News
Success with sexual offenders
A PRISON treatment programme for rapists and sexual murderers is
beneficial in rehabilitating offenders, according to researchers at the
University of Birmingham’s School of Psychology, but specific areas
remain to be tackled.
The Sex Offender Treatment Programme has been conducted in prisons in
England and Wales since 1991 and is a cognitive behavioural approach to
treatment, aiming to change the way an offender thinks about his crime
and victim. It is currently the biggest treatment programme of its kind
in the world, running in 26 prisons with 1000 men taking part each
year.
Recently the Home Office and the Prison Service commissioned a study to
evaluate the programme. It involved the use of psychometric tests to
identify sex offenders’ problems and to examine the immediate or
short-term impact of treatment programmes. To carry out the study
complete data were collected on 112 rapists and 58 sexual murderers.
Sex offenders are categorised in three groups: grievance-motivated
offenders, sexually motivated offenders and sadistically motivated
offenders. The first group commit impulsive and vengeful offences that
are not sexually motivated or planned. Following treatment these
offenders continued to blame others for their actions; however, their
grievance towards women had decreased significantly and their empathy
towards victims had improved.
Sexually motivated offenders plan and fantasise about their sexual
offences beforehand, and sometimes violence is used to avoid detection.
After treatment they took more responsibility for their offences. Their
empathy and attitudes about rape had improved, but their stereotypical
views about women and acceptance of violence against women had not
changed.
The sadistically motivated offenders have shallow emotions, are
fascinated by sexual violence and are aroused by thoughts such as death
and torture. The treatment process meant they became less hostile
towards their victims and people in general, and their angry thinking
had been reduced. They were also less likely to blame their offence on
poor mental health, such as depression.
Professor Anthony Beech, BPS Fellow and lead investigator from the
University of Birmingham’s Centre for Forensic and Family Psychology,
said: ‘We are satisfied that the programme is a success in some areas.
Some areas need more attention, for example: grievance-motivated
offenders need more work on anger and hostility; sexually motivated
offenders should work on their stereotypical and negative attitudes
towards women and sadistic offenders should complete a follow-up course
in healthy sexual functioning to deal with deviant sexual fantasy and
arousal.’
The researchers draw attention to the need for a central register of
sex offenders to maximise the number of men entering treatment, because
suitable offenders may not be sent to prisons where the rehabilitation
programme is running. The researchers would also like to see a ‘buddy’
scheme set up for group members with literacy problems. This would
enable those with reading and writing difficulties to complete the
homework that is required by the scheme. PDH
BE THE NEW FACE OF SCIENCE
FAMELAB, an initiative of the Cheltenham Festival of Science, is
offering to the most entertaining and original science presenter a
prize of a masterclass in science communication, £2000 cash, and a
chance to work with a producer on an idea that can be pitched to
Channel 4. Auditions take place in Newcastle, Swansea, Edinburgh,
London and Belfast in March and April with the final held at the
Cheltenham Festival on 11 June.
o For full details of the scheme go to www.famelab.org.
ME/CFS guidelines for SEN ASSESSMENTS
NAOMI Burgess, a chartered educational psychologist with experience
of ME, and Jane Colby, a former head teacher and severe ME sufferer,
have produced the first comprehensive set of guidelines for educational
psychologists who plan and carry out special educational needs
assessments for children with ME.
o The guidelines, published by The Young ME Sufferers Trust are available free of charge at www.tymestrust.org/tymespublications.htm.
Young people care but don’t trust the government
YOUNG people care about social justice but don’t trust the
government to deliver it, according to a new report from the Nestlé
Social Research Programme.
The study, authored by psychologist Professor Helen Haste (University
of Bath), explores young people’s civic engagement in terms of voting,
making one’s voice heard and helping in the community. It explores the
relationship between these activities and young people’s values,
identity, and experience of school and community.
o To download the report go to www.spreckley.co.uk/nestle.
