Providentia

Are Intoxicated Eyewitnesses Better Than Their Reputation?

According to law enforcement, many witnesses are intoxicated either at the time of the crime, the interview, or both. However, no study to date has examined whether intoxicated witnesses' recall is different from sober witnesses' and whether they are more vulnerable to misinformation using an ecologically valid experimental design. A new research study published in Law and Human Behavior examines this basic question.  Intoxicated, placebo, and sober witnesses observed a live, staged theft, overheard subsequent misinformation about the theft, and took part in an investigative interview. Participants generally believed they witnessed a real crime and experienced a real interview. Intoxicated witnesses were not different from placebo or sober witnesses in the number of accurate details, inaccurate details, or “don't know” answers reported. All the participants demonstrated a misinformation effect, but there were no differences between intoxication levels: Intoxicated participants were not more susceptible to misinformation than sober or placebo participants. Results are discussed in the light of their theoretical and applied relevance.

For the abstract.

Thousands of Women Kidnapped Each Year in Kyrgyzstan

In Kyrgyzstan, it's known as ala kachuu or "bride kidnapping".    Long regarded as a traditional practice, thousands of women are abducted from their family homes each year, either by force or trickery.   Although many cases of ala kachuu are actually consensual (providing willing couples a way of way of eloping without parental consent),  involuntary ala kachuu remains common as well.   Since it often goes unreported, the actual number of bride kidnappings is unknown although Kyrgyszstan Ombudsman Tursunbek Akun estimates that more than 8,000 young women are kidnapped each year.  Despite being illegal under Article 155 of Kyrgyzstan's Criminal Code, only a handful of ala kachuu cases ever reach the courts.  Not only are local police disinclined to investigate bride kidnapping cases, but families are often reluctant to take back woman who have been kidnapped.  As a result, almost no ala kachuu cases have ever been successfully prosecuted and many abductees, abandoned by their families, later commit suicide.

Despite the shroud of secrecy that often surrounds ala kachuu, most local civil groups agree that bride kidnappings have risen sharply since 1991 when Kyrgyzstan became an independent republic.  Prior to that time, bride kidnappings were banned by the Soviet authorities and involuntary cases were almost unknown.   With the return of local rule, villages have become divided over legal and religious recognition of ala kachuu marriages.    While many brides are afraid to speak out due to fear of retaliation and social stigma, a few women have been willing to talk to international media sources.   In one interview, a bride who only wished to be known as "Totugul" reported that she was taken from her village in eastern Kyrgyzstan by a man from a nearby village.   Persuaded to marry her abductor in a religious ceremony, she and her two children were later abandoned by her husband.   Since the marriage had never been registered with the state, Totugul found herself in a legal limbo shared by many Central Asian women.   Having an unregistered marriage left her with almost no legal options over forcing her husband to provide child support.    “My marriage was not registered and no one will help me. Our [village] women’s committee has talked to many government officials but, because our marriages are unregistered, we [bride kidnapping victims] don’t have rights,” she said.   Conservative Kyrgyz consider any attempt at opposing bride kidnappings as a cause for shame. The incidence of bride kidnappings varies sharply across Kyrgyzstan with some areas reporting that up to 45% of the women who married in 2010 and 2011 were abducted from their homes. 

For family members and their lawyers who break the tradition of silence, getting police to act on ala kachuu complaints is often impossible due to implicit approval of the practice by many local police.  Insisting that ala kachuu is a tradition, many police either insist on bribes to help and can even engage in bride kidnappings themselves.   Even when police are motivated to act, they can refuse to intervene unless the victim herself agrees to press charges.    In many bride kidnapping cases, the abductee is typically held in the husband's household with no way of contacting family members for assistance.  While abducted women are technically free to refuse to be married against their will, they often face enormous moral pressure both from their husband's family and even from their own family (given the stigma involved).   After a bride is married, the likelihood of her reporting the kidnapping is virtually nil since it would mean pressing charges against her husband and in-laws. 

