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Should an IQ Score Be a Death Sentence?

Freddie Lee Hall has been on Florida's Death Row for the past 36 years.

Sentenced to death on June 27, 1978 for a brutal double-murder, the 69-year-old Hall has exhausted decades of legal appeals relating to his mental capacity at the time of his crimes.   Though the 1978 sentence was later vacated, Hall was re-sentenced to death in 1991.  While the judge at the time acknowledged that Hall was "mentally retarded", that was deemed to be "unquantifiable" in whether he should be executed. Since the 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision bans people diagnosed as intellectually disabled from being executed, Florida, as well as several other U.S. states, establishes the legal cutoff score for a diagnosis of intellectual disability as being an IQ of 70  (70 is two standard deviations below the mean score of 100).  Since then, the use of intelligence testing for inmates facing execution has taken on a lethal importance. In Hall's case, numerous IQ tests administered over the years have yielded scores ranging from 60 to 80 although he has been assigned a final score of 71.

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

Does Work Shape Identity?

Although work is a core part of life, the direction of influence from personality to work has typically been conceived as only unidirectional. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology aims to contribute to the literature by considering reciprocal relations between personality and occupational characteristics, drawing on current perspectives from personality psychology (i.e., the social investment principle) and using a well-established framework to conceptualize career development (i.e., Holland’s RIASEC theory). For this purpose, a longitudinal cohort of college alumni (N = 266) was tracked across a substantial and significant period in their professional career. Big Five personality traits and RIASEC occupational characteristics were assessed at the career start and 15 years later when their careers had unfolded. A combination of observed and latent variable analyses were used to disentangle the longitudinal and reciprocal relations between traits and occupational characteristics. Our results indicate that personality shapes and is shaped by our vocational experiences, suggesting that work can be a source of identity. The implications for theory and research on personality in the industrial and organizational literature are discussed alongside a number of practical implications for organizational and counseling settings.

For the abstract.

Can Virtual "House Calls" Help Dementia Patients?

With the alarming rise in new dementia cases worldwide, there is a critical shortage in long-term care beds and trained professionals to provide care.   Since many of these dementia patients and their families live in remote rural areas,  patients and their caregivers often spend hours traveling to urban centres to access the help they need.   

Can virtual "house calls" be the answer?   A new research project funded by the Alzheimer Society of Canada's Research Program is looking at the effectiveness of video conferencing in linking rural dementia patients and their families with health-care professionals living in distant cities.     According to Dr. Roger Butler, a family medicine professor at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, the "tele-gerontology" project he and his team are setting up will allow people with dementia stay in their homes longer and reduce the stress of their caregivers.

With Alzheimer's Society funding, Dr. Butler and his team will provide tablets or home computers to twenty Alzheimer's patients.   Through weekly video confereencing sessions with a nurse or doctor in St. John's, caregivers can share information about health problems that arise and also learn how to care for their family members.  

“It’s one of the major health crises our society will have to face over the next 30 years,” said Doctor Butler in an interview with local media.  “When government spends hundreds of millions on nursing homes as a solution without having all forms of assisted living and at-home programs in place, that’s a model doomed to failure."

Through video conferencing, caregivers can learn about new developments in dementia care and also have a social outlet to help them deal with the stress of providing long-term care.  Live video contct can also be important for dementia patients by helping them remain mentally active.   According to British researchers, cognitive rehabilitation with dementia patients has been  effective in helping with memory lapse though regular weekly sessions with a trained rehabilitation specialist is needed.   While this has been a problem for patients living in rural areas, video conferencing can help them avoid lengthy commuting. 

According to Rachel Burton of the University of Saskatchewan's Rural and Remote Memory Clinic,  the cognitive rehabilitiation she currently provides to patients at the Saskatoon clinic could soon be available for dementia patients in their own homes.  “I’m still in Saskatoon, and people who are accessing the treatment would remain in their home communities,” she said. “I’m in a room and there’s a small TV screen, and they’re in another room with a screen, and we just talk.”   Family caregivers can also take part in the rehabilitation and even provide some of the therapy themselves. 

While it is still to soon to evaluate the effectiveness of video conferencing, Burton is hoping to match the success reported by British therapists using in-person cognitive rehabilitation.

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Living with Betrayal

What happens when you are betrayed by someone close to you?

For a child dealing with sexual abuse or a spouse dealing with domestic abuse, the trauma becomes far worse when it involves someone with whom they share an intimate relationship.   When you depend on another person for food, shelter, emotionl, or financial support,  the sense of being betrayed adds a new dimension to being abused.  

