignore the future”. But I do wonder what “careful nonplanfulness” might measure. Or “carefree planfulness”.

You can access the article on psychopathy among female juveniles via this link (subscription required for full text). Other articles in the same issue cover predictors of police contact among Midwestern homeless and runaway youth; implementing effective community-based prevention programs; classification of offenders; and the impact of reentry services on juvenile offenders’ recidivism .

Reference:

• L. Stephen Long and Debra A. Titone (2007). Psychopathy and verbal emotion processing in non-incarcerated males [PDF]. Cognition and Emotion 21(1):119-145
• Michael G. Vaughn, Christina E. Newhill, Matt DeLisi, Kevin M. Beaver and Matthew O. Howard (2008). An Investigation of Psychopathic Features Among Delinquent Girls:Violence, Theft, and Drug Abuse. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 6(3): 240-255

It’s no secret that I have concerns over the ethics of the TV show Big Brother. From the way the programme is set up, to the involvement of psychologists in the series there are major issues about the show.

Concerns include the problem of experts in the programme not always being the psychologists they claim to be. That psychologists who appear on the show are simultaneously advocating a programme that acts in ways that are unethical, and that the production company behind the programme will not allow dissenting voices from psychologists to be heard on their shows. There are also worries about the conditions participants in the show are kept in - from restricting food, to setting up stressful situations that lead to conflict and hostility.

While there’s the argument that people consent to be on the show therefore they know what they’re letting themselves in for, even the series producers claim that they can’t be sure how people will react once in the Big Brother house. Ergo you can’t truly consent to something even if it seems familiar to you. Particularly if, year on year, the show aims to set up increasingly stressful and difficult scenarios so contestants can seem more interesting for the viewing public.

In previous years there have been scandals over the show allowing bullying and racism to go unchallenged. This year, there seems to be both a nod to understanding this, but also using this as a means of upping ratings.

Although the series has been on for only a few weeks, already we’ve seen contestants deprived of food, subjected to stressful situations and two contestants evicted for bullying behaviour - including threatening the wellbeing of fellow housemates and their families and spitting in a housemate’s face.

Putting people into cramped conditions, stressful situations and introducing alcohol into the mix is always going to cause flashpoints. So is including people who are picked for being deliberately different in their views and backgrounds. Engineering difficult situations to make people more hostile to each other, particularly as a means of making things more ‘entertainment’ is unethical broadcast journalism.

Every year I caution about the programme, I disclose how psychologists are involved within the shows, and I question about the ethics of the series. But this years series seems to be worse than before. Despite of warnings over showing bullying and racism in the past, it seems Big Brother are more than happy to allow this to happen this year - just so long as they remove offending housemates after an aggressive act has happened.

Year on year I ask for the British Psychological Society to speak out against the programme, for psychologists to boycott it, and for greater awareness for the public over how the programme manipulates both contestants and the viewing public.

I suspect I waste my time whenever I speak out against the programme, but this year it has completely got out of control. It is not acceptable to set up stressful situations that lead to violence or threats, and cause distress to contestants all in the name of ‘entertainment’.

Letting people get stressed to the point of aggressive behaviour, only to then evict them is psychologically damaging, as is the effects on the remaining housemates.

Clearly this year people have been selected for their volatile behaviour, and said behaviour has not been monitored or managed appropriately. This is not entertainment, it is exploitation.

It’s not just a case of psychologists refusing to endorse this show anymore. Anyone linked with it - celebrities, presenters and TV workers ought to be ashamed of themselves.

In a fascinating bit of research, Stanford University researchers have discovered that a vital part of brain functioning — our neural hubs — might be a key into understanding Alzheimer’s. Neural hubs connect neural paths, which our brains use to communicate. Anything adversely affecting either the paths or the hubs could result in problems with not only our brain functioning, but our physical functioning as well.

Here’s what the researchers did and found:

“Each hub connects to several other hubs, and a signal chooses among several options to find the shortest path to its destination,” said Supekar. Social networking sites operate on similar principles. The Facebook example might be one of, “I’m friends with your cousin’s hairstylist - want to hang out?”

