Search results

The paper examines the historical shifts in policing strategies towards individuals with SMI and vulnerable populations, highlighting the development of co-response models, introducing the concept of “untethered” co-response.

This paper conducts a review of literature to trace the evolution of police responses to individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and vulnerable populations. It categorizes four generations of police approaches—zero-policing, over-policing, crisis intervention and co-response—and introduces a fifth generation, the “untethered” co-response model exemplified by Project SCOPE in Philadelphia.

The review identifies historical patterns of police response to SMI individuals, emphasizing the challenges and consequences associated with over-policing. It outlines the evolution from crisis intervention teams to co-response models and introduces Project SCOPE as an innovative “untethered” co-response approach.

The research acknowledges the challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of crisis intervention teams and co-response models due to variations in implementation and limited standardized models. It emphasizes the need for more rigorous research, including randomized controlled trials, to substantiate claims about the effectiveness of these models.

The paper suggests that the “untethered” co-response model, exemplified by Project SCOPE, has the potential to positively impact criminal justice and social service outcomes for vulnerable populations. It encourages ongoing policy and evaluative research to inform evidence-based practice and mitigate collateral harms associated with policing responses.

Given the rising interactions between police and individuals with mental health issues, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper highlights the urgency for innovative, non-policing-driven responses to vulnerable persons.

The paper contributes to the literature by proposing a fifth generation of police response to vulnerable persons, the “untethered” co-response model and presenting Project SCOPE as a practical example.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to unprecedented mental health repercussions in the lives of every individual including university students. Therefore, study on students’ psychological state and its associated factors during the pandemic are of importance. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

An online survey was done on a total of 207 university students of Pakistan to collect information on socio-demographic characteristics, concerns or fears amidst COVID-19 and mental distress. Validated tools; Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)-Depression were used to assess stress, anxiety and depression, respectively.

Around 14% of the university students were experiencing severe stress and anxiety, while 8.2% had severe depression. The authors found that stress among university students was related to psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 5.1: 1.1, 22.9) and unpredictability due to the pandemic (OR = 3.7: 1.2, 11.2). The significant determinants of anxiety were psychiatric illness/symptoms (OR = 6.6: 3.4, 12.9), implementation of public health measures (OR = 3.7: 1.1, 11.6), employed mothers (OR = 2.4: 1.1, 5.0) and lack of support from university administration (OR = 2.2: 1.0, 5.0). While the factors associated with depression included psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 8.4: 3.3, 21.5), unpredictability due to pandemic (OR = 6.8: 2.2, 20.7), impaired social support system (OR = 3.7: 1.3, 10.4) and studying without a scholarship (OR = 2.1: 1.0, 4.4).

These findings call for an urgent need to develop appropriate interventions and educational programs that could address the psychological needs of students.

The study directs the role of university and faculty in dealing the mental health needs of the student in COVID-19 pandemic time.

Educational programs are important that could address the psychological needs of students in COVID-19 pandemic.

University students reported mental distress during COVID-19 pandemic which shows that younger people are at risk of COVID-19 repercussions. Moreover, several stressors (i.e. impaired social support system and lack of support from universities) were revealed that could be mitigated by implementing appropriate strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on medical education and training, with many medical schools and training programs having to adapt to remote or online learning, social distancing measures and other challenges. This paper aimed to examine the disruption for clinical training, as it has reduced the opportunities for students and trainees to gain hands-on experience and interact with patients in person.

The ethnographic qualitative research design was chosen as the research methodology. Using Gibbs' reflective cycle, the researcher explored the psychiatry clerks' (final-year medical students) reflections on the disruption of their clinical training during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings demonstrated that the students had a significant psychological impact on their coping capacities as the crisis progressed from shock and depression to resilience. The students being the key stakeholders provided a concrete foundation for the development of a framework for improving practices during uncertain times.

Students' reflections provided valuable insight into the pandemic’s impact on their psychosocial lives with uncertainty and incapacity to cope up with changing stressful dynamics. The results will assist in planning how to best support medical students' well-being during interruptions of their educational process brought about by similar future crises.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has challenged leadership in hospitals worldwide. The experiences of leadership during the pandemic changed leadership significantly. This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ perceptions of what future leadership in hospital settings in the post-pandemic era needs to be like.

A qualitative descriptive study was used. A total of 20 nurse leaders from the Finnish central hospital were interviewed from June to October 2021. The data were analysed using inductive content analysis.

The analysis revealed five main categories describing nurse leaders’ perceptions of future leadership in hospital settings in the post-pandemic era: digitalisation and hybrid working culture, development of sustainable working conditions, moving smoothly to the post-pandemic era, dissolution of traditional regimes of organisation and flexibility in leadership.

In the post-pandemic era, the constantly changing demands and challenges currently facing healthcare systems have significantly increased the complexity of hospital organisations. This requires critical evaluation and change to traditional leadership. Enhancing flexibility and authenticity in leadership, strengthening competencies, implementing a wide range of digital resources and increasing the appeal of the nursing profession to build the next generation of nurses – all of these are needed to provide sustainability in future healthcare.

