CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health articles from June 2004

CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health archives from June 2004

Note from the editor.(Editorial)
June 22, 2004... Rarely a day goes by that we are not in contact with one form of violence or another, whether it be through the media, those around us or our own experiences. Squalid crimes that seem inexplicable, family dramas, bullying, sexual or verbal...

CAMH partners with MADD Canada on new publication.(news from CAMH)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... CAMH recently partnered with MADD Canada on Alcohol, Trauma and Impaired Driving, a document intended to serve as a single, fully referenced source of current facts on alcohol and trauma. The resource can be found at...

WHO report on neuroscience of psychoactive substance use and dependence.(news from CAMH)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... CAMH scientists contributed to the development of Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence, the first report of its kind published by the World Health Organization. The report provides a comprehensive and authoritative summary...

Practical guide for police responding to people with mental illness now available in Ontario.(news from CAMH)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... In response to various coroners' inquests calling for practical guidelines to help police officers respond to people with mental illness in crisis, the Ontario Police College drafted Not Just Another Call... Police Response to People with...

CAMH president and CEO receives award from Schizophrenia Society.(news from CAMH)(Paul Garfinkel)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... The Schizophrenia Society of Canada (SSC) presented CAMH president and CEO Dr. Paul Garfinkel with the 2004 Pacesetter Award for his extraordinary efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination in the field of mental illness. Dr. Garfinkel...

Pamela Fralick Community Information Forum on Addiction.(news from CAMH)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... As a tribute to the hard work, dedication and contributions of Pamela Fralick during her years as chair of CAMH's Board of Trustees, CAMH has created an annual event called the Pamela Fralick Community Information Forum on Addiction. The...

Behaviour goes beyond the brain.(letters)
June 22, 2004... I was pleased to read the Q&A piece on neuroethics in the winter 2003/04 issue of crosscurrents. In the interview, Dr. Zach Hall says, "With the principle established that our behaviour depends on our brains..." I draw to your attention that...

Clients grow through innovative inpatient personality disorders program.(profile)
June 22, 2004... Personality disorders have long been considered one of the most treatment-resistant of all mental health diagnoses. But an award winning program in Saskatchewan is developing a better way to help clients with a new inpatient service. The...

Health care interpreters bridge the language barrier.(news)
June 22, 2004... A young man enters the emergency room of a U.S. hospital. He's South East Asian and doesn't speak English. He has with him a bilingual friend who tells doctors the man is hearing loud noises. As the ER doctor prepares to send the client for a...

Childhood sleep problems may signal risk for adult drug use.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... Children who have trouble sleeping may be at greater risk for drinking, smoking and using other drugs as teenagers, according to researchers at the University of Michigan. Researchers interviewed the mothers of 257 boys between the ages of...

Drinking interrelated with nicotine addiction.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... People who drink are more likely to smoke because alcohol enhances the pleasurable effects of nicotine, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. The findings provide a physiological explanation for the...

Early parental support linked to later mental and physical health.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... People with good parental support during childhood are likely to have better health throughout adulthood than those who received inadequate support, according to a study conducted at the University of Albany in New York and the University of...

Scientists identify gene linked to autism.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... Two variants of a single gene have been found that may at least double a child's risk of developing autism, according to researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. The variation was found with two single nucleitide...

Primary care reduces suicidal ideation in older adults.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... A primary care intervention can reduce suicidal ideation in older adults with depression, according to research out of Cornell University in White Plains, New York. Between 1999 and 2001, the Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly:...

Smoking accelerates mental decline.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... The rate of cognitive decline in smokers may be five times higher than among non-smokers, according to researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, The study also found that smokers who quit significantly slowed...

Cognitive-behavioural therapy may help hypochondriasis.(research update)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... A randomized clinical trial has found that cognitive-behavioural therapy (EBT) may successfully treat hypochondriasis. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston state that no existing treatment had been found for hypochendriasis, the...

