Search

Recent political processes have rendered people with dementia an increasingly surveilled population. Surveillance is a contentious issue within dementia research, spanning technological monitoring, biomarker research and epidemiological data gathering. This paper explores surveillance in the relationships of people affected by dementia, how older relatives both with and without diagnoses are surveilled in everyday interactions, and the importance of expectations in guiding surveillance. This paper presents data from 41 in-depth interviews with people affected by dementia living in the community in the United Kingdom. Agedness was a key contributor to expectations that a person may have dementia, based on previous experiences, media accounts and wider awareness. Expectations provoked surveillance in interactions, with participants looking for signs of dementia when interacting with older relatives. Older people also enacted self-surveillance, monitoring their own behaviour. Various actions could be attributed to dementia because interpretation is malleable, partly vindicating expectations while leaving some uncertainties. Expectant surveillance transformed people’s experiences because they organised their own actions, and interpreted those of others, in line with pre-existing meanings. The ability to interpret behaviours to fit expectations can bring coherence to uncertainties of ageing, cognition and dementia, but risks ascribing dementia to many older people who straddle those uncertainties.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) degrees in Australian and British universities have come under attack from sceptics who argue that such courses teach only ‘pseudoscience’. Moreover, CAM academics have themselves been publicly labelled ‘quacks’. Comparatively little is known about this group of health professionals who span the two worlds of CAM practice and academia. How do they navigate between these domains, and how are their collective and individual professional identities constructed? Drawing on 47 semi-structured interviews, this paper explores the professional identities of academics working in three university-based CAM disciplines in Australia and the UK: osteopathy, chiropractic and Chinese medicine. By analysing these individuals’ accounts, and building on prior research on health professions in the academy, the paper contributes to understanding how contests about professionalism and professional knowledge take place against the academic-practice divide. By focussing on a domain where knowledge claims are conspicuously contested, it highlights the salience of navigating ‘epistemic stress’ for both group and individual professional identity.

This qualitative study investigates health care practitioners’ approaches to early childhood obesity in Denmark and their view on their own ability to initiate processes of change in affected families, and it asks the overall question of whether perceived barriers become real through practitioners’ reluctance to intervene in families labelled as ´problematic’. The paper identifies three approaches in the practitioners’ narratives: the socially oriented, the individually oriented, and the mixed. The individually oriented approach was based on a logic resembling individualistic explanatory models of behaviour change, and was related to a positive perspective on their own ability to move families towards healthier habits by health care practitioners. The socially oriented approach borrowed elements from a sociological perspective, which seemed to lead to resigned pessimism in the face of the complexity of the problem of childhood overweight and a reluctance to address early childhood overweight in some families. In practitioners of all three types, widespread cultural essentialism was found. Non-western, ethnic minority background was seen as determining family habits and making preventive action especially difficult. Based on this, the current paper discusses whether individual actions and choices are being ascribed too much explanatory power, and the health system's biased perceptions too little.

Over the past decade ‘social egg freezing’ has emerged as a technology of hope that purports to empower women by enabling them to continue their careers or find the right partner without the fear of jeopardising their fertility. This technology has been promoted and celebrated by fertility companies, bioethicists, clinicians, and multi-national corporations such as Apple and Facebook. While critical questions have been raised, they tend to focus on ethical and legal issues, such as informed consent and patient autonomy. This paper uses Foucault’s notion of dispositif as analytic lens to examine the entanglement of the commercial arrangements of fertility companies, the discursive use of hope in promoting these services, and effects on professional medical care. Drawing on socio-political analyses of hope, this paper examines the potential financial conflicts of interest facing clinicians and the way discourses of hope might mask problematic financial relations and lack of evidence of effectiveness.