According to Marina Edigeeva, a human rights lawyer with the Adilet legal clinic in northwestern Kyrgyzstan, most kidnapped brides have few legal protections under Kyrgyz law.  "Many marriages are unregistered because the bride kidnapping is illegal.  It is the man’s decision not to register the marriage because initially he isn't sure how long she will stay, or if she will try to run away",  Edigeeva says.  Despite the efforts of human rights organizations to gain better legal protections for women in informal unions,  initiatives to strengthen laws against ala kachuu and help women in unregistered marriages remain stalled.   Kyrgyzstan's parliament, largely dominated by men from regions where bride kidnappings are common, has consistently voted down legislation banning clerics from blessing unregistered marriages.   Given the widespread popularity of ala kachuu, as well as polygamy which is also illegal in Kyrgyzstan, little progress is expected in the near future on an issue that has polarized the country.

To date, there has been little consistent international pressure on Kyrgyzstan to end the practice of bride kidnappings.    To raise public awareness on the local level,  civil rights organizations and youth groups have launched a series of video-making workshops sponsored by the Kyrgyz NGO Open Line to educate villagers about the harm caused by bride kidnappings and to combat the stigma associated with returning a kidnapped bride to her home.   According to one of the producers of a video titled "Women are not livestock!":

There is an article in the criminal code - 155 - that should punish the stealing of women for marriage. We want this law to work. For some reason, [in Kyrgyzstan] when someone steals livestock, he is sternly punished, but when he steals a woman, he isn't punished. We want to get across to society that a woman is a person deserving of love…we want to lobby the parliament so that [law 155] works, or to change this law [from “abduction of a woman with the aim of entering marriage”] to simply “abduction of a person.” 

Despite the obvious frustration many Kyrgyz feel over ala kachuu, the bride kidnappings continue.

For more information.

After the Zoot Suit Riots (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

Understanding the Riots

Working along with his colleague, James Barker, Kenneth Clark began interviewing zoot suiters who had taken part in the 1943 riot to try to get a sense of why the rioting had happened.  In a paper that they would later publish in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, the two researchers would provide a verty human face for the racial tensions that had sparked the riots and make an attempt at explaining how similar race riots could be prevented in future.   In describing their justification for the research project, they raised the following points: 

1. The riots "vividly illustrate[s] the impact of racial prejudice and social isolation upon the personality of an individual who is a victim of such circumstances".
2. Through an understanding of this case, it is possible to observe some implications of the pathology of racial prejudice not only in reference to its effects upon the individual but also in reference to the stability of society as a whole.
3. It presents a clear picture of a personality undergoing a process of disintegration.Similar case studies might lead to insights concerning ways to check these patently disintegative processes and stabilize the personality.
4. When racial problems and conflicts are seen in the light of their effects upon individual persons rather than in broad, general, detached statistical terms, their psychological significance becomes clearer and the practical implications for an applied social psychology become inescapable.

The study focused on an 18-year old African American man,  identified only as  "R", who lived alone in a rooming-house in the centre of Harlem.   Although he had been planning to complete vocational school, everything changed with his induction notice and his decision to stop school and "have some fun" before entering the military.  In commenting on R.'s appearance at the time of his interview, the researchers pointed out that he was fully dressed in the zoot suit style and, without any prompting, began discussing the 1943 Harlem riot and the role that he had played in it.   Since the riot had only happened the month before his interview,  R. seemed determined to have his account of the riot recorded to avoid any misunderstandings or alterations to his testimony.   Clark and Barker made it clear that R.'s statement would become part of a book on the riot that they were writing and that the book would present a fair and impartial account of what had happened.  The Clark-Barker paper included R.'s description of his life in the ghetto and how it influenced his actions during the riot and afterward.

“Harlem is on fire”

According to R., “the riot started when a colored man got shot.  About half an hour later,  the riot was goin’ full blast, and the people was going ‘round stores. “   Widespread looting took place, especially at men’s clothing stores where zoot suits were being stolen to be worn by rioters.   R.'s involvement began when someone ran into the Harlem Dump Theatre and shouted that “Harlem is on fire”.  R. and his friends responded by "jump[ing] up, half full of juice and runnin’ for the goddamn door.  Me leading of course”.   He and the other rioters spread all over Harlem with their looting and rioting until the following morning by which time, “half a Harlem is on fire”.