HIV rates Eastern Europe reflect attitudes toward substance use.(news)
June 22, 2004... Think of it as a tale of two countries. Poland and Belarus are both situated in Eastern Europe, where they share a 416-kilometre border. Yet according to the World Health Organization's European Office Health databases, in some ways, they are...

Bully in the boardroom: workplace aggression takes its toll on employee health and productivity.(focus)
June 22, 2004... IN APRIL 1999, PIERRE LEBRUN WALKED INTO OC TRANSPO, a public transit company in Ottawa, armed with a rifle, and shot and killed four people. An inquest reported that Lebrun had been bullied in his workplace. The incident smacked of revenge....

Putting the rap back into therapy: music treatment challenges the rap-violence connection.(focus)
June 22, 2004... They say I walk around like got an "S" on my chest Naw, that's a semi-auto, and a vest on my chest I try not to say nothing, the DA might want to play in court But I'll hunt or duck a nigga down like it's sport Front on me, I'll cut ya,...

Sixty Seconds (work in progress).(focus)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... Sixty Seconds (work in progress) Thirty seconds re recite the five words you write will keep you up all night you may be gone in 60 seconds But you only have thirty seconds to speak Pan handle your rhymes in the...

When trust is broken: home visit staff need strategies to ensure their safety.(focus)
June 22, 2004... PROVIDING HEALTH CARE TO CLIENTS WITH MENTAL illness involves much more than psychiatry appointments, hospitalization or finding and maintaining an appropriate drug regimen. Psychosocial support is key to a good outcome, and for many, home...

Driven to destruction: are road rage perpetrators victims of psychiatric distress?(focus)
June 22, 2004... YOU'RE DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD, MINDING YOUR OWN business. Suddenly, another driver tries to cut in front of you. You slam on the brakes and grind to a halt, narrowly missing a collision. You honk your horn at the driver, since he seems...

Women's shelters, substance use and domestic violence.(focus q & a)(Interview)
June 22, 2004... Nancy Poole and Dr. Lorraine Greaves are researchers at the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women's Health in Vancouver. They are in the process of completing research with women moving through women's shelters in British Columbia who...

Beating the Blues: identifying and treating dysthymia.(Beating the Blues: New Approaches to Overcoming Dysthymia and Chronic Mild Depression)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS REMAIN A DAUNTING MENTAL. health challenge. According to the World Health Organization, major depression imposes the fourth greatest burden of ill health of all diseases worldwide. Alarmingly, it is projected that by the...

Downloaded.(Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse launches new website)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... CCSA'S Web site: new look, new feel, new information! www.ccsa.ca The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse has recently launched its new Web site. Bookmark and visit this site regularly to read current Canadian and international news, learn...

Antisocial and Violent Youth: highlighting recent research on aggression.(Antisocial and Violent Youth: Volume II)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... DR. JALAL SHAMSIE AND HIS COLLEAGUES BEGAN publishing their newsletter, Youth Update, some 20 years ago. Mental health practitioners, researchers and policy makers have come to depend on these periodic summaries of the most recent research on...

News media perpetuate the myth about mental illness and violence.(the last word)
June 22, 2004... THE STIGMA ASSOCIATED WITH MENTAL illness is recognized as one of the most insidious and difficult barriers to treatment. Sadly, the news media has been a big contributor Io this stigma. Who doesn't recognize the media "code language" that...

Conferences.(Calendar)
June 22, 2004... CANADA 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism June 26-30, Vancouver, British Columbia Contact: Research Society on Alcoholism 7801 North Lamar Blvd. Suite D-89, Austin, TX 78752 USA ...

An anniversary of ideas.(Editorial)(Editorial)
June 22, 2004... I heard a rumor the other day. A colleague returned from a conference where, she informed me, the word was out that Crosscurrents is now conservative. That was news to me, as it probably would be to the contributors to this Summer issue....

Toward a cosmology of continual creation: from ecofeminism to feminine ecology and umbilical ties.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... It is neither customary nor wise to tell an audience, and least of all a learned audience, about the incidents and stories around which the thinking process describes its circles. It is much safer to take...

