Search results

Security is a vital requirement for software systems. Misuse case models allow system designers to inject security considerations within their designs early in the development cycle rather than patching an end system with security mechanisms after it was developed. The notation and syntactical rules of misuse case models are relatively simple. However, misuse case modeling practitioners are highly vulnerable to modeling pitfalls, creating defective models that can have catastrophic effects downstream in the development cycle. This paper seeks to present a framework that unitizes antipatterns to help remedy defective misuse case models and poor modeling practices.

A repository of antipatterns was constructed and formatted to be machine‐readable whenever possible so that it can be utilized by the proposed framework. The feasibility of the proposed approach was then demonstrated using a real‐world misuse case model of an online bookstore system.

The results indicate that the overall quality and clarity of the bookstore misuse case model is improved by applying the proposed technique and framework.

This research work presents a series of domain‐independent antipatterns. Users of this framework may be interested to develop domain‐dependent antipatterns to better suit their modeling and development needs.

The proposed approach will help misuse case modelers, especially novice ones, to improve the quality of their current models as well as future models.

There is growing statistical and research evidence to suggest that the prevalence of alcohol misuse is increasing among older adults in the UK. This has been an under‐recognised problem, but is now a source of increasing concern for health and social care providers. Older adults with mental health problems have increased vulnerability to problematic alcohol use, and this is likely to have a significant impact on older people's mental health services (OPMHS).

This paper discusses some of the problems facing OPMHS in relation to increasing alcohol misuse among services users.

There is also evidence that alcohol misuse in older adults is often poorly identified and untreated within health and social care services including OPMHS. Use of an alcohol‐screening tool as part of a health care assessment is an effective way to improve detection. This paper also reviews the use of alcohol screening tools in the detection of alcohol related illness among older adults with mental health problems and proposes a care pathway for the management of alcohol misuse in OPMHS.

Current evidence indicates that the prevalence of alcohol misuse among older adults is increasing and is likely to rise further due to the reasons discussed in this paper.

Drawing on the social cognitive theory, this study investigated the effect of mentors' drinking norms on their protégés' alcohol misuse by focusing on the mediating role of conformity drinking motives and the moderating role of moral disengagement. We conducted a three-wave survey of 148 mentor–protégé dyads and found that mentors' drinking norms were positively related to their protégés' alcohol misuse and that this relationship was fully mediated by conformity drinking motives. Moreover, the moderated mediation model revealed that moral engagement strengthens the main effects of mentors' drinking norms on conformity drinking motives and the indirect effects of mentors' drinking norms on protégés' alcohol misuse via enhanced conformity drinking motives. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

With permission, this paper is an edited and abridged version of an article written by Richards, Doyle and Cook for The British Journal of Forensic Practice (Richards et al, 2009), detailing their literature review on family interventions in dual diagnosis and with reference to forensic mental health care. There appeared to be limited direct evidence, therefore various domains were examined and extrapolated to a forensic setting as appropriate. The review indicates the potential for positive outcomes for families following family interventions in dual diagnosis, which may be beneficial in a forensic setting in lowering risk.

The purpose of this paper is to understand service users’ experience of a new acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)-based substance misuse programme. The programme is designed for people in secure mental health services, presenting with complex mental health difficulties and co-occurring substance misuse problems.

A qualitative approach informed an exploratory pilot of this novel intervention. Service users completing a 16-week ACT programme were invited to participate in the current study. Out of the nine individuals enroled on the programme, six opted to take part in the exploratory pilot and completed semi-structured interviews following part 1 of the programme (eight weeks). Four of these participants proceeded into part 2 of the programme (eight weeks) and completed a further semi-structured interview.

The thematic analysis identified five main themes: “Increased awareness of personal values and the impact of substance use on values”, “Taking committed action towards values”, “Coping skills and the application of skills to manage difficult thoughts and feelings”, “Personal development” and “Use of metaphors/analogies”.

A quantitative evaluation of clinical outcomes is recommended to gauge further programme effectiveness.

The findings provide preliminary support for the use of an ACT-based substance misuse programme in a secure mental health setting.

This study evaluates the use of a novel ACT-based substance misuse intervention with people in secure mental health care with co-occurring mental health and substance misuse difficulties. This paper provides an in-depth understanding of service users’ experience of participating in this new treatment programme.