The violence was hardly limited to stores and inanimate objects.  Police officers and white shopkeepers were often beaten without mercy although no actual fatalities occurred as a direct result of the riot.   While Mayor Fiorello Laguardia tried to restore order by speaking to the rioters directly, he was cut off when an unidentified rioter hit him on the side of his head with a brick.   Although he wasn’t seriously injured, the mayor quickly withdrew from the riot scene and left it up to the police to restore order. 

If R. had any reservations about admitting to his role in the riot,  he showed little indication of it.  As he stated in his account, “Whoever is goin' to read this little letter of introduction, let him know it was hell  down here. By time you read this I will be fighting for Uncle Sam, the bitches, and I do not like it worth a dam. I'm not a spy or a saboteur, but I don't like goin' over there fightin' for the white man—so be it.”

His closing lines likely say it all: 

“So as I close my  little letter of introduction, I leave this  thought with thee:  Yea, so it be   I leave this thought with thee  Do not attempt to fuck with me. (An expression of manifest defiance even though stated in characteristic humorous vein)  Yours truly,  ? ? ? ? ? ? ?  P.S., B.S."

The Zoot Effect

As Kenneth Clark and James Barker pointed out in their summary, R.'s description of the riot and its aftermath deviated significantly from the news accounts, especially considering his descriptions of police violence and evidence of corruption on their part (such as stealing money from arrested rioters).   Clark and Baker then made the following conclusions based on their interview:

1. There is a complete lack of manifest guilt feelings in reference [R's] own participation in antisocial acts.
2. There is a habitual, seemingly deliberate, disregard of even the simple rules of gramar in his ordinary speech- probably a specific indication of a generalized defiance of the larger society.
3. There is an excessive use of profanity in ordinary conversation even in the presence of individuals he obviously respects- indicating the possibility that these words have been used with such frequency by the individual that they either become meaningless or are another symbol of habitual social defiance and cynicism.  They become "normal" for his rigidly restricted ideational and behavioral sphere.
4. A complete lack of manifest sympathy, sorrow, or other human feelings in observing acts of brutality inflicted upon another or even upon himself.  This cannot be ascribed to the objectivity of his report since it is certainly not objective. 
5. A general tendency to engage in exhibitionistic exaggeration, bordering upon phantasy, in descriptions of events in which he was allegedly involved.  The same exhibitionism is shown in his general language and in his dress.
6. A definite rejection of social authority, i.e., prestige of public administrators and police.

Clark and Barker also proposed a new term, the "zoot effect" to describe what they were observing.     As they added in their summary: 

The "zoot effect" in American culture appears to manifest itself when the human personality has been socially isolated, rejected, discriminated against, and chronically humiliated.  It is the consequence of the attempts of the individual to stabilize himself and maintain some ego-security in the face of these facts. It is not primarily a racial phenomenon since a given person of any race who is subjected to the determining conditions may manifest this effect in personality structure.

Considering that the "zoot effect" represented an early example of what would come during the 1960s as race riots became far more widespread and violent, the Clark and Barker paper represents a largely ignored attempt on the part of two social psychologists to warn American society at large of the consequences of systemic prejudice.   In one final warning that was also quietly ignored, the authors noted that:

"the stability of the individual personality and the stability of the larger society are inextricably interrelated and therefore the socially accepted dehumanization of an individual or group must inevitably manifest itself in societal disturbances"

Learning from the Riots

The three-person McGucken Committee eventually pulled together testimony from the Zoot Suit riots and the various scientific contribtions (including the Clark-Barker study) into a remarkable document, the McGucken report.   While the report acknowledged the need to arrest lawbreakers, the committee also laid blame on the media for stirring up the rioters and also called for better cultural and language training for police.  Unfortunately, the sensible recommendations of the McGucken report were hardly compatible with the systematic racial and cultural attitudes of the time.    More importantly however, the zoot suit riots were a valuable learning experience for those zoot-suiters who went on to become influential activists, including Ralph Ellison, Cesar Chavez, and Malcolm X.   It was hardly surprising that former zoot-suiters who participated in the 1943 riots would put the lessons they had learned to good use in the explosive race riots of the 1960s.  

