Dutch Citizen Research Articles

Unveiling citizens’ perspective on citizen assemblies among participants and non-participants of a citizen assembly on energy

Abstract Governments all over Europe are commissioning citizen assemblies (CAs), which could be one possible way to assist the representative democracy in developing more socially acceptable sustainability policies. Yet, little is known about how citizens themselves think about CAs in general, l et al one the actual real-life procedures, which perceived aspects of CAs and how influence these opinions, and whether opinions differ between those who participate in CAs and the population at large. We investigated citizens’ perceptions and acceptability of CAs, both among the participants of the Dutch Citizen Assembly on Energy (DCAE) and the general Dutch population. First, we studied to what extent both groups thought that CAs, in general, could reach the broader goals of public participation: normative (better democracy), substantive (improved decisions), and instrumental (enhanced public support) goals. Second, we studied citizens’ perceptions of the DCAE in particular, focusing on the 4Ds of public participation: dialogue, diversity, decision-making power, and deliberation. Citizens were generally positive about the potential of CAs to reach broader participation goals, except for some scepticism about their capacity to bring in new knowledge and accelerate the energy transition. Compared to the general population, citizens who join CAs may be more accepting of CAs at the start and evaluate the process more positively at the end. In contrast to conventional wisdom, decision-making power was not the key driver of public acceptability of the DCAE—engaging in dialogue and deliberation might be more important to citizens than having more power per se.

PEMBAGIAN HARTA BERSAMA PASCA PERCERAIAN PASANGAN BERBEDA KEWARGANEGARAAN: PERBANDINGAN HUKUM INDONESIA DAN BELANDA

This study examines the separation of marital property after divorce between mixed married couples. It compares Indonesian and Dutch laws on the division of matrimonial property upon divorce, focusing the case of Henk Willem van Der Spil (a Dutch citizen) and Dyah Supriyantini (an Indonesian citizen). The study shows how the two legal systems are alike and different The research type is normative and descriptive, utilizing secondary data, qualitative analysis, and a comparative legal approach with deductive conclusions. The findings display similarities: 1) Research considers the division of shared belongings among couples in mixed marriages according to the HPI factors; 2) Both the Indonesian and Dutch HPI designate Indonesian law as applicable. The variations include: 1) Under Indonesian law, land and buildings are not counted as community property, whereas Dutch law regards them as such and divides them equally. 2) Indonesian law excludes the income of the Tulips Hotel and Resto from community property, while Dutch law includes it. 3) The Dutch law recognizes "divorce covenant," a concept that is not present in Indonesian law. Recommendations: to achieve fairness, judges should. consider international civil law and foreign law aspects when dividing property in joint ownership between mixed marriage couples.

Implementation of Prosecution for Grants of Absolute Rights (Legitieme Portie) that Are Expired More than Three Years According to the Civil Code

The law guarantees the absolute rights of heirs or what is usually called legitimie portie. Legitimie Portie itself is an absolute portion of the heir's inheritance, which cannot be abolished or reduced by the person who will leave the inheritance or cannot be reduced by gifts during the testator's lifetime or gifts by will. The formulation of the problem in this research is (1) Implementation of the Grant Legitime Portie (absolute rights) in Decision no. 560/Pdt.G/2015/PN.Sby (2) Judge's legal considerations in decision no. 560/Pdt.G/2015/PN.Sby. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. Data obtained from Laws, journals. books, internet, etc. The result of this research is that the implementation of the testamentary grant requires approval from the Plaintiff who is one of the heirs and also has absolute rights (legitime portie) even though the Plaintiff is a foreign citizen, namely a Dutch citizen and it is proven that the Plaintiff has given consent to the will was granted with a Letter of Approval dated 21 December 2010. Then, on the basis of this letter of approval, to carry out the will, a Deed of Grant of Will was drawn up, number 18/2011, dated 31 May 2011, and this was then followed up by registering the rights to the land object of the dispute with the issuance of a certificate. property rights Number 842 in the name of the rights holder Leo Alphons Sandhaka. the plaintiff's claim has expired because the right to claim legitiemeportie regarding inheritance cannot expire 3 (three) years from the time the legitimaris declares that they have received the inheritance. Based on the provisions of Article 929 paragraph 4 of the Civil Code, the right to claim legitiemeportie will expire after 3 (three) years have passed. The legitimaris begins to declare that he has received the inheritance, thus the plaintiff's right to claim his legitiemeportie in the a quo case has expired (exceptio temporis).

