High-profile Deaths Research Articles

A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies: The cases of Mr. Shinzo Abe, Queen Elizabeth II, and Pope Benedict XVI

In 2022, a year marked by high-profile deaths, leaders worldwide expressed their condolences for the passing of Mr. Shinzo Abe, Queen Elizabeth II, and Pope Benedict XVI. This study primarily compares the condolence strategies employed to honor these distinguished figures. An analysis of the deceased individuals naturally revealed some significant differences, such as their role, gender, cause of death, and length of reign or term as a leader. This study investigates how these differences influenced the choice of condolence strategies. The dataset comprises 150 official statements, including letters and Twitter messages, written in English by world leaders, with 50 messages dedicated to each deceased individual released to the public shortly after their passing. A modified coding scheme, focusing on linguistic realizations, was applied to perform the relevant analysis on these official condolence communications. While there were a variety of condolence strategies used for the three deceased individuals, direct strategies prevailed over indirect strategies, with slight variations among sub-strategies. Among the direct sub-strategies, the use of an address term, was the most commonly utilized. Differences in role, cause of death, and length of reign or term as leader contributed to the choice of condolence strategy made by well-wishers, while gender did not.

Baby deaths reveal culture of poor practice

High-profile deaths of two babies in preventable incidents in nurseries have raised wider issues over safeguarding procedures

How learning from the lived experiences of child protection social workers can help us understand the factors underpinning workforce instability within the English child protection system

ABSTRACT The English child protection system continues to be the focus of national commentary in light of several high-profile deaths and the recently published reports from the Review of Children’s Social Care, and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Whilst narratives of ‘failure’, ‘betrayal’, and ‘scandalous incompetence’ perpetuate, these forgo consideration of the complexity of child protection work, nor do they acknowledge that during the COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’, social workers remained one of the few professional groups visiting vulnerable families at home. Moreover, of the recent accounts of the lived experience of social workers, these have omitted a specific overview of what it means to be a child protection practitioner. Drawing from an original ethnography of a statutory child protection team and supplemented by follow-up interviews, the article seeks to elucidate the long-standing lived experience of a cohort of child protection social workers. It highlights a ‘tendency’ to be the target of threats and intimidation and identifies other costs in the context of health and personal relationships. The article concludes that these findings could help us better understand child protection workforce instability and the system’s reliance on agency staff – both of which continue to be identified as contributory in child death tragedies.

Legislative Expansion and Judicial Confusion: Uncertain Trajectories of the Death Penalty in India

The numbers and the politics of the death penalty in India tell very different stories, presenting complicated narratives for its future. The public reaction to instances of sexual violence and other offences over the last decade and the consequent political response has significantly strengthened the retention and expansion of the death penalty. This is reflected from the fact that that of all the death sentences that district courts impose, only about 5 per cent get confirmed in India’s appellate system. However, does this mean there is growing scepticism about the death penalty in the Supreme Court of India? Unfortunately, the answer is far from simple. An assessment of the death penalty in India’s appellate courts during the last decade will demonstrate that a crime-centric approach has hindered any principled discomfort with the death penalty or the manner of its administration. In particular, the Supreme Court has faltered in high-profile death sentence cases (i.e., offences against the state and sexual violence cases), and its track record of commutations has very little to do with principled considerations on sentencing. This paper argues that the political and judicial imagination of the death penalty, as a necessary part of the response to crime, creates significant and unique challenges for the path towards abolition.

Promoting Mental Health and Criminal Justice Collaboration Through System-Level Partnerships.

Recent high-profile deaths of unarmed individuals in police custody have raised concerns about the role of police officers in responding to people who are experiencing mental health crises. Of further concern, people with serious mental illness are highly over-represented throughout the entire criminal justice system including within jail, prison and community corrections populations. It is widely accepted that promoting mental health and criminal justice collaboration is a key to addressing these concerns. Promoting effective collaboration is challenging, however, due to fundamental differences in cultures and methods that exist between mental health and criminal justice service providers. To promote effective collaboration between service providers, a conceptual framework was recently published that divides the collaborative process into separate steps and outlines respective responsibilities at each step. Yet optimal collaboration between mental health and criminal justice service providers requires the support of their respective supervisors and agency heads. This paper extends previous work at the service provider level by applying the conceptual framework to promote effective collaboration at the systems level (i.e., between agencies). Barriers to inter-agency collaboration are discussed, and strategies for facilitating collaboration at each step of the collaborative process are presented.