As for Kenneth Clark, his early work in studying the zoot suit riots was just part of a rich heritage of research that would eventually make him one of the most influential psychologists of his generation.  Although he and his wife Mamie Phipps Clark were most famous for their doll research (cited as a footnote in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling ending school desegregation in 1954), his other achievements remain legendary.  Along with the publication of his landmark classic, Prejudice and Your Child, in 1955, he distinguished himself as a social researcher and an advocate for change in society.   By the time of his death in 2005 however,  Kenneth Clark's pioneering was already largely overshadowed by a national shift away from the principles of equality and justice that Clark expressed throughout his long career. 

That many of the important lessons that he and James Barker first laid out in 1943 seem in danger of being forgotten demonstrates the role that social scientists still need to play as future problems unfold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can a Brief Training Program Help Mental Health Professionals Prevent Suicide?

Finding effective and efficient options for training mental health professionals to assess and manage suicide risk is a high priority. A research study published in a recent issue of Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention examined whether an innovative, brief workshop can improve provider knowledge, confidence, and written risk assessment in a multidisciplinary sample of ambulatory and acute services professionals and trainees. The researchers conducted a pre/post evaluation of a 3 h workshop designed to improve clinical competence in suicide risk assessment by using visual concept mapping, medical records documentation, and site-specific crisis response options.  The 338 diverse mental health professionals participating in the study completed pre- and postworkshop questionnaires measuring their knowledge and confidence. Before and after the workshop, participants completed documentation for a clinical vignette. Trained coders rated the quality of risk assessment formulation before and after training. Results showed that participants’ knowledge, confidence, and objectively-rated documentation skills improved significantly (p < .001), with large effect sizes. Participants’ expectation of their ability to transfer workshop content to their clinical practice was high (mean = 4.10 on 1–5 scale). The researchers concluded Commitment to Living is a promising, innovative, and efficient curriculum for educating practicing clinicians to assess and respond to suicide risk. Well-designed, brief, suicide risk management programs can improve clinicians’ knowledge, confidence, and skill.

For the abstract.

June 20 Is World Refugee Day

In December 2000, a special United Nations resolution was passed marking June 20 as World Refugee Day.  The first World Refugee Day was held on June 20, 2001 since that year marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.    The Organization of African Unity already marked June 20 as African Refugee Day and the United Nations resolution marked that day to call attention to the estimated 43.u million people driven from their homes by war, poverty, and upheavals in countries around the world.  According to the most recent report by the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), four-fifths of the world's refugees come from developing nations with Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia being the countries with the most refugees per capita.   Millions of refugees are forced into internment camps or driven to make desperate attempts to enter neighbouring countries illegally. 

As part of the World Refugee Day 2021 activities, the UNHCR has launched the "Dilemma Campaign" to increase understanding of why refugees need help.  Intended to show us the sorts of life or death decisions that refugees often face, the Dilemma Campaign has four main flight scenarios and asks one haunting question:  What would you do:

• If your country is embroiled in a regional conflict, do you stay and risk being drawn into the conflict?  Or do you attempt to flee?
• Do you face death in a war zone?  Or do you escape and leave loved ones behind?
• Do you stay and risk being killed?  Or to you attempt to flee and risk being kidnapped, raped or tortured? 

As part of his message for the 2011 World Refugee Day, United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said:

No one wants to become a refugee.  No one should have to endure this humiliating and arduous ordeal.  Yet, millions do.  Even one refugee forced to flee, one refugee forced to return to danger is one too many."