Recommended OCD therapy
PSYCHOLOGICAL therapies have again been recommended as the first
line treatment by National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)
guidelines, this time for adult and child sufferers of obsessive
compulsive disorder (OCD) and body dysmorphic disorder. OCD charities,
including OCD Action and OCD-UK, have welcomed the guidelines, but
concerns have been raised that there are not enough psychologists or
other trained professionals who can deliver effective psychological
therapy.
The guidelines, published in November, state that clients should first
be offered self-help, telephone-based or group cognitive behavioural
therapy (CBT), including exposure and response prevention. For more
serious cases, or when low-intensity CBT is ineffective, clients should
be offered a choice of more intensive CBT, or a course of a selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which is a kind of antidepressant.
Dr Tim Kendall, Joint Director of the National Collaborating Centre for
Mental Health, who developed the guideline on behalf of NICE, said:
‘This is the seventh mental health guideline where we have recommended
psychological treatments
as key treatments for a mental health condition, and the fourth where
we have recommended them as the first line treatment. We know that
there are currently not enough people to deliver psychological
therapies. Now is the time to increase our capacity and provide real
help for those people that need it.’ CJ
- The guidelines: tinyurl.com/a38mq.
The write advice, put simply
EVIDENCE adduced by psychological researcher Daniel M. Oppenheimer
of Princeton University in New Jersey suggests that utilisation of
unnecessarily elongated verbal expressions could have the consequence
of their writer being perceived as less intelligent by readers.
Oppenheimer asked undergraduates to look at university application
letters, half of which he had manipulated by replacing every noun, verb
and adjective with its longest synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000
thesaurus (retaining linguistic sense and grammatical structure).
Students who saw the modified letters were less likely to say that they
would have admitted the author to university than were the students who
saw an unaltered application letter.
Oppenheimer also presented a second set of undergraduate volunteers
with student dissertation abstracts, half of which he had altered by
replacing every word of nine or more letters with its second shortest
synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus. Here, students judged
the authors of the simplified passages to be more clever than the
authors of the unaltered passages.
These effects also extended to an author’s font selection. For example,
participants viewed the authors of text written in italicised Juice
font to be of lower intelligence than did participants who saw
identical wording written in Times New Roman.
Oppenheimer commented: ‘The continuing popularity amongst students of
using big words and attractive font styles may be due to the fact that
they may not realise these techniques could backfire.’ He suggested:
‘One thing seems certain: write as simply as possible and it’s more
likely you’ll be thought of as intelligent.’
The findings will be published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology.
CJ
Q: Do helplines help?
YES, according to mental health charity Rethink and the National
Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE). They have jointly
published research into mental health crisis helplines, revealing they
can make a big difference in maintaining the mental health of service
users and were particularly useful for people at risk of self-harm and
suicide. The report, Do Helplines Help?, explores the impact of two
Rethink 24-hour helpline services. The qualitative study, commissioned
as part of a government review of services, included site visits, focus
groups, analysis of caller logs and telephone interviews, gathering the
views of all stakeholders – helpline staff, local mental health
professionals and service users. The study’s key results from helpline
staff and mental health professionals indicated that helplines:
l provide a valuable listening space and emotional support system;
l play an active role in the prevention of suicide and self-harm; and
l are a central component in the package of care available to service users.
Comments of service users backed this up, suggesting that the lines
provided support at times of risk and helped users deal with anxiety,
self-harm, suicide and depression. There was a sense of relief at being
able to talk things through with helpline staff, particularly out of
hours. Users felt that helplines were instrumental in lessening
anxiety, isolation and restoring a feeling of control.
While generally positive, the report makes various recommendations for
improvements. These include promoting helplines within statutory and
primary care agencies; advertising and configuring services to black
and minority ethnic communities; and increasing resources.
Carolyn Steele, Department of Health lead for voluntary and independent
sector partnership, acknowledging the benefits of helplines, said: ‘We
want to see an increase in the capacity of helpline support that can be
accessed seven days a week and which offers local knowledge and strong
connections with other sources of help.’ PDH
- The full report is available at tinyurl.com/d4ped.