The researchers compared the path length and number of hubs between 21 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and 18 unaffected age- and gender-matched control subjects. They discovered that, although the path lengths of signals in the resting brain were similar among all study subjects, the people with Alzheimer’s disease had fewer functional hubs.

It’s like taking the hairstylist out of the mix in the Facebook example — you might still be able to get to the same person quickly (because you also know her brother’s girlfriend), but the nature of the background chatter, and number and type of potential relationships that could occur, might be quite different.

Not enough hubs, and voilà, your brain’s functioning might be seriously impaired.

“These regional connections appear to be compromised in people with Alzheimer’s,” said Greicius, who speculated that the deficit may continue to worsen as the disease progresses. A breakdown of regional connectivity and the resulting less-than-optimal conversation that occurs between neurons may explain the memory loss and confusion that are the hallmark of the disorder.

These findings may help future scientists or doctors more quickly identify Alzheimer’s-prone individuals by testing the number of active hubs that are functioning in a person. They’re close already…

The researchers found that, using a test they devised, they could correctly identify patients with Alzheimer’s disease about 72 percent of the time and identify those who didn’t have the disease about 78 percent of the time. While these numbers are good, they’re not good enough yet to use as a screening test.

Read the full article: Social Networking Concepts Aid Alzheimer Research

This brief interview with MIT neurobiologist Matt Wilson, posted on the TIME website a few days ago, is an interesting addition to a long-standing debate about memory: do people recall good or bad events more easily?

Convincing research exists for both arguments, but according to Professor Wilson it’s much easier for people to recall negative occurrences:

“We think of memory as a record of our experience. But the idea is not just to store information; it’s to store relevant information. [The idea is] to use our experience to guide future behavior.”

“…The speculation is that we process memory in order to solve problems. And things we should learn from, things that are particularly important or that have strong emotions tied to them, may be things that are going to be important in the future. If you present stimuli with a strong negative emotional component, the memories do seem to be more easily retrieved than neutral stimuli or even those that are somewhat positive…”

Other studies run counter to Walker’s ideas, however, such as this 2003 Review of General Psychology article by W. Richard Walker et al. entitled “Life is Pleasant – and Memory Helps to Keep It That Way!”.

In the study, the authors found that people generally show a positive bias toward past memories, for two reasons. First, people “perceive events in their lives to more often be pleasant than unpleasant”. Second, “the affect [feeling or emotion] associated with unpleasant events fades faster than the affect associated with pleasant events,” a phenomenon known as the fading affect bias.

Depressed people were an exception to the rule – they tended to exhibit less “fading” behavior. Overall, though, Walker and colleagues concluded that “these biases allow people to cope with tragedies, celebrate joyful moments, and look forward to tomorrow.”

So, what conclusions can we draw from these contradictory research findings? First, it’s important to note that our memories are not unchangeable recordings, as we like to imagine. Even Wilson admits this, adding towards the end of his interview:

“[Emotional content] does not necessarily mean that events are remembered more accurately, and that’s an important distinction. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that all memories can be altered. It’s a normal process — we’re constantly taking our experience and revising it, even twisting it to our own benefit.”

Unless something is so traumatic as, say, the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks (an example offered by Laura Blue, who interviewed Prof. Wilson), I like to think that time really can soften the blow of negative events, as with Walker’s fading affect bias. I have certainly found this to be the case in my own life – the painful feelings associated with negative events fade gradually over time, while happy memories reliably make me feel good when I recall them, no matter how long ago they took place.

Continuing with their research on the ‘cognitive load hypothesis’, Aldert Vrij and colleagues from Portsmouth University report on a technique for facilitating lie detection - telling the story in reverse order. This article appears in the latest issue of Law and Human Behavior, although the study featured extensively in the press a few months ago (see here ).

Here’s the abstract:

In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that (a) the difference between liars and truth tellers will be greater when interviewees report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order, and (b) instructing interviewees to recall their stories in reverse order will facilitate detecting deception. In Experiment 1, 80 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and did or did not report their stories in reverse order. The reverse order interviews contained many more cues to deceit than the control interviews. In Experiment 2, 55 police officers watched a selection of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity judgements. Requesting suspects to convey their stories in reverse order improved police observers’ ability to detect deception and did not result in a response bias.