World Refugee Day is also intended to combat negative stereotypes relating to refugees which can often affect whether they will be allowed to obtain the right to remain in those countries where they are seeking asylum.  In many cases, countries denying asylum can lead to refugees being forced to return and facing torture, imprisonment, or worse.   Canada recently marked the anniversary of the tragic voyage of the MS. St. Louis in which hundred of German Jews, fleeing Nazi persecution, were turned away from Canada, the United States, and Cuba and many of those refugees eventually died back in Nazi Germany.    While the number of refugee claimants to Canada have actually been going down in recent years, the introduction of new punitive legislation such as the proposed Bill C-49 which criminalizes human trafficking has already been targeted by refugee groups as being overly harsh.   Similar measures are being passed and approved in other countries, spurred on by anti-immigration politicians.   Since many countries that already host large refugee populations find their own resources being overwhelmed, the need for other countries to take up the burden is facing active resistance.

World Refugee Day activies are being held around the world with conferences, festivities and tributes from private citizens to celebrities such as UNCHR's Special Envoy, Angelica Jolie.  Contact your local UNCHR branch to find about about World Refugee Day in your area.

For more information on World Refugee Day

To watch Angelica Jolie's video message on YouTube

 

After the Zoot Suit Riots (Part 1)

Despite the colourful name associated with them, there was nothing amusing about the Zoot Suit Riots that raged across many parts of the United States in 1943.   Not only did they represent an important chapter in the battle for civil rights in the United States, but they set the stage for an almost forgotten part of psychology's history as well

Even before the outbreak of World War II,  the rising number of Hispanic immigrants entering California from Mexico left many white Californians feeling threatened.  Although a Hispanic community had existed in California since before it became a U.S. state, anti-Mexican attitudes, spurred on by the often inflammatory propaganda found in many southern California newspapers, led to numerous racial confrontations.    After the forced repatration of more than 12,000 people of Mexican descent to Mexico during the 1930s (despite many of them being American citizens), the remaining members of the Hispanic community became increasingly militant.   As the young Hispanics began fighting back against the blatant discrimination they faced, there was growing alarm on the part of the non-Hispanics.   Since there were more than three million people of Hispanic descent in the United States at that time, the potential for racial violence was immense.  That was especially true in the case of Los Angeles, which had the highest concentration of Mexicans outside of Mexico at that time.

By the beginning of the 1940s, Hispanic youths (already being called Chicanos by the media) had formed their own subculture, complete with unique slang, preferences in music, and distinctive clothing style.   While the high-waisted, long-coated, and wide-legged zoot suits that the Hispanic youths preferred to wear was commonly seen in Harlem during the Jazz Age, they had spread to ethnic neighbourhoods throughout the United States by the time World War II broke out.    Along with their characteristic zoot suits and pork-pie hats, the Hispanic youths (who preferred to call themselves "Pachucos")  were already forming their own gangs for self-defence against racial taunts and anti-Hispanic violence.   As for the predominantly-white majority however, outrage over pachuco gangs (again fostered by derogatory newspaper coverage) only became worse with time.   Since the zoot-suit culture often meant a way of resisting the blatant racism of that era, many African-American youths became zoot-suiters as well.  While not all of them were Hispanic or African-American (there were also white pachuco gangs), that hardly changed the public perception.

After the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, mobilizing thousands of troops to take part in the fighting became a priority for the Roosevelt administration.   Still, despite the outrage following the Japanese attack, the U.S. government was faced with a dilemma since not enough Americans were volunteering to fight.    To solve the problem, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order on December 5, 1942 ending voluntary enlistments and begin drafting an average of two hundred thousand men a month.    Millions of Americans would eventually be drafted to fight while draft dodgers and conscientious objectors were punished with prison or mandatory service.  