Ecological characterisation of urban ponds in the Netherlands: a study based on data collected by volunteers

Blue space in the urban environment can positively contribute to public health and well-being. Many urban freshwater systems, however, are exposed to anthropogenic stressors, resulting in deteriorated water quality and biodiversity. Private garden ponds are essential elements of this blue space but little is known about their water quality since they are not monitored by water professionals. The Dutch citizen science initiative Waterdiertjes.nl focusses on biological water quality assessment using macroinvertebrates and launched a campaign to investigate garden ponds in 2021. The campaign yielded macroinvertebrate recordings in 60 garden ponds and limited additional information on dimensions, and presence of water vegetation and fish. Volunteers also investigated 92 public urban ponds in 2021. Combining both data allowed for evaluation of the similarity between both pond types. Analyses were also performed to discover the importance of pond dimensions and presence of aquatic vegetation or fish for the macroinvertebrate biodiversity and water quality. Multivariate analyses showed a considerable overlap in macroinvertebrate community composition between garden and public urban ponds. Results showed high variability in taxon richness, total macroinvertebrate density and water quality scores A significant, nonlinear relation was observed between pond depth and macroinvertebrate taxon richness with the highest richness at a depth of 0.5-1m. Submerged vegetation correlated significantly with taxon richness with little vegetation having the lowest richness. Presence of fish or floating vegetation was not significantly related to taxon richness, total density and water quality scores possibly due to unnatural conditions that underlie in garden ponds. Since water professionals and academic scientists do not monitor garden ponds, citizen science may provide valuable data on water quality and biodiversity in these waters. The present initiative showed that volunteers can successfully monitor understudied ecosystems and gather data on temporal and spatial scales complementary to professional data that lead to new (ecological) insights.

The Evolution of Migrant Mobilization in One Polish Diaspora Community: A Case Study of the Polish Catholic Society Eindhoven

This research concerns the transformation of one migrant community. It is based on an analysis of selected documents presenting Polish migrant associations in the Netherlands from the beginning of 1950s until the 1990s. The study offers an analysis of the minority mobilization process, with a focus on migrant organizational agency. It is a case study devoted to the Polish community in Eindhoven and its association, which was a local branch of migrant organization operating at a national level. The main sources used in the study are archival records, including organizational statute, circulars, information leaflets, press releases, official and private correspondence, bulletins, protocols, organizational reports, official declarations, and minutes from meetings. In addition, interviews and biographical data are taken into account. Most of the written sources were obtained from the archive of Franciszek Łyskawa, a Polish migrant soldier who settled in Eindhoven shortly after World War II. Over the course of the following decades, he remained an active member of the diaspora while also integrating into the host society, and he became a Dutch citizen. The study shows the evolution of this Polish migrant community from the precarious situation of the early postwar years through the development of immigrants’ associations and institutions which emerged in parallel to efforts to integrate into the multicultural society in the 1960s and 1970s and eventually the gradual decline of activity among the members of this community as immigrants.

Relating Social and Ecological Resilience: Dutch Citizen’s Initiatives for Biodiversity

Social resilience and ecological resilience are related and distinguished, and the potential of social resilience to enhance resilience of encompassing social-ecological systems is discussed. The value of resilience thinking is recognized, yet social resilience needs to be better understood in its distinctive qualities, while resisting identification of social resilience with one particular form of governance or organization. Emerging self-organizing citizen’s initiatives in The Netherlands, initiatives involving re-relating to nature in the living environment, are analyzed, using a systems theoretical framework which resists reduction of nature to culture or vice versa. It is argued that space for self-organization needs to be cultivated, that local self-organization and mobilization around themes of nature in daily life and space have the potential to re-link social and ecological systems in a more resilient manner, yet that maintaining the diversity of forms of knowing and organizing in the overall governance system is essential to the maintenance of social resilience and of diverse capacities to know human-environment relations and to reorganize them in an adaptive manner. Conclusions are drawn in the light of the new Biodiversity Strategy.

