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The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence of somatisation as a determinant of burnout amongst drug and alcohol staff in the UK.

The study employed a cross-sectional design utilising a self-completion online questionnaire. Data were collected from substance misuse workers across England and Wales. In total, 165 responses were eligible for analysis, yielding a response rate of 5 per cent. Burnout and somatization were measured with Maslach’s Burnout Inventory and the Physical Symptoms Inventory.

The prevalence of somatic symptoms was relatively low in the sample studied. The reported levels of burnout were moderate. Personal accomplishment remained high in the sample. There was a strong association between burnout and incidence of stress-related somatic symptoms, with higher levels of burnout correlating with multiple symptoms.

It was not possible to determine the extent of non-response bias, as at the time of the study there was no information available relating to the characteristics of drug and alcohol staff in the selected services. Therefore, as the response rate was very low (5 per cent) it was recognised that non-response bias might have affected the findings, in such way that non-respondents may have differed in their experiences of work stress, satisfaction, burnout and health outcomes.

Despite the limitations, the study provided practical information relating to burnout vulnerability and associated physical symptoms in this specific occupational group. These findings can support employers to address staff wellbeing with a view to prevent burnout and reduce existing levels of burnout and related somatic symptoms, and improve job performance, job satisfaction and staff retention through making appropriate adjustments, such as developing staff-wellbeing programmes. These adjustments could potentially contribute to improvement in substance misuse practice, through maintenance of healthy and satisfied workforce.

There are very few studies looking at burnout in drug and alcohol staff. This study is also novel in a way that it reveals correlations between a variety of specific stress-related physical symptoms and the three components of burnout.

This paper offers readers a review of the literature on alcohol and illicit drug misuse in people with learning disabilities, focusing on six key areas. First, clarity is provided on the definition of ‘misuse’. Second, prevalence rates are examined along with the methodological difficulties involved in such studies, the authors arguing that prevalence rates are higher than current estimates. Third, the authors explore the relationship between the intra‐ and inter‐personal risk factors. Fourth, the nature of the substance misuse is explored, with a focus on offending behaviour. Fifth, a range of treatment modalities are described with a series of recommendations for more robust evidence‐based interventions. Last, the authors explore the gaps in policy that lead to a dearth in service provision as well the barriers which people with learning disabilities face on entering treatment services. The paper cites four innovative projects that address this population's needs in England, and illustrates how Northern Ireland has positioned the needs of this hidden population within the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (Northern Ireland).

This paper considers parents who misuse substances. The potential impacts of their substance misuse on their ability to parent effectively and safely (parenting capacity) are explored, as are some of the barriers many parents face when attempting to seek treatment for problematic substance misuse. The terms ‘use’ and ‘misuse’ are used interchangeably in this paper and ‘substances’ refers to alcohol, illicit drugs and overuse of prescribed medicines. It is important to make the distinction between parents whose use of substances does not constitute dependency and might be best described as ‘recreational or hazardous’. Such individuals might not seek treatment and estimates of prevalence rates of use among this cohort are difficult as they remain hidden from services. Parents who might already be in treatment services or who might be seeking treatment might be described as ‘problematic or dependent’ although presentation at services is neither necessary nor sufficient to assume that the individual's misuse of substances is problematic or indicative of a dependency. The use of substances is associated with numerous harms to the individual: psychologically, socially, interpersonally and physically, and is a risk factor towards negative parenting practices. The use of substances in itself is not an indication of neglectful or harmful parenting, as many parents who use substances have adequate parenting skills, however, it is more frequently associated as a risk rather than a protective factor when considering potential harms. Most of the research refers to mothers although we are aware that some fathers may have sole parenting responsibility for their children. Parents, in particular mothers, face many barriers when trying to access substance misuse treatment services. When they are in treatment, services often lack the skills and experiences to be able to balance managing child protection issues and engaging the parent in treatment. A full review of the issues associated with parenting and substance misuse is beyond the scope of this paper and the reader is referred to Fowler (2003), Cleaver et al (1999), Velleman and Templeton (2007) and Day and George (2005) and the British Psychological Society's Child Protection Portfolio (2007) for further discussion.

Problem drinking includes a spectrum of drinking habits ranging from excessive alcohol intake to alcohol dependence. Numerous risk factors are thought to increase the susceptibility to such drinking patterns ‐ genetic, environmental and constitutional. Although alcohol misusers are frequently stereotyped, from interviewing numerous patients it is evident that there is no ‘typical alcoholic’. Alcohol consumption screening is widely used; however, it is important for healthcare professionals to understand the social and psychological aspects of problem drinking before advising abstinence. With this understanding, it is clear that governmental legislation with regards to alcohol is more likely to cut down the number of social binge drinkers than the number dependent on alcohol. The onus of reducing the number of individuals developing diseases as a result of chronic alcohol misuse, therefore, lies with the healthcare profession; early screening of alcohol consumption and early psychological intervention for susceptible individuals is key in this prevention.