This paper, based on data taken from in-depth interviews with senior midwives and obstetricians and conducted as part of a critical ethnographic study, argues for a greater appreciation of person-centred, value-led midwifery practice. The paper begins with a discussion of the way midwifery practice is shaped by encoded and embodied knowledge. The paper subsequently focuses on an emergent practice based leadership using an adapted Aristotelian conceptual framework derived from MacIntyre (2007). Professional dissonance is highlighted as a difficulty experienced by repositioned managers who are also expected to be leaders in their field. Using data gathered from in-depth interviews it is contended that establishing person-centred care might be better achieved through the development of practice based leadership (rather than solely by adherence to organisational requirements). This type of leadership could potentially nurture a professional environment that promotes qualities, such as agency, commitment and high levels of competence among midwives. Such leadership is central to UK government priorities and is applicable to a global practice development agenda.

Health promotion, as one tool of hospital managers to reorient hospitals towards more client-oriented healthcare services, has been emphasized for almost three decades. Yet, it is recognized that change in hospitals is challenging and is more desired than substantially enacted. To overcome organizational challenges, health promotion has, so far, adapted organizational change strategies primarily applied in business organizations. However, in this paper, it is argued that such strategies do not adequately reflect the nature of hospitals as ‘professional organizations’. To gain a better understanding of the challenges for health promotion reorientation, this paper combines well-established theories from the sociology of professions and organizational science. These theories provide a useful framework that advances the role of professionals as powerful agents within any reorientation efforts in hospitals. This framework guided the narrative review of empirical literature on critical dimensions along which pr...

Poor health and disease and the nature of interventions to ameliorate them typically generate opportunities and costs. What diseases are prevalent, which interventions are favoured and what factors fuel the nature of health interventions are recurrent concerns for political economists. This paper examines the prevailing viewpoints about what health policy works and what does not. Drawing on evidence from developing countries, it shows that there are many deficiencies in the prevailing orthodoxy which emphasises state, market, and civil society solutions. The paper suggests that health policy debate must be reframed around poverty and social inequality, constructs which are often subordinated to attaining grand ideological goals. © eContent Management Pty Ltd.

unexplained symptoms. The study is conducted in Denmark using qualitative interviews with welfare officers and clients. The paper's focus is on how issues of gender and class intersect in the negotiation of illness among welfare officers and clients. The particular client group in question consists of individuals that are defined by their lack of a bio-medical diagnosis.Their ‘lack’ of identity accentuates how gender and class become central in the categorisation practices, constructing the ill person as either bio-medically sick or as a person who may be suffering but only from diffuse psychological problems. The paper shows that it is predominantly poorly educated women without a bio-medical diagnosis that welfare officers describe as suffering from psychological problems despite the fact that the women themselves focus on physical ailments in their illness stories. Men and better-educated women are described by the welfare officers as tired and exhausted or truly stressed after a long working life.

This paper sets out some of the parameters of social intervention in the family in Australia around the turn of the 20th century in ways which permit interventions in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations to be broadly compared and contrasted. It focuses on forms of intervention underpinned by the kind of liberal political reasoning that allowed administrators to intervene on the basis of assessments of the capacity of families to govern themselves (Hindess 2000, 2001). The paper draws on archival material in Victoria, and the evidence of interventions in Aboriginal populations focuses on the removal of Aboriginal children from their communities in various parts of the state during this period. 'Race' comes to be constructed in terms that allow legislators and administrators to make discriminations within Aboriginal populations in order to manage them. (author abstract)

Although health services in Australia have an aim to provide inclusive care for their patients/clients, this study highlights how barriers to care can lie at the centre of patient-provider interactions. Racial microaggression is a subtle form of racism that can occur in health settings, leading to further exclusion for First Nations Australians, immigrants and refugees. This paper is guided by Derrida's approach to deconstructionism by unpacking how language is used by health professionals - as holders of organisational power - and how they construct 'truths' or discourses about clients that historically have been marginalised by health services and system. Data comprise 21 interviews with staff from two rural health services. It identified three racial microaggressions were used to justify the challenges of providing care to people from First Nations, immigrant and refugee backgrounds: (1) Participants problematised culture(s) of service users; (2) participants implied cultural superiority in their conceptualisation of 'other' cultures; and (3) participants shared stories of inactions, discomfort and relegating of responsibility. The findings identified these discourses as forms of racial microaggression that can potentially lead to further exclusion of people seeking services and support.