Reference:

• Aldert Vrij, Samantha A. Mann, Ronald P. Fisher, Sharon Leal, Rebecca Milne and Ray Bull (2008). Increasing Cognitive Load to Facilitate Lie Detection: The Benefit of Recalling an Event in Reverse Order. Law and Human Behavior 32(3): 253-265

Recently advertised jobs that might be of interest to forensic psychologists and/or criminologists:

• Lecturer in Criminology, University of Leicester. Closing date: 24 June
• Senior Lecturer in Criminal Psychology, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. Closing date: 27 June
• Senior Lecturer, Penology and Prisons, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. Closing date: 27 June
• Research Associate, Child Protection, Department of Educational Studies, University of Edinburgh. Closing date: 27 June
• Research Officer, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds. Closing date: 30 June
• Senior Lecturer/Lecturer In Criminology, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, University of the West Indies. Closing date: 15 July
• Lecturer / Senior Lecturer, Criminology, Middlesex University. Closing date: 1 July
• Senior Lecturer Criminology, Coventry University. Closing date: 1st July
• Lecturer/Preparatory Lecturer in Criminology (Violence), University of Salford. Closing date: 4 July

Photo credit: Khalilshah, Creative Commons License

For those who are into ‘neurolaw’, head over to the latest issue of Forensic Science International for a paper on neuroimaging studies involving aggressive, violent, psychopathic or antisocial offenders. Here’s the abstract:

Objective: Studies indicate there is a substantial biological substrate for psychopathic behavior. Neuroimaging techniques have afforded biomedical sciences a means to investigate further how aberrant brain activity or structure may be correlated with psychopathy and violence. This paper will provide an overview of the literature, and then will explore the role of structural and functional MRI brain imaging in the defense of a young adult male charged with kidnapping and rape.

Method: Using Pubmed and the keywords “functional neuroimaging,” “structural neuroimaging,” “psychopathy,” “antisocial personality,” “sociopathy,” “aggression,” “impulsivity,” and “violence,” the authors conduct a review of structural and functional neuroimaging studies involving aggressive, violent, psychopathic or antisocial offenders. We then provide a case report of a defendant, charged with kidnapping and rape, who was found during a forensic evaluation to have abnormal neuroimaging findings.

Results: The defendant’s counsel was able to present in his client’s defense multiple indicators of brain dysfunction and psychiatric illness partially substantiated by brain imaging.

Conclusions: The extent to which neuroimaging findings can be used as exculpatory or mitigating evidence remains the subject of much debate. Neuroimaging is just one piece of evidence the forensic expert relies on in determining the extent of neuropathology and mental illness. As illustrated in the case report, imaging studies most often will serve a mitigating role, affording the courts an opportunity to tailor punishment, provide court-ordered treatment, and potentially decrease recidivism.

Reference

• David S. Husted, Wade C. Myers and Yuijin Lui (2008). The limited role of neuroimaging in determining criminal liability: An overview and case report. Forensic Science International 179(1): e9-e15

Part One

Part Two

Vlog Summary: New research findings related to sports psychology and child development have resulted in more progressive-thinking schools adopting no-cut policies when it comes to their athletic programs. Deaf schools, with their unique responsibility of providing academic and athletic education opportunities to Deaf students, should follow suit and allow all interested students to participate in their athletic programs. Cut policies are outdated and harmful.

In this vlog, Sharon M. Duchesneau reviews 11 myths and facts about no-cut policies for school sports programs, drawing on an article published by college professors and researchers, Dr. Stephen C. Jefferies and Dr. Vincent M. Nethery. For those who may prefer to read the article quickly, it can be accessed by clicking on the link below.

REFERENCE:

Jefferies, S.C. & Nethery, V.M. (2008, June 16). Cutting Kids from Athletics: Truths, Myths, and Misperceptions. Central Washington University. Retrieved (June 16, 2008), from http://www.cwu.edu/%7Ejefferis/framesetck.html.