African Americans and Law Enforcement: Tackling a Foundational Component of Structural Reform-Union Disciplinary Procedures.

Despite numerous high-profile deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement, little attention has been paid to the issue of police reform in the social work literature. To address this gap, this article focuses on a topic that has been singled out as the most important area of potential reform: restructuring the disciplinary provisions embedded in the contracts negotiated between police unions and municipalities. These provisions frequently shield problematic officers from public accountability by hindering their identification, sanctioning, and dismissal. Given that collective bargaining agreements are typically negotiated behind closed doors, social workers can play an essential role by advocating for public negotiations between municipal and union leaders, so provisions that obstruct public accountability for unfit officers can be identified and eliminated. The article concludes by delineating three alternative models to the status quo-increased neighborhood policing, disbanding or defunding police departments, and police abolition zones-and notes that no model can be successful if those who abuse their power cannot be removed from their positions of public trust. The authors suggest that social workers collaborate with African American residents in a given community to ensure that their preferences regarding community justice are enacted in a manner that reflects their aspirations.

The adverse effects of policing on population health: A conceptual model

While negative encounters between police and the community are not a new trend, recent high profile deaths of unarmed people of color have gained widespread national attention and ignited new movements demanding reform, accountability, and progress. Increasingly over the past few decades, researchers have examined the most extreme cases of lethal use of force, describing the context of these violent encounters, situational and personal characteristics, and underlying risk factors. More recent research has aimed to define the broader and more nuanced adverse effects that policing can have on population health. We propose a holistic and multidisciplinary model for the relationship between policing and population health in the U.S. that incorporates contextual, situational, and individual-level factors while also recognizing the direct and vicarious mechanisms by which policing exposures can negatively affect population health. The model captures the short and long term health effects of policing and the cyclic nature by which those effects at the individual, community, and systemic levels can influence each other. We consider the unique qualities of different communities that may influence these pathways, the historical trends of the criminal justice and policing systems, and recommend applications of the model in policing agencies, medicine, and research.

Beyond Statistics: Uncovering the Roots of Racial Disparities in Breastfeeding.

* Abbreviations: BFHI — : Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative CDC — : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention IHS — : Indian Health Service Breastfeeding is for white women. This sentiment was expressed by several Black women featured in Chocolate Milk , an eye-opening documentary series that was shown during a 2-week virtual breastfeeding elective created for medical students and implemented amid the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.1 In addition to learning about proper latch techniques, effective positions, and the breastfeeding challenges that women face, our learning also revealed racial disparities in breastfeeding. As 2 medical students who identify as Black and Native American, we desired to dig deeper to better understand the roots of these disparities and the systemic changes we can advocate for within medicine. Racial disparities in breastfeeding are similar to those that persist in other facets of health, including infant mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 25.6% of all US infants born in 2017 were exclusively breastfed through 6 months of age. Whereas the 6-month exclusive breastfeeding rate among white infants born in 2017 was above the national average at 28.7%, only 21.2% of Black infants born in the same year and 19.6% of Native American infants born in 2015 (there is a lack of reporting after 2015) were exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life.2 Given the known benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and infant and the increased risks of comorbid health conditions for these communities, there is much to learn about how … Address correspondence to Suet Kam Lam, MD, MPH, MS, Department of Pediatric Hospital Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave, S1-20, Cleveland, OH 44195. E-mail: skl48{at}case.edu

Traumatisme et résilience associés à la pandémie de la COVID-19 dans les villes de Bafoussam et de Dschang au Cameroun

