Sparx 3D Computer Game Beats Teen Depression

Tags

anxiety, CCBT, computer game, Depression, mental health issues, Teens, Therapy

More ccbt:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/20/3d-computer-game-beats-depression_n_1439577.html?ref=uk

Playing a 3D computer game could be just as effective at treating young people with depression as face-to-face counselling, new research has suggested.

The study, published on British Medical Journal website bmj.com, found that many adolescents are reluctant to seek help for mental health issues.

To tackle that problem, researchers developed an interactive fantasy game called Sparx, which sees each player choose an avatar and then face challenges to restore balance in a virtual world overrun by ‘Gnats’ (Gloomy Negative Automatic Thoughts).

They found that the self-help game, which uses cognitive behavioural therapy techniques to help young users, had as much benefit as more traditional treatments, reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety by at least a third.

Of the 187 young people in New Zealand studied as part of the trial, significantly more recovered completely in the group playing the computer game. A total of 44% of those who completed at least four of the seven modules in Sparx recovered, compared to 26% of those who were receiving face-to-face treatment.

The authors of the study, who are based at the University of Auckland and the University of Otago, said Sparx was an “effective resource for help seeking adolescents with depression at primary healthcare sites”.

They added: “Use of the program resulted in a clinically significant reduction in depression, anxiety, and hopelessness and an improvement in quality of life.”

The game treatment could prove a cheaper, and more accessible, way for some teenagers with depression to get help. In the Sparx group, 95% of the adolescents said they believed the game would appeal to other teenagers.

Why can’t we stay married?

Tags

age, Children, Divorce, Marriage, Postnatal Depression

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/why-cant-we-stay-married-7657610.html

It could be described as a depressing portrait of a modern relationship: a career-driven couple meet later in life, have a whirlwind romance and settle down quickly to have children. Then things start to go wrong.

This is the picture painted by research carried out by the parenting website Netmums, which found that modern relationships are most likely to break down after just three years due to the stresses of late parenthood.

Relationship specialists immediately pointed to a growing trend for “fast forward” partnerships as couples leave it later in life to get together – but spend less time getting to know each other before moving in together and having children. One in 20 couples polled admitted they were expecting a baby within three months of getting together and 15 per cent within a year.

Consequently, the study of 1,500 people found that couples are now four and a half times more likely to split up after three years – earlier than the “seven year itch” traditionally cited as the danger point in a relationship. More than 20 per cent of couples who split saw their relationship fall apart between two and four years, while only 3 per cent broke up seven years in.

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that women now delay having children until they are nearly 30. The average age of women giving birth in England and Wales is now a year older than it was a decade ago (29.5 in 2010 compared with 28.5 in 2000).

The figures also suggest an increase in the number of parents who are living together, as the number of those who are married or in civil partnerships continues to fall. The proportion of births to couples who are married or in civil partnerships was 53 per cent in 2010, compared with 61 per cent in 2000, and 88 per cent in 1980.

But births registered by parents who appeared to be cohabiting – by jointly registering the baby and giving the same address – has risen, reaching 31 per cent of all births in 2010, compared with 25 per cent in 2000.

Penny Mansfield, director of One Plus One, the relationships charity, said: “This poll supports what we know of the changing social patterns that we see all around us. People are not marrying in the numbers that they did but they are forming partnerships and having children.

“People may have a series of relationships and then get to a certain age and then think: ‘Oh we should have children’ without necessarily having made more of a commitment. When you get this more informal approach to relationships – particularly when you have children – relationships are much more unstable.

“People also now have much higher expectations of relationships. So when people hit difficulties, often when they become parents, they think: “Things aren’t what they were’.”

Two out of five parents responding to the poll reported that they were so short of time and money that they could only go out as a couple “two or three” times a year. Fifteen per cent said they “never” went out as a couple anymore, while 14 per cent only had a single night a year together. Only one in 100 parents now spends quality time together a few nights a week.

