There is considerable controversy among mental health professionals and the public about the proper role of psychotropic medications in the treatment of youths. Within social work, too, there have been sharp differences of opinion. There have been few studies, however, about the views of practicing clinical social workers on the use of psychiatric drugs in the treatment of youths. This study, a...

This article argues that we could improve the design of research protocols by developing an awareness of and a responsiveness to the social contexts of all the actors in the research enterprise, including subjects, investigators, sponsors, and members of the community in which the research will be conducted. "Social context" refers to the settings in which the actors are situated, including, bu...

Many patients are taking psychiatric drugs for years despite little knowledge about their long-term harms. Here, we summarise the findings of whether psychiatric drug exposure causes long-term harms in mammals after a drug-free period. We searched PubMed, Biosis and Embase for controlled animal studies (no behavioural priming; behavioural assessments performed after a 90 day drug-free period). ...

In this article, I scrutinize the process by which scientific research on human subjects is regulated by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). At the outset, let us agree that at least some biomedical scientific research on human subjects must be externally monitored and that whether government should sometimes be involved in that process is at least an open question. We simply cannot forget the ...

T hepolice profession hasmuch to gain by recognizing its kinship with a broad range of regulatory professions. Law-enforcement agencies, security and intelligence organizations, and social regulatory agencies all exist primarily to protect society from a variety of harms. Such harms include crime, pollution, occupational hazards, transportation hazards, corruption, discrimination, various forms...

This paper explores the neglected ‘harms-to-others’ which result from increased attention to beauty, increased engagement in beauty practices and rising minimal beauty standards. In the first half of the paper I consider the dominant discourse of beauty harms – that of ethics and policy – and argue that this discourse has overfocused on the agency of, and possible harms to, recipients of beauty...

BACKGROUND Socioeconomic status is strongly associated with smoking prevalence and social class differences contribute substantially to social inequalities in mortality. This research investigated socioeconomic and country variations in smokers' knowledge that smoking causes heart disease, stroke, impotence and lung cancer, that smoke contains cyanide, mercury, arsenic and carbon monoxide, and ...

INTRODUCTION Maternal smoking rates in Australian Aboriginal women are triple that of the general population, with little evidence for successful interventions. We reviewed the literature to understand smoking and cessation in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and provide recommendations for targeted interventions. METHODS Six databases were searched using terms related to smoking, ...