IntroductionThe emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in Cameroon, as in Africa and around the world, was marked by a suddenness and unpredictability that fascinated the imagination. The considerable psychic and social repercussions of the pandemic mobilized a significant anguish of death. The sudden onset of the pandemic was followed by spectacular, high-profile deaths that fascinated the imagination, listing it in the order of traumatic events, provoking reactions of astonishment, flight and avoidance. GoalThe objective of this study is to determine the symptomatology of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as the resilience, associated with the Covid-19 pandemic in the Western Region of Cameroon. MethodologyThe research was carried out following the model of general population mental health surveys. The availability of area frames (sampling) made it possible to opt for probabilistic calculations. First and second year master's students in clinical psychology from Dschang University were involved in data collection. They benefited from a two-day seminar on data collection techniques in the general population. The calculated sample size is 384 households. The anticipated response rate, set at 90%, made it possible to increase robustness and to anticipate a total sample of 424 households, spread over 3 districts of Bafoussam and Dschang, according to the choice previously made. The study followed the ethical provisions of the Helsinki Protocol. The data collection tools used are: the Impact of Event Scale-Revised and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Results409 subjects were recruited, representing a completion rate of 106.5%. 70.7% of subjects exhibited symptoms of PTSD. These symptoms are more often mild (40.9%) or moderate (25.6%). Women are more affected (73.7%) by PTSD than men (67.9%). In addition to sex and age, area of residence and marital status, appear to be significantly associated with symptoms of PTSD: subjects under 35 years of age have a significantly higher prevalence rate than those over 35; the rate of PTSD is significantly higher in subjects living in urban areas than in those living in rural areas; single subjects are more affected by PTSD (40.1%) than married subjects (26.7%). The average score recorded on the CD-RISC is 64.3, the standard deviation is 15.3 and the coefficient of variation is 24%. This average falls into the second quartile of the distribution, indicating average resilience. CD-RISC scores are not affected by gender, age, marital status, level of education, or occupational status. These characteristics are therefore not factors of resilience. ConclusionThe Covid-19 pandemic has had a psychological impact in Cameroon which has made it a major psychosocial stressor. More than 6 in 10 people have symptoms of PTSD. But this symptomatology is often weak or moderate, testifying to an effective resilience, to balance the traumatic effects of the pandemic.

Black Kids Matter initiative calls for greater inclusion of Black children in clinical trials.

During 2020 a group of Italian clinicians set up the Black Kids Matter study group, which was inspired by the international response to the Black Lives Matter campaign that followed a high-profile death in the USA. The project has a number of aims with regard to healthcare professionals and paediatric patients. It aims to involve clinicians living outside the main urban areas of low-income countries in research projects (1,2) and develop dedicated teaching programmes for medical students and residents.

Frontline yet at the back of the queue – improving access and adaptations to CBT for Black African and Caribbean communities

AbstractThis paper focuses on the Black minority ethnic population (Black British, Black African, Black Caribbean) and uses the term BME in reference to this group. Only 6.2% of BME people access psychological intervention for common mental disorders. In provision of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) the diversity in global majority populations1requires culturally specific informed and responsive approaches. The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme needs to be accountable, culturally congruent and strategic, to ensure accessibility and improve outcomes for BME people. According to the Mental Health Foundation (2019), a higher percentage of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic populations (BAME) are diagnosed with common, severe and complex mental health disorders. Despite the weight of literature on this, little has changed. The NHS Implementation Plan outlines trajectories for increased access and reduced attrition within mental health services, addressing inequalities for BAME populations.Evidence-based guidance and audits for provision of culturally sensitive and adapted therapies are presented in the pioneering (IAPT) BAME Positive Practice Guide (PPG). However, there are no funding arrangements or formal integrated frameworks to support implementation. The COVID-19 global pandemic and the high-profile death of George Floyd tragically exposed and highlighted the consequences of systemic racism. Understanding of the importance of service and clinical anti-racist practice is imperative for CBT therapists. Implementation of the BAME PPG audit tool ensures review of race equity in access, engagement, adaptation and workforce within IAPT and other mental health services. This could transform lives.Key learning aims(1)To understand the barriers (individual, societal and systemic) to accessing psychological therapies such as CBT and the impact on CBT treatment outcomes specifically for black minority ethnic (BME) populations.(2)To recognise barriers to implementation of formal frameworks for equitable access to psychological therapies such as CBT for BME communities.(3)To assist services and therapists to implement evidence-based learning, on cultural adaptations, to address barriers in access, retention and completion of CBT.(4)To provide examples of services that have taken successful actions to address the issues identified in the earlier points.

Cannabis Legalization and Acute Harm From High Potency Cannabis Products: A Narrative Review and Recommendations for Public Health.

