Israel Journal of Psychiatry and related Sciences

BACKGROUND: While Asian groups have immigrated worldwide, suicide risk models have neglected to integrate cultural components. This study incorporates how stigma associated with failure to uphold clan/kinship roles can increase suicide risk in highly-marginalized Lao-Americans. METHODS: One focus group with five Lao participants and 21 individual semi-structured interviews with community family members were conducted. Transcripts were coded via directed content analysis using the "What Matters Most" and Cultural Theory of Suicide frameworks...

BACKGROUND: While explicit negative stereotypes of mental illness are well established as barriers to recovery, implicit attitudes also may negatively impact outcomes. The current study is unique in its focus on both explicit and implicit stigma as predictors of recovery attitudes of mental health practitioners. METHOD: Assertive Community Treatment practitioners (n = 154) from 55 teams completed online measures of stigma, recovery attitudes, and an Implicit Association Test (IAT)...

BACKGROUND: Stigma and discrimination are major difficulties for people with psychosis. However, despite the dominance of biomedical ideology in public education and de-stigmatization efforts, there is substantial evidence that campaigns based on the "medical model" (such as the "mental illness is an illness like any other" approach) are not only ineffective, but can actually compound the problem. This paper considers the alternative role of psychosocial explanatory frameworks in promoting more tolerant and enlightened approaches to, and attitudes about, psychosis...

OBJECTIVE: This paper describes mental health related stigma expressed by police to police using a newly developed 11-item Police Officer Stigma Scale and reports on the preliminary psychometric properties (factor structure and internal reliability) of this scale. METHOD: The scale used an indirect measurement approach adapted from the Perceived Devaluation and Discrimination Scale. Five themes appropriate to police culture were adapted and six additional items were added...

BACKGROUND: The uneven progression of mental health funding in the United States, and the way that the funding climate seems to be influenced by local and regional differences, raises the issue of what factors, including stigma, may impact mental health funding decisions. Criticisms that mental health stigma research is too individually-focused have led researchers to consider how broader, macro-level forms of stigma - such as structural stigma - intersect with micro-level forms of individual stigma...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

INTRODUCTION: A consultation model between primary care physicians and psychiatrists that has been in operation for 12 years in the Jerusalem district of the Clalit Health Services in Israel is evaluated. In this model psychiatrists provide consultations twice a month at the primary care clinic. All patients are referred by their family physicians. Communication between the psychiatric consultant and the referring physician is carried out by telephone, correspondence and staff meetings...

BACKGROUND: Approximately half the patients seeking mental health (MH) treatment consult primary care practitioners (PCPs). Previous research indicates that patients often do not receive correct MH diagnoses or appropriate treatment from PCPs. The present study examines whether a specialization in family medicine compared to other or no PCP residency programs enhances physicians' ability to detect, diagnose and treat MH problems. METHODS: Face-to-face interviews with 49 physicans in eight clinics in Israel...

BACKGROUND: This study examined the immediate outcome of Feeding Disorders (FD) in preschoolers referred to the family treatment program Cerco Asilo. METHOD: 21 children (mean age [SD=1]: 39 months [1]; range 9-65 months) with a diagnosis of FD were included in the treatment for 24 weeks. Specifically, seven subjects were diagnosed with Infantile Anorexia (IA), nine subjects with Sensory Food Aversion (SFA), and five subjects with Feeding Disorder of Caregiver-Infant Reciprocity (FDCIR)...

BACKGROUND: Recovery and quality of life are key outcomes emphasized in mental health systems around the world. This study explores the extent to which efforts to facilitate community participation may enhance these outcomes. METHODS: Six hundred and six individuals with serious mental illnesses completed measures of participation, recovery and quality of life. RESULTS: Small, but statistically significant positive relationships between community participation and recovery and quality of life were found...

While extensive efforts have been made in recent decades to enhance community mental health services around the world and in Israel, less attention has been given to the challenging transitional period from psychiatric hospitalization to community living. The current paper reviews the literature on discharge planning programs, which shows that using an interdisciplinary team and adapting a case management model to include overlapping relationships during the process of changing settings might lead to cost-effective outcomes...

BACKGROUND: Mental health services for youths in Singapore were challenged by accessibility and resource constraints. A community-based mental health program working with schools and other partners was developed to address the population needs. AIM: To describe the formation of a community-based mental health program and evaluate the program in terms of its outcome and the satisfaction of the users of this program. METHODS: Based on needs analyses, a community multidisciplinary team was set up in 15 schools to pilot a new model of care for youths...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: It is now over half a century since community care was introduced in the wake of the closure of the old asylum system. This paper considers whether mental health services, regardless of location, can be genuinely effective and humane without a fundamental paradigm shift. DATA: A summary of research on the validity and effectiveness of current mental health treatment approaches is presented. LIMITATIONS: The scope of the topic was too broad to facilitate a systematic review or meta-analyses, although reviews with more narrow foci are cited...

Recovery as a process through which people reclaim their lives even while continuing to experience symptoms of mental illness has at times been misunderstood or misinterpreted, including being used as an excuse for cutting needed services and supports in the guise of allowing people to pursue their own personal "recovery journeys." In delivering a message of hope to individuals and fostering initiatives to counter the debilitating impact of clinical pessimism, recovery literature has also, at times, paid less attention to the material, social, cultural, political and economic contexts in which people pursue recovery...

After 1945 the prevailing consensus that persons with serious mental disorders should be treated in public hospitals began to dissolve. It was replaced by a faith in the efficacy of community care and treatment. Yet for a variety of reasons the new community care system fell far short of its initial promise. Advocates failed to understand that the problems of persons with serious and persistent disabilities were different from those people with mild and moderate disorders. The belief that residence in the community would promote adjustment and integration was illusory and did not take into account the extent of social isolation, exposure to victimization, inducement to substance abuse, homelessness, and criminalization of persons with mental disorders...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: This study examined the immediate outcome of Feeding Disorders (FD) in preschoolers referred to the family treatment program Cerco Asilo. METHOD: 21 children (mean age [SD=1]: 39 months [1]; range 9-65 months) with a diagnosis of FD were included in the treatment for 24 weeks. Specifically, seven subjects were diagnosed with Infantile Anorexia (IA), nine subjects with Sensory Food Aversion (SFA), and five subjects with Feeding Disorder of Caregiver-Infant Reciprocity (FDCIR)...

BACKGROUND: This manuscript assesses the use of the Child Attachment Interview (CAI) in a sample of Israeli Jewish children in middle childhood in order to add to empirical data on this measure. METHOD: Forty-one children between the ages of 7 and 13 were consecutively recruited to the study. The clinical sample included 29 children diagnosed with anxiety disorder, major depression or ADHD. The Father Focused Referral (FFR) sample included 12 children whose father was unavailable to them...

BACKGROUND: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is linked to social norms and role expectations which are culture dependent, such as the construal of one's self as independent or interdependent in relation to others. The current study is the first to examine SAD symptoms among Ethiopian and former Soviet Union immigrants to Israel compared to a sample of native Israelis. We investigated the relationship between SAD, ethnicity and independent/ interdependent self-construals. METHODS: A total of 261 students (151 native-born Israelis, 60 Ethiopian immigrants and 50 students from the former USSR) were administrated the Liebowitz Scale (LSAS), the Self-construal Scale (SCS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and a socio-demographic questionnaire...