Analysis of Indonesia-Netherlands Diplomatic and Consular Relations

<p>In order to improve the quality of international cooperation, the Indonesian nation must be able to improve the quality and performance of foreign officials so that they are able to carry out proactive diplomacy in all fields to build a positive image of Indonesia in the international world. Through this article, the diplomatic relations between Indonesia and the Netherlands will be analyzed specifically, both diplomatic and consular relations. The result,diplomatic relations between the governments of Indonesia and the Netherlands have been in accordance with Law Number 37 of 1999, but in practice it has not been implemented properly in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations, so on this occasion I will discuss further about diplomatic relations between Indonesia and the Netherlands which had temporarily interrupted by several influencing factors including the revocation of the Dutch embassy in Indonesia named Rob Swartbol due to protests against the execution by the Indonesian government against a Dutch citizen named Ang Kim Soe or vice versa the revocation of the Indonesian embassy in the Netherlands because it will be held consultations by their respective countries, both the Netherlands and Indonesia, on their embassies.</p>

The Dutch Citizen Forum on Public Reimbursement of Healthcare: A Qualitative Analysis of Opinion Change

Background: A deliberative Citizen Forum ‘Choices in healthcare’ was held in the Netherlands to obtain insight into the criteria informed citizens would propose for the public reimbursement of healthcare. During 3 weekends, 24 citizens participated in evidence-informed deliberation on the basis of 8 case studies. The aim of this study was to assess how the opinions of 8 participants in the deliberative Citizens Forum changed and if so, why participants themselves believe their opinions have changed, whether participation influenced their perceived reasonableness of other participants in the forum and whether it influenced their opinions about involvement of citizens in decision-making. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were held with 8 participants before and after their participation in the Citizen Forum. Using the method of reconstructing interpretive frames opinions about the public reimbursement of healthcare were reconstructed. Results: Participants’ opinions changed over time; they became more aware of the complexity of decision-making and came to accept that there are limits to the available resources and accept cost as a criterion for reimbursement decisionmaking. Participants report that exchanging arguments and personal experiences with other participants made them change their initial opinions. Participants ascribed increases in the perceived reasonableness of other participants’ opinions to feelings of group-bonding and becoming more familiar with each other’s personal circumstances. Participants further believe that citizens represent an additional opinion to that of other stakeholders and believe their opinions should be considered in relation to those of other stakeholders, given they are provided with opportunities for critical discussion. Conclusion: Organized deliberation should allow for the exchange of arguments and the sharing of personal experiences which is linked to learning. On the one hand this is reflected in the uptake of new arguments and on the other hand in the revision, specification or expansion of personal argumentation. Providing opportunities for critical deliberation is key to prevent citizens from adhering to initial emotional reactions that remain unchallenged and which may no longer be supported after deliberation.

Improving Diagnosis of Depression With XGBOOST Machine Learning Model and a Large Biomarkers Dutch Dataset (n = 11,081).

Machine Learning has been on the rise and healthcare is no exception to that. In healthcare, mental health is gaining more and more space. The diagnosis of mental disorders is based upon standardized patient interviews with defined set of questions and scales which is a time consuming and costly process. Our objective was to apply the machine learning model and to evaluate to see if there is predictive power of biomarkers data to enhance the diagnosis of depression cases. In this research paper, we aimed to explore the detection of depression cases among the sample of 11,081 Dutch citizen dataset. Most of the earlier studies have balanced datasets wherein the proportion of healthy cases and unhealthy cases are equal but in our study, the dataset contains only 570 cases of self-reported depression out of 11,081 cases hence it is a class imbalance classification problem. The machine learning model built on imbalance dataset gives predictions biased toward majority class hence the model will always predict the case as no depression case even if it is a case of depression. We used different resampling strategies to address the class imbalance problem. We created multiple samples by under sampling, over sampling, over-under sampling and ROSE sampling techniques to balance the dataset and then, we applied machine learning algorithm “Extreme Gradient Boosting” (XGBoost) on each sample to classify the mental illness cases from healthy cases. The balanced accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score obtained from over-sampling and over-under sampling were more than 0.90.

HIV Infection: What Should We Know?

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first known in 1981 in homosexual groups who had opportunistic infections and malignancies. In Indonesia the first AIDS case was reported in 1987 to a Dutch citizen living in the province of Bali. Cases of HIV infection in Indonesia are reported to increase every year and most occur at the age of 25-49 years. HIV transmission is not easily transmitted, even when an HIV-infected person takes antiretroviral drugs can reduce the risk of transmission by up to 96%. But one of the biggest challenges in managing HIV infection is facing stigma and discrimination. As many as 1 in 5 people living with HIV are afraid to come to the clinic because they will experience discrimination and stigma from the community if this condition occurs will cause treatment delay until PLWHA (People living with HIV/AIDS) will fall to the AIDS stage and PLWHA will be susceptible to opportunistic infections. A clinic in Namibia, when stigma and discrimination were successfully overcome, there was a 20% reduction in mortality in PLWHA