In this brief paper, I argue that the coronavirus pandemic is functioning like an ethnomethodological 'breaching experiment'. In short, it is putting a gigantic spanner in the works of neoliberal governance, in the process exposing the widening cracks and fissures of what I have called the 'fractured society'. I begin by recalling Garfinkel's notion of the breaching experiment and by listing the principal attributes of the fractured society. I then explore the response to the coronavirus in the UK, from the government's initial commitment to 'herd immunity' to its present policy of 'muddling through'. The bulk of the remainder of this contribution addresses precisely how this global health crisis shines a harsh and unforgiving searchlight on the strategies and policies pursued by governments in the UK since 2010, and most especially after the passing of the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. In the closing paragraphs, I examine possible scenarios for a post-fractured society, making particular use of Fraser's concepts on 'reactionary' versus 'progressive populism', and conclude with a comment on sociology and engagement.

Diabetes presents a challenge to healthcare services worldwide. Diabetes educators work with individuals and communities to reduce the impact of diabetes. In Australia, diabetes educators derive from one of several primary qualifications including nursing, medicine or a specified allied health background, and have an accredited postgraduate qualification in diabetes education. The peak professional body, the Australian Diabetes Educators Association (ADEA), promotes equivalence of all diabetes educators in terms of their scope of practice. However, in practice, there is evidence of inequities, particularly between those from nursing and allied health backgrounds. This paper uses a neo-Weberian lens to explore the interprofessional role dynamics of a ‘postprofessional’ group of practitioners, who adopt a common role and title to create a professional identity at post-qualifying level. Data were collected via individual interviews with 19 stakeholders and analysed using an abductive template approach. Differential role boundaries between nurse and allied health diabetes educators were established and reinforced in several ways. Diabetes education is considered a sub-specialty of nursing only; access to education and credentialing has been restricted for allied health; reinforcement of professional stereotypes and perceived professional values; and perceived legislative differences in access to medication management for nurse and allied health diabetes educators.

In England there has been substantial policy development and an academic drive to promote the goal of ‘living well’ for people with dementia and their family members. This article critically evaluates the feasibility of this intention, with reference to the experience of those caring for people with the condition. Qualitative data are utilised from a study which explored how couples negotiate relationships and care. The focus of this paper is the perspectives of spousal carers and the challenges they encounter within their caring role. Views were obtained via semi-structured joint interviews where the carer participated alongside the person with dementia. The extent to which living well with dementia is a credible aspiration for carers is examined via three themes: identity subsumed under care responsibilities; the couple as an isolated family unit; and barriers to professional support. The findings highlight that experience of caring is highly complex and fraught with multiple practical, emotional and moral pressures. It is asserted that research into dementia and care relationships must avoid a zero sum situation, prompted by living well discourses, where attempts to bolster the position of people with dementia compound the marginalisation and stigmatisation of informal carers.

In recent years, society has witnessed a proliferation of digital technologies facilitate new ways to monitor young people’s health. This paper explores a group of English adolescent girls’ underst...

The widespread availability of portable sensing devices has given rise to growing numbers of people voluntarily self-tracking their daily experiences through the medium of digital data. At the extreme end of this trend is the ‘Quantified Self’ movement. This collective uses sensor-enabled tech to extensively map aspects of their personal lives, before sharing procedural insights at community ‘show and tell’ events. A key aim of the group is to better understand imperceptible bodily processes, especially those influencing health states, as they are materialised through the datafied body. Despite the growth in those mobilising digital data for health management, little is known about the subjective meanings that are ascribed to self-monitoring practices. This paper explores how self-trackers conceptualise the data they generate, and how exteriorised bodily interiorities mediate impressions of embodiment. We suggest that the availability of self-tracked data has initiated interesting new relationship...

Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualisation of power, this paper examines public health as a distinctly modern regime of governance. An account of the historical regulation of drug use is traced in order to examine socio-historical shifts and lines of continuity in contemporary technologies of harm reduction. Using qualitative interview data, we examined practices of power in the context of contemporary drug use, including self-governance using techniques of monitoring, self-management and self-tracking. Participants’ accounts revealed that they were encouraged to self-govern their drug use through a variety of reformist technologies that are embedded in harm-reduction programs. It is argued that participants’ subjectivity is formed at the intersection of authoritative governance and self-governance, through ethical practices of the self which have emerged from disciplinary health practices, and incorporate the body as the site of power. We illustrate this by drawing a distinction between hygienist an...

During the period 2009–2012, Prita Mulyasari, a resident of Tangerang, Indonesia, was embroiled in a defamation dispute with Omni International Hospital. The legal case was instigated by the Hospital in response to a specific e-mail Prita sent to family, friends and colleagues about her health-care experience that subsequently went viral. In this paper, we discuss health consumer participation, medical dominance and digital ethics in a context of changing social norms and expanding use of digital technology in Indonesia. We argue that digital technology is changing health consumer participation and opening up avenues for challenge to medical privilege; however, this development is set against the use of the law to reinforce privilege and limit participation.

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of the impact of casualised and independent contractor work place arrangements on the psycho-social health of 72 workers in regional Victoria. It contributes to our understanding of the crisis in rural Australia in its use of qualitative methods focusing on the impact of work on health and well-being. There is some evidence in the literature that casualised work arrangement enhance the health and well-being of workers by giving them a sense of autonomy and freedom to negotiate their conditions of work. On the other hand, these arrangements may make an already vulnerable group even more vulnerable to uncertain work conditions, poor pay and uncertainty for their future with a significantly negative impact on their health and wellbeing. The results of these interviews support this latter perspective and show that these workers do not experience freedom and autonomy, but rather lowered social status, insecurity and serious limitations to their ability to manage their health, psychological wellbeing and social relations.

The ill-health assemblage comprises the networks of biological, psychological and sociocultural relations that surround bodies during ill-health. The paper argues for health sociology to reject an organic bodywith- organs as its unit of analysis of health and illness, and replace it with an approach to embodiment deriving from Deleuze and Guattari's ontology. I set out the three key terms: the body-without-organs (BwO), assemblages, and territorialisation. These concepts will be applied to health and illness, to develop an understanding of an ill-health assemblage. I contrast this with the biomedicalised body-withorgans, and explore the shaping of the ill-health assemblage in a case study.

Over the past decade, consumers in Australia and elsewhere have increasingly been confronted with a fast growing number of health food products. This profusion of health foods is accompanied by a proliferation in popular culture of professional nutritional advice on ‘what is good to eat'. The genre of lifestyle magazines is one popular medium via which healthy eating practices and health foods are frequently reported. In this paper we use a visual discourse analysis of food-related editorial and advertorial content sourced from the long running and popular "The Australian Women's Weekly" to investigate how lifestyle magazines have been one important locus for constituting health conscious consumers. Taking up a Foucauldian governmentality perspective we trace how this active, responsible conceptualisation of the consumer, which we refer to as ‘healthy food consumer', has increased in prevalence in the pages of The Australian Women's Weekly over time. Based on our analysis we suggest that the editorial and advertorial content offers models of conduct to individuals about what possible preventative activities in which to engage, and plays an important role in shaping how we think about taking care of our health through eating.