Health psychology findings may improve HIV care
HIV patients are more willing to consider self-injectable therapy
than many doctors thought, according to the results of a study revealed
at the 10th European AIDS Conference in Dublin in November. This and
other findings are expected to help implement improved care to HIV
patients and pave the way for better acceptance of innovative drug
therapies being developed for the management of HIV and other diseases.
The OpenMind study, which took place across six countries (France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and USA), is the largest behavioural study to
look at perceptions of HIV care. It was specifically designed to
identify the drivers and barriers to the use of injectable
antiretrovirals from the perspective of both patients and physicians.
The study found that three quarters of patients would consider using a
self-injectable HIV therapy if their doctor recommended it, though only
28 per cent of those potentially eligible for the treatment had
actually discussed the injectable option with their physicians.
Some of the reasons why many doctors are seemingly reluctant to
prescribe a treatment of proven efficacy and safety were identified.
These included a perception that patients would be reluctant to use a
self-injectable therapy or would not be able to incorporate it into
their lifestyle. Rob Horne, Professor of Psychology at the University
of Brighton and OpenMind study author, commented: ‘These new insights
from the OpenMind study will enable us to develop tools to facilitate
more informed decisions by both patient and physician.’
The researchers hope that the study will inform the design of
evidence-based interventions to optimise HIV care through greater
concordance between physician and patient perspectives. Dr Mike Youle,
Director of HIV Clinical Research at the Royal Free Hospital and
co-author of the OpenMind study said: ‘With the increasing choice of
injectable biotech drugs, these findings potentially have far reaching
implications across
a whole range of therapeutic areas. We look forward to presenting the
final results and exploring possible interventions at major congresses
next year.’
PDH
Engaging with the environment
A NEW study launched in December aims to move ‘beyond NIMBYism’ to
investigate public engagement with renewable energy technologies.
The study, funded to the tune of £500,000 by the joint-research
councils Energy Research Programme, is led by Dr Patrick Devine-Wright,
Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology at De Montfort
University. He said: ‘We aim to increase understanding of public
responses to renewable energy technologies, the local experience of
resistance and consent and ways in which public engagement is
constructed and practised in the UK. Using a multi-method, empirical
approach, the project will create an integrated framework for
understanding public engagement and perceptions that encompasses
technical and social science, and then use this framework to suggest
how a constructive dialogue can be better facilitated amongst the
public and other stakeholders.’ JS
WEBSITES
www.bps-research-digest.blogspot.com
Sign up to the Society's free Research Digest, and read the blog
www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/10
Mind Hacks ‘Essential sites for students’
www.teach-the-brain.org
Learning Sciences and Brain Research website – forums and resources for teachers
If you come across a website that you think would be of interest to our readers, let us know on [email protected].
RESEARCH FUNDING NEWS
The World Health Organization’s Strategic Social, Economic and
Behavioural Research Steering Committee requests full research
proposals on the following topics: (1) Understanding and remedying
access barriers to established measures of prevention, therapy and
information; (2) Understanding fundamental social issues related to
stigma and adherence to treatment and prevention and improving
adherence, with a focus on mass-drug administration and other
prevention schemes; (3) Elucidating the dynamics of human resources in
infectious disease control programs; (4) Elucidating transaction costs
in infectious disease control programmes; and (5) Understanding and
addressing child vulnerability and resilience, with a focus on
infectious diseases among children in conflict situations. They are
particularly interested in supporting projects that involve South–North
partnerships between institutions and individuals that will contribute
to research capacity building for social science research in disease
endemic countries. The closing date for applications is 17 February
2006.
o For further details see www.who.int/tdr/grants/workplans/seb.htm.