This article explores the link between adult substance misuse and the effects such behaviour can have on children in their care. The implications for child development are considered. Child protection implications can be far reaching and children's longterm exposure to adult displays of behavioural loss of control can have detrimental effects upon their development. It is argued that parental substance misuse is not however, sufficient warrant to justify the child protection registration of children. This can act as an obstacle to enabling the parents to seek appropriate clinical intervention for their substance misuse problems (Standing Conference on Drug Abuse, 1989, now Drugscope). This article highlights the combined effect of these interactions on the development of children. Rather than an end in itself child protection assessment, with possible registration, should be viewed as a window of opportunity by agencies to respond to the needs of children with a range of possible responses dependent upon how serious the problems are.

The purpose of this paper is to explore current practice, barriers and facilitators to identifying and responding to alcohol problems in memory clinics.

A questionnaire sent to professionals in 55 memory clinics in England, Wales and the Isle of Wight and two focus groups with professionals from three memory clinics in England.

Only 1/35 clinics that responded to the questionnaire was using a standardised alcohol screening tool but all attempted to gain some information about alcohol use. Without screening tools, practitioners found it difficult to determine whether alcohol use was problematic. Barriers to identification/intervention included cognitive impairment, service-user being “on guard” during assessment, presence of family members/carers, time constraints and a perception that brief interventions were not within the remit of memory clinics. Facilitators were obtaining visual clues of problem drinking during home visits and collateral information from family members/carers.

Focus group participants were recruited through convenience sampling and a small number of professionals took part. This means that the findings may be subject to selection bias and limits the generalisability of the findings.

Memory clinics should provide guidance and training for practitioners on how to intervene and respond to alcohol misuse. Further research is required to determine the most effective way to identify alcohol problems in people with cognitive impairment and how to deliver brief alcohol interventions that take account of cognitive deficits.

This is the first study to examine alcohol screening and interventions in memory clinics and identifies a need for guidance, training and further research.

The United Kingdom Ministry of Justice recently highlighted the extent of buprenorphine (Subutex) misuse in English andWelsh prisons, naming it the third most misused drug overall. Yet little is known regarding how illicit buprenorphine is obtained in prison and what influences prisoners to use it. Qualitative research was used to explore prison drug using practices. Thirty men who were former prisoners with a history of injecting drug use were interviewed in depth about their illicit prison drug use, including buprenorphine. Interviews were conducted over 18 months, from August 2006 to January 2008 and were analysed using Framework. The misuse of Subutex by snorting emerged as a significant theme. Accounts suggested that the diversion of prison prescribed Subutex was widespread and prisoners used various tactics to obtain the medication. Various complex and interlinked reasons were given to explain why Subutex was snorted in prison. The main motivation for snorting was to experience a prolonged euphoric opiate effect, believed to help to combat the boredom of being in prison. The price of illicit Subutex in prison was linked to its availability, but it was generally cheaper than heroin, thus contributing to its use. Participants’narratives identified the belief that snorting Subutex in prison was not risk free, but risks were lower than continuing to use other drugs, particularly injecting illicit opiates. The implications of prison Subutex misuse for prisoners, prison medical services, commissioners, and prescribing policy and practice are discussed.

This paper presents the process of constructing a language tailored to describing insider threat incidents, for the purposes of mitigating threats originating from legitimate users in an IT infrastructure.

Various information security surveys indicate that misuse by legitimate (insider) users has serious implications for the health of IT environments. A brief discussion of survey data and insider threat concepts is followed by an overview of existing research efforts to mitigate this particular problem. None of the existing insider threat mitigation frameworks provide facilities for systematically describing the elements of misuse incidents, and thus all threat mitigation frameworks could benefit from the existence of a domain specific language for describing legitimate user actions.

The paper presents a language development methodology which centres upon ways to abstract the insider threat domain and approaches to encode the abstracted information into language semantics. The language construction methodology is based upon observed information security survey trends and the study of existing insider threat and intrusion specification frameworks.

This paper summarizes the picture of the insider threat in IT infrastructures and provides a useful reference for insider threat modeling researchers by indicating ways to abstract insider threats.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the health problems and treatment needs of drug‐misusing offenders and to draw out the implications of the findings for health education and prevention.

This analysis is based on data collected as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW‐ADAM) programme. The survey was based on interviews and urine sample collection with over 3,000 arrestees.

The research found that young arrestees experienced a wide range of drug‐related and general health problems. The implications of this are discussed in the context of programmes implemented as part of the government's drug strategy.

The NEW‐ADAM surveys provide an original source of information on the drug and general health needs of young people at the first point of entry in the criminal justice system.