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Sadomasochism in art and politics
No full textDr Estela V. Welldon contests the view that sadomasochism is an isolated 'perversion'. Using numerous examples from literature, film, opera and other media, she undertakes an exploration of the psychodynamic aspects of sadomasochism that carries us from the writings of de Sade and von Sacher-Masoch to the contemporary underground S & M club scene. Challenging our expectations that S & M is concerned only with 'bizarre' activities, Dr Welldon illuminates the dynamics of power and control in everyday family life and sexual relationships. Her investigation deepens to include the downward spiral of domestic violence and child abuse, and the 'malignant bonding' between couples in cases such as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Fred and Rosemary West. Is sadomasochism invariably present in the victim-perpetrator cycle? Is it learned or innate? Are sadism and masochism complete opposites or do they complement one another? Are they specifically related to the genders? Dr Welldon asks these questions and many more in a fluent, thought provoking essa
Clinical characteristics associated with the prescribing of SSRI medication in adolescents with major unipolar depression
No full textUnipolar major depressions (MD) emerge markedly during adolescence. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK recommends psychological therapies, with accompanying selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) prescribed in severe cases only. Here, we seek to determine the extent and rationale of SSRI prescribing in adolescent MD before entering a randomised clinical trial. SSRI prescribing, together with their clinical characteristics was determined in 465 adolescent patients with MD prior to receiving a standardised psychological therapy as part of the Improving mood with psychoanalytic and cognitive therapies (IMPACT) clinical trial. Overall, 88 (19 %) had been prescribed antidepressants prior to psychological treatment. The clinical correlates varied by gender: respectively, depression severity in boys and self-harming behaviours in girls. Prescribing also differed between clinical research centres. Medical practitioners consider severity of depression in boys as an indicator for antidepressant prescribing. Self-injury in girls appears to be utilised as a prescribing aid which is inconsistent with past and current revised UK NICE guidelines
Systemic psychotherapy with families where someone has an autism spectrum condition
No full textBACKGROUND: Families play an important role in facilitating the development and well-being of children with autism spectrum conditions. OBJECTIVES: After setting the scene with a clinical example, and providing a brief discussion of the current thinking about the aetiology of Autism spectrum conditions, this paper provides a review of the literature regarding the practice of systemic psychotherapy with families in which a child has an autism spectrum condition (ASC). METHODS: A search of databases and journals revealed a large number of opinion papers regarding how family therapists might work with families of children with ASCs and a smaller number of papers that describe or explore actual clinical practice. RESULTS: Pilot studies using qualitative methods and practice-based evidence in the form of descriptions of clinical work offer a solid footing on which to develop systemic practice to help families where a person has an ASC. CONCLUSION: Given the multifactorial nature of the aetiology of ASCs it is suggested that systemic interventions have the potential to influence changes at multiple levels of functioning for the child and the family
'What if I get it wrong?' A psycho-social enquiry into SENCOs' experiences of learning, doing and teaching maths
Get PDFThis research applies a psycho-social approach to explore how SENCOs think about children with learning difficulties in mathematics, their feelings when performing mathematics tasks, and their own experiences of mathematics learning. Four SENCOs from different schools were interviewed twice. These participants were interviewed using a Free Association Narrative Interviewing (FANI) method, and were asked to complete a mathematics task. The mathematics task provided an experiential element through which participants communicated more unconscious or ‘unpolished’ feelings. This is a qualitative, exploratory piece of research. It comes from a psycho-social ontology, insofar as the participants are theorised in terms of psychoanalytic and societal concepts, and a psycho-social epistemology, in that knowledge of participants is gained through an interaction between a defended subject and researcher. As the researcher I understand people as psychologically defended against anxiety (Klein, 1952). Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis, while keeping in mind the ‘whole’ person. Thought was given to the researcher-participant relationship, to the narrative and to the ‘unspoken’ parts of the narrative which were interpreted using psychoanalytic frameworks. A reflective research diary and psycho-social supervision were used in order to enhance the understanding of the subjective researcher experience of dynamics underlying the interview process. A number of themes emerged from the data: Participants tended to attribute the causes of the children’s learning difficulties to within child difficulties or to teaching or parenting; participants’ negative feelings around mathematics were associated with rivalry, disempowerment and vulnerability, and shame at feeling unable to do something; the participants’ experiences of learning mathematics as a child appeared to have a profound effect on participants and how they approached mathematics tasks, and uncontaining school experiences of mathematics left a lasting impression. Limitations of the research and implications for teachers, SENCOs and EPs are discussed
Building young people’s online resilience
Get PDFA medical perspective on internet safety and resilience, focusing on features associated with resilience, the relation between adverse life experiences and mental health
Laverne Antrobus on Good Morning Britain. Parents distracted from children by smartphones. 06 June 2016, ITV [Starts at 29:01]
No full textUsing linked administrative data for monitoring and evaluating the Family Nurse Partnership in England: A scoping report
No full textThis report, commissioned by the FNP National Unit and undertaken by researchers at UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, presents a scoping review of how population-based linkage between data from the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) in England and administrative datasets from other services could be used to generate evidence for commissioning, service evaluation and research.
It addresses the methodological considerations, permission pathways and technical challenges of using data from the FNP linked with routinely collected, administrative data from other public services for population-based analyses, at a national and local authority level.
Our ambition, when commissioning this work, was to explore whether linking data from FNP with administrative datasets might help provide a richer view about how the FNP intervention is affecting different cohorts of clients and their child after they have graduated.
The report suggests that the potential for data linkage to support ongoing evaluation of a wide range of interventions including FNP at a national level is promising and an important area to explore. It makes a significant contribution to understanding the possibilities and constraints for doing this, which include barriers to data linkage at a local level (which we know is crucial for local commissioners) and the significant investment required to realise the potential of this project.
We believe this report offers valuable insights other organisations interested in the delivery of evidence based policy may want to pursue
The suicide attempt of a seven year old boy: An exploration of precipitating and protective factors
No full textThis research is a retrospective single-case-study analysis of an intensive child psychotherapy treatment begun with a seven year old boy called ‘C’, referred to specialist CAMHS for severe depression following a suicide attempt. The research question concerns itself with the identification of precipitating and protective factors surrounding this event and the design of a method by which to do so. The method designed for this purpose is: the ‘4 Column Method’: influenced by ‘grounded theory’, ‘complexity theory’ and ‘psychoanalytic observation’, suitable for identifying naturalistic patterns and themes hidden within spontaneously occurring psychoanalytic data sets and allowing transference affects to be systematically tracked. The research has resulted in the identification of six Core Variables whose developments impact upon one another. Notable is that of an inverse co-relation between an increase in the core variable ‘Developmental Thinking’ paralleling a decrease in the expression of non-developmental Core Variables: ‘Uncontained Aggression’, ‘Primitive Anxiety’ and a powerful sense of relational ambivalence: ‘Equivocal Object’. Identifying the role of frequency in the therapist’s response during a process of transforming non-developmental Core Variables into those that support Developmental Thinking has also been important, as too: the making of tentative links between C’s expressed internal experience with his experience of his external world which helped guide him through an ‘encaptive conflict’ (Gardner 2001:12), and assisted in the corrective re-organisation of C’s experience of a fractured reality (Anderson et al 2012). Another key finding to be identified within this research is the connection between experiences of early trauma, domestic violence and the expression of suicidal concerns
