Providentia

The Law and Same-Sex Parenting

Legal and policy questions relevant to the lives of lesbian and gay parents and their children have recently been subjects of vigorous debate. Among the issues for which psychological research has been seen as particularly relevant are questions regarding child custody after divorce, same-sex marriage, adoption, and foster care. An article published in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity provides an overview of the current legal terrain for lesbian and gay parents and their children in the United States today, an overview of relevant social science research, and some commentary on the interface between the two. It is concluded that research findings on lesbian and gay parents and their children provide no warrant for legal discrimination against these families

For the abstract

What is Synthetic Cannabis?

On April 20, 2012, police in Cozad, Nebraska responded to a 911 call from a teenaged girl stating that a man was trying to break into her family home.  When they arrived, they found 46-year-old Vidal Sarimento in the bathtub.  He had entered the home, terrorized the girl who had barricaded herself in her bedroom, and helped himself to orange juice from the refrigerator before falling asleep in the tub.   After being taken to the Dawson County Jail, Sarimento became agitated while taking a shower.  Three deputies were need to subdue him and one required medical treatment afterward.

Charged with burglary, stalking a child under sixteen years of age, false imprisonment, and assault, Sarimento was held over for a psychiatric evaluation.   He was later found incompetent and treated for paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations.    According to forensic psychiatrist, Y. Scott Moore, who examined Sarimento, his psychotic symptoms appeared to be linked to his ingesting synthetic cannabis.   While it is not known how much synthetic cannabis he used or whether it was still in his system at the time of the break-in,  another psychiatrist argued that Sarimento had been psychotic for some time when the break-in occurred and that the synthemtic cannabis likely contributed to his psychosis.   His condition was stabilized after six months in a regional treatment centre and his lawyer asked for the charges against him to be dismissed on the grounds of insanity.   He has since been released.

Also known as "K2" and "Spice", synthetic cannabis is a psychoactive designer drug intended to mimic the effects of THC.   Available from Internet distributors, symptoms linked to the drug include psychosis, agitation, convulsions, vomiting, and dependency.   People with previous psychiatric problems or a family history of mental illness appear at risk of prolonged psychotic symptoms after taking the drug.   Given that synthetic cannabis does not cause a positive drug test the way that cannabis or other drugs would, it remains a popular choice for recreational drug use.   There are currently more than 450 synthetic cannabinoid products available online with many sites billing it as "a legal spice that can be smoked." 

Though legal in some jurisdictions, many U.S. states have passed laws banning its sale and distribution.   Synthetic cannabis gained international recognition after the suicide of 18-year-old David Mitchell Rozga of Indianola, Iowa in 2010.   Rozga had smoked K2 shortly before his suicide and investigators suggested that synthetic cannabis played a role in his death.   The Rozga case has been used by political lobbyists to push for more stringent protections against K2 and other then-legal synthetic drugs.     The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported that emergency room visits across the U.S. due to synthetic cannabis use rose from 13 in 2009 to 567 in the first half of 2010 alone.   It is now the second most-used recreational drug among high school seniors behind marijuana itself and is believed to be far more potent. 

As more high-profile incidents continue to be reported, the danger associated with synthetic cannabis, and the difficulty in cracking down on all the different possible synthetic cannabinoid compounds, means more legal headaches for drug enforcement agencies.

Foreign Study, Women, and Sexual Assault

In the 2009-2010 academic year, more than 270,000 American students studied overseas and the number is expected to rise as foreign education becomes more popular.   In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the "100,000 strong initiative" to boost the number of American students studying in China while numerous colleges and universities across the world offer foreign exchange programs to attract international students.  

Despite the appeal of studying abroad, there has been little attention paid to the actual dangers involved, especially for women students.    While both male and female students face many of the same risks that tourists do overall, the added risk of sexual assault must also be considered.    The murder of Peace Corps volunteer Kate Puzey in 2009 highlighted the danger that female volunteers often face.   More than 1,000 female Peace Corps volunteers have reported being sexually assault between 2001 and 2009 and are likely just the tip of the iceberg given the thousands of other women on their own overseas.

