Emotional Injury Research Articles

Healing psychiatry: bridging the science/humanism divide

This is a new patient-centred approach to psychiatry that aims to resolve the field's conceptual tension between science and humanism by drawing on classical American and contemporary pragmatic bioethics. today is torn by opposing sensibilities. Is it primarily a science of brain functioning or primarily an art of understanding the human mind in its social and cultural context? Competing conceptions of mental illness as amenable to scientific explanation or as deeply complex and beyond the reach of empirical study have left the field conceptually divided between science and humanism. In Healing David Brendel takes a novel approach to this stubborn problem. Drawing on the classical American of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as contemporary work of pragmatic bioethicists, Brendel proposes a pragmatism that synthesises scientific and humanistic approaches to mental health care. Psychiatry, he argues, must integrate scientific and humanistic models by emphasising the practical, pluralistic, participatory, and provisional aspects of clinical diagnosis and treatment. Psychiatrists need to have the skill and flexibility to use scientific and humanistic approaches in a collaborative, open-ended clinical process; they must recognise the complexity of human suffering even as they strive for scientific rigor. This is the only way, he writes, that psychiatry can heal its conceptual rift and the emotional wounds of its patients. Healing Psychiatry explores these issues from both clinical and theoretical standpoints and uses case histories to support its basic argument. Brendel calls for an open-minded and flexible yet scientifically informed approach to understanding, diagnosing, and treating mental disorders. And he considers the future of psychiatry, applying the principles of clinical to a broad range of ethical concerns in psychiatric training and research.

The Constitutionality of Federal Taxes and Federal Tax Provisions

A recent case, Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service, 460 F.3d 79 (Aug. 22, 2006), has stimulated interest in the constitutionality of federal taxes and provisions thereof. In Murphy, the panel of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that section 102(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code was unconstitutional by failing to exclude from gross income damages for emotional distress and injury to professional reputation that, according to Murphy, are not income under the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This essay is not a systematic comment of the Murphy case, but various aspects of Murphy will be considered in passing in the process of looking at the general problem of the constitutionality of federal tax laws. Among the conclusions reached herein are the following: (1) in general, a federal tax provision is constitutional if it either entails income under the Sixteenth Amendment or results in an indirect tax; (2) Murphy is not a proper case for reaching the indirect tax issue; (3) the Sixteenth Amendment only refers to gross income, and gross income means gross receipts; (4) although there is no constitutional requirement of capital recovery, capital is now limited to basis; (5) there is no basis in human capital or the capacity to enjoy life; (6) emotional suffering does not result from a realized loss of any portion of any asset; (7) a cash receipt cannot be excluded on the theory that it is a substitute for an untaxed psychic state; (8) direct tax is limited to head taxes, mandatory requisitions (taxes on states), and taxes on real estate, all because of their existence; (9) Congress can disallow basis; and (10) Congress can impose personal consumption taxes and personal wealth taxes.

Taxing Emotional Injury Recoveries: A Critical Analysis of Murphy V. Internal Revenue Service

Does Congress have the power under the United States Constitution to tax compensatory personal injury awards? Several months ago, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said in Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service. The court theorized that Ms. Murphy's compensatory damages award did not constitute income, as understood by the enactors of the 16th Amendment, because the award merely made Ms. Murphy whole rather than increasing her wealth. This paper disputes virtually every aspect of the Murphy decision. The court made errors from the beginning in analyzing the statutory issues. While the court ultimately reached the correct preliminary conclusion - that Ms. Murphy's award was statutorily subject to taxation - the court's flawed analysis led it to consider the constitutionality of, and ultimately to hold unconstitutional, the wrong statute. Even though the court's flawed statutory analysis may have been harmless, its flawed constitutional analysis was not harmless. The court of appeals ignored the Constitution's original Article I grant to Congress of the power to impose taxes, as well as the first 100 years of judicial rulings recognizing Congress's plenary power under Article I to tax both property transactions and from human capital, such as wages. A proper review of the pre-16th Amendment law shows that Congress could tax Ms. Murphy's award under its original Article I powers even if the award was not income under the 16th Amendment. Moreover, there was no legitimate support in Murphy for the court's conclusion that the enactors of the 16th Amendment in 1913 did not intend for compensatory damages awards to be subject to taxation as Instead of citing contemporaneous evidence of intent, the court relied on two 1918 administrative rulings that did not even purport to consider the meaning of the 16th Amendment, and the court ignored earlier administrative positions, closer in time to the 16th amendment, treating such awards as taxable. Viewed in context, the 1918 administrative rulings were an attempt to comprehend then-recent Supreme Court decisions interpreting the meaning of the early taxing acts - interpretations that have long since been undermined by Supreme Court judicial opinions. The court of appeals took these administrative rulings out of their historical and factual context in an attempt to attribute to the enactors of the 16th amendment the conclusion it sought to reach - that Congress does not have the constitutional power to tax compensatory damages awards. The enactors of the 16th Amendment had a limited objective: to overturn the Supreme Court's 1895 decisions in Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust, which held that Congress lacked the power to impose taxes on generated by real and personal property without apportionment. It is folly to suggest that the enactors of the 16th Amendment had a clear opinion about whether non-physical emotional distress damages would constitute The enactors of the 16th Amendment left it to the courts to determine the meaning of income, and it took decades after the enactment of the 16th Amendment for the courts to develop a coherent definition of income.

