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This article applies Victor Turner's schema of 'social drama' to examine narrative rituals and the roles performed by a local and national newspaper in their coverage of the Umpqua Community College shooting that took place in October 2015. Textual analysis is used to compare stories from The Roseburg News-Review and the New York Times in terms of the narrative's movement from breach, crisis, redress and finally to either reintegration or separation. This study finds that narrative patterns for the local and national newspapers do not parallel, suggesting differences in role perceptions. Instead, journalistic ritual is subject to the crisis, proximity to the tragedy and audience. The local outlet reinforces consensus with authority by focusing on victims and the grieving process to achieve the social good of healing and recovery; and the national newspaper challenges the status quo by focusing on the shooter and legislative reform. While the News-Review reaches reintegration by achieving a sense of normalcy, the New York Times stalls in a state of liminality. Both papers move the discourse on school shootings toward a societal ideal though neither narrative reaches the transformative discourse that has invoked national reflexivity noted in past instances of tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unfortunately, tragedies occur all around the world every day. It is perceived by many as particularly devastating when children are the victims of the tragedy. When these events do occur, the media is likely to cover them in part due to the innocence and vulnerability of the victims. In reading media accounts of tragedies involving children, we often hear stories of bravery and heroism on the part of teachers. Teachers' images in the media are not always positive, but their capacity to serve as heroes can be seen in the coverage of these tragic events. Campbell discusses the hero monomyth in terms of separation, initiation, and return. In this vein, we look at the stories of hero teachers before, during, and after two specific incidents in order to conduct a comparative, cross-cultural study. We consider two tragic incidents in two different countries--the sinking of the Sewol ferry in South Korea in 2014 and the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. In this research, we look at media accounts of three hero teachers in each incident and make comparisons from a sociocultural perspective through the lens of a hero narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sociologist by trade, Scull began in mental health in the early 1970s, primarily focused on the asylum and the emergence of Victorian England psychiatry. Book review: Desperate remedies - psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness Scull touches on Freud in America but, disappointingly, fails to highlight Freud's own dabble in bogus psychobiology - the mutilation of Emma Eckstein arguably a glaring omission. [Extracted from the article]

Trauma patients are vulnerable to medication error given multiple handoffs throughout the hospital. The purpose of this study was to assess trends inmedication errors in trauma patients and the role these errors play in patient outcomes. Injured adults admitted from 2009 to 2015 to a Level I trauma center were included. Medication errors were determined based on a nurse-driven, validated, and prospectively maintained database.Multivariable logistic regression modeling was used to control for differences between groups. Among 15,635 injured adults admitted during the study period, 132 patients experienced 243 errors. Patients who experienced errors had significantly worse injury severity, lower Glasgow Coma Scale scores and higher rates of hypotension on admission, and longer lengths of stay. Before adjustment, mortality was similar between groups but morbidity was higher in the medication error group. After risk adjustment, there were no significant differences in morbidity or mortality between the groups. Medication errors in trauma patients tend to occur in significantly injured patients with long hospital stays. Appropriate adjustment when studying the impact of medical errors on patient outcomes is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of child sexual abuse currently loom large in the life of a number of churches. This article draws on the insights of the late Donald MacKinnon, who viewed tragedy as a vital component of ethical reflection, to explore the human dimensions of a Christian response to abuse in such a way that the needs of survivors are paramount, perpetrators are challenged by the message of God's unconditional love to repentance and transformation, and churches and institutions do not put their corporate needs over those of individuals and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma-based interventions are common in mental health practice, and yet there is a gap in services because social media has created new ways of managing trauma. Practitioners identify treatments for traumatic experiences and are trained to implement evidence-based practices, but there is limited research that uses social media as a data source. We use a case study to explore over 400 Twitter communications of a gang member in Chicago’s Southside, Gakirah Barnes, who mourned the death of her friend on Twitter. We further explore how, following her own death, members of her Twitter network mourn her. We describe expressions of trauma that are difficult to uncover in traditional trauma-based services. We discuss practice and research implications regarding using Twitter to address trauma among gang-involved youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have provided robust evidence for an association between childhood trauma (CT) and psychosis. Meta-analyses have quantified the association, pointing to odds ratios in the order of around 3, and prospective studies have shown that reverse causation is unlikely to explain the association. However, more work is needed to address the possibility of a gene-environment correlation, that is, whether genetic risk for psychosis predicts exposure to CT. Nevertheless, multiple studies have convincingly shown that the association between CT and psychosis remains strong and significant when controlling for genetic risk, in agreement with a possible causal association. In addition, several studies have shown plausible psychological and neurobiological mechanisms linking adverse experiences to psychosis, including induction of social defeat and reduced self-value, sensitization of the mesollmbic dopamine system, changes in the stress and immune system, and concomitant changes in stress-related brain structures, such as the hippocampus and the amygdala, findings that should be integrated, however, in more complex models of vulnerability. It is currently unclear whether genetic vulnerability plays a role in conferring the mental consequences of adversity, and which genes are likely to be involved. The current, limited evidence points to genes that are not specifically involved in psychosis but more generally in regulating mood (serotonin transporter gene), neuroplasticity (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), and the stress-response system (FKBP5), in line with a general effect of CT on a range of mental disorders, rather than suggesting specificity for psychosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the manner in which journalists write news stories based on the ‘death knock’ interview where