Women studying abroad or doing remote volunteer work are at increased risk for a number of reasons including the "second-class citizen" status of women in many countries, unfamiliarity with the culture, language differences, reduced security, and lack of familiarity with alcohol.   

Even on American campuses,  the risk of sexual assault is high for female undergraduates experiencing the college culture for the first time.  This is particularly true for women in their first and second college years who participate in fraternity and sorority activities.   While making police complaints can be arduous enough for women in their own countries, it can be positively nightmarish for women dealing with police in other countries and entirely different cultures who may treat the offence as minor or being the fault of the victim.    In some cases, sexual assault victims in other countries have even been arrested for "having sex outside of marriage."

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

William Whiston and the Second Coming (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One

The story of the “Rabbit Woman of Godalming” began with an illiterate woman named Mary Toft who lived with her husband in the English town of Godalming.   By all accounts, the Tofts lived in extreme poverty with only her husband’s meager income as a cloth-worker to support them.    For reasons that would only become clear afterward, Mary Toft would claim to have given birth to various pieces of a rabbit in 1726.   According to her story, she had seen a rabbit running in the field and her longing for it led to a maternal impression that led to her giving birth to rabbits.   

A local surgeon and  midwife, John Howard, testified that he had witnessed Toft giving “a creature resembling a Rabbit but whose Heart and Lungs grew without [outside] its Belly, about 14 Days since she was delivered by the same Person, of a perfect Rabbit: and in a few Days after of 4 more; and on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the 4th, 5th, and 6th instant, of one in each day: in all nine, they died all in bringing into the World.”    It was Howard who publicized “the Rabbit Woman” and even managed to find her an even more powerful supporter, Nathaniel St. Andre.   As the official surgeon of the Royal Family as well as chief surgeon of the Westminster infirmary,  St. Andre seemed unlikely to be taken in by such a crude fraud. Still,  when he traveled to Godalming to assist in the birth of, yet another, rabbit, he became one of Mary Toft’s chief supporters.

The news of Mary Toft’s miraculous births led to widespread panic (and a nationwide boycott of rabbit meat).   For William Whiston, what was happening in Godalming seemed like ironclad proof that the end of the world was at hand.   The commotion over Mary Toft was enough for King George I to dispatch a more skeptical medical doctor to investigate and to arrange Mary Toft’s move to London where she could be more closely watched.   The two new doctors assigned to watch the Rabbit woman at work, Cyriacus Ahlers and Sir Richard Manningham, had difficulty testing Toft’s claims since she was suddenly unable to given birth to any more rabbits.    Being under continuous watch meant that she was no longer able to arrange for rabbits to by smuggled in to her by her husband.   After an investigation showed that her husband had been seen collecting rabbits around Godalming and one witness reported that Mary had attempted to have a rabbit smuggled into her room, the Royal court decided they had enough.   Following a grueling interrogation (and Richard Manningham threatening to carry out invasive surgery to decide her case once and for all), Mary Toft finally confessed to the fraud.   She had been sneaking in rabbit parts which she inserted into her vagina to “miraculously” give birth to them.  

Mary Toft’s widely publicized confession led to her arrest and conviction for fraud.   It also meant that Nathaniel St.  Andre and the other doctors who had endorsed her claim were completely disgraced.   Not that any of this deterred William Whiston from continuing his own public support of Mary Toft’s claims.    Dismissing Toft’s confession as being the result of intimidation, he decided that John Howard’s original description of Toft’s delivery should be accepted as absolute proof.  Since he view John Howard as “a Person of very great Honesty, Skill, Reputation in his Profession”,  Whiston regarded Mary Toft’s pregnancies as another sign that the end of the world was at hand.