The European Research Advisory Board has research grants available to
support any aspect of biomedical or psychosocial research into beer or
alcohol. Researchers must be from established European research
institutions or universities. Single project grants will not exceed
€120,000. The closing date for applications is 27 March 2006.
o For further details see www.erab.org/pagesuk/grants-howto.asp.
The Joint MRC/MoD Grant Scheme enables the academic community to have
access to the specialised technology and expertise that is available
through the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). It is
possible to obtain joint MRC/MoD funding for proposals that are
submitted under any of the MRC’s normal funding schemes and that are of
relevance both to the MoD and MRC. Applications to the scheme can be
made at any time. Applicants are asked to discuss their plans with the
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory representative Dr Jim Wilson
([email protected]).
o For further details see the MRC website www.mrc.ac.uk.
The Academy of Social Sciences and NZ-UK Link Foundation Travel
Scholarships are to support visits to New Zealand to conduct social
science research. A sum of £10,000 is available for travel in 2006/7.
The closing date for applications is 31 January 2006.
o For further details contact Francis King, Executive Officer, Link Foundation, e-mail: [email protected].
The Research Sabbatical Training Awards are offered by the Health and
Personal Social Services Research and Development Office of NHS
Northern Ireland. They support senior researchers to undertake visits
to leading research centres for up to one year. The proposed
research/visit must be relevant to the Health and Personal Social
Services and must benefit the applicant in terms of research and
potential career advancement. Applications can be made at any time.
o Enquiries should be sent to [email protected] or see the website www.centralservicesagency.com/display/rdo_research_sabbatical_trai.
For a list of current funding opportunities go to www.bps.org.uk/tiny/on5mx7.
Funding bodies should e-mail news to Elizabeth Beech on [email protected] for possible inclusion.
Female domestic violence under scrutiny
AS well as providing the tabloid press with the perfect headline
story, the alleged assaults of actors Ross Kemp and Steve McFadden by
their female partners also thrust the issue of female domestic violence
into the spotlight. Together with recent media reports of violence by
girls in schools (see opposite),
the alleged attacks raise the question of whether female violence is on the increase.
Society Fellow and Professor of Psychology John Archer at the
University of Central Lancashire said it was difficult to establish
whether female domestic violence towards men had risen, because the
methods used by the British Crime Survey had changed over time – for
example, the 1996 survey was the first to use an anonymous
self-completion method rather than face-to-face interviews. Archer said
a more interesting observation came from his new cross-cultural study
of domestic violence comparing countries with varying levels of gender
equality and individualism. This showed that ‘male victimisation
increases according to women’s empowerment and a country’s increased
individualism’, thus supporting a social explanation for the
differential rates of violence by men and women. The findings will be
published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Personality and Social
Psychology Review.
Rates of violence by women may not have risen but they have certainly
been underestimated. That’s according to a recent review in the journal
Aggression and Violent Behaviour by Donald Dutton of the University of
British Columbia. Dutton says that independent research studies using a
measure called the Conflict Tactics Scale – which asks respondents to
rate how often they have engaged in, or been on the receiving end of,
various violent acts – show ‘roughly equal rates’ of violence by the
sexes. Dutton argues that government studies on rates of domestic
violence are biased because they tend to emphasise victimhood and to
work from crime statistics, yet men may be reluctant to see themselves
as a victim or to report their partner’s violence against them as a
crime. Dutton cautions against the ‘in-group, out-group form of siege
mentality’ shown by feminist activists that he says is based ‘on a
perceived threat that somehow, services for women will disappear if
male victimisation is recognised
or that those who raise issues about female violence or intervention
are somehow against progressive goals for women’s equality’.
In September 2005 the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly published a
special issue on female violence. A contributor to the issue, Irene
Frieze, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and
author of Hurting the One You Love, appeared to agree with Dutton’s
conclusions. She told The Psychologist: ‘I am not sure that there is an
increasing trend for women to be violent, but rather a reinterpretation
of data collected over 30 years shows that if we look at acts of
physical aggression, such as hitting, slapping, pushing, and the like,
women are as likely to commit such acts of aggression against romantic
partners as men are. Such acts can’t be labelled as battering, but they
are how “violence” in relationships is measured in scientific studies.’
