Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Crossroads Of Wellness And Second Victim Syndrome: Identifying Factors That Alter The Pathway Of Caregiver Recovery Following An Unanticipated Adverse Patient Outcome, Kimia Zarabian, A. Katharine Hindle, Ivy Benjenk, Anita Vincent, Jamil M. Kazma, Benjamin Shambon, Raymond Pla, Eric Heinz

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: Second Victim Syndrome (SVS) describes the phenomenon in which a caregiver experiences a traumatic psychological and emotional response to an adverse patient event or medical error. Using quantitative survey analysis, we aim to better understand the personal factors that affect SVS development and recovery.

Methods: Caregivers at a small urban academic medical center who had experienced an adverse patient event in the past six months were invited to take part in this institution-wide, voluntary, quantitative, cross-sectional study. Three surveys were administered; the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory (HRLSI) was used as a surrogate to measure stressful life events. The …

Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shift to interact with new domains and populations, so does AI ethics: a relatively nascent subdiscipline that frequently concerns itself with questions of “fairness” and “accountability.” This fairness-centred approach has been criticized for (amongst other things) lacking the ability to address discursive, rather than distributional, injustices. In this paper I simultaneously validate these concerns, and work to correct the relative silence of both conventional and critical AI ethicists around disability, by exploring the narratives deployed by AI researchers in discussing and designing systems around autism. Demonstrating that these narratives frequently perpetuate a dangerously dehumanizing model …

Animals In Drama And Theatrical Performance: Anthropocentric Emotionalism, Peta Tait

Animal Studies Journal

This article outlines how nonhuman animals are framed by the emotions of drama, theatre and contemporary performance and considers a distinctive tradition in western culture of enacting animal characters who function as surrogate humans. It argues that, contradictorily, while animal characters confirm anthropocentric emotionalism, drama also contains pro-animal values and concern for animal welfare. Animals embodying emotions in theatrical languages are part of the way animals are used in the traditions of western culture and to think and philosophize with, but they also indicate thinking about the emotions in theatrical performance. The article considers if, however, staging living animals can …

“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …

Contents Ije-Volume 1 (1), October 2020, Cynthia Brunold-Conesa

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Morita Therapy According To Morita: Dwelling In The Tension Between Hardy And Fragile Life, Peg Levine

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

At the turn of the last century, Shōma Morita, MD (1874-1938), observed the ways thriving habitats revitalize and sustain humans, other mammals, birds, insects, fish, trees, fungi, and other life. Compatibly, Morita progressed his theory of peripheral consciousness (mushojūshin), which informed his therapeutic ecological habitat and methods. In Morita’s era, scholars and clinicians mulled over diverse hypotheses on consciousness and how consciousness theories (or lack of a theory) influence therapy and places of delivery. Largely by the 1980s, phenomenological inquiry was displaced (if not discredited) by advocates and funders of cognitive science. Therein, consciousness was reframed as …

Native American Perspectives: From The Red Road In Recovery, James Pete

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

CULTURE AND TRADITIONS are a major part of my Red Road in Recovery. I've been involved in Native Art (used to call it Arts and Crafts) from the time I was 8 years old and going on 55 years! I am still learning, in many aspects. But, when I am creating Native Art....there is this place of peacefulness, serenity, a connection to the Higher Power (Gichi Manidoo), those who traveled to the Spirit World, and many others. This is from an Anishinaabe (Chippewa or Ojibwa) aspect.

Clusters Of Individuals Experiences Form A Continuum Of Persistent Non-Symbolic Experiences In Adults, Jeffery A. Martin

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Persistent forms of nondual awareness, enlightenment, mystical experience, and so forth (Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience) have been reported since antiquity. Though sporadic research has been performed on these experiences, the scientific literature has yet to report a large-scale cognitive psychology study of this population. Method: Assessment of the subjective experience of 319 adult participants reporting persistent non-symbolic experience was undertaken using 6-12 hour semi-structured interviews and evaluated using grounded theory and thematic analysis. Results: Five core, consistent categories of change were uncovered: sense-of-self, cognition, affect, perception, and memory. Participants’ reports formed phenomenological groups in which the types of change …

Brain Complexity, Sentience And Welfare, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Neither sentience nor moral standing is confined to animals with large or human-like brains. Invertebrates deserve moral consideration. Definition of terms clarifies the relationship between sentience and welfare. All animals have welfare but humans give more protection to sentient animals. Humans should be less human-centred.

Books: The Original And Final Refuge For Mental Wellness, Kyle Christopher Miller

Journal of Wellness

An appreciation for literature and how reading fights to stay relevant in the fast moving era of technology.

China's Lack Of Animal Welfare Legislation Increases The Risk Of Further Pandemics, Amanda Whitfort

Animal Sentience

Legislation enforcing positive animal welfare standards provides an important buffer against the spread of disease when other safeguards to promote animal health have failed. The continuing absence of animal welfare legislation in China increases the risk of future pandemics, like COVID-19, and puts animal health, and consequently public health in danger.