Having founded his own religious society, Whiston proclaimed the message of impending doom in his autobiography and assorted books.  He also gave lectures across the United Kingdom, complete with a scale model of the Tabernacle of Israel as a visual aid while he lectured on Christ's imminent return in 1766.   Since the notion of comets caused universal devastation was in vogue at the time (even Edmund Halley suggested that The Great Flood had been caused by a comet),  Whiston's pronouncement that a comet would eventually shatter the Earth seemed less strange than it would today.

And so it was in 1736 that Whiston, who was still widely regarded as an eminent scientist despite being dismissed from Cambridge, publicly predicted that a comet would appear on Wednesday, October 14 which would result in the end of the world.  Basing his prediction of the comet’s appearance on his calculations,  Whiston stated that the comet would trigger a universal fire just as an earlier one had caused the Flood.   When the comet appeared on schedule, there was widespread panic as people tried to avoid the doom he had predicted.   A number of people in London climbed into boats and barges and set themselves afloat on the Thames hoping to avoid burning to death.    One captain of a Dutch ship carrying gunpowder threw all his cargo overboard for fear it would be ignited.   Perhaps more alarmingly as far as the government was concerned, stock in South Sea and India fell sharply and a run on the Bank of England forced the Bank’s director to issue a fire watch to protect their property.    

As the comet panic was at its peak, a group of clergymen formally asked the Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake, to prepare prayers to mark the end of the world (none of the traditional prayers in the Anglican canon applied).    Wake had to issue a public denial to calm the panic fears.    As the comet came and went without the promised catastrophe, the panic subsided and Whiston found his reputation as a scientist suffering badly as a result. 

Perhaps a final nail in the coffin of Whiston’s credibility came when Jonathan Swift published A True and Faithful Narrative of What Passed in London During the General Consternation of All Ranks And Degrees of Mankind shortly after the comet hysteria had peaked.   Meant as a tongue-in-cheek look at Whiston and his apocalyptic movement, Swift’s book (which he attributed to “Mr. Pope and Mr. Gay”) described the 1736 hysteria from his own perspective.    The cynical way in which the comet hysteria is described, including recording that "So great was the Faith and Fear of two of them, that they dropt Dead on the Spot; but I will not record their Names, lest I should be thought invidi∣ously to lay an Odium on their Families and Posterity."

By the time of his death in 1752, William Whiston was a virtual pariah because of his extremist religious views and his doomsday predictions.  Perhaps because of the example he provided, later scientists would be more cautious about making sensational claims about universal destruction.  

Or at least claims that were so easily disproven...

 

After Mathew Sheppard

Recent state and federal legislation such as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) addresses hate crime prevention and punishment. Two pivotal questions that arise in the development of such legislation are (a) should hate crime perpetrators be subject to penalty enhancements? and (b) should protections be extended to sexual and transgender minority individuals? An article published recently in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law presents two studies addressing these questions employing a two-step vignette methodology. Jury-eligible community members provided sentencing and blame attribution ratings for one of three hate crime scenarios (i.e., anti-African American, antigay, or antitransgender), as well as penalty enhancement agreement (i.e., yes/no) and measures of need for affect (Study 1) and need for cognition (Study 2). Patterns of findings across studies suggest that participants comply with hate crime legislation instructions in general, but sentencing decisions are consistently moderated by whether a participant agrees with the penalty enhancement aspect of hate crime legislation. Moreover, need for affect and need for cognition differentially impact perceptions of hate crimes; need for affect demonstrated predictive associations with victim blame, whereas need for cognition moderated relations with perpetrator sentence and blame judgments. Results are discussed with emphasis on the state of federal hate crime legislation, antigay and antitransgender prejudice, and future directions in research and policy.

For the abstract.

Is the Veterans Administration Ignoring Sexual Assault Trauma Claims?

A report released by the Department of Veterans Affairs as part of the settlement for a Freedom of Information lawsuit confirmed what thouands of female veterans had been reporting for years:  the Veterans Administration has been systematically discriminating against claims relating to trauma resulting from sexual abuse. 