Along with the sense of violation comes a basic shattering of the trust that victims once had with their abusers.   Coping with that abuse often leads to a form of betrayal blindness or deliberate unawareness of what is happening.    Whether through simple denial or, in more extreme cases, active repression of the memory of that betrayal, the psychological costs of betrayal and abuse can last a lifetime.

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

 

The Problem with Fat Jokes

For the most part, disparagement humour, i.e., jokes intended to put down people based on their membership in a marginalized group, is considered offensive.   Usually based on stereotypes reflecting attitudes about "the other", eg., people "not like us", these jokes are intended to make others look ridiculous.   Whether it involves people belonging to a different religion, ethnic group, place of origin, sexual orientation, or economic class, using these jokes in polite company often leads to scorn and anger.   Still, there are some groups that continue to be regarded as "fair game" as far as disparaging jokes go.  Jokes about members of a given profession (such as lawyers or politicians), "dumb blonde" jokes, and sexist humour are still widely used with little of the public anger usually directed at the one telling the joke. 

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

The Indian Rape Experiment

Imagine yourself walking down a street in New Delhi and suddenly hearing a woman screaming from inside a white van with black-out windows. Do you stop and try to help or just ignore it?

In a shocking new video posted on Youtube, numerous men simply walked past the van or even stopped to listen before moving on. Only a small minority of the men in the video are actually seen trying to help. One older man actually struck the van with his walking stick while another man attempted to enter the van to help the woman inside.

Except that there was no woman in the van, just a tape recorder. The cries for help had been recorded as part of a social experiment conducted by Indian activist group YesNoMaybe to call attention to the rape culture pervading much of India's society. Though numerous high-profile rapes have been reported in the media, including the horrendous gang-rape and hanging of two young girls recently, the video highlights the sense of apathy that still surrounds sexual violence towards women.

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

When Parents are Harsh

A study published in Health Psychology was designed to examine the prospective relations of harsh parenting during preadolescence, anger across adolescence, and a health phenotype at late adolescence among African American youths living in the rural South. A second purpose was to determine whether, for genetic reasons, some youths will be more sensitive than others to a harsh parenting to anger to poor health pathway. Participants were 368 youths (age 11.2 at the first assessment) who provided data on receipt of harsh parenting during preadolescence (ages 11 to 13), anger across adolescence (ages 16 to 18), and a health phenotype consisting of C Reactive Protein, depressive symptoms, and health problems at age 19. Youths were genotyped at the 5-HTTLPR at age 16. The data analysis revealed that (a) harsher parenting was associated positively across time with anger and poor health, (b) anger across adolescence also was associated positively across time with poor health, (c) anger served as a mediator connecting harsh parenting and poor health, and (d) the harsh parenting to anger to poor health pathway was significant only for youths carrying one or two copies of a short allele at the 5-HTTLPR.   These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that harsh parent–child interactions presage health through effects on emotion regulation, particularly anger. This mediational pathway pertained only to youths carrying a gene that confers sensitivity and reactivity to harsh family processes and the negative emotional states they occasion.

For the abstract.

Few Americans Aware of Mental Health Coverage

Though mental health problems remain the leading cause in the United States and Canada, an estimated 10.7 million Americans are not receiving the mental health care they need.  Part of the problem may stem from a lack of awareness of the basic rights most people with health coverage have in dealing with a mental health problem  

According to a new American Psychological Association (APA) survey, only four percent of Americans are aware of their right to coverage under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.    Under the Act, which was enacted in 2008, health insurers and group health plans are required to provide coverage equivalent to the coverage received for physical health conditions.   The parity law requires insurers to provide mental health care that is equal to or better than physical health coverage with no annual limits, co-pays, or deductibles.   The law applies to most employer-provided health plans and to individual plans available through state and federal health insurance exchanges. 

Despite increased attention paid to mental health issues, as well as the National Dialogue on Mental Health sponsored by the White House,  the results of the latest APA survey are little changed from a similar survey done in 2010.   “More access to mental health care is the rallying cry, but the simple fact is many people may already have coverage and not know it or not understand how to use it,” said Katherine C. Nordal PhD, APA’s executive director for professional practice. “The mental health parity law, together with the Affordable Care Act, has expanded mental health treatment opportunities to many Americans in need who may otherwise have gone untreated. But laws don’t have the intended effect when people don’t know that they exist."