Since 2003, avian influenza has recently spread around the world sparking fears of a potential pandemic. As a result of this, a range of explanations and expectations surrounding the phenomenon were generated. Such social representations of disease depict the issue under discussion and frame reactions to the event. This paper explores the social representations surrounding avian influenza in Australia. Methodologically, a textual analysis of media and government documents was conducted in order to uncover the social representations implicit in these accounts. This demonstrated a symbolic framing of avian influenza with reference to the Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918). Analytically, the study draws upon the concepts of social representations from Durkheim and of risk and symbolic risk in the work of Beck. Overall, it is argued that the framing of avian influenza as a risk, mediated through the collective memory of Spanish Influenza, characterised the nature of the social representations surrounding the phenomenon. This resulted in the production of symbolic solutions to the threat.

The relationship between ethnicity and the use of 'party drugs' (e.g., methamphetamine and ecstasy) has received little attention in Australia. This paper focuses on ethnicity and party drug use within the context of dance parties and clubs in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city. The young people who participated in our research, many of whom are long-time dance party attendees, or 'old skool ravers', frequently made claims to the possession of subcultural capital by labelling as 'muzzas' those they perceived to be outsiders to the dance scene. Muzzas are defined as heavily muscled young men, commonly of Southern European or Middle Eastern background, who use cocaine and steroids, have 'no class' and dance in an overly aggressive way. Although the old skool ravers were often from similar ethnic backgrounds to muzzas, they rarely drew on ethnicity in forming their own identities. They did, however, explicitly invoke ethnicity in the distinctions they created between themselves and muzzas. Their claims to subcultural capital are based on notions of nostalgia and an authentic involvement in the dance scene, and on their perceived distance from a mainstream culture consisting of 'normal people'.

This essay critically examines the process of governmentality as revealed in the construction and resistance to the categorisation and classification of 'Healthy Senior Citizenship'. This also includes an illustrative analysis of data from a national UK qualitative interview study of the input into the policy process of older adults in voluntary and community organisations. The paper demonstrates how governmentality finds its expression within the construction of healthy senior citizenship as synonymous with activity and participation within the technologies of collaboration and consultation. The conclusion reflects upon developing a critical sociology of old age in order to scrutinize conceptions of the 'problems' of governing an ageing population in post-welfarist or advanced liberal states.

The 21st century will be characterised by aged and ageing nations, making eldercare a growing concern. Most eldercare in most nations will be provided informally, primarily by female family members. Helping these people understand the dimensions of eldercare is a key to effective and cost-effective caregiving. The Person-Environment Model (Lawton and Nahemow 1973) is proposed as a theoretical framework for understanding, assessing, and optimising family-based caregiving. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of informal rehabilitation caregiving provided to elderly stroke survivors in Thailand. Four main rehabilitation dimensions (biological, psychological, social, spiritual) are identified, as are three main caregiver needs (information, assistance, and support). We suggest that while the Person-Environment Model is useful in developed nations, it is perhaps more valuable in societies where fewer options to family-based eldercare exist, and thus where effective informal eldercare is more critical. Implications for education and training of health care providers are also discussed.

Using a large contemporary United States data set, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS), this paper examines the relationship between parental work schedules and adolescent depression at age 13 or 14, paying particular attention to the mechanisms that may explain this relationship. Analysis based on structural equation modelling showed that increased work at night by mothers was significantly associated with a lower quality of home environment and fewer meals together, and this mediator was significantly linked to increased risks for adolescent depression. In addition, evening work by fathers was significantly associated with lower paternal closeness and this mediator was significantly associated with increases in adolescent depression. In contrast, irregular shifts by both mothers and fathers increased the likelihood of mothers knowing where the child was and this relationship in turn reduced adolescent depression. Implications and avenues for future research are d...