A positive Shift in the Public Acceptability of a Low-Carbon Energy Project After Implementation: The Case of a Hydrogen Fuel Station

Public acceptability of low-carbon energy projects is often measured with one-off polls. This implies that opinion-shifts over time are not always taken into consideration by decision makers relying on these polls. Observations have given the impression that public acceptability of energy projects increases after implementation. However, this positive shift over time has not yet been systematically studied and is not yet understood very well. This paper aims to fill this gap. Based on two psychological mechanisms, loss aversion and cognitive dissonance reduction, we hypothesize that specifically people who live in proximity of a risky low-carbon technology—a hydrogen fuel station (HFS) in this case—evaluate this technology as more positive after its implementation than before. We conducted a survey among Dutch citizen living nearby a HFS and indeed found a positive shift in the overall evaluation of HFS after implementation. We also found that the benefits weighed stronger and the risks weaker after the implementation. This shift did not occur for citizens living further away from the HFS. The perceived risks and benefits did not significantly change after implementation, neither for citizens living in proximity, nor for citizens living further away. The societal implications of the findings are discussed.

Using volunteered observations to map human exposure to ticks

Lyme borreliosis (LB) is the most prevalent tick-borne disease in Europe and its incidence has steadily increased over the last two decades. In the Netherlands alone, more than 20,000 citizens are affected by LB each year. Because of this, two Dutch citizen science projects were started to monitor tick bites. Both projects have collected nearly 50,000 geo-located tick bite reports over the period 2006–2016. The number of tick bite reports per area unit is a proxy of tick bite risk. This risk can also be modelled as the result of the interaction of hazard (e.g. tick activity) and human exposure (e.g. outdoor recreational activities). Multiple studies have focused on quantifying tick hazard. However, quantifying human exposure is a harder task. In this work, we make a first step to map human exposure to ticks by combining tick bite reports with a tick hazard model. Our results show human exposure to tick bites in all forested areas of the Netherlands. This information could facilitate the cooperation between public health specialists and forest managers to create better mitigation campaigns for tick-borne diseases, and it could also support the design of improved plans for ecosystem management.

Finding Dutch natives in online forums

Law enforcement agencies have a restricted area in which their powers apply, which is called their jurisdiction. These restrictions also apply to the Internet. However, on the Internet, the physical borders of the jurisdiction, typically country borders, are hard to discover. In our case, it is hard to establish whether someone involved in criminal online behavior is indeed a Dutch citizen. We propose a way to overcome the arduous task of manually investigating whether a user on an Internet forum is Dutch or not. More precisely, we aim to detect that a given English text is written by a Dutch native author. To develop a detector, we follow a machine learning approach. Therefore, we need to prepare a specific training corpus. To obtain a corpus that is representative for online forums, we collected a large amount of English forum posts from Dutch and non-Dutch authors on Reddit. To learn a detection model, we used a bag-of-words representation to capture potential misspellings, grammatical errors or unusual turns of phrases that are characteristic of the mother tongue of the authors. For this learning task, we compare the linear support vector machine and regularized logistic regression using the appropriate performance metrics f1 score, precision, and average precision. Our results show logistic regression with frequency-based feature selection performs best at predicting Dutch natives. Further study should be directed to the general applicability of the results that is to find out if the developed models are applicable to other forums with comparable high performance.

Identifying Environmental and Human Factors Associated With Tick Bites using Volunteered Reports and Frequent Pattern Mining

AbstractTick populations and tick‐borne diseases like Lyme borreliosis have been steadily increasing since the mid‐1990s. Realizing the threat that ticks pose to public health, two Dutch citizen science projects have collected tick bite reports since 2006. This unique volunteered geographical dataset, which currently has nearly 35,000 reports, was used to identify environmental and other circumstantial factors associated with tick bites. For this, we first enriched the tick bite reports with temperature, precipitation, vegetation and volunteered data associated with the location of the tick bite. Using this enriched dataset, we then derived a series of features to characterize the environmental and volunteer‐related conditions in which each tick bite occurred. Next, we discretized these features using the Jenks Natural Breaks algorithm and, after that, we mined frequent environmental patterns associated with tick bites using the AprioriClose algorithm. Finally, we checked that these patterns are specifically associated with the tick bites by comparing them with the frequent patterns mined from pseudo‐random locations. The frequent patterns were visualized using heat maps and ring maps and two representative patterns associated with tick bites were projected into geographic space to study their spatio‐temporal distribution. Our results show that factors linked to human activity are more relevant to model tick bites than seasonal accumulations of temperature, vegetation or precipitation. In particular, the number of warm and dry days per season are present in a significant number of patterns and the majority of tick bites are produced within a distance of half a kilometer of a forest, recreational or built‐up area. The study of patterns in the time‐series revealed that there are several persistent patterns consistently occurring each year and the validation process showed that the volunteer tick bites collection is capturing environmental conditions associated with tick bites, suggesting that these reports have a high scientific value. These results support the creation of a Dutch tick bite risk map that, in turn, will open the door to the design of public health interventions to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease.