Rethinking Global Governance To Address Zoonotic Disease Risks: Connecting The Dots, Kelley Lee

Animal Sentience

Large-scale changes in human behaviour are urgently needed to prevent future pandemics involving zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. However, this will not happen to the required degree, and with sufficient speed, without a major shift in how humanity collectively governs itself. Alongside a shift in focus from individual behaviours to the structural conditions underpinning the world economy that shape human behaviours, effective global governance presses us to connect more dots than ever before. The One Health approach is an important starting point but we need to go much further.

Animal Studies Journal 2020 9(1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Contributor Biographies, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2020 9(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Contributor Biographies.

Provocation From The Field: A Multispecies Doula Approach To Death And Dying, Kathryn Gillespie

Animal Studies Journal

Death doulas can help to make meaning in the dying process, to be present for what arises at the end of life, and to move alongside those who are dying and their loved ones. At the end of life, doulas can offer help reflecting on what this life has meant, planning for the coming death, holding space during the active dying process, and grieving the loss of the one who has died. This paper extends a doula approach – typically work done with humans – to death and dying in multispecies contexts. Many other species are routinely rendered killable, disposable, …

Free To Be Dog Haven: Dogs Who May Never Be Pets?, René J. Marquez

Animal Studies Journal

I am an artist who runs a sanctuary for dogs. I did not start the sanctuary as a studio project, but, as it turns out, it is very much an extension of my studio work. The sanctuary focuses on acknowledging canine subjectivity and agency in the context of colonialist, Western, modernist human fictions, a context explored throughout my work, in general. Our sanctuary is a site of ongoing investigation: we seek to map the territory between ‘free’ and ‘pet’. This paper examines the thinking behind and the practical life of my dog sanctuary: exigencies of doghuman collaboration and what it …

How To Help When It Hurts: Act Individually (And In Groups), Cheryl E. Abbate

Animal Studies Journal

In a recent article, Corey Wrenn argues that in order to adequately address injustices done to animals, we ought to think systemically. Her argument stems from a critique of the individualist approach I employ to resolve a moral dilemma faced by animal sanctuaries, who sometimes must harm some animals to help others. But must systemic critiques of injustice be at odds with individualist approaches? In this paper, I respond to Wrenn by showing how individualist approaches that take seriously the notion of group responsibility can be deployed to solve complicated dilemmas that are products of injustice. Contra Wrenn, I argue …

The Grieving Kangaroo Photograph Revisited, David Brooks

Animal Studies Journal

Early in 2016 a photograph circulated widely of a male kangaroo holding up a dying female in the presence of a joey. Although initially taken as a moving and powerful photograph of grief, ‘experts’ quickly determined that this male may have killed the female in the process of coition. The male was in effect accused and convicted of rape and murder. Was this judgement correct? Was the male innocent or guilty? What are the nature, strength and politics of the assumptions involved in this judgement? Might he be exonerated, and why should this matter? The photograph is read and contextualised. …

[Review] John Simons. Obaysch: A Hippopotamus In Victorian London. Animal Publics Series, Edited By Fiona Probyn-Rapsey And Melissa Boyde, Sydney University Press, 2019. 226 Pp, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] John Simons. Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London. Animal Publics Series, edited by Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Melissa Boyde, Sydney University Press, 2019. 226 pp. John Simons’ riveting biography of a hippo invites the reader into the experience of Obaysch who was captured on the Nile in 1849 then became a ‘star’ animal in the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in London. Obaysch is not just figured symbolically, politically and culturally, as so many historical animals are; Simons entices him from the archives to inhabit his own embodied narrative – a process which springs him from entrapment as a spectacle behind …

[Review] Susan Mchugh. Love In A Time Of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide And Extinction. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. 228 Pp, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Susan McHugh. Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide and Extinction. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. 228 pp.

[Review] After Coetzee: An Anthology Of Animal Fictions. Edited By A. Marie Houser, Faunary Press, 2017. 189 Pp, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] After Coetzee: An Anthology of Animal Fictions. Edited by A. Marie Houser, Faunary Press, 2017. 189 pp.

[Review] Hope Ferdowsian, Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born And Resilience Lives, Chicago University Press, 2018. 212 Pp., Teya Brooks Pribac

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Hope Ferdowsian, Phoenix Zones: Where Strength is Born and Resilience Lives, Chicago University Press, 2018. 212 pp. It was a Sunday morning in mid-September. I was woken up by the sound of rain. Thick, steady, there to stay, at least for the day. For a moment I wondered whether I should skip my morning run but decided against it. I wanted to honour the rain at a time when parts of the world were so desperate for it. The streets were empty of humans, the rest of nature relishing the much- needed soak. I thought of resilience.