Rainbow children over me: parabolic narratives for Sakia Gunn.
June 22, 2004... Sakia La Tona Gunn was murdered early on Mother's Day morning, May 11, 2003 in downtown Newark, New Jersey while she and her friends were waiting for a bus. She was stabbed in the heart by Richard McCullough, 29, and later died. McCullough, who...

Rufus Jones and mysticism for the masses (1).(literary works)
June 22, 2004... The October 11, 1948 issue of Time magazine carried a short article in the "Religion" section with the intriguing title "Mystics Among Us." Nestled among post-war ads for Frigidaire compressors and Kelvinator adding machines, the piece began:...

Engraving emotions: memory and identity in the quest for emotive scholarship.
June 22, 2004... The engraving commenced during my childhood. It was a painful inscription instructing me to live a life without feelings or emotions as a young boy growing up in a Mexican/Chicano family in southern California during the nineteen sixties. I...

In place of the absent God: the reader in Dan Pagis's 'Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway Car'.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... While thinking about the challenges of both reading and teaching the literature of the Holocaust, I find myself grappling not only with the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of post-Holocaust art, but with the meaning of asking students to...

Service learning as a transgressive pedagogy: a must for today's generation.
June 22, 2004... The phrases "curriculum infusion," "teaching/learning anti-racism," "teaching against resistance," and incorporating "diversity" or "multiculturalism" into the curriculum are all attempts to democratize, de-canonize, and open up traditionally...

"The battle has been joined": gay and polygynous marriages are out of the closet and in search of legitimacy.
June 22, 2004... I am a recovering homophobe for whom questions regarding forms of partnering other than heterosexual monogamous unions first emerged in 1994 amid a "stress break" from exam preparation during my final year as a Master of Divinity student at...

Driving while faculty: the religion of innocent domination in America.
June 22, 2004... It is a hard conundrum... [this] liberty of the Christian.... It is tricky even in the exquisite analyses of Thomas Aquinas. In Protestantism it has always taken the form of paradox. As Luther put it, the Christian...

Imperial designs: theological ethics and the ideologies of international politics.
June 22, 2004... Belatedly, but suddenly with intensity, Americans have begun to debate whether their country is some kind of empire. Most of the world has no doubt that the U.S. is an empire, but now it has plenty of doubt about the kind of empire that the...

Dresden: the fire last time.
June 22, 2004... A stand-up comedian has compared Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's views on the war in Iraq to those of a recovering alcoholic--as though he were fearful that the mere scent of combat would tempt the Germans to relapse into the unfortunate habits...

Costumes.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... My mother made my sisters nuns for Halloween in 1952. By hand, she stitched black serge, carefully pleated flat bodices, starched white linen for the wimples. Gauzy veils attached with pins, my father's dark belts for the waist,...

See.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... He Became still Like the wind before the funnel cloud. Suddenly his arms flailed as if he were a juggler, and when words came they were daggers as he struck her. He Immersed her in his rage with a rhythmic attack that...

In the beginning was the word.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... The first time I heard the word nigger I was ten years old And even then I didn't know What it meant But because of the way it was Said I went home and asked my father. ... Nothing has been the same since.

Three-armed woman.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... At her birth the tribal elders sought to kill her-- Even twins were viewed with horror- But by now the women had edged their thin bodies Into the circle of judgment: The men were withering young with some strange sickness. When the...

The color of soul.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... "And the Lord God formed man dust from the earth; and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7) What color is soul? Transparent; We paint it. There are those who dye it The...

Forgiveness.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... "And he [Joseph] kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; only afterwards were his brothers able to talk to him." (Genesis 45:15) When Joseph, crying, hugged and kissed his brothers, Did the sun and moon descend and bow before him?...

Eclipse.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... "And He said, "I will hide My face from them, and see what will be their end; for they are a treacherous generation, children who lack faith." (Deuteronomy 32:20) The light Is gone. In a solar eclipse, The moon hides the face of...

We, the unborn sons of Abel.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2004... And the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is Abel, your brother?' And he answered, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?' Then He said to Cain, 'What have you done? The voices of your brother's bloods are crying out to me from the ground."...