Leila Collins, a counselling psychologist and lecturer at Middesex University, said: “There’s a great deal of pressure on women to educate themselves and prepare themselves for careers. Consequently the age at which they are prepared to settle down is a bit older and they may feel the clock is ticking. Even though they are a bit older and more experienced, when it comes to choosing a partner to start a family with, they may make mistakes.

“If you are going to have children with someone you need to be absolutely sure, no matter how much the clock is ticking. It is absolutely ludicrous and childish for people to think that they can have a child with someone and move on. You cannot take these risks with other people’s lives on a whim.”

The study also found that two thirds of couples believe it is harder to maintain a relationship nowadays compare to a generation ago. Almost two in five couples said it was more difficult to maintain a relationship because women were forced to work and had less time for their partners, while 22 per cent thought couples were less committed and too quick to split. One in 10 believe couples take having children “too lightly”.

Netmums founder Siobhan Freegard said: “Relationships are tough at the best of times, but add in young children, lack of time, work and money worries and it’s little surprise couples are splitting up earlier than ever before. There is unprecedented pressure on women to be the perfect wife, mother and career woman while men are feeling more and more unsure of their role.”

Having children was shown to be the biggest problem area. Almost half (42 per cent) of people who took part in the research claimed having children made them less close – with only a third saying they became closer after kids.

Four in five people polled said their relationship suffered when they were exhausted after the birth of a new baby or looking after young children. Almost half (46 per cent) went off sex, while two in five felt less attractive after putting on weight.

More than half blamed money worries and debts for problems in their relationship, while a third suffered postnatal depression. One in 14 admitted to starting an affair, while 9 per cent said their partner wanted to become more sexually adventurous when they didn’t.

Fears of upheaval as firm facing probe over asylum seeker’s death wins housing deal

Tags

Children, destitute, detention, Torture, trauma

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/17/upheaval-fears-g4s-asylum-seeker-housing

Campaigners say asylum seekers could be housed in “sub-standard, unsecure and overcrowded” housing and face huge upheaval. The claims come after contracts to provide accommodation for people seeking asylum in Britain were awarded to a private security firm that has been accused of “inhumane” policies, and whose staff are still being investigated over the death of an asylum seeker two years ago.

G4S will receive £203m from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to house asylum seekers across Britain, from Newcastle to Birmingham and across to Ipswich, after it won two “super contracts” last month.

Campaigners are concerned that the company may attempt to lower costs by placing asylum seekers in poor-quality, unsuitable housing. Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, says: “We have consistently raised concerns in the past about the poor standard of accommodation provided for many asylum seekers, and the situation has the potential to deteriorate further with very large super-regional contracts.

“Many asylum seekers have been through hugely traumatic circumstances in their home country and on their journey to the UK, and arrive here with nothing. It is unacceptable to house asylum seekers in sub-standard, unsecured and overcrowded conditions for cost-cutting purposes while they seek safety here and wait for a decision on their claim.”

Loutish behaviour

People seeking asylum in Britain have been housed since 2006 by regional public sector consortiums and housing associations. These consortiums are now handing over to the new providers, in a transition that UKBA aims to complete by the end of the year. The other four super contracts were shared by outsourcing companies Serco and Reliance. Reliance took over a government contract to deport foreign nationals and refused asylum seekers from G4S last year, and has admitted that its own guards have displayed“loutish” and “aggressive” behaviour towards minority ethnic people.

The three companies will take over the provision of housing for the 18,108 people currently in asylum accommodation at an estimated cost of £620m over seven years, which the Home Office claims will save £150m over the potential life of the contract.

Under the change of providers, existing housing arrangements could be renegotiated, requiring tenants to move to anywhere across the large geographical areas covered by each of the contracts, with transport provided by the companies

Peter Richardson, director of Leeds Asylum Seekers’ Support Network, says the contracts may force some of its clients and their children to move to accommodation provided in different cities. “It could be devastating,” he says. “They’ve already fled persecution, escaped torture, lost families and left everything behind. Now, just as they begin to settle into a new life in Leeds, everything is disrupted again.

“People we support are vulnerable and have no support structures apart from our volunteers. Being forced to move to a new city is going to separate them from the little they have managed to make into a home. It couldn’t come at a worse time for some families. Originally, children taking exams were not going to be moved but now they could be shifted right across the city at this critical moment in their lives.”