As for the zoot suiters and pachucos, they made no attempt to hide their contempt for the military and the Draft Board.   Many African American and Hispanic youths hotly insisted that the war in Europe had nothing to do with them and  that they had no business fighting overseas when they were denied equal rights (U.S. armed forces were still segregated then).   When tension was at its peak in June 1943, newspapers in the Los Angeles area ran a media campaign about an incident in which a group of Mexicans attacked some white sailors.  The resulting anger led to thousands of enlisted men and civilians rioting through Mexican American neighbourhoods.  They targeted zoot-suiters specifically, stripping off their zoot suits and cutting their long hair.  Although there were no actual fatalities, more than one hundred people were injured in the rioting.   Again, the media coverage was largely one-sided and newspapers often played up the violence of the pachucos and overlooked worse incidents by white rioters.    They also praised the "cleansing effect" of the rioting servicemen who they insisted were purging Los Angeles of "hoodlums".   The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps high command attempted to halt the riots by banning all U.S. servicemen from the Los Angeles area.   They also insisted that their men were acting purely in self-defense despite the clear evidence to the contrary.  

As the rioting began dying down in Los Angeles, fresh outbreaks spread across California as well as Texas and Arizona.  And the rioting was hardly one-sided.  Since African American zoot-suiters were targeted for violence with little sympathy from the media or the police, they began to riot themselves.  The race rioting was hardly as widespread as it would be during the 1960s but the violent outbreaks in Detroit, Beamont, San Diego, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago were enough to unnerve a government already fighting World War II.    The extent of the rioting was completely unprecedented and police focused primarily on suppressing rioters by any means possible.

By the time the rioting finally subsided, the question of who could be blamed for the violence became a hot issue for the still-at-war U.S. government.   Not only was were military and civilian forces being accused of unnecessary violence across the country,  but the Mexican government lodged a formal complaint over how Mexican nationals had been treated during the rioting.   This led to an interesting political split regarding the cause of the rioting and how further problems could be prevented.   Many conservative government leaders preferred not to acknowledge that Hispanic and African-American communities had legitimate grievances.  Instead, they were quick to denounce zoot-suiters as dangerous radicals who were a threat to national security and even suggested that foreign agitators were involved.  

In the months following the riots, Earl Warren (who was then governor of California) launched the creation of the McGucken Commission to investigate the riots and possible solutions to prevent future violence.   As part of the commission's work,  the commission members called for formal study of the social conditions that had created the zoot suit culture and contributed to the violence,  While applied social psychology was still in its infancy, the prospect of using social psychological research to help solve a major social problem proved a powerful lure for many researchers.

Such as Kenneth Clark....

While the groundbreaking research that he he would do with his wife Mamie Phipps Clark still lay in the future, Kenneth Clark was already a well-established teacher at the City College of New York   as well as one of the very few African American researchers doing work with Harlem residents.   Not only was he uniquely placed to study the Zoot Suit rioters but he may well have been one of the only social scientists capable of gaining their trust.

Continue to Part 2

 

Feminism and psychology: Analysis of a half-century of research on women and gender

Starting in the 1960s, feminists argued that the discipline of psychology had neglected the study of women and gender and misrepresented women in its research and theories. Feminists also posed many questions worthy of being addressed by psychological science. This call for research preceded the emergence of a new and influential body of research on gender and women that grew especially rapidly during the period of greatest feminist activism. A new metanalysis published in a recent issue of American Psychologist reviews journal articles cataloged by PsycINFO for 1960–2009.   These explorations revealed (a) a concentration of studies in basic research areas investigating social behavior and individual dispositions and in many applied areas, (b) differing trajectories of research on prototypical topics, and (c) diverse theoretical orientations that authors have not typically labeled as feminist. The considerable dissemination of this research is evident in its dispersion beyond gender-specialty journals into a wide range of other journals, including psychology's core review and theory journals, as well as in its coverage in introductory psychology textbooks. In this formidable body of research, psychological science has reflected the profound changes in the status of women during the last half-century and addressed numerous questions that these changes have posed. Feminism served to catalyze this research area, which grew beyond the bounds of feminist psychology to incorporate a very large array of theories, methods, and topics.

For the abstract.

Are We Facing A Dementia Epidemic?

Just to let you know that I have a new guest post on the Huffington Post.