There is an association between the diagnosis of a mental illness and violent behaviour. Individuals diagnosed with severe and enduring mental health difficulties who display violent behaviour have inferior treatment outcomes when compared with those who do not engage in violent behaviour. Violent behaviour within care settings impacts on general functioning, adherence to treatment plans, and inhibits wider recovery goals. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research studied 95 inpatients with a primary diagnosis of severe mental illness, with and without a history of violence, and compared how levels of global functioning and risk impacted on recovery. Patients were divided into two groups: those with and without a previous or current history of violence. The two groups were compared on measures of global functioning, symptomatology, and risk at baseline and 12-month follow up.

Both violent and non-violent groups showed increased global functioning over time, with no significant difference between the groups. Neither group showed significant reductions in risk over time. Patients in the violent group had significantly fewer prior and current symptoms of mental ill-health than non-violent individuals.

Despite evidence suggesting that historical or current violence leads to impaired outcomes amongst people with diagnoses of mental illness, the findings of this study suggest a history of violent behaviour was not a predictor of poor progress within inpatient settings.

Disconfirming previous hypotheses, the paper suggests that in itself, violent behaviour does not always significantly impair outcomes for individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses, and that many other variables contribute to meaningful recovery.

Whilst there are previous studies investigating outcomes for inpatients diagnosed with mental illness who have violent histories, there is a dearth of research comparing equivalent groups in the same facility over the same time period. This study directly compared inpatients with or without a history of violence in the same psychiatric rehabilitation settings.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Sir Julian Huxley (1887‐1975) was one of those rare scientists who, beyond professional training and contribution in biology, was very much concerned with the future of man and humanity. As a social thinker, he strongly believed in eugenics, that science which, in his view, should investigate analytically and practically how to improve the quality of the human race by careful selection of parents. On the other hand, he was aware that practically the attainment of such a goal requires full powers to control social and economic development. He knew that such an attitude may come in conflict with the existing political arrangement in the West but he persisted. As a philosopher he shared a more flexible conception about a better world of tomorrow, leaving room also for the unexpected. He believed that a “New Man” will come from the East, but the judgment of history up to now was not on his side.

The main purpose of this contribution lies in the attempt to show that the future of western civilisation has been placed in jeopardy as a result of the declining influence of the Christian ethic, a system of transcendental values, and the increased acceptance of moral relativism due to the zeal and diligence of the proponents of secular humanism, naturalism, pragmatism and utilitarianism.

The purpose of the paper is to extend the differential quadrature method (DQM) for solving time and space fractional non-linear partial differential equations on a semi-infinite domain.

The proposed method is the combination of the Legendre polynomials and differential quadrature method. The authors derived and constructed the new operational matrices for the fractional derivatives, which are used for the solutions of non-linear time and space fractional partial differential equations.

The fractional derivative of Lagrange polynomial is a big hurdle in classical DQM. To overcome this problem, the authors represent the Lagrange polynomial in terms of shifted Legendre polynomial. They construct a transformation matrix which transforms the Lagrange polynomial into shifted Legendre polynomial of arbitrary order. Then, they obtain the new weighting coefficients matrices for space fractional derivatives by shifted Legendre polynomials and use these in conversion of a non-linear fractional partial differential equation into a system of fractional ordinary differential equations. Convergence analysis for the proposed method is also discussed.

Many engineers can use the presented method for solving their time and space fractional non-linear partial differential equation models. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the differential quadrature method has never been extended or implemented for non-linear time and space fractional partial differential equations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two (accidental and inevitable) reasons why W.H. Beveridge, who in 1936/1937 had rejected all of the elements of Keynes’s General Theory, came to accept it enthusiastically in the 1940s.

The paper answers this question in three steps. First, it distinguishes apparently changeable factors in Beveridge’s views, from consistent ones. Second, it looks for factors of the latter type in his three goals for economics. Third, it compares his goals with those of Keynes.

Beveridge’s three goals overlapped with Keynes’s ideals for economics and economists, and this is not historically accidental: economics should be useful as a basis for verification by fresh observations (as an exact science); economic knowledge should be useful in business and policy-making processes (for new kinds of educated professions); and economic studies requires a wide range of related subjects (a liberal education).

This paper attempts to clarify the cognitive assumptions of the two economists. This clarification can contribute to understanding the process and reasons behind Beveridge’s acceptance of Keynesian economic theory and policies on a theoretical level.

This paper examines previously ignored reasons for Beveridge’s acceptance of Keynesian economics. Moreover, it suggests certain pre-analytic assumptions concerning the co-existence of social insurance and full employment policies. This perspective will be useful for historians of economics and the welfare state.