Dave Stamp, project manager at the Asylum Support and Immigration Resource Team in Birmingham, adds: “We are aware that many people will lose their homes as a consequence of this transfer of responsibility, [but] we have been given no indication of how this process will be managed, or what arrangements have been put in place to ensure that people’s individual needs – including those of children about to sit GCSE exams – will be respected during this period of upheaval.”

Campaigners are also concerned that asylum seekers will be separated from their trusted specialised health workers, who deal with problems ranging from HIV to the psychological scars of torture.

UKBA insists, however, that the housing and welfare of asylum seekers will not be jeopardised. A spokesman for the agency says: “Contracts for asylum services have been awarded to providers that demonstrated they could meet our high standards of support and ensure the welfare of individuals.”

Stephen Small, managing director of immigration and borders at G4S, says: “We take the welfare of all people who receive our services extremely seriously. Asylum seekers are among the most vulnerable people in our society and we are committed to ensuring they are integrated into local communitieswith the minimum of disruption, and into housing which is safe, sanitary and fit for purpose.

“G4S will be delivering services largely through a carefully selected supply chain of experienced housing providers, which includes local private andvoluntary sector housing organisations. We will use housing assessment specialists to drive up the standard of housing provided, and employ dedicated social cohesion experts to work with local authorities, migrant support groups, health and education bodies”.

G4S became a frontrunner for the contract to house and transport asylum seekers in December last year, when it was named as a preferred bidder, while still the subject of an inquiry by the Commons home affairs select committee.

The committee’s report, published in January, responded to the death ofJimmy Mubenga, a refused asylum seeker from Angola, while on a deportation flight in the custody of G4S guards in October 2010. Three guards who were escorting Mubenga when he died are on bail, as prosecutors weigh up the evidence against them.

The report raised concerns about the safety of restraining holds used by guards on deportees, guards’ open use of racist language, the quality of information given to guards about deportees’ health, and the excessive number of guards per deportee.

Cosy relationship

The committee also mentioned a “relationship between the agency [UKBA] and its contractors which had become too cosy”. It condemned G4S’s policy of taking extra detainees (“reserves”) to the airport without informing them that they would be taking the place of any deportees granted last-minute reprieves. Those reserves who weren’t deported were taken back into detention, but not necessarily to the centre they had left.

Keith Vaz, chair of the select committee, said on publication of the report: “It is simply inhumane to uproot somebody on the expectation that they will be returned to their home country only to then return them at the end of the day to a detention centre in the UK – sometimes a different one from the one they left that morning.”

In a separate report of an inspection of a G4S-run immigration detention centre, Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, described this practice as “objectionable and distressing” and “inhumane”.

In addition, there are fears that asylum seekers who have been refused permission to remain in Britain could be left destitute as a result of the contracts going to private companies. In Glasgow, where Serco won the accommodation contract last month, 84 households who had their applications turned down have already been served with eviction notices. Ypeople, the charity that has provided accommodation since 2000, had refused to follow the UKBA policy of eviction for refused asylum seekers.

Ypeople’s chief executive, Joe Connolly, says: “Although Ypeople receives no funding for the cost of accommodating and supporting people whose asylum claims are rejected, we have, as a not-for-profit organisation, contributed in excess of £500,000 in the last year alone, which has helped significantly to alleviate destitution and provide shelter for those who have been refused permission to remain in the UK.”

Back at the Refugee Council, Covey says: “We will be working closely with all the contractors and UKBA, and monitoring feedback from our clients following the changes, to ensure that their living conditions are not only adequate but also safe and comfortable.”

The electrifying power of game show hosts

Tags

electric shock, Torture

A variation on Milgram’s Experiment:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/the-electrifying-power-of-game-show-hosts-7645975.html

It seems there’s almost nothing we won’t do – up to and including torturing someone – as long as a game-show host says it is all right, according to a new scientific study. TV personalities such as Davina McCall and Ant and Dec are now such powerful influences on our lives that game-show participants are prepared to inflict cruelty and pain on each other for the cameras.