Legalization and commercial sale of non-medical cannabis has led to increasing diversity and potency of cannabis products. Some of the American states that were the first to legalize have seen rises in acute harms associated with cannabis use, e.g. Colorado has seen increases in emergency department visits for cannabis-related acute psychological distress and severe vomiting (hyperemesis), as well as a number of high-profile deaths related to ingestion of high doses of cannabis edibles. Over-ingestion of cannabis is related to multiple factors, including the sale of cannabis products with high levels of THC and consumers’ confusion regarding labelling of cannabis products, which disproportionately impact new or inexperienced users. Based on our review of the literature, we propose three approaches to minimizing acute harms: early restriction of cannabis edibles and high-potency products; clear and consistent labelling that communicates dose/serving size and health risks; and implementation of robust data collection frameworks to monitor harms, broken down by cannabis product type (e.g. dose, potency, route of administration) and consumer characteristics (e.g. age, sex, gender, ethnicity). Ongoing data collection and monitoring of harms in jurisdictions that have existing legal cannabis laws will be vital to understanding the impact of cannabis legalization and maximizing public health benefits.

‘Can you sleep tonight knowing that child is going to be safe?’: Australian community organisation risk work in child protection practice

ABSTRACT Risk averse practice has dominated the child protection field for decades, with high-profile child deaths, ever-tightening surveillance, and regulation of families. In this context, the practice of social work as ‘risk work’ including the use of risk assessment tools has been subject to substantial scholarly investigation. Less attention has been paid to the community organisations that play a central role in supporting child protection-involved parents. Based on interviews with Australian community workers, we examine their negotiation of the parent support/parent risk dichotomy. From the perspective of community workers, the overly reductive, process-oriented risk judgements of child protection workers lead to both false positives and false negatives, with harmful impacts on the health and wellbeing of children and their families. Community workers resisted such approaches. Perceived failures of justice and care drove some to take liberties in their mandatory reporting obligations to guide outcomes. We argue that including the expertise of community workers in child protection assessments would better support child and family wellbeing.

The role of social distance in the relationship between police-community engagement and police coercion

ABSTRACT While there is a considerable body of evidence on the influence of individual and situational, and to a lesser extent community factors, on police use of force, little is known about the influence of police agency factors on use of force by police. Greater use of community policing approaches has recently been recommended for U.S. policing agencies, in the wake of a series of high-profile police-involved deaths of predominantly African American citizens. However, there is limited empirical evidence that community policing can influence or impact the use of force by police. The current study uses an online survey of Australian police officers to examine whether frequency of community engagement affects officers’ attitudes towards coercive and non-coercive policing responses to a vignette, and whether social distance might explain this relationship. Regression analyses demonstrated that community engagement was positively related to endorsement of non-coercive policing responses and negatively related to endorsement of coercive policing responses. Social distance mediated the former relationship, but not the latter. These results suggest that community policing approaches may increase the propensity for non-coercive policing responses, and that a reduction in social distance to the community is one pathway through which this occurs.

The doctor wellbeing toolkit

Doctors suffer with high levels of stress, anxiety and depression; they are at increased risk of suicide when compared with the general population and other professional groups. Several high-profile deaths of junior doctors have led to a renewed focus on the wellbeing of doctors. In this article, we will review some of the facts underlying burnout in the National Health Service and provide a toolkit for doctors to assess their own wellbeing and learn simple strategies to enable them to live a more balanced and fulfilled life through self-care.

Sepsis information-seeking behaviors via Wikipedia between 2015 and 2018: A mixed methods retrospective observational study.