To cite: Duchesneau, S. (2008, June 16). No Cut Policy for Sports in Deaf Schools. ASC on the Couch. Retrieved (date retrieved), from http://www.ascdeaf.com/blog/?p=344

The big news today is that ‘TV psychiatrist’ Dr Raj Persaud is being investigated by the General Medical Council for passing off other people’s academic work as his own in media features and academic journals. Dr Persaud has admitted to plagiarism, but the GMC has to decide what action to take as a result.

This poses a dilemma, since plagiarism is a major academic no-no. Due to an increase in people selling essays and the ability to copy information from the internet, cheating is a widespread problem affecting universities worldwide. That’s why most academic institutions take a very firm stance on the issue – automatically failing students who are caught passing off people’s work as their own.

Academic journals are slightly different. While they equally disapprove of plagiarism, it is down to individual authors to declare what they are submitting as their own work. That means they haven’t copied from another source – or from their colleagues or students. Unfortunately plagiarism by supervisors isn’t unheard of, nor is copying from colleagues. But in the case of journals it’s also the responsibility of peer reviewers and journal editors to check the accuracy of any work submitted.

Where complaints are made, journals and academic institutions are obliged to investigate. This could lead to an academic losing their job, but not always since those in positions of power who take advantage of students or researchers may get away with what is plagiarism by calling it ‘supervision’ or ‘management’. It takes a brave student or staff member to show (and prove) unethical practice of a senior staff member.

Within media it’s different again. The media thrives on cannibalising itself for ideas and angles, although again its poor form to copy someone’s work directly. So you could take an idea (e.g. the plot of a recent episode from a TV show) and use that to inform an article, but you couldn’t pass off the script of said show as your own work.

Dr Persaud was caught between two places, the media (where plagiarism is perhaps subject to interpretation) and academia, where plagiarism is (rightly) a big issue. This may explain why these unfortunate events arose. Moreover, while Persaud is a practitioner who works in the media and someone who does publish academic papers, it may be without formal training on how to publish that a clear understanding of what plagiarism means could have been missed. Admittedly I’m giving a very generous benefit of the doubt here, but having taught practitioners how to publish I’m frequently surprised how little they know about the logistics and ethics of this area.

I’ve followed Dr Persaud’s career with interest. I would do, as I’m also a psychologist who’s keen to work within mainstream media. As a successful media personality I’ve watched how Persaud works and made decisions about my own practice. Like Persaud I believe that we can share many ideas from psychology with the public – and we should do this as a part of our daily work. Unlike Persaud I have made decisions not to talk about celebrities and case studies. This is probably one of the reasons he’s a successful media pundit and I am not.

All day colleagues have been emailing me about this case. ‘Hey have you seen how Per-pseud (sic) has been caught out!’ was the subject heading from one. In general the tone has not been sympathetic for Dr Persaud (from my colleagues and also wider media coverage). Perhaps that’s partly because academics are a funny bunch that tend to look down on working with the media – but are still always jealous of anyone who gets a bit of publicity.

Strangely, as someone who has been critical of Dr Persaud’s approach in the past, I have taken no satisfaction in this case. Bad practice has been admitted to here, that’s undeniable. But the pressure from both academia and media will certainly have played a role. And when any practitioner is shown up as suspect it makes all of our jobs that much harder. There are still a great many academics who would rather we have nothing to do with the media, and cases like this automatically serve to bolster their arguments that nothing good can come from being part of the press.

Interestingly the media have been quick to cover the TV-doc-in-cheating-scandal angle, but very few have acknowledged the role the media may have played within this case. For practitioners who worry about working with the media this case has become a cautionary tale since the press were very happy to woo Dr Persaud back in the day, only to label him ‘rent a quote’ when he became well known, and now we see the media happy to pillory him. It’s a sad payback for someone who, whether you like his views or approach, has done a lot to bring psychiatry to society.

Critics within academia of course can argue that it’s no good bringing psychiatry (and psychology) to the public domain if what you’re sharing involves stealing someone else’s work. In an era where academics are fearful of any accusation of malpractice it is perhaps unsurprising that nobody is apparently speaking out in Dr Persaud’s defence.