Though 61 percent of the adults in the APA survey reported having coverage, only a small percentage were actually aware of specific details of that coverage.   When asked if they would attend treatment, 20 percent suggested that cost would be a barrier and that they would need information on their coverage before seeking help.  

The American Psychological Association maintains an online page providing resources for people wanting more information on how they are covered under the Parity Law.  The page includes links to mental health resources as well as an instructional video.

APA Resources Page.

 

Should Attempting Suicide Be a Criminal Offense?

Attempted suicide is still considered a crime in Ghana.  A study recently published in the journal Crisis investigated the attitudes toward this law held by health workers and police officers in Ghana so as to provide culture-sensitive arguments to aid in abolishing the law. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight clinical psychologists, eight emergency ward nurses, and eight police officers. Results showed that the majority of informants did not agree with the law criminalizing attempted suicide in Ghana, although five of the emergency ward nurses and two police officers did. Arguments for agreeing with the law were that people have no right to take life and that the law has a deterrent effect and thus it will help reduce the suicide rate. The main argument for not agreeing with the law was that suicidal behavior is a mental health issue. Those who argued in favor of the law did not seem to reflect much on the reasons for suicidal behavior.  The authors concluded that education on how to understand suicidal behavior and suicidal people may aid the work toward decriminalizing attempted suicide in Ghana.

For the abstract.

Are Wind Farm Critics Suffering from Psychogenic Illness?

For years, people opposing the rise of wind farms as a viable method of generating energy have been reporting health problems apparently related to the noise of the turning wind blades.   With complaints ranging from headaches to conjuctivitis,  the existence of "wind turbine syndrome" continues to generate controversy.    While this new syndrome has never been formally recognized by medical doctors,  wind farm opponents insist that the symptoms are real and not due to the power of suggestion.    To date, virtually all of the evidence supporting the existence of wind farm syndrome has been purely anectodal with few consistent symptoms being identified.   In fact, the various complaints reported more than two hundred different symptoms supposedly affecting humans and animals alike.  Since 2003, eighteen reviews of the anecdotal reports collected showed that only a minority of people exposed to wind turbines report developing any kind of symptoms with little real evidence of actual illness.

Some of the variables that have been linked to reported complaints include negative attitudes relating to wind farms (including objections to "landscape aesthetics"), having a "negative personality", being able to see wind turbines from nearby residences,  and subjective sensitivity to noise.  On the other hand, people reporting positive benefits from wind farms (including enjoying reduced electricity bills) experienced no negative symptoms at all. 

A new study undertaken by a team of health researchers at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health takes a critical look at reported cases of wind farm syndrome occurring in Australia.    The study examined the complaints relating to fifty-one wind farms operating in Australia between 1993 and 2012 along with court affidavits and news stories about wind farm syndrome.   What the researchers determined was that the pattern of reported symptoms do not reflect the actual locations of the different wind farms in operation.   In fact, thirty-three of the fifty-one farms, including farms with the largest turbines, have been operating with no complaints at all despite the density of the nearby population.    Of the 129 people who did lodge complaints, ninety-four lived near wind farms that had been specifically targeted by anti-wind farm groups.  

Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of complaints came after 2009 when anti wind farm groups began publicizing wind farm syndrome as part of their platform.   There were few complaints prior to 2009 which may have been due to most of people living nearby not being aware of the sort of complaints that had been associated with "wind farm syndrome."    Also, wind farms in Western Australia and Tasmania had no complaints recorded despite thousands of potentially susceptible residents living nearby. 

Based these results, the researchers concluded that "wind farm syndrome" is a mass psychogenic illness (MPI) similar to reported health problems related to other environmental causes such as proximity to cell telephone towers and senstivity to electromagnetic radiation.    Among the common features seen in other examples of mass psychogenic illness are:

• a constellation of symptoms suggestive of a somatic cause which are seen in two or more socially connected people who share beliefs relating to those symptoms and their cause.
• transmission of symptoms is increased by news reports, researchers taking an interest, and the use of a clinical label which gives the symptoms a certain legitimacy
• growing fear triggered by media stories and/or word of mouth

While the researchers recognize that not all people experiencing symptoms may have made complaints that could be included in the study, the overall pattern of complaints that were studied seem to bear out their conclusions about the psychogenic nature of wind farm syndrome.   As the battle over wind farms continues, complaints of wind farm syndrome will need to be eveluated carefully to rule out the possible influence of psychological factors.

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