Addressing Child Abuse in Southern Nigeria: The Role of the Church

Child abuse can be defined as 'an intentional or neglectful physical or emotional injury imposed on a child, including sexual molestation.' (Garner 1999:10) Child abuse violates the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child. This evil, which is also considered offensive to any genuine Christian conscience, is becoming very common in many villages, towns and cities in Southern Nigeria. In this paper, using phenomenological and hermeneutical methods, attempt is made to highlight the major types of child abuses in Southern Nigeria, identify the factors encouraging the trend, examine generally the attitude of the churches in this regard and prescribe more child friendly attitudes and practices for the church in Nigeria.

Evaluating the Validity of Pain Complaints in Personal Injury Cases: Assessment Approaches of Forensic and Pain Specialists

ABSTRACT Psychologists active in conducting evaluations in personal injury cases should expect to see clients with complaints of physical pain. The purpose of this article is to inform practitioners about the assessment approaches used by experienced forensic and pain specialists to assess for malingering in these cases. We first examine specialists' use of symptom validity/malingering instruments in a hypothetical emotional injury case and then examine responses to an open-ended question asking specialists to describe how they would assess the validity of the hypothetical client's pain symptoms. The MMPI-2 was by far the most commonly identified instrument for assessing malingering. When asked specifically about assessing the validity of pain complaints, the most common method reported was to obtain and review collateral information about the patient's pain symptoms, including medical records and interviews/consultation with the patient's medical doctor and physical therapist. Other methods described by specialists included behavioral observations of pain-related behaviors, considering the consistency between self-reported pain symptoms and other sources of information, and using measures designed specifically to measure either response style or pain symptoms. Implications for practice are discussed.

Exploring the Causal Relationship between Exposure to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and Pre- and Post-Earthquake Preparedness Activities

Whether, when, and why individuals prepare for disasters are major concerns of disaster preparedness researchers. Using population-based survey data collected after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, multinomial logistic models are imposed to examine if preparedness activities were adopted after the quake because of quake-related financial loss, physical and emotional injury, and proximity to the earthquake epicenter and shaking. The extent to which people invest in sustained preparedness was also examined by comparing the preparedness activities occurring both before and after the earthquake. The results indicated that exposure to physical, financial, and emotional injuries, and to shaking increased post-quake preparedness. Engaging in certain types of pre-quake preparedness increased the likelihood of post-quake preparedness. Post-quake preparedness is not affected by socioeconomic status or demographic factors, except that married persons are more likely to prepare in all situations and immigrants are more likely to adopt post-quake preparedness activities.

Injury Increases the Risk for PTSD: An Examination of Potential Neurobiological and Psychological Mediators

A growing number of common traumatic events involve both physical and emotional injuries. In contrast to previously held beliefs, the rapidly growing body of literature shows quite convincingly that physical injury, over and above exposure to the traumatic event itself, increases rather than decreases the risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A pertinent question becomes how bodily injury contributes to the risk of developing PTSD. In this article, we review contemporary findings regarding the neurobiological and psychological mechanisms by which bodily injury may augment or independently contribute to chronic posttraumatic stress. In addition, we propose three theoretical pathways through which physical injury can increase the risk for PTSD. These pathways are: additive, unique, and recovery impeding. Finally, we highlight unresolved issues pertaining to each one of these pathways and propose directions for future research to address them.

From repression to prevention against violence: a challenge posed to civil society and the health sector

This article deals with the proposal of the Pan American Health Organization for the prevention of violence, following the precepts of the "World report on violence and health" of the WHO. In this analysis the authors distinguish the approach of public safety (generally based on repression) from the way public health approaches this issue, based on the traditional concepts that constitute its patrimony: promotion of health, prevention of physical and emotional injuries, and the strengthening of citizenship. The authors show that the health sector has already embraced the issue definitively but that even so the problem is still far from occupying the outstanding place it deserves in the public health agenda, together with other health problems of the contemporaneous populations of the world and the Americas. The text concludes establishing a link between prevention of violence and the Millennium development goals, which in principle urge society for taking action towards human rights, solidarity and quality of life.