For country and western star Glen Campbell, the decision to go public with his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease wasn't easy. In the press release that he and his wife Kim issued in June 2011, the 76-year-old singer admitted to experiencing short-term memory problems for years before being diagnosed.

As Campbell's daughter, Ashley, pointed out in a CNN interview, the family's main concern was fans getting the wrong impression of problems that her father might develop on stage during shows: "We were concerned about was during shows he would forget a line or get a little confused. People would think, 'Is he drunk?' Is he doing drugs again?" Currently engaged in a series of goodbye tours and media events to increase public awareness for Alzheimer's disease, Glen Campbell is experiencing an upsurge of popularity as his international host of fans rally around him.

Read more.

Should Medically Assisted Suicide Be Legal in Canada?

On February 12, 1994, Sue Rodriguez ended her life with the help of an anonymous physician.   A 44-year old British Columbia resident, Ms. Rodriguez had been suffering from the devastating effects of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) for many years and her campaign for the legal right to assisted suicide made her a figurehead for the right-to-die movement in Canada.  After a gripping court battle that dominated headlines across Canada, the  Supreme Court of Canada ruled against her in 1993 in the landmark Rodriguez v British Columbia decision .   Despite losing the case, she later terminated her own life with the assistance of then-MPP Svend Robinson.  Neither Mr. Robinson or the anonymous physician were ever charged for their involvement.  

Although assisted suicide remains a controversial issue worldwide, the passage of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act in 1994 made it the first U.S. state and one of the first jurisdictions in the world to allow medically-assisted suicide under specific conditions.    Since then, Washington and Montana have also moved to allow physicans to assist patients commit suicide under controlled conditions.  In Europe, the Netherlands passed the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act in 2002 which has since been followed by similar legislation in Luxembourg and France.  More controversially,  assisted-suicide legislation in Switzerland has enabled the establishment of medical clinics operated by Dignitas, a Swiss assisted-dying organization.    Despite attempts to block foreign visitors from using the Dignitas clinics, a new form of "suicide tourism" has led to Dignitas being involved in more than eight hundred suicides as of March 2008 (60 per cent of these suicides are from nearby Germany). 

Since the Rodriguez decision, assisted suicide continues to be a criminal offense under Canadian law with a potential penalty of fourteen years in prison.  Despite several high-profile cases, including the prosecution of Robert Latimer for killing his physically disabled daughter in 1993 and opinion polls which consistently show widespread support for medically assisted suicide by Canadians, the right-to-die debate in Canada has only recently been reignited by two high-profile cases from British Columbia.   

The first of these cases involved Kathleen (Kay) Carter  who, in 2010, became the tenth Canadian to die by assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.  An 89-year old resident of a Vancouver nursing home who was nearly paralyzed with spinal stenosis, Ms. Carter was horrified at her increasing debilition and made the decision to end her life in 2009.  After researching different options, she informed her seven children of her intention to die and enlisted their support.    Due to concerns over possible arrest for seeking an assisted suicide, she traveled to Switzerland in secret accompanied by family members (the other residents of her nursing home were only told that she was being taken ouot of province to "visit her sister").    After meeting with Dignitas physicians, Kay Carter drank a lethal drug combination supplied by her physicans on January 15, 2010 and died peacefully.  After their return to Canada, Kay Carter's daughter Lee and her husband Hollis Johnson have become part of a legal challenge directed at the British Columbia Supreme Court to allow physician-assisted suicide in Canada.   Working with them and the British Columbia Civlil Liberties Association  (BCCLA)   was the second high-profile case to test current assisted suicide legislation in Canada.     