Anne Harris, a representative of the charity SNAP, which provides a
helpline for male victims of domestic abuse, welcomed Dutton’s
conclusions. She said: ‘It is my and many other people’s opinion that
men have always been victims of domestic abuse, although we still need
to encourage them to report it for their own sake and for their
children caught up in the abuse.’ Pointing to the example of a recent
BBC report that claimed ‘Every minute in Britain a woman reports
domestic violence’, Harris said this is simply not true, and that what
is actually taking place is the ‘increased hype in female abuse
victims’ in order to secure government and charitable funding. She said
her small organisation received between 22 and 25 calls a week from
male victims of female violence, a number that was rising following a
leafleting campaign. ‘We have to get across that in abuse, men and
their children are victims too,’ she told us, adding that of the £23
million the government spends on tackling domestic violence each year,
none of it goes to male victims.
However, Sylvia Walby, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, said
a report she’d conducted for the Home Office in 2004, using a
confidential, self-report methodology, showed that ‘the more severe the
violence, the more frequently it is repeated, the more serious the
acts, the more injurious, the more likely it is that women rather than
men are the victims’. She told us: ‘If the focus is on incidents – the
number of events in a year – the events are overwhelmingly from male to
female. If the focus is prevalence – the proportion of the population
affected – it is predominantly male to female, but much less so than if
the focus is on incidents. This is because women who experience
domestic violence experience many more incidents than men who
experience domestic violence.’ Her report is available at
tinyurl.com/9et89. CJ
Bullying - epidemic or panic?
BULLYING in schools was in the news in November following a spate of
violent incidents. The new Children’s Commissioner for England, Al
Aynsley-Green, called for more to be done, saying: ‘I have had hundreds
of in-depth conversations with children since accepting this post and I
can tell you that the one thing every child I have met has been
affected by, with virtually no exceptions, is bullying.’
A survey for November’s Anti-bullying Week from the Anti-Bullying
Alliance found that 52 per cent of children and young people say
that bullying is a big problem in their school – and the same number
think that schools are not doing enough to tackle the issue. ‘We know
that many schools are doing their best to address the scourge of
bullying, but as recent incidents of violence show, this is still not
good enough,’ commented Vanessa Cooper, coordinator of the
Anti-Bullying Alliance. ‘Today’s findings indicate that more needs to
be done, especially to support and protect older children.’
But is bullying getting worse? We spoke to Professor Peter Smith, Head
of the Unit for School and Family Studies at Goldsmiths College,
University of London. He said ‘There is a moral panic element in some
headlines and in part of Aynsley-Green’s statement that bullying is
getting much worse. I don’t believe this. We lack good evidence, but
what there is suggests a small downward trend over the last five years
or so – since the Don’t Suffer in Silence pack, and the legal
requirement for anti-bullying policies. Evidence from Rob Osborn with
large samples in Leicestershire show an initial rise in the first year
of intensive anti-bullying work there, and then a small but rather
steady fall over the subsequent three or four years.
‘I think the publicity is good if it re-invigorates anti-bullying work.
Aynsley-Green is calling for termly surveys on bullying, which is
positive in my view.
It’s also good that the MP John Penrose is calling for basic teacher
training on anti-bullying strategies. We should see this as building on
work already done and consolidating positive inroads into reducing
school bullying.’
However, experts warn that some forms of bullying are on the increase,
notably cyber-bullying. Dr Mike Elsea (University of Central
Lancashire) was concerned that media concentration on physical violence
undermines calls for greater awareness of indirect, social forms of
bullying. ‘These are just as distressing and damaging as physical
bullying, but schools already find it easier to tackle overt bullying
successfully, particularly among boys, rather than covert bullying and
bullying among girls. Emotive photographs of scarred faces might lead
some teachers (and maybe the victims themselves) to disregard or play
down the seriousness of less obvious suffering.