There are lessons to be learned in this case. Academic journals need to take an even stronger line on plagiarism, and check more thoroughly for cases of malpractice. Healthcare practitioners who intend to publish academic books or papers require greater training in how to publish – and what constitutes plagiarism. And the media need to be careful that experts they are employing are playing fair.

The key question here is really about fitness to practice. Dr Persaud is a psychiatrist. His dealings with the media give us no real clue about how he is as a doctor. He could be an excellent practitioner. We don’t know. The question is whether passing off someone’s work as your own interferes with being a competent healthcare practitioner. And whether cheating over your writing means you can’t deliver patient care.

There’s no doubt that someone who has admitted to a fair amount of plagiarism from different sources (and seemingly denied accusations of plagiarism when first accused) will lose their credibility as an academic. It may be a case where academic journals could refuse to publish future research of someone like this – unless they could verify the originality of their work. It may also be the case that an academic institution would not have a practitioner lecturing students if they had been under such a cloud, since how can we penalise students if academics are allowed to get away with cheating?

Yet this is a separate argument about fitness to practise on a clinical level. I suspect it will be a difficult dilemma for the GMC and general opinion seems to be Persaud will not escape without a major stain on his character, but may be allowed to continue to practice clinically. Whether he has much of an academic career left is debatable, but so long as he’s happy to say what the media wants, no doubt the journalists who’re labelling him a fraud today will be happy to have a quote from him about a celebrity du jour tomorrow.

It’s one of the key differences between media and academia. Academics rarely forget, and journalists rarely remember.

Iris Robinson is a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP, wife of Peter Robinson (the chair of the DUP), and the chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee on Health.

You would expect that someone in charge of a health committee would be well aware of evidence relating to health care issues, including homosexuality. Iris Robinson appears to think that being in a position of power means you can simply disregard evidence in favour of bigotry.

Earlier in the week Robinson claimed in an interview that she regarded homosexuality as a mental illness which could be ‘turned around’, adding that she condemned homophobic violence but decried homosexuality. She explained “I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals - trying to turn away from what they are engaged in”.

So now we have not only the chair of the Committee on Health having no clue about evidence, she is being advised by a practitioner who also clearly hasn’t read up on the evidence around the ‘treatment’ of homosexuality.

Following this controversy, rather than apologising, or looking at whether her claims hold any substance (outside of being just a personal view) Iris Robinson continued to state homosexuality was a mental illness, stated she had ‘no regrets’ over the claims she had made, and went on to claim being gay was on the same spectrum as being a murderer.

Given Mrs Robinson’s views about homosexuality I suspect she won’t be remotely interested in considering the scientific evidence on this issue, but in case anyone else wants to know homosexuality is not a mental illness (it used to be classified as such, but hasn’t been for many decades). The American Psychological Association have created a list of FAQs answering most of the commonly asked questions about sexuality and mental health.

Since being gay doesn’t mean you’re mentally ill there is no cure or treatment needed. Although there are some private practitioners who claim they can make gay folk straight, independent research of psychiatrists and patients offered cures for homosexuality indicate that treatments for the most part are completely unsuccessful. Click here for that research on patients and practitioners as well as a summary about homosexuality over the past 40 years.

It has to be said that lesbians, gays, bisexual and trans folk often do report more problems with mental health issues, not because they are ’sick’ but because living in a homophobic society puts tremendous pressure on their psychological wellbeing.
MIND has some useful information and sources of support for people concerned about their mental health.

Claims have been made that Iris Robinson’s remarks have already encouraged homophobic attacks, and as a result of this plus her narrow minded views, there is now a petition you can sign to call for her to be reprimanded. I would add to this that the psychiatrist also offering ‘treatment’ to ‘turn around’ gays should be investigated as there is no place within the health service for homophobia.

While people are entitled to religious views, when one holds a position of power relating to healthcare, and where there is a body of evidence being ignored this becomes a major ethical and social problem.

It also becomes very depressing, so let’s look at how relying on the bible to inform our views on homosexuality may sometimes give us some further life instructions that are also pretty daft.