According to the report prepared by Yale Law School's Veterans Legal Services Clinic, just 30 percent of claims relating to sexual trauma had been approved compared to 53 percent of non-sexual PTSD claims in 2008 alone.  Though 57 percent of claims for sexual trauma were approved in 2012, over 73 percent of non-sexual claims were approved.  

Sexual trauma claims filed by men were even less likely to be approved than claims filed by women.   In 2011, just 37.1 percent of men's sexual trauma claims were approved while 74.5 percent of non-sexual PTSD claims were approved.

The report also found enormous differences between regional VA offices with St. Paul, MN, Detroit, and St. Louis showin a steep difference between sexual and non-sexual trauma claims while Nashville, TN and Los Angeles showing little difference after significant improvement in recent years.

The report findings come as no surprise for veterans and women's rights groups that have been reporting years of systematic discrimination against men and women making sexual assault trauma claims.    Sandra Park, senior attorney with the ACLU's Women's Rights Project,  stated that it was "inexcusable that the VA discriminates against survivors who have sacrificed so much for our country."    She added that she and her colleagues were hopeful that the report will encourage reform by forcing the VA to acknowledge the discrimination that many veterans face.

The percentage of disability claims approved rose sharply in 2011 when the VA relaxed the burden of evidence required for soldiers to prove their PTSD resulted from combat but the burden of proof for soldiers claiming trauma from sexual abuse is as rigid as ever.   According to Ann Bhagwati, a former captain and executive director of the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), the process involved in filing a sexal trauma is "unnecessarily grueling."     She added that the process involved in filing a claim is "a second betrayal to most veterans"  who often report having their accusations dismissed by their commanding officers.

Despite the growing awareness of the problem of sexual victimization in the Armed Forces, the system remains, in Bhagwati's words, "broken through and through."  

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Media Exposure and the "Perfect" Body

Why have obesity and eating disorders become so common in children and adolescents?    Along with an unhealthy obsession with food, diet, and appearance, there also seems to be an underlying belief in an "ideal" body weight and shape.   For those young people who believe that they fall short of this ideal (as the vast majority do), the outcome is low self-esteem, biased perceptions about how much food they should eat, and a tendency towards poor eating habits that can aggravate health problems. 

Adolescents diagnosed with serious eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia often report that their symptoms can be linked to the bullying they often receive from their age peers as well as the unrealistic media images presented as an ideal for them to follow.    When overweight people are shown at all, they are presented as comic relief and often ridiculed.   The romantic heroes and heroines on the other hand, typically have bodies that are smaller and thinner than average.   This is especially true for female characters while males are allowed the option of "bulking up" with greater muscular development.

Content analysis of female characters show a bias towards body weights well below the recommended size and weight for people in their age group.    As a result,  adolescent females who are unable to conform to the ideal being put forward by movie and television find themselves taking extreme measures to be more like their role models.    With thinness presented as the ideal body shape and a necessary prerequisite for health and happiness,  anyone falling short of this ideal is vulnerable to depression, poor self-esteem, and general body dissatisfaction.   The effect of media content on ideas of physical beauty appears remarkably robust with women reporting greater feelings of inadequacy regardless of their real body weight.   Though the problem is most commonly seen in females, it is hardly limited to them.   While there is  slightly wider variation in body shapes among male characters in movies and television who are presented as ideals of physical attractiveness, obesity is still regarded as unattractive.

To read more, check out my new post in Psychology Today. 

William Whiston and the Second Coming (Part 1 of 2)

By the dawn of the 18^th century, the rise of science meant that purely religious doomsday predictions no longer had the widespread support they once did.    Though apocalyptic preachers could still attract followers,  skepticism about religious predictions of doom was becoming more popular.  Still, the dividing line between science and religion was often razor thin with even icons of science weighing in on thorny religious questions such as when the world would end.   While Isaac Newton was careful not to have his odd speculations about the date of the Second Coming published during his lifetime, his successor, William Whiston, was not as reluctant with his own pronouncements.