Psychologists set up a dummy TV studio, complete with a crew, cameras, lighting, warm-up comedians, makeup artists, an audience of 100, a host played by a TV weather girl, and an array of fake electrical switches labelled “dangerous”.

At the start of the game show, and in front of everyone, a fake contestant was strapped to a chair inside a sealed container. A second contestant, the subject of the experiment, then went to another part of the studio with the host.

This contestant asked the fake contestant, who could be heard but not seen, a series of 27 questions. Every time they gave an incorrect answer, the questioner had to deliver what they were told would be an electric shock. In fact, all the switches were fakes. The “shocks” ranged between 20 and 460 volts, and were to be increased by 20 volts with each new mistake. The questioner had an array of switches with labels ranging from 20 volts to “danger: severe shocks”. The contestant got 24 out of 27 questions wrong.

As the voltage of the “shocks” increased, the faked audible reactions of the contestant changed. Grunts were followed by loud cries of pain accompanied by refusal to continue, then screams and pleas to stop the game.

If the questioner refused to go on, the host intervened, saying: “Don’t let yourself get upset,” and “Go on, we are taking all responsibility for this.”

Eight of 10 questioners were prepared to keep on zapping. There was no difference between men and women, or between the young and old. But obedience rates dropped dramatically if the host left the stage, with only 28 per cent continuing.

The study, reported in the Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée, outlines how the questioners were willing to carry on, even after a member of the team posing as a production assistant rushed on to the stage shouting for the game to be stopped because it was too immoral.

The researchers, from the University of Paris and other centres, concluded: “It has long been known that television, and so television hosts, had influence on viewers – and we suspected they could also have prescriptive power for ordering people’s behaviour, including cruel and immoral behaviours, but until now it had never been shown.”

DRC: Thorny issue of reparations for Lubanga’s victims

Tags

Child Soldiers, Children, DRC, ICC, Reparations, Sexual Violence, trauma, Tribunal, War Crimes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/12/congo-reparations-lubanga-child-soldiers

Motorcycles, school fees, counselling, cash: Thomas Lubanga’s kadogo (child soldiers) know what reparations they want from the international criminal court(ICC). Less clear is what a cash-strapped tribunal can offer damaged children taken from their families and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic conflict in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“They expect something that will really help them to heal, to help them to recover from the loss of their childhood, their education,” said Bukeni Waruzi, an expert on child soldiers and the programme manager for Africa and the Middle East at the NGO Witness. “When a child is recruited, the minute he gets in the camp, he is not the same as before. It doesn’t take 10 years for a child to become a child soldier, it takes two days maximum, and the mind is changed. How do you repair that?”

Lubanga was convicted in March on three charges of recruiting and using child soldiers in the military wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots in 2002 and 2003. His ICC trial heard that children as young as nine served as fighters and bodyguards.

It was the ICC’s first-ever verdict, and the court is now heading into unfamiliar legal territory as judges must decide on reparations for Lubanga’s victims.

No other international criminal tribunal has ever awarded reparations, but under ICC rules those who have suffered injury or harm from a crime for which someone is convicted could receive restitution, compensation or rehabilitation.

“The [judges] will decide on Lubanga’s sentence, this is first step,” said Paolina Massidda, principal counsel of the ICC’s office of the public counsel for victims, which provides support to victims, including legal representation. Under the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome statute, court-recognised victims are given lawyers and allowed to participate throughout a trial, including questioning witnesses.

“It is possible then for the court to start reparations proceedings, but there is no clear established procedure – which is the reason why the judges are asking participants [in the case] to provide observations, among other things, on whether reparations should be awarded collectively or on an individual basis, to whom, and how harm could be assessed.”

Luc Walleyn, who along with a Congolese lawyer represents 19 victims, doubts collective reparations would work for his clients – former child soldiers and their families. “Child soldiers are not a community,” he said. “It is not like a village that has been victimised. They are very often in conflict with their own families. I cannot see my clients as a group. They are really individuals.