‘A second consideration arises from the interplay between theory and
practice. Bullying is usually thought of as a group process involving
many more than just the immediate protagonists. Bystanders and the
wider peer group, teachers, parents and the whole school community all
play a role. In this view, explanations (and interventions) are sought
in the sociocultural realm: peer pressure, school ethos, friendships,
popularity and status. Extreme violence, by contrast, tends to be
viewed as an individual behaviour, and explained in terms of individual
experience and psychopathology. Lessons drawn from the latter cannot
necessarily be applied to the former.’ JS
Q: How does indefinite detention affect the state of mind?
WHEN a team of 11 consultant psychiatrists and one consultant
clinical psychologist assessed eight men who were being detained
indefinitely at Belmarsh high security prison under the 2001
Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act, they found them all to be
suffering from severe depression and anxiety, and some to be suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The six Algerians, a
Tunisian and a man from Gaza, all devout Muslims, had also contemplated
suicide, and some had cut themselves or tried to hang themselves. One
detainee who was subsequently released under conditions of house arrest
developed psychotic symptoms. The wives of three detainees were also
assessed and showed signs of depression, anxiety and PTSD.
Although four of the men had suffered psychiatric problems before their
incarceration, and three had a family history of mental health
problems, the assessing team concluded that the detainees’ mental
health problems were either the ‘direct result of’ or were ‘seriously
exacerbated by the indefinite nature of detention’. In the report on
their findings published recently in Psychiatric Bulletin, psychologist
Ian Robbins (Professor of Mental Health Practice at the University of
Surrey) and his colleagues, stated that the ‘prison healthcare system
was unable to meet [the detainees’] needs adequately’, although they
added ‘this is not a criticism of the healthcare system but is rather
an acknowledgement of the causative role of the indefinite nature of
the detention in the generation of mental illness’. The report also
draws a parallel between the experiences of the Belmarsh detainees and
the situation facing asylum seekers held in detention centres.
The eight detainees, including one described by judges as a ‘seriously
dangerous individual’, were released under special bail conditions in
March 2005 following a House of Lords judgment that indefinite
detention without trial was illegal. CJ
o An earlier version of the report can be downloaded here: tinyurl.com/dfstg.
Mind how you drive
ANEW report from the Transport Research Laboratory suggests that
using ‘psychological’ measures to lower traffic speed – for example,
reducing the perceived width of the road – may be preferable to
physical strategies like road humps and signs.
The research team, which included Society member Mark Elliott, held
focus groups with drivers to identify potentially effective
psychological measures. They then conducted trials with a driving
simulator, before testing the efficacy of a real-life scheme in the
village of Latton, in Wiltshire.
At a cost of £40,000, the village scheme involved adding stone gateways
to the entrance and exit of the village, removing the road’s central
white line (increasing perceived risk), adding small ‘build-outs’ with
shrubbery on alternate sides of the road (reducing forward visibility
and giving a gentle winding effect), adding sections of buff anti-skid
surfacing and dropping the speed limit from 40 miles per hour to 30.
The proportion of drivers exceeding 30 miles per hour fell from 50 per
cent before the scheme, to 10 per cent afterwards. The authors said
only a small proportion of this effect could be explained by the change
in speed limit. Their report concludes: ‘…psychological schemes can be
effective, their effect can be long-lasting…and they are highly
acceptable to local people.’ Overall, psychological traffic calming was
said to work best when several measures were combined and used in
conjunction with physical strategies.
Society member Tom Stewart, managing director of ergonomics consultancy
firm System Concepts, said the idea of psychological calming measures
sounds good as long as it doesn’t go too far. ‘One worry’, he told us,
‘is that all the publicity about the use of “psychological tricks” to
confuse drivers may reduce its effectiveness. If it goes too far, we
may feel cheated when we
(Please note that some pictures may have been removed for copyright reasons)
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