Raising public awareness of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening dysregulated host response to infection, to hasten its recognition has become a major focus of physicians, investigators, and both non-governmental and governmental agencies. While the internet is a common means by which to seek out healthcare information, little is understood about patterns and drivers of these behaviors. We sought to examine traffic to Wikipedia, a popular and publicly available online encyclopedia, to better understand how, when, and why users access information about sepsis. Utilizing pageview traffic data for all available language localizations of the sepsis and septic shock pages between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2018, significantly outlying daily pageview totals were identified using a seasonal hybrid extreme studentized deviate approach. Consecutive outlying days were aggregated, and a qualitative analysis was undertaken of print and online news media coverage to identify potential correlates. Traffic patterns were further characterized using paired referrer to resource (i.e. clickstream) data, which were available for a temporal subset of the pageviews. Of the 20,557,055 pageviews across 65 linguistic localizations, 47 of the 1,096 total daily pageview counts were identified as upward outliers. After aggregating sequential outlying days, 25 epochs were examined. Qualitative analysis identified at least one major news media correlate for each, which were typically related to high-profile deaths from sepsis and, less commonly, awareness promotion efforts. Clickstream analysis suggests that most sepsis and septic shock Wikipedia pageviews originate from external referrals, namely search engines. Owing to its granular and publicly available traffic data, Wikipedia holds promise as a means by which to better understand global drivers of online sepsis information seeking. Further characterization of user engagement with this information may help to elucidate means by which to optimize the visibility, content, and delivery of awareness promotion efforts.

We need smarter trigger tools for diagnosing sepsis in children in Canada.

KEY POINTS The failure to recognize and treat the child with sepsis is devastating to the child and family, as well as for physicians, other health care providers and policy-makers. Several recent high-profile deaths from sepsis in Canadian children1 have highlighted the need for rapid and reliable

Bridging big data and qualitative methods in the social sciences: A case study of Twitter responses to high profile deaths by suicide

With the rise of social media, a vast amount of new primary research material has become available to social scientists, but the sheer volume and variety of this make it difficult to access through the traditional approaches: close reading and nuanced interpretations of manual qualitative coding and analysis. This paper sets out to bridge the gap by developing semi-automated replacements for manual coding through a mixture of crowdsourcing and machine learning, seeded by the development of a careful manual coding scheme from a small sample of data. To show the promise of this approach, we attempt to create a nuanced categorisation of responses on Twitter to several recent high profile deaths by suicide. Through these, we show that it is possible to code automatically across a large dataset to a high degree of accuracy (71%), and discuss the broader possibilities and pitfalls of using Big Data methods for Social Science.

Black Boys Matter: Developmental Equality

The life course of Black boys is a stark reminder of the realities of inequality. While recent attention to policing and high profile deaths of Black youth and adults has raised consciousness of life-threatening situations, this focus exposes the most visceral and deadly aspect of a much larger set of issues. Those issues begin at birth, and are powerfully framed before adulthood, creating inequality particularly when the individual is most vulnerable, in childhood. This Article confronts the inequalities of Black boys and their subordination, as a vehicle to expose inequalities more generally based on children’s identities.The life course of Black boys is the basis for two groundbreaking contributions. First, the Article proposes a model, the developmental equality model, to achieve children’s equality. It takes developmental scholarship centered on analysis of the experience of children of color and other “outsider” groups of children and proposes it as a critical addition to the law’s use of development as an interpretive lens or rule of decision. Rather than imagining a child without race, gender, or class when those identities so powerfully affect development, I argue identities, and their intersectionalities, must be central to the developmental model. Most importantly, this race-conscious developmental scholarship must be fused with equality principles to address structural discrimination responsible for children’s inequalities. My developmental equality model brings this critical perspective to law, as a way to meaningfully confront state action that challenges or blocks children, and as a basis to require support for all children’s developmental opportunities.The second critical contribution of the Article is its application of the developmental equality model to the life course of Black boys from birth to age 18. The article summarizes a comprehensive interdisciplinary collection of social science literature on the development of Black boys. The developmental equality model is tested against this data; and the model suggests where policy and litigation should focus to dismantle systemic discrimination that blocks opportunity for Black boys. The data on Black boys is critical because Black boys matter. But the data is also important because it exposes inequalities that affect all children at the bottom of hierarchies among children. This example therefore serves to expose and deal with all children’s inequalities.The synergy between these two pathbreaking contributions provides the basis for the usefulness of the developmental equality model to achieve real, substantive equality. The final section of the article sketches the potential use of the model to advance litigation and policy strategies.

FATALITIES IN UNITED STATES TRIATHLONS: AN EXPANDED PROFILE

Triathlon, a public competition involving swimming, bicycling and running, is a popular endurance activity. However, several recent high profile deaths have raised concern regarding safety of triathlon competition. We sought to define the mortality rate and risk factors for triathlon participants.