[Review] Paula Acari. Making Sense Of ‘Food’ Animals: A Critical Exploration Of The Persistence Of Meat. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 356 Pp., Alex Lockwood

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Paula Acari. Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals: A Critical Exploration of the Persistence of Meat. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 356 pp. There are many audiences for Paula Acari’s new book on the persistence of meat as edible matter, Making Sense of Food Animals, and not all of them academic. One of the striking facets of this well-researched, clearly argued and empirical analysis, drawing on 41 interviews with Australian meat eaters and meat producers, is the lessons for animal advocacy organisations for rethinking their messaging strategies. Central to the book’s argument is Acari’s challenge to narratives of transparency and visibility, …

[Review] Natalie Porter And Ilana Gershon, Editors. Living With Animals: Bonds Across Species. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 266 Pp., Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Natalie Porter and Ilana Gershon, editors. Living with Animals: Bonds across Species. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 266 pp. Living with Animals, as the dust jacket avers, ‘is a collection of imagined animal guides – a playful look at different human-animal relationships’. The collection has an international range from dogs in Australia, to sacrificial cattle in Madagascar, chimpanzees in West Africa, tamed hyenas in Harar, and returning birds in Buenos Aires. At the same time the reader learns more about animals in processes and places we might take for granted – training service dogs, marketing rescue dogs, introducing …

Whenever Possible, Treat The Cause: Shut Down The Flu Factories, Michael Greger

Animal Sentience

Over the last few decades -- and at a historically unprecedented rate -- hundreds of human pathogens have emerged, mostly from animals. The United Nations’ “Preventing the Next Pandemic” report blames increasing demand for animal protein and unsustainable agricultural intensification as two key drivers of the emergence of zoonotic threats. Animal agribusiness has become a viral disease incubator, but there is a clear path towards preventing the next pandemic as well as protecting planetary health: to reform the practice of raising domestic animals for food and to adopt eating habits that not only protect our health, but address …

Reflections On Psychological And Psychiatric Consequences Of Covid-19 Pandemic, Donatella Marazziti

Animal Sentience

Although far from reaching a clear conclusion, some evidence increasingly highlights the possible connections among climate change, environmental pollution and the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their intertwined detrimental effects on both physical and mental health. Such a catastrophic event calls for a novel awareness of the interdependence of all biotic and nonbiotic factors in our environment and planet.

The Necessity Of Human Attitude Change And Methods Of Avoiding Pandemics, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Humans share their biology with other animals and in each of their actions should consider the consequences for all life. A series of measures can be taken by governments and individuals that would minimise inter-specific transfer of pathogens from wildlife and reduce the development of antimicrobial resistance.

Plant-Based Diets And Covid-19: Those Who Harvest Crops Are At High Risk, Jarret S. Lovell

Animal Sentience

This commentary extends Wiebers & Feigin’s (2020) plea to adopt diets that are less dependent on animals by calling on experts and activists to work for change with regard to farm worker labor conditions. Already doing among the most dangerous jobs, farmworkers are at increased risk of COVID-19. As we increasingly transition to plant-based diets, we must all ensure that farmworkers have safe and just working conditions to meet the demands of our changing diets.

Should New Zealand Do More To Uphold Animal Welfare?, Andrew Knight

Animal Studies Journal

Governmental and industry representatives have repeatedly claimed that Aotearoa New Zealand leads the world on animal welfare, largely based on an assessment by global animal protection charity World Animal Protection (WAP). New Zealand’s leading ranking rested primarily on favourable comparisons of its animal welfare legislation with that of 50 other nations, within WAP’s 2014 Animal Protection Index. Unfortunately, however, review of welfare problems extant within the farming of meat chickens and laying hens, pigs, cows and sheep, reveals the persistence of systemic welfare compromises within most New Zealand animal farming systems. These are contrary to good ethics, to our duty …

'From Here To Everywhere': Foucault, Fonterra And Richie Mccaw (A Cow’S Tale), Chevy Rendell

Animal Studies Journal

This research paper attempts to provide a Foucauldian analysis of Fonterra’s television commercial ‘From Here to Everywhere’. With the cooperation of former All Black captain, Richie McCaw, ‘From Here to Everywhere’ is a play of power to construct a certain truth, that the dairy industry is the beating heart (and deliberately not the bountiful udder) of Aotearoa New Zealand’s economic and physical wellbeing. However, the Fonterra-McCaw narrative mystifies the often-violent realities of dairy farming while masquerading as natural certain ideologies, such as carnism, that perpetuate species and gender inequality. The recent Mycoplasma bovis outbreak in New Zealand inserts a measure …

[Review] Animal Experimentation: Working Towards A Paradigm Change. Edited By Kathrin Hermann And Kimberley Jayne. Brill, 2019. 714 Pp, John Hadley

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Animal Experimentation: Working Towards a Paradigm Change. Edited by Kathrin Hermann and Kimberley Jayne. Brill, 2019. 714 pp. This is a very large volume. In almost 700 pages, no less than 51 authors contribute to 28 chapters (there is also a Foreword, by Peter Singer, and an Afterword, by John P. Gluck). The majority of chapters focus upon ethical or political matters and are readily accessible to scientists. Likewise, non-scientists ought to be able to follow the more technical or science heavy chapters.