A long-time resident of British Columbia, Gloria Taylor has become a familiar figure sitting in her wheelchair while waiting to address the British Columbia Supreme Court during the current round of hearings.   The 64-year old grandmother is suffering from the debilitating effects of ALS, much as Sue Rodriguez had.   After hearing about the legal challenge launched by Lee Carter, Hollis Johnson, and the BCCLA, Ms. Taylor added her name to the Carter Challenge and became a co-plaintant.    In the affadavit that she has presented to the court, Ms. Taylor described her own horror at her progressively worsening condition.   "I must make this clear: I do not want to die"  she added. "I want to live every day that I can to the fullest, one day at a time. What I do not want is to die an agonizing, slow, difficult, unpleasant, undignified death."   She also described the suffering of several of her friends, including a fellow ALS sufferer who also provided an affidavit although he died before the trial began.  

As the court challenge continues in British Columbia, the fight for medically assisted suicide is progressing in Quebec.  On March 22 of this year,  a Quebec commission on Dying With Dignity released a report after two years of public hearings on the contentious issue.  The commssion heard from thirty-two experts in diverse fields such as law, philosophy, ethics, medicine, and psychology.   They also conducted public hearings and heard evidence from hundreds of individuals and groups and held meetings in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France to examine palliative care systems in other countries.  Finally, the commission received more than 16,000 comments by mail, fax, and email and examined online questionnaire responses from more than 6558 respondents.

In the final report released by the commission, they made the following recommendations:

1. Quebec should improve access to palliative care to all terminally ill people and increase traing of medical staff in palliative care;
2. A centralized registry for advance care directives should be created and hospitals should be routinely audited to ensure they follow the directions in these documents;
3. The law should be changed to allow medically assisted dying.  Doctors who provide medical assistance to help a person die should not be subject to criinal prosecution if the patient:

• Is a resident of Quebec
• Is an adul and mentally competent to make decisions
• Is in constant and unbearable suffering from a disease which has no prospect for improvement
• Makes two written requests for medically assisted dying, which are in turn assessed by two doctors

While Canada's federal government has the final jurisdiction for changing legislation relating to euthanasia and assisted suicide, the commision's report represents an important step in changing current laws.   As well, the responsibility for charging and prosecuting medical doctors and family members for participating in assisted suicides are left  up to the discretion of the Attorney General for each individual province.    Since healthcare is also a provincial responsibility, the growing support for assisted suicide legislation, as well as the latest court challenges, may well force provinces to demand changes at the federal level.

As the various court challenges work their way through the system, groups such as Dying With Dignity Canada are seeking to raise grassroots support with a series of debates across the country.   Many of these debates involve DWD Executive Director, Wanda Morris facing active opposition from religious groups, including the BC Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute.     "We must look to the rights of those who suffer needlessly,"  Ms. Morris pointed out in a debate held in Toronto recently.   "As Canadians we have a number of rights. Now it's time that we have one more. If a time comes when I am suffering and want to end my life, I hope I can choose my time, gather my loved ones around me and gently go into the good night." 

In the meantime, Gloria Taylor and others like her are still waiting for a final legal decision from the B.C.  Supreme Court (and the Federal Supreme Court as well, most likely) but the fight for assisted suicide in Canada is likely only just beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

Aging and mental health in the decade ahead: What psychologists need to know

A new public policy review published in a recent issue of American Psychologist points out that, until relatively recently, most psychologists have had limited professional involvement with older adults. With the baby boomers starting to turn 65 years old in 2011, sheer numbers of older adults will continue to increase. About 1 in 5 older adults has a mental disorder, such as dementia. Their needs for mental and behavioral health services are not now adequately met, and the decade ahead will require an approximate doubling of the current level of psychologists' time with older adults. Public policy in the coming decade will face tensions between cost containment and facilitation of integrated models of care. Most older adults who access mental health services do so in primary care settings, where interdisciplinary, collaborative models of care have been found to be quite effective. To meet the needs of the aging population, psychologists need to increase awareness of competencies for geropsychology practice and knowledge regarding dementia diagnosis, screening, and services. Opportunities for psychological practice are anticipated to grow in primary care, dementia and family caregiving services, decision-making-capacity evaluation, and end-of-life care. Aging is an aspect of diversity that can be integrated into psychology education across levels of training. Policy advocacy for geropsychology clinical services, education, and research remains critical.   Psychologists have much to offer an aging society.

For the abstract.