Along with most natural philosophers of his time, Whiston was very much a creationist since he considered “the Matter of the Universe” as having been “created out of nothing” by “the Almighty Power of God.”     There was nothing remarkable about this at the time since this was the dominant scientific view then (though there were already freethinkers questioning the link between science and religion).     Whiston didn’t hesitate to regard God and Nature being part of a single system with God controlling the physical world with His “immechanical” powers.   Without God controlling nature, “this beautiful System would fall to Pieces and dissolve into Atoms. On which Occasion, the Apostolical Constitution speak as agreeably to Philosophy as to Religion, when they say, The Whole World is held together by the Hand of God.” 

He also regarded the Bible as an unerring guide to understanding Nature and insisted that the chronology laid down in the Old and New Testaments needed to be followed to understand “the true System of the World.”

Replacing Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University in 1702, nobody questioned Whiston’s brilliance as a mathematician and as a researcher.   It was his preoccupation with religion, including attempts at reconciling science with a literal interpretation of Scripture that upset his colleagues, however.   His 1696 book, A New History of the Earth From Its Original to the Consummation of all Things, represented a bold attempt at linking terrestrial disasters to astronomical causes.   That included his suggestion that Noah’s Flood had been caused by a comet and that comets had formed the Solar System.  

Though he agreed with Edmund Halley about comets returning periodically (and helped calculate the return of Halley’s Comet among others), he also clashed with Isaac Newton and many of his colleagues over various scientific misconceptions that Whiston endorsed.   That included his belief that the Earth only began rotating after Adam and Eve ate the apple and were expelled from Eden.   Whiston also calculated the comet that caused the Flood passed by the Earth on November 28^th, 2349 BC “to show God’s displeasure with the wicked world”.   It was the comet that caused worldwide rainfall for 40 days and nights and  flooded the world.  Also, because of the inertia from the excess water along with magnetic force from the comet,  the Earth’s year was lengthened to 365 days and shifted to an elliptical orbit around the sun (he maintained that the year had been only 360 days previously and the Earth’s orbit had been perfectly circular). 

Whiston backed up these unorthodox teachings with mathematical proofs and religious quotations taken directly from Scripture.    Ironically, despite his clashes over his scientific ideas, it was religion that eventually got him fired from Cambridge.   Under university statute, Whiston was required to adhere to Anglican doctrine and his anti-Trinity ideas were too much for the university’s administrators to tolerate (this despite Isaac Newton sharing many of those same ideas).   He compounded his heresy by publishing in English rather than Latin which ensured the widest possible readership for his works.    By 1710, Whiston was stripped of his professorship and banned from teaching at Cambridge despite strong support from inside Cambridge and even the Church.  

After he appealed the decision, Whiston’s case became a major political issue with the ruling Tories determined to silence him and his views on “Primitive Christianity” at all costs.  Relevant documents in the case were “misplaced” and the question of Whiston’s reinstatement was quietly shelved after Queen Anne’s death in 1714.   Even after being forced out of Cambridge, Whiston continuing giving lectures to the Royal Society (though he was never invited to join it, another legacy of his feud with Isaac Newton). 

Becoming increasingly more disenchanted with the Church of England, Whiston founded a Society for Promoting Primitive Christianity in 1717.   Despite proposing a “purer” form of Christianity purged of the later embellishments by the Catholic Church and High Protestant churches, Whiston’s bold attempt at religious reform failed badly.   Even with holding Society meetings at this own house in London, Whiston’s society only lasted two years.   Still, he would continue writing about Primitive Christianity for the rest of his life.    

According to his book, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston (published after his death), he even had a scale model of Moses’ Tabernacle constructed in his house.  Used during Society meetings, Whiston also regarded it as a model for the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple  once the Jews reclaimed their homeland (which he regarded as  sign of the Last Days).   He began giving public lectures across the country in which he announced the imminent return of the Messiah in 1766. 

