Psychiatric disorders among employment requiring firearms.

Individuals who carry guns as a requirement of employment frequently experience hazards that can be stress inducing, violent, traumatizing, or cause personal injury. This study used data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiological Surveys (CPES; n = 20,013), to examine mental health diagnoses of individuals that ever worked at a job requiring a firearm. Consistent with existing literature, the findings indicated that those who worked in professions requiring a firearm showed similar risk of mental health diagnoses as law enforcement officers which includes symptoms of trauma, mood disorders, and alcohol use. Further, race/ethnic differences emerged in patterns of mental health diagnoses, suggesting sociocultural differences influence diagnoses. These findings indicate the necessity for further investigation of the understudied area of mental health of those within employment positions that require firearms.

Recovery After Genocide: Understanding the Dimensions of Recovery Capital Among Incarcerated Genocide Perpetrators in Rwanda.

Utilizing survey data from 302 men and women incarcerated in the Rwandan correctional system for the crime of genocide, and structured interviews with 75 prisoners, this mixed methods study draws on the concept of recovery capital to understand how individuals convicted of genocide navigate post-genocide healing. Genocide smashes physical and human capital and perverts social and cultural capital. Experiencing high levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms with more than two-thirds of the sample scoring above typical civilian cut-off levels, raised levels of depression, and high levels of anxiety, and failing physical health, the genocide perpetrators require multiple sources of recovery capital to foster internal resilience as they look forward to rebuilding their own lives.

Development of a measure of mental health stigma including police behaviors.

Various stigmatizing notions are associated with mental illness, resulting in negative personal (e.g. employment discrimination) and societal (e.g. public treatment of the mentally ill as 'dangerous' and/or 'criminal') outcomes. This study develops and validates a new multi-scale assessment tool to assess several dimensions of mental illness stigma, including perceived dangerousness, self-care, social distance, treatment amenability and predicted police behavior. A total of 641 undergraduate students from various American universities completed the new stigma measure along with two other existing measures. The results indicate that the new stigma measure has an acceptable three-factor solution consisting of self-care, dangerousness and police behavior. The self-care and dangerousness factors were found to have concurrent validity with the corresponding scales of the existing measures. Future research involving different populations, as well as the policy implications of the new police behavior factor, are discussed.