The results identify the critical points of leadership that need to be developed for future challenges and for maintaining a sufficient supply of qualified professionals. Acting on this information will enhance flexibility in organisations and lead to acceleration of changes and the development of new kinds of leadership in the future

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

Groups of students were enrolled in a course that sought to produce a three-phase theoretical model over three semesters.

A design project to comprehensively address school violence was launched at a university in eastern Pennsylvania.

This article updates the recent and most critical finding of the project by illuminating specific implications of the importance of teacher training and the development toward competence in recognition of children who are emotionally and psychologically injured through proactive measures such as screening for emotional and psychological well-being.

Although the model has not been tested, screening to identify those in need of emotional support and training to support teachers is clear. Screening and training offer important opportunities to help learners build skills toward resilience to soften the effects of trauma.

A view of the “whole child” with regard to academic success could further foster social and emotional development.

Early intervention can prevent the onset of symptoms associated with posttraumatic stress and related disorders. This effort alone may significantly reduce the uncomfortable incidences and perhaps ultimate prevention of the violence that is perpetuated among children.

Preliminary research supports a continued conversation regarding effective tools to find children emotionally and psychologically at-risk, which allows teachers an opportunity for timely emotional and psychological interventions.

As host to over one million Syrian refugees, Lebanon continues to experience challenges addressing the needs of refugee families. This research examined the experiences of Syrian families with the refugee support system in Lebanon. The purpose of this study was to better understand the strengths and gaps in existing mechanisms of support for these Syrian families, including informal support from family, neighbors and community and more formalized support provided through entities such as nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies.

Data were collected from 46 families displaced by the war and living in Lebanon (N = 351 individuals within 46 families). Collaborative family interviews were conducted with parents, children and often extended family.

The data identified both strengths and gaps in the refugee support system in Lebanon. Gaps in the refugee support system included inadequate housing, a lack of financial and economic support, challenges with a lack of psychosocial support for pregnant women and support for disabled youth. Despite these challenges, families and community workers reported informal community support as a strong mediator of the challenges in Lebanon. Furthermore, the data find that organizations working with Syrian families are utilizing informal community support through capacity building, to create more effective and sustainable support services.

This study provides an overview of strengths and gaps in supports identified by refugees themselves. The research will inform the development and improvement of better support systems in Lebanon and in other refugee–hosting contexts.

This study aims to understand the utility of personas and illustrate, through a case study, how a persona-building exercise in a Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) training of community leaders elicited important insights that complemented findings from ongoing formative research on vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic/Latino population in the USA during COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory concurrent parallel qualitative study design compared three personas created by community-based organization members (n = 37) to transcripts from five formative research focus groups (n = 30) from the same project. All participants in this study were recruited by the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network as part of their capacity-building and formative research activities. Grounded theory guided the content analysis.

This study found personas and focus groups to be complementary. A high degree of co-occurrence was observed when investigating the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine under the categories of barriers, culture and communication. Between the two methods, the authors found strong associations between fear, disruption to the value system, work-related barriers, inaccessibility to health care and information sources and misinformation. Areas of divergence were negligible.

While personas provided background information about the population and sharing “how” to reach the priority population, focus groups provided the “why” behind the behavior, followed by “how”.

A community-driven persona-building process built on cultural community knowledge and existing data can build community capacity, provide rich information to assist in the creation of tailored messages, strategies and overall interventions during a public health crisis and provide user-centered, evidence-based information about a priority population while researchers and practitioners wait on the results from formative research.

This case study provided a unique opportunity to analyze the complementary effectiveness of two methods acting in tandem to understand the priority population: stakeholder-informed persona-building and participant-informed focus group interviews. Understanding their complementary nature addresses a time gap that often exists between researchers and practitioners during times of crises and builds on recommendations associated with bringing rigor into practice, promoting academic contribution to real-world issues and building collaborative partnerships. Finally, it supports the utility of a nimble tool that improves social marketers’ ability to know more about their audience for intervention design when time is of the essence and formative research is ongoing.

This study aims to explore the experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic for people who faced homelessness and dealt with mental health and/or substance use challenges.

This qualitative study was comprised of 26 1:1 interviews (16 men and 10 women), conducted between February and May 2021 with people who experienced homelessness in North East England during the COVID-19 pandemic. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken, with input from individuals with lived experience who were involved throughout the study.

Four themes were developed. The first theme, lack of support and exacerbation of mental health and substance use difficulties, highlighted how the lack of in-person support and increased isolation and loneliness led to relapses or new challenges for many people’s mental health and substance use. The second theme, uncertainty and fear during the pandemic, explored how the “surreal” experience of the pandemic led to many people feeling uncertain about the future and when things would return to normal. The third theme, isolation and impacts on social networks, discussed how isolation and changes to relationships also played a role in mental health and substance use. Finally, opportunity for reflection and self-improvement for mental health and substance use, explored how some people used the isolated time to re-evaluate their recovery journey and focus on self-improvement.

The experiences shared within this study have important implications for planning the future delivery and commissioning of health and social care services for people facing homelessness, such as sharing information accessibly through clear, consistent and simple language.

As one of the few papers to involve people with lived experience as part of the research, the findings reflect the unique narratives of this population with a focus on improving services.