Much of Western media has promoted the idea that we are facing an epidemic of mental illness and psychiatric emergencies in contemporary Western society and worldwide, and that young people are a particularly vulnerable group. Schools have become a prominent site of concern and focus for this discourse as mental health problems are said to start…

Aims: The aim of the paper is to investigate the extent to which university students misuse prescription drugs, using techniques of neutralization to understand and explain their behaviour. Methods: The study was based on an email survey of students currently registered at a university in north Wales which supports widening access and has one of…

We manipulated two parameters of response blocking to reduce pica: (a) the criteria for initiating the procedure (either earlier or later in the response chain) and (b) the distance from which the procedure was initiated. Results suggested that response blocking may be effective only when implemented early in the chain and with near-perfect…

Understanding, one of the chief components of prevention in mental health, is not for the researcher or clinician only, but for all who may be concerned with their own conflict and pain or that of family members. Looking at neurotic disorders requires the examination of guilt which burdens individuals as they realize their failure to fulfill…

This paper presents a multinomial logit analysis of the methods used by Taiwanese individuals who completed suicide between 1991 and 1993. We investigated the influence of age, gender, urban or rural residence, seasons, and occupations on the six "choices" of suicide methods. The findings suggest that a systematic pattern exists between the choice…

Implications for suicide prevention efforts are examined. It is concluded that psychiatric treatment of depression and restricting access to lethal methods for suicide are more useful tactics for suicide prevention programs in elderly, and crisis counseling from suicide prevention centers and educational programs are more useful in younger adults.…

This report focuses on the evidence about the health consequences of smoking for women, and is intended to serve the public health and medical communities as a unified source of existing scientific research. The major issues about tobacco use and women's health are examined, including trends in consumption, biomedical evidence, and determinants of…

Provides a rationale for the focus on working with youth in prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) targeting specific behavior patterns learned in childhood and youth that are implicated in the development of chronic diseases. Reviews promising community-wide strategies for youth and argues that they are efficacious and efficient for primary…

The spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) depends very much on the way people behave. Individuals from some groups have been successfully persuaded to modify behaviors that put them at increased risk of HIV infection. The salient questions for future AIDS prevention and control programs are…

This book, on the nature and problems of inappropriate drug use by older adults, provides researchers and health practitioners with an up-to-date survey and overview of the literature on drug use, misuse, and abuse among the elderly. The volume provides abstracts of 100 selected scientific articles on the major topic areas in the field. The…

Development and initial validation are described for an instrument to assess the behavioral coping skills of adolescents. The Assessment of Behavioral Coping Skills (ABCS) was designed for use in the South Carolina Coping Skills Project, a school-based coping skills prevention program for adolescents at high risk for substance abuse. The ABCS…