they gather reaction from the recently bereaved about their loss. The death knock news story with its emphasis on the first-hand testimony of the bereaved in certain respects can be perceived as a personal narrative of grief. This research studies the types of narratives used to tell these personal stories and applies Labov and Waletzky’s personal narrative model in order to determine what the bereaved tell us about grief and how the journalist interprets it. Statements from the bereaved contained in such stories are examined to identify emergent grief themes across the genre. The research found that, despite the adoption of a more positive mood in the later stages of reporting a family’s grief, the coherent narrative was one of unyielding anguish, emptiness and continuing loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourist studies scholars have sought to differentiate tours of the picturesque, the romantic, and the sublime from those of the disgusting, the abject, and the macabre. The assumption is that tourist destinations for relaxation and play involve a notably different clientele, tour operator, and set of ethical questions than those destinations where death and tragedy once occurred. An increasingly popular framework to approach this research is ‘dark tourism’. Despite the emerging discourses questioning it, none have interrogated the trope of ‘dark’ itself. This essay identifies and interrogates the scholarly and political assumptions behind labeling tourist destinations at sites of death as ‘dark’. Then, drawing on performance theory and the authors’ own fieldwork, the essay recovers a range of ways that the performance studies turn in tourist studies can be a productive approach to studying the intersections of death and tourism, including questions of ritual, play, identity, everyday life, and embodiment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of the sociological curriculum often represents society as tragedy. This article explores the incorporation of a society as comedy component in introductory courses at two institutions using the sociological insight and social critique of comedians. A general discussion of parallels between the comedic eye and the sociological imagination is followed by specific steps for locating, selecting and incorporating comedic clips into various courses. Through comparisons between experimental and control groups, as well as student questionnaires, we found that the use of comedians to model sociological perspectives increased student ability to apply course concepts, decreased student anxiety when tackling new concepts, and engaged a broader number of students during class discussion. We conclude with discussion of challenges specific to these methods—language use and controversial comedians—as well as the broader need to learn from figures who have been historically successful at engaging the public on issues of social importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When reminded of something we would prefer not to think about, we often try to exclude the unwanted memory from awareness. Recent research indicates that people control unwanted memories by stopping memory retrieval, using mechanisms similar to those used to stop reflexive motor responses. Controlling unwanted memories is implemented by the lateral prefrontal cortex, which acts to reduce activity in the hippocampus, thereby impairing retention of those memories. Individual differences in the efficacy of these systems may underlie variation in how well people control intrusive memories and adapt in the aftermath of trauma. This research supports the existence of an active forgetting process and establishes a neurocognitive model for inquiry into motivated forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many Christian theologians and non-Christian theorists about Christianity, tragedy has no serious place in a Christian conception of the world; at best, tragedy is an episode overcome by the triumph of resurrection. Drawing on Karl Rahner's theology of freedom, this article argues that including a sense of the tragic in a Christian conception of the world can both undermine a saccharine theology immune to the threats of contingent history and, paradoxically, be a means of reengaging a Christian theology of hope, understood as commitment to the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civilization and Its Discontents is shown to occupy a special place in Freud's development of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Especially emphasized is its implications for an inclusive understanding of the reality principle. The concept tragic knots is then defined and used to emphasize Freud's readiness to include tragic elements in that principle. An extended section then illustrates the spread of tragic knots into several diverse aspects of human existence: victimization, intimacy, and maintaining privacy. Finally, implications are drawn for the clinical assessment of working through unconscious conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses events that cause what is called population-wide trauma (PWT) and how educators should deal with children who have experienced such events. The author offers the examples of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in New York City and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana as examples of PWT. The author also discusses what teachers can expect and should expect from traumatized kids, what to do if a PWT event takes place, and guidelines for both teachers and parents on how to best deal with children who have experienced PWT.

Research findings within posttraumatic growth (PTG) and terror management theory (TMT) currently appear contradictory. Following confrontations with mortality, PTG research demonstrates intrinsic goal shifts, whereas TMT suggests extrinsic shifts. The current studies examine factors contributing to these inconsistent results. Study 1 demonstrates that perceived death threat is associated with PTG effects. Study 2 illuminates the importance of duration of death processing. Study 3 demonstrates that existing goal values and duration and type of processing all interact in determining ultimate goal structure, with a match between level of goals and processing producing the most psychologically advantageous outcomes. Although previous research suggests that short-term confrontations with death may lead to defensiveness, the current studies suggest that encountering death over a longer period or in a manner consistent with goal structure may lead individuals to transcend defensiveness and maintain intrinsic goals or become more intrinsically oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The factorial structure of trauma-related stress reactions was explored using the Purdue Posttraumatic Stress Disorder revised scale, in a sample of 106 adults with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. An exploratory factor analysis yielded 2 factors, (a) arousal and passive cognitive-affective avoidance reactions and (b) re-experiencing and active avoidance reactions. The 2-factor structure, however, may also be reflective of the scale format which limits its interpretative power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on what social workers mean by oppression 30 years after it became part of the professional lexicon on practice. For countercultural workers, discussion about oppression tends to lie dormant and somewhat clichéd until faced with the reality of violent death owing to differentness.