Though many of his scientific ideas were sound enough, they also became increasingly bizarre as he grew older.   While determined to reconcile science and religion, it was religion that was foremost in his opinion.   Not only was he convinced that comets had brought destruction to the world in the past, he also maintained that a comet would result in the end of the world. 

But he also argued that there would be God would send signs to warn the faithful that the end of the world was at hand.   Drawing on selected Biblical text focusing on apocalyptic visions, Whiston declared that one particular passage from the Second Book of Esdras referring to women “giving birth to monster” would signal the Second Coming.   For Whiston, this applied to any account of women giving birth to abnormally formed children.    Unfortunately for Whiston, his credibility led him to be taken in by one of the great medical hoaxes of the 18^th century.

Continue to Part Two

Does Mindfulness Therapy Help Veterans with PTSD?

How might a practice that has its roots in contemplative traditions, seeking heightened awareness through meditation, apply to trauma-related mental health struggles among military veterans? In recent years, clinicians and researchers have observed the increasing presence of mindfulness in Western mental health treatment programs. Mindfulness is about bringing an attitude of curiosity and compassion to present experience. A review published in Spirituality in Clinical Practice addresses the above question in a detailed manner with an emphasis on the treatment of military veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related psychopathology. In addition, the integration of mindfulness with current empirically supported treatments for PTSD is discussed with specific attention to directions for future research in this area

For the abstract.

NFL Head Trauma Saga Continues

"It hit me like a ton of bricks."

For former Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos running back Tony Dorsett,  the results of a UCLA brain study confirming that he and two other NFL veterans were suffering from the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) came as a revelation.   Although he had been battling memory loss and depression for years, the brain testing that he ha undergone along with seven other NFL players provides the first clear evidence that he suffers from the same brain trauma experienced by other veterans.  Previouly known as dementia pugilistica (or punch-drunk syndrome) CTE was first identified in professional boxers but is being increasingly recognized in athletes from other sports including professional wrestling and football.

Although typically only diagnosed after death, advances in brain imaging provides better diagnosis for people with a history of repeated head injuries and enables them to receive the needed treatment while still living.    With imaging, brain researchers are able to identify a buildup of tau protein.    Abundant in the neurons of the central nervous system, defective tau proteins have been identified in other dementias including Alzheimer's disease.   High tau levels in the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain have also been identified with poor outcomes after head injuries. 

While professional organizations such as the NFL have downplayed the potential for long-term brain damage in players, a rash of CTE diagnoses has led to a class action suit launched by more than 4,500 former players, including Dorsett, against the NFL.   Plaintiff attorneys and the NFL announced a $765 million settlement although details remain to be finalized.

According to a recent ESPN Outside the Lines report,  players participating in the UCLA study who have been confirmed to have CTE include Dorsett,  Hall of Fame offensive lineman Joe DeLamielleure and former All-Pro defensive lineman Leonard Marshall.   Other athletes who have been tested are still awaiting their results.

While there is no known cure for CTE, Dorsett has been placed on a new nutrition regime and researchers are hoping that cases such as his can lead to new treatments in time.    In the meantime, Tony Dorsett is prone to lapses in memory including forgetting driving routes he traveled for years and often losing his train of thought in conversations. 

But there is nothing wrong with his memory of the gruelling performance that was expected of him and other players by NFL teams.   "I knew something was going on,"  he said in a recent interview.  "It takes me back to the fact that we (as players) were treated (after head injuries) and still put back out there in harm's way, when from my understanding management knew what they were doing to us. They were still subjecting us to that kind of physical abuse without the proper treatment. It really hurts. My quality of life (long pause) deteriorates a little bit just about every day."

"But I'm not being inactive," he added.  "I'm being proactive. I'm trying to cut it off at the pass, slow it down, do whatever I can to fight this thing. But it's tough, man, it's frustrating as hell at times."

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