Violence, zero tolerance and the subversion of professional practice

Assaults on health care staff have been a fact of life since the earliest years of organised health services, but it is only in recent years that governments have begun to acknowledge the problem. Assaults not only inflict physical and emotional injury, but undermine morale, create a climate of fear, and subvert the quality of care.They are also costly in terms of lost labour, compensation, and legal and procedural expenses.The response to violence in health care settings has thus far ranged from what might be called the ‘Ostrich position’, in which it is simply ignored, to training in self-defence, the deployment of security staff in clinical areas, conflict resolution training and, more recently, the policy of ‘zero tolerance’.This paper examines the rationale for zero tolerance policies, drawing on their origins and applications in the United States and Britain. It suggests that zero tolerance is an ineffective response to violence in health care settings, and its adoption by authorities in Australia should be rejected. It is further argued, that resource allocation and marginalisation are identifiable and modifiable factors contributing to violence in our health care systems.

A PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF TWO BEHAVIORAL SKILLS TRAINING PROCEDURES FOR TEACHING ABDUCTION‐PREVENTION SKILLS TO SCHOOLCHILDREN

Although child abduction is a low-rate event, it presents a serious threat to the safety of children. The victims of child abduction face the threat of physical and emotional injury, sexual abuse, and death. Previous research has shown that behavioral skills training (BST) is effective in teaching children abduction-prevention skills, although not all children learn the skills. This study compared BST only to BST with an added in situ training component to teach abduction-prevention skills in a small-group format to schoolchildren. Results showed that both programs were effective in teaching abduction-prevention skills. In addition, the scores for the group that received in situ training were significantly higher than scores for the group that received BST alone at the 3-month follow-up assessment.

Wounded hearts: masculinity, law, and literature in American culture

This book offers a new approach to thinking about men and emotion. The literary study of emotion is part of an important revisionary movement among scholars eager to recast emotional politics for the twenty-first century. Looking beyond the traditional categories of sentiment, sensibility, and sympathy, Jennifer Travis suggests a new approach to reading emotionalism among men. She argues that the vocabulary of injury, with its evaluations of victimhood and its assessments of harm, has deeply influenced the cultural history of emotions. From the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Travis traces the history of male emotionalism in American discourse. She argues that injury became a comfortable vocabulary - particularly among white middle-class men - through which to articulate and to claim a range of emotional wounds. The debates about injury that flourished in the cultural arenas of medicine, psychology, and the law spilled over into the realm of fiction, as Travis demonstrates through readings of works by Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Travis concludes by linking this history to twenty-first-century preoccupations with pain-centered politics, which, she cautions, too often focuses only on women and racial minorities.

On the Role of Reparative Processes in Childhood: Pathological Development and Therapeutic Change

This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes. Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion malignant psychological events in the mind of the child: painful affects and associated fantasies increasingly dominate the child's sense of self and others, leading to prolonged states of withdrawal and demoralization or defiant rage. The therapeutic process, especially the therapist's empathy, intervenes to arrest this malignant development, helping unlock the child's exuberant energies and restore in the child a more confident and joyful participation in life.

Listening to Olivia: Violence, Poverty, and Prostitution (review)

