This book offers a unique examination of how violence is situationally induced and reproduced for those inmates living with HIV in a US State prison system. Imprisonment is the only space where Americans have a constitutional right to healthcare but findings from this research suggest that accessing this care and associated welfare benefits requires some degree of violence. This book documents how HIV-positive inmates went about achieving agency through harm to their bodies and social standing to improve their health and wellbeing, in prison and upon re-entry to the community. It focusses on ethnographic research which was carried out in seven penal facilities in New England and comprises of accounts from inmates, prison staff, healthcare providers, ex-offenders, and community social workers. This book speaks to academics interested in prisons, violence, health, and ethnographic research, and to policy makers.
Countering violent extremism consists of various prevention and intervention approaches to increase the resilience of communities and individuals to radicalization toward violent extremism, to provide nonviolent avenues for expressing grievances, and to educate communities about the threat of recruitment and radicalization to violence. To explore the application of health approaches in community-level strategies to countering violent extremism and radicalization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a public workshop in September 2016. Participants explored the evolving threat of violent extremism and radicalization within communities across America, traditional versus health-centered approaches to countering violent extremism and radicalization, and opportunities for cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration and learning among domestic and international stakeholders and organizations. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely. Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness. Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness. Reader-friendly, well-structured, and accessible to professional and lay audiences, the book: * Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings. * Examines the current legal provisions for prohibiting access to firearms for those with mental illness and whether these provisions and new mandated reporting interventions are effective or whether they reinforce negative stereotypes associated with mental illness. * Discusses the issues raised in accessing mental health treatment in regard to diminished treatment resources, barriers to access, and involuntary commitment.* Explores novel interventions for addressing these issues from a multilevel and multidisciplinary public health perspective that does not stigmatize people with mental illness. This includes reviews of suicide risk assessment; increasing treatment engagement; legal, social, and psychiatric means of restricting access to firearms when people are in crisis; and, when appropriate, restoration of firearm rights. Mental health clinicians and trainees will especially appreciate the risk assessment strategies presented here, and mental health, public health, and public policy researchers will find Gun Violence and Mental Illness a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume that eschews sensationalism and embraces serious scholarship.
By conservative estimates, more than 16,000 violent crimes are committed or attempted every day in the United States. Violence involves many factors and spurs many viewpoints, and this diversity impedes our efforts to make the nation safer. Now a landmark volume from the National Research Council presents the first comprehensive, readable synthesis of America's experience of violence-offering a fresh, interdisciplinary approach to understanding and preventing interpersonal violence and its consequences. Understanding and Preventing Violence provides the most complete, up-to-date responses available to these fundamental questions: How much violence occurs in America? How do different processes-biological, psychosocial, situational, and social-interact to determine violence levels? What preventive strategies are suggested by our current knowledge of violence? What are the most critical research needs? Understanding and Preventing Violence explores the complexity of violent behavior in our society and puts forth a new framework for analyzing risk factors for violent events. From this framework the authors identify a number of "triggering" events, situational elements, and predisposing factors to violence-as well as many promising approaches to intervention. Leading authorities explore such diverse but related topics as crime statistics; biological influences on violent behavior; the prison population explosion; developmental and public health perspectives on violence; violence in families; and the relationship between violence and race, ethnicity, poverty, guns, alcohol, and drugs. Using four case studies, the volume reports on the role of evaluation in violence prevention policy. It also assesses current federal support for violence research and offers specific science policy recommendations. This breakthrough book will be a key resource for policymakers in criminal and juvenile justice, law enforcement authorities, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, public health professionals, researchers, faculty, students, and anyone interested in understanding and preventing violence.
This comprehensive volume explores various forms of violence in health care settings. Using a broad range of critical approaches in the field of anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, political philosophy and sociology, it examines violence following three definite yet interrelated streams: institutional and managerial violence against health care workers or patients; horizontal violence amongst health care providers and finally, patients' violence towards health care providers. Drawing together the latest research from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings engages with the work of critical theorists such as Bourdieu, Butler, Foucault, Latour, and Zizek, amongst others, to address the issue of violence and theorise its workings in creative and controversial ways. As such, it will be of interest to sociologists and anthropologists with research expertise in health, medicine, violence and organisations, as well as to health care professionals.
This comprehensive volume explores various forms of violence in health care settings. Using a broad range of critical approaches in the field of anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, political philosophy and sociology, it examines violence following three definite yet interrelated streams: institutional and managerial violence against health care workers or patients; horizontal violence amongst health care providers and finally, patients' violence towards health care providers. Drawing together the latest research from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings engages with the work of critical theorists such as Bourdieu, Butler, Foucault, Latour, and Žižek, amongst others, to address the issue of violence and theorise its workings in creative and controversial ways. As such, it will be of interest to sociologists and anthropologists with research expertise in health, medicine, violence and organisations, as well as to health care professionals.
This is the first comprehensive book that provides accessible, international knowledge for practitioners, students and academics about social work in health emergencies and spans fields of practice across world regions with particular reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. Divided into three sections: • Regional, Historical and Social Work Perspectives takes a journey through world regions during the first six months of the pandemic as it unfolded, explores the lessons found in the history of pandemics and situates public health social work practice in the values of the profession. Situating the diversity of challenges and opportunities in context, in turn, influences current and future social work practice. • Social Work Practice, Issues and Responses explores social work practice innovations and responses across eleven key practice fields. International authors feature social work responses during the COVID-19 health emergency from different regions of the world. • Preparing for the Future analyses broader concepts, innovations and the implications for future practices as social work enters a new era of service delivery. The 20 chapters explore the convergence of pandemic, politics and planet which is critiqued within a framework of the profession’s ethics and values of human dignity, human rights and social justice. Social work’s place in public health is firmly situated and built on the premise that the value social work brings to the table deserves recognition and should be documented to inform the development of the profession and future practice and how social work must carry lessons forward to prepare for the next pandemic. The book is relevant to a wide range of audiences, including practitioners, educators and students in social work, human services, international development and public health, as well as policy makers and researchers.
"This book offers a variety of contributed chapters to expand the study of crime victims to be more inclusive of common types of victimization, and to increase student, researcher, and practitioner understanding of victimization and barriers to victim assistance"--
More than 1 billion children - half of all children in the world - are exposed to violence every year, in many forms and places, online and off. Whether a target or a witness, a child's exposure to violence has a severe impact on mental health. Such experiences with violence are often traumatic, evoking toxic responses to stress that cause both immediate and longterm physiological and psychological damage, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, substance use disorders, sleep and eating disorders, and suicide. As the international community begins a Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, mental health must be imperative to measures employed to prevent and respond to violence against children and fulfill the promises of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In support of that process, this publication provides an overview of international evidence on the ways in which violence harms children's mental health, considering both diverse settings and forms of violence, developmental differences in the aftermath, and the most significant risk and protective factors. Highlighting the urgent need for action alongside continued gaps in knowledge of worthwhile solutions, the report also offers existing, effective approaches that should be pursued.