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy., In July 2006 the Australian Government introduced the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 (Cth) (the Shared Parental Responsibility Act 2006) which puts in place a legal presumption of shared parental responsibility for children after separation and which emphasises ‘equal time’ parenting arrangements. Equal time places expectations on both parents to participate—equally—in child care regardless of the child’s age. Breastfeeding is optimal for infants and requires the infant and mother to spend significant time together. The expectation of equal time or substantial and significant parenting arrangements becomes problematic when considering breastfed children. This article begins a discussion about the decisions regarding shared parenting of breastfed children made as a consequence of the 2006 amendments that do not always appear to be in the best interests of children’s health and wellbeing. The paper argues that the Shared Parental Responsibility Act 2006, and the decisions made, can work at a macro-level to produce social and health disparities for these children. Decisions about parenting of children under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) are required to be made with the ‘best interests of the child’ as the paramount consideration; a central tenet of the Act which remains in place following the Shared Parental Responsibility Act 2006. The application of this requirement has particular implications when the child is very young and pre-verbal and is being breastfed by the mother. There appears to be a tension in determining the best interests of the child in cases where children are breastfed and their father is seeking equal or substantial shared care arrangements. Breastfeeding has significant physical, psychological, financial benefits to individuals, families and society, and is an important public health practice. Shared parenting orders, made since the Shared Parental Responsibility Act 2006, have the potential to separate breastfeeding mothers and their child which would impact on women’s ability to breastfeed, influencing their perseverance and ultimately breastfeeding duration (Brodribb 2004). This outcome is arguably not in the best interests of the child. Two cases from an on-going study to investigate breastfeeding women’s experiences of the implementation of the Act will be presented. These examples will illustrate that the court made decisions for 2 breastfeeding mothers are not consistent and compromise the ability of women to continue breast feeding. From the women’s perspective this is viewed as not in the best interests of their infants. Further questions are raised about the best interests of children when domestic violence and/or abuse are present. The impact of this new law on the continued breastfeeding of very young children is an unacknowledged consequence and a public health concern.

This editorial provides a critical review of the progress in social determinants of health research over the last two decades, suggesting new perspectives which may further our understanding of persistent social inequalities in health. It highlights the global significance of the Special Issue setting it in the context of the recently released WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health Final Report (CSDH 2008). The editorial introduces individual papers in the Special Issue and discusses how they are in line with, complement or provide feedback to, the WHO CSDH Final Report and its call for actions to close the health gap in a generation. Finally, based on the articles in this Special Issue and emerging themes of the global research and policy literature, it outlines a number of significant directions for future research and actions, from both methodological and theoretical points of view. (editor abstract)

New Zealand research suggests that CAM use by GPs has decreased, while referral to CAM practitioners by GPs has increased, and that patients often do not tell their health practitioners when they are using CAM. The New Zealand Medical Council has developed guidelines for GPs who use CAM. However, there is no research in New Zealand that looks at how patients and GPs respond to CAM issues in the consultation. This paper uses data collected for two research projects on doctor-patient interaction. For this research, consultations between 105 patients and nine GPs were videorecorded. In this data set, all doctors but one were 'orthodox' and to some degree reserved judgement on CAM, albeit remaining cautious in how they made this evident. Patients on the other hand demonstrated a variety of strategies to get CAM on the agenda, and GPs were careful to couch any criticism in such a way as to protect the 'face' of patients. (author abstract)

This paper examines the social gradient in self-reported health in Argentina, and at the provincial level, explores the extent to which self-reported health and mortality indicators provide dissonant health profiles. This study is based on a secondary analysis of Argentina's 2001 Survey of Living Conditions. A significant gradient in self-reported health was observed by income quintile, but self-reported health and mortality indicators were not significantly correlated at the provincial level. Respondents from deprived regions were most likely to report being in good health, despite living in areas with low life expectancy and high infant mortality; in other words, respondents from areas of poor population health nevertheless report good individual health. Unless acknowledged, this will ultimately lead to an underestimate of the social gradient in health. The implications of this notion for tests of the income inequality hypothesis are discussed. sociology, health inequality, social surveys, Argentina