“If today you asked my clients how they wish to have reparations, the answers would be quite different from one to another. One will say I would like to start my studies again. Another would say I would like to have a motorcycle so I can … run a taxi business. A lot of them say ‘give me money’.”

But experts warn that cash payouts are unlikely, and many will get nothing unless they can prove to the court that they were harmed by Lubanga’s crimes. Waruzi worries this will be disappointing to the former child soldiers, who are largely uneducated and untrained. Many suffer from drug addiction or diseases, including HIV. Others have been victims of sexual violence.

“The victims think that what they want will be provided,” he said. “A child thinks, ‘I have been a victim. I shall get reparations because I won the case. Will they give me money? Will they give me a car? Will they buy me a house? How much will I receive?’ I think that’s what’s in the mind of the child soldiers.”

He wants reparations that match the scale and scope of the crimes. “The ICC was initially thinking of symbolic reparations,” Waruzi said. “They were saying something like building a statue in the village that will really honour the victims. But reparations cannot be symbolic, because the crimes were not symbolic. It is now for the ICC to take full responsibility, to actually manage the expectations.”

On trial since January 2009 and in custody since 2005, Lubanga was declared indigent and given a legal aid lawyer. This will be reassessed by judges in the coming weeks. If he cannot pay for reparations himself, the court may turn to its Trust Fund for Victims, which supports reparations from the voluntary contributions it receives from ICC members and others. In 2011 the fund’s total annual income was €3.2m. It has ring-fenced €1.2m for court-ordered reparations.

Though his resources are “modest” and the number of ICC cases expanding fast, the executive director of the fund’s secretariat prefers to talk about meeting rather than managing expectations. But Pieter de Baan admits the fund has been keeping a deliberately low profile on reparations until the judges decide how the process will work.

“Our plan is that once we have more information coming from the chambers on which direction they would like to go we will tailor the messages we will be sending out to communities,” said De Baan.

“The current message is that the trust fund is not a fund for all victims of all crimes in all places but is very much limited by the legal framework of the Rome statute. It also doesn’t take away any of the responsibilities that the national government may have, to look after victimised communities. That will be part of the message as well.”

Reparations are only one part of the fund’s work. Operating under its general assistance rather than reparations mandate it has been on the ground in eastern DRC and northern Uganda since 2008, offering vocational training, trauma counselling, reconciliation workshops and reconstructive surgery to more than 80,000 victims. This close contact has convinced De Baan that the best reparations are those that help people to get on with their lives.

“They might like to have some sort of reparation that would acknowledge their victimhood and their dignity as human beings that allows them to rebuild their lives in a way that is meaningful and sustainable,” he said.

Analysts agree that reparations are a legal and social minefield. The potential problems – and solutions – are already filling pages of legal submissions to the judges.

In its filing to the court, the ICC’s registry warns that because Lubanga recruited children from his own Hema community, which was in conflict with the Lendu people, “should reparations be awarded in the case, the majority of victims will be from one side of an ethnic conflict in which both sides suffered harm”.

The registry also cautions against “ill-advised reparation orders [which] may worsen the situation of former child soldiers by increasing the children’s stigmatisation within their own community”. It also questions how eligible victims will be found, as some have moved on from their villages.

Carla Ferstman, director of Redress, a human rights group working with war crimes victims, urges the judges to consider the many existing rulings on reparations. They come from truth commissions and regional courts, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

“It’s not like the ICC will have to start from scratch,” said Ferstman. “We hope that the court isn’t going to try and reinvent the wheel but that it is going to look at all of these different kinds of processes. There is a lot of experience out there.”

She said it is essential the ICC gets this right. “Ensuring there is some manner of reparations is part of this vital rebalancing of the criminal justice process to involve victims not only as observers and witnesses – [something] that makes it clear that what happened to them matters. It is like a humanisation of criminal justice.”

But with so many potential pitfalls, there are fears that the reparations process could drag on as long as the trial. Walleyn says the former child soldiers he represents have become disillusioned after years of waiting. “They have fewer expectations than six years ago,” he said. “However, they are still hoping to see something, because that was what was promised by the system of the court.”