Reviewed by: Listening to Olivia: Violence, Poverty, and Prostitution Celia Williamson (bio) Listening to Olivia: Violence, Poverty, and Prostitution by Jody Raphael. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004, 312 pp., $50.00 hardcover, $27.95 paper. In Listening to Olivia, Jody Raphael writes a compelling book about life as a prostituted woman in the United States. This book presents the personal story of Olivia's progression through prostitution from entrance through exit. Most chapters are arranged in sequence to first present Olivia's experience, and then to explore both quantitative and qualitative information on prostitution to support her experience. Raphael gives a voice to the most vulnerable in the sex industry. Throughout the course of the book, Olivia's thoughts, feelings, and experiences are exposed. The reader comes to know Olivia and learns that Olivia's tragic journey sadly represents the journey of many women in this country who succumb to street life and drug addiction. Olivia's fears, anger, love, and ultimately her empathy for helping others touches the reader in a way that encourages compassion toward the issue of prostituted women. The author does a nice job outlining the damaging effects of legalization and presents a compelling argument for continued legal intervention. This is not a book that legalization advocates would enjoy, but one that helps to remind everyone to pay particular attention to the experiences of those who are at the bottom rung of society's ladder. [End Page 226] Raphael charges society with a dangerous level of tolerance for prostitution recruitment and the negative outcomes of the women involved. She also charges the social service, criminal justice, and health care community with an overall lack of concern for prostituted women. She cites examples of missed opportunities for intervention while acknowledging that these institutions most often represent the initial contact with women in which a meaningful connection leading to intervention could be made. In her book, Raphael offers a prescription to successfully address the issue of prostitution that speaks to those most vulnerable women in prostitution. The answer to the problem is complex, and Raphael could have easily spent an additional hundred pages explaining possible solutions. She does address a full spectrum of services from early intervention with adolescents through comprehensive services for women. For the informed reader, this section could have represented more of a comprehensive map toward successful advocacy and program implementation, but that is not the intent of the book. This section does provide a nice overview of potential possibilities. The richness of the many examples of both qualitative and quantitative studies from both national and international research cannot be understated. However, distinctions between national and international data are sometimes blurred and can lead to confusion. Generalizing experiences in other countries, under varied circumstances, to experiences in this country, under different circumstances, can be confusing to the informed reader and unchallenged by the uninformed reader. Most interesting is the personal story and Raphael's ability to expose the shame and degradation inherent in the experiences of women who end up on the streets and drug addicted. She becomes the vessel through which Olivia can share her most sensitive emotional wounds with the world. Olivia's experience represents the experiences of women in more vulnerable forms of prostitution. Often born out of early abuse, adolescent runaway, survival sex, and entrance into prostitution, these experiences are reportedly not the experiences of those empowered women who are advocates for the legalization of prostitution. Raphael addresses those "other voices" under the chapter "Other Voices, Other Rooms." At the beginning of each chapter, Raphael opens with a section from the writings of Rebecca West. In my opinion, the Rebecca West quotes seem distracting. If the reader is not familiar with the work of Rebecca West, it appears disconnected and awkward. All in all, Raphael's accounts of women in lower levels and exploited forms of prostitution complements what researchers conducting street-level prostitution research have been saying for more than a decade. To her credit, Raphael is able to put a human face on what has been a hidden [End Page 227] tragedy in the country and abroad. I applaud her efforts and hope that many more books and articles...

Introduction to the Special Issue on Emotion in Legal Judgment and Decision Making.

In the last decade, researchers have shown burgeoning interest in issues at the intersection of emotion and law. Given the longstanding interest in emotion among social (and other) psychologists, most of this research has come from a psychological perspective, but it also includes work with a legal, sociological, philosophical, and neuroscience flavor. The issues are theoretical as well as practical, influencing both psychological theories of emotion and matters of legal practice and policy. The law adopts a double standard in its treatment of emotion. In some areas, the law explicitly addresses emotion as a legitimate consideration, but in other areas, the law denies emotion any role in legal decision making. For example, legal analysis requires decision makers to consider the emotional reactions of others when classifying certain offenses for purposes of criminal culpability (e.g., “hate crimes” and “crimes of passion”), awarding damages for emotional injuries (e.g., mental suffering and emotional distress), and allowing jurors’ moral judgments to influence certain consequential decisions such as punitive damages, capital sentencing, and jury nullification. At the same time, the courts make what may be untenable presumptions when they require factfinders to ignore their affective states and evaluate evidence, such as gory crime scene photographs, dispassionately. Thus, the field of law and emotion is ripe for scholarly exploration.

Injury Representations, Coping, Emotions, and Functional Outcomes in Athletes With Sports-Related Injuries: A Test of Self-Regulation Theory1

This study examined the influence of injury representations on emotions and outcomes of athletes with sports-related musculoskeletal injuries using self-regulation theory. Participants were athletes (N= 220; M age = 23.44 years, SD= 8.42) with a current sports-related musculoskeletal injury. Participants self-reported their cognitive and emotional injury representations, emotions coping procedures, physical and sports functioning, attendance at treatment centers, and 3-week follow-up attendance. Participants’ negative and positive affect were influenced by emotional representations. Identity, causal attributions, and emotional representations influenced physical functioning; and identity, serious consequences, causal attributions, and emotional representations predicted sports functioning. Injury severity, identity, and personal control predicted attendance at treatment centers, but the effect of personal control was mediated by problem-focused coping. Problem-focused coping predicted 3-week follow-up attendance. Results support self-regulation theory for examining injury representations in athletes.

How Do Hired Workers Fare Under Consumer-Directed Personal Care?