Fictions of All-Encompassing Precarity in the Works of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Fictions of All-Encompassing Precarity in the Works of Ayaan Hirsi Ali Richelle D. Schrock (bio) Missionary work and colonial feminism belong in the past. Lila Abu-Lughod1 In the spring of 2014 Brandeis University invited Somali author Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at their commencement ceremony. The university chose her to receive the degree because “she is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world.”2 However, in early April Brandeis University rescinded Hirsi Ali’s invitation to commencement and reversed its decision to offer her an honorary degree. This abrupt change in plans came as the result of student and faculty backlash to the institution’s intention to recognize Hirsi Ali and celebrate her work. Hirsi Ali is one of the best-known Somali authors in the Western world. In 2005 she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. She has written three books—The Caged Virgin, Infidel, and Nomad: From Islam to America—and is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Some regard her as an outspoken supporter of women’s rights, while others view her as an Islamaphobe who employs hate speech against Muslims. In its official university statement on what became an international controversy, Brandeis claimed to respect Hirsi Ali’s work regarding women’s rights, but “that said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.”3 The Brandeis incident highlights how Hirsi Ali has become a controversial figure in the United States and how she provokes strong affective responses from both her supporters and her detractors. The incident at Brandeis is not the first time Hirsi Ali has been at the center [End Page 66] of an international controversy. In November 2003 Theo Van Gogh, a well-known Dutch filmmaker and descendent of the famous Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, was murdered while riding his bike to work. He was shot and stabbed to death by Mohamed Bouyeri, a Moroccan immigrant and Muslim extremist who had become a Dutch citizen. Bouyeri was upset by Van Gogh’s recent film, Submission, which portrays Muslim women as victims of Islam. After murdering Van Gogh, Bouyeri pinned a note to Van Gogh’s shirt that was addressed to Hirsi Ali, the screenwriter of Submission. In this note he threatened her life and threatened to destroy Holland and the United States. Hirsi Ali has been the focus of controversy for much of her life, and in the last ten years she has become a go-to expert on Muslim women and Islam in general for the media in the United States. For example, in the aftermath of the events at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in January 2015, Hirsi Ali appeared on cnn and wrote editorials for both the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Beast in which she urged the Western media to continue reprinting the cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed, because “we have to make sure that Muslim immigrants who come to the West understand that our rules protect satirists from jihadists, and not the other way round.”4 Hirsi Ali regards herself as a feminist, and her most widely read work, Infidel, is an autobiography in which she uses her life experiences to articulate a narrative that posits the West as a utopia for women in comparison with the Muslim world. Hirsi Ali’s claims about Muslim women’s treatment under Islam are premised on the evidence of what she purports to be her life experiences and the meaning she assigns to these experiences. She positions herself as an emancipator of Muslim women, who, she argues, inhabit a fundamentally precarious subject position under Islam. She establishes a narrative of precarity in Infidel by claiming: I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason—from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. The message of...

The how and why of societal publications for citizen science projects and scientists

In the scientific community, the importance of communication to society is often underestimated. Scientists and scientific organisations often lack the skills to organise such communication effectively. The Dutch citizen science phenology network Nature's Calendar has been successful in communicating to the general public via numerous newspaper articles, television appearances, presentations, websites and social media. We refer to these publications as societal publications. Due to active communication to mass media, we frequently reach millions of people. This communication helped us to involve thousands of volunteers in recording the timing of phenological events like the start of flowering, leaf unfolding and bird migration, but also several health-related events like hay fever symptoms and tick bites. In this paper, we analyse and present our experiences with the Nature's Calendar project regarding societal publications. Based on this analysis, we explain the importance of societal publications for citizen science projects and scientists in general, and we show how scientists can increase the news worthiness of scientific information and what factors and activities can increase the chances of media paying attention to this news. We show that societal publications help phenological networks by facilitating the recruitment, retention and instruction of observers. Furthermore, they stimulate the generation of new ideas and partners that lead to an increase in knowledge, awareness and behavioural change of the general public or specific stakeholders. They make projects, and scientists involved, better known to the public and increase their credibility and authority. Societal publications can catalyse the production of new publications, thereby enforcing the previous mentioned points.