With rapid developments in life-prolonging technologies and increases in average life expectancy, euthanasia has become an increasingly topical issue. This paper contributes to the euthanasia debate an analysis of Australian attitudes to assisted suicide, active non-voluntary as well as passive non-voluntary euthanasia. Between 1993 and 2002, Australians supported access to voluntary euthanasia of the terminally ill, but had reservations when death was not imminent. The age of patients was relatively unimportant in these considerations. Non- voluntary euthanasia of babies and adults received widespread approval only when particular situations could be defined as 'letting die' rather than 'killing'. (author abstract)

Until recently, permanent residents in caravan parks were often absent from discussions about homelessness and housing in the Australian context. When permanent residency was recognised and legislated for in the 1980s, efforts were made to ensure scope for standard community infrastructure such as roads, sewerage and community gathering places. Although the number of long term caravan parks in Australia has recently decreased, on the edge of Melbourne some parks are expanding to cater for a growing clientele reflecting a new and partly de-institutionalised society. This society is characterised by mobile, temporary and casualised work and changing, volatile family relationships; each trend creating a need for different forms of housing. In this paper, preliminary interviews with ten caravan park managers from the outskirts of Melbourne reveal their role in the complex relationship between space, community formation and social solidarity: a relationship which directly impacts on the health and well...

The aim of this study was to examine the relevance of type of work and socio-economic status on the experiences of pain rehabilitation for workers with musculo-skeletal injuries. The paper reports results of a study conducted with patients (n=20) and treating professionals (n = 40). The findings of this study provide insight into how patients with chronic musculo-skeletal pain and treating professionals determined success and also what they saw as barriers to success. Emergent themes and rich descriptions that supported the study showed that patients’ experiences were shaped significantly by social factors, and that type of work and socio-economic status were key determinants of success in terms of patients regaining their sense of independence and control over their lives – as opposed to losing control, remaining helpless and dependent on others, or becoming intent on revenge and validation of their pain and suffering.

It has been suggested that 'Filipino brides' may be 'at risk' of social isolation and mental health impairment after migrating to Australia to marry Australian men. This paper examines the mental health of a cohort of Filipino and Australian-born women who became mothers in Australia, and investigates the relationship between place of birth, social network size and symptoms of poor mental health. The data was taken from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP), a longitudinal study of mothers and children instigated in 1981. Symptoms of anxiety and depression and social network size were assessed at their first clinic visit (FCV), and followed up at 5 and 14 years. Filipino-born mothers had smaller social networks at the birth of their child, and reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression at FCV and 5 years follow up (F/U), but did not differ from their Australian counterparts 14 years later. We conclude that Filipino-born migrants experience greater distress and poorer social networks than Australian-born mothers in the early years after they have given birth to a child in Australia. Further, that over a period of time, the decrease in mental health symptoms indicates the adaptation of Filipino-born women to their new environment. (author abstract)

Studies that focus on the effects of both the division of household chores and of financial contributions on the mental health of couples are scarce. This paper expands on previous research by paying attention to the variation of this relationship among three types of households: Male breadwinner, one-and-a-half-earner and dual-earner. Using paired data from the 10th wave of the Panel Study of Belgian Households, collected in 2001, we perform separate linear regressions for men (N = 1054) and women (N = 1054). The results suggest that in one-and-a-half-earner households, women’s employment has a negative effect on their partner’s depression level and that in dual-earner households, the effect of women’s employment is only negative if men are not the major breadwinner. Crossover effects of depression between partners seem to mediate part of the aforementioned associations.

For more than two decades we have been engaged in a program of research which examines the health of Indigenous people. More recently this work has focused on ways in which substance misuse affects communities, and their responses to it. Our work is framed by understandings derived from political economy, which directs attention to the web of political and economic relations surrounding individuals and social groups. We have stressed that this framework should not be interpreted in a crudely deterministic fashion, which neglects the nuances of the social determinants of health, or individual and community agency. Much of our recent work documents such agency, in community based actions throughout Australia. In this paper we examine Indigenous drinking and its consequences, outline a political economy approach to drinking, and discuss how this has informed our work. We conclude with a discussion of some criticisms of this approach and our responses. (author abstract)