This study describes the experiences of workers hired under consumer direction. Medicaid beneficiaries who volunteered for the Cash and Counseling demonstration were randomly assigned to the treatment group, which could participate in the consumer-directed program, or the control group, which was referred to agency care. Paid workers for both groups were surveyed about 10 months after demonstration enrollment. Directly hired workers for the treatment group were nearly always the consumers' friends or relatives. The two groups received similar wages and both were highly satisfied with their working conditions and the supervision they received. Compared with agency workers, directly hired workers who lived with or were related to the consumer were more likely to report emotional strain and a desire for more respect from the consumer's family; however, no such differences were observed for directly hired workers who were not relatives. Directly hired workers and agency workers providing comparable amounts of care reported similar levels of injury and physical strain, although directly hired workers received less formal training. The Cash and Counseling model does not appear to cause adverse consequences for the hired workers. Directly hired workers report high levels of job satisfaction and do not suffer physical or emotional hardship beyond what might be expected for individuals providing care to relatives. However, states might be able to reduce emotional strain and injuries by providing educational materials and referrals for consumers, their families, and workers, and by having counselors monitor workers' well-being.

Dealing with damage: the desire for psychic violence to soothe psychic pain

Damage and destruction in people's lives can be dealt with either through recognizing and resolving psychic pain and loss or acting out destructive human relationships. This paper highlights the internal processes within a patient and a troubled society where psychic pain may not be recognized, experienced and worked through, so leading to the possibility that psychic violence may be used to soothe heartfelt emotional injuries. Psychic pain is often associated with emotional poverty and inadequacy. This paper describes the idea that pain is acted out through psychic violence and how the therapist has to face and contain many facets of this human frailty disguised as ‘sexed-up’ violence. My observations of psychic violence in the everyday life of a society exposed to over 35 years of death and destruction are also described. Here, there is not the comfort of the consulting room to detoxify poisonous projections, which often present under the psychic guise of superiority and contempt. Intrapsychic formulations are outlined which underlie such violence and clinical interventions and suggestions to repair societal troubles are offered to help this disturbed state of mind move towards more whole-object human relations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Wound Care at End of Life

Nurses are in a unique and privileged position with regard to both end-of-life care and wound care. Expert wound care can greatly contribute to the relief of physiologic stress on the human organism and psychosocial and physical distress at the end of life. Using what is known from both domains,nurses apply critical thinking to assist patients, families, and other caregivers in maintaining the maximum possible integrity of the physical body of the dying person. The manner in which nurses approach wound care with dying patients and the ability to preserve patient dignity and family respect while doing necessary palliative interventions also can serve the healing of emotional wounds in the dying process.

Cognitive and psychosocial correlates of alexithymia following traumatic brain injury

Changes in emotional and social behaviour are considered to be amongst the most common and debilitating consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Little is known of the effects of TBI on alexithymia, which refers to impairment in aspects of understanding emotions. In the current study TBI patients ( N = 28) were compared with demographically matched healthy controls ( N = 31) on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), a measure that taps three distinct characteristics of the alexithymia concept; difficulty in identifying emotions, difficulty in describing emotions and externally oriented thinking. Patients and controls also completed measures of anxiety, depression, quality of life, and measures of fluency to assess executive function. Patients showed greater levels of alexithymia, in terms of difficulty identifying emotions and reduced introspection. Difficulty in identifying emotions was associated with poorer quality of life, even when depression and anxiety were controlled. Difficulty in identifying emotions was also uniquely associated with executive function deficits. Thus, although studies typically focus on aspects of cognitive change following head injury, these results lend support to Becerra et al.'s (Becerra, R., Amos, A., & Jongenelis, S. (2002). Organic alexithymia: a study of acquired emotional blindness. Brain Injury, 16, 633–645.) notion of an ‘organic alexithymia’, and suggest that more attention should be focused upon assessment of emotional change post-head injury.

Die predikant as teiken – profiel van iemand wat emosionele wonde toedien

A minister as target – profile of a person inflicting emotional wounds This article focuses on the personality of someone who intentionally wounds a minister of the Word. The typical profile of someone who wounds emotionally, and the behavioural process that usually characterises his acts are highlighted. At the meta-theoretical level the interpersonal style of a wounder is examined by applying viewpoints of Interpersonal Theory – a subsection of Personality Psychology. The specific behavioural style of a wounder comprises characteristics such as being dominating, competitive, distrusting, cold and hostile. The basis-theoretical survey conducted in this article focuses on the relationship between Paul and the Corinthian church with specific reference to the underlying relational tension. This survey reveals that the effective functioning of a congregation as a community of faith and love is of utmost importance in the identification of the personality type of the person who intentionally wounds a minister of the Word. In conclusion an analysis for understanding, as well as guidelines for coping with the whole situation is proposed. The reaction of a minister and a congregation’s understanding of the nature of the wounding process are outlined as being of specific importance.