The Act of Recognition: Citizenship in Practices

Abstract: In this article I will reconstruct the Dutch debate on citizenship against the developing thinking about social citizenship in the context of globalization. I will show that the confusion around citizenship in the Netherlands can be seen as a result from a split between an unanimous negative valuation of Dutch citizen participation and the practice in which the participation of Dutch population is high. Recent theory on citizenship and participation localizes citizen participation, through membership, in the heart of citizenship practices (B.S. Turner). This can be understood as that all kinds of practices and activities can be viewed as citizenship practices and citizenship activities. From this perspective it becomes clear that in the Netherlands, due to the nation-state conceptualisation of citizenship social participation is not acknowledged as part of citizenship. In reverse, the case study learns about the theory of citizenship in practices that that theory functions as a framework that visualises different - sometimes conflicting - notions and practices of citizenship and thereby recognises all these as part of citizenship.

Thinking the unthinkable – the end of the Dutch river dike system? Exploring a new safety concept for the river management

Since 1100 the Dutch relied on their continuously expanding extensive dike system for keeping dry feet and dry goods. But how durable and safe is this traditional dike concept, now the sea-level is rising and rainfall patterns seem to change? Can they continue to raise their dikes in the future or should they give more room to the river? In the Dutch mind higher dikes are saver. In practice, however, higher dikes may lead to higher risks as the consequences of failure rise. What is wrong with the risk perception of the Dutch citizen? How should risks be communicated to the public, how should a public debate on safety regimes be organized? In a study project a new safety concept in which the Dutch rivers got a free flow was explored and communicated. In an effort to reframe the issue a transition path, scenarios, impact studies and ex ante evaluations of this new safety management regime were made. A new safety paradigm seems to be taking shape. Context scenarios show under what circumstances frequent flooding can be made acceptable to the Dutch citizen and the inhabitants of the Dutch polders.

Religion in Mental Health Care: Psychotherapists’ Views

This paper presents the results of an empirical study among two groups of psychotherapists in the Netherlands. One group works in a mental health institution based on religious principles (the Gliagg), and the other group in a general mental health institution (the Riagg). The investigation starts with an overview of the religious background and religious practices of the therapists. Some equations with the average Dutch citizen are made. The next part of the study deals with the perception by psychotherapists of religious issues connected with psycho-social problems. How often in their opinion is there a relation and what kind of relation is at issue? The third part of the study considers the way in which psychotherapists treat these religious issues. Do they attend to them and what kind of (religious) interventions are used? Special attention is given to the question of whether there are contacts with the clergy. We conclude that religion should be given a more pronounced place in general mental health care and that Riagg psychotherapists, in particular, should become better equipped to deal with religious issues.

Challenges to prevention in Dutch general practice

In the Netherlands the general practitioner (GP) plays an important role in prevention. Every Dutch citizen has to be registered with one GP and GPs know their patients well. Face-to-face contact is a relatively effective means of influencing behavior; if preventive advice is related to a patient's state of health, compliance may be stimulated. However, Dutch GPs have shown reluctance toward preventive work. Curing rather than preventing disease is emphasized in medical school. Many GPs doubt that they are entitled to interfere with a patients' lifestyle unless asked. Some GPs are aware of their limited knowledge of nutrition. Preventive work requires some reorganization of medical practice and can lead to an increased workload, without financial compensation. Then there is the "prevention paradox": preventive actions that have a demonstrable effect on the whole population bring only small benefits for individuals. Since 1989 the Dutch College of General Practitioners has published 60 standards for general practice. Several of these include advice on lifestyle and diet, eg, for non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, peptic ulcer, and heart failure. Prevention work in general practice must use only interventions proved to be effective and they must be feasible in the context of general practice. A trial collaboration of 118 GPs and 5 public health authorities between 1988 and 1990 for screening and lifestyle management of hypertension was a limited success. It brought to light the practical problems of this type of work in general practice. Present government priorities for GP-public health collaboration are influenza vaccination and cervical screening.