Co-Deployment is an Answer, but What are the Questions? Insights from Officer Focus Groups in Philadelphia.

Cities have been experimenting with less police-centered models for responding to people experiencing mental health crises. Ten focus groups were conducted with Philadelphia police officers to understand their experiences encountering mental health distress in the community and their perspectives on a new co-deployment initiative. There was general consensus that conventional police-centered responses to mental health concerns are often problematic. However, perspectives varied on the value of co-deployment and the general feasibility of reducing police involvement. This variation is traced to different notions of what constitutes a mental health crisis, whether crises are prospectively identifiable, how dangerousness is assessed, and whether civilian co-response partners will effectively complete key response activities. Bringing greater understanding and consensus to these issues is essential to healthier and more effective responses to mental health crises.

Experiences with the Philadelphia police assisted diversion program: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: The U.S. relies far too heavily on punitive criminal justice strategies to address problems that are better prevented and resolved through social and health services. The resulting harms are especially large and longstanding for people trapped in the failed War on Drugs. Philadelphia launched a Police Assisted Diversion (PAD) program to address the highest rates of poverty, incarceration, and fatal overdose among large cities in the U.S. PAD enables police officers to connect people with supportive services in many instances that would otherwise result in arrest or through outreach when no crime is suspected. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 clients, 15 police officers, and 12 other personnel involved with the program. Data were gathered in 2019 and 2020 and analyzed using standard qualitative methods. RESULTS: PAD represents a new less-punitive model for responding to illegal purchasing of drugs, possession of drugs, prostitution, and retail theft in Philadelphia. Clients reported mostly positive experiences with the program, identifying the primary benefits as avoided arrest and relational support from affiliated service providers. Police officers expressed support for the program in principle but skepticism about its effects in practice, questioning the quality of available services. Program personnel and police officers described multi-sectoral collaboration as essential to addressing frequent and diverse logistical challenges, including overly restrictive eligibility criteria, mistrust between police and service providers, and coordination across different neighborhoods. Finally, all three groups suggested that people can only benefit from service linkages when they are ready to engage and that inadequate access to resources like housing limits program effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The PAD program is a promising public health intervention for diverting people away from punishment and towards services to address unmet social and health needs. But increasing investments in training and in other supportive services is essential to sustainable and transformational change.

Provider and Patient Perspectives on a New Tangible Decision Aid Tool to Support Patient-Centered Contraceptive Counseling with Adolescents and Young Adults.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Despite the benefits of patient-centered contraceptive care, many adolescents and young adults do not receive such care. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate Hello Options, a tangible decision aid to support patient-centered contraceptive counseling with adolescents and young adults in a clinic setting. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, INTERVENTION, AND MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Hello Options is a contraceptive counseling decision aid tool (hereafter referred to as "the Tool") that allows patients to see and feel life-size "tangible" models of the range of contraceptive methods. The Tool was developed by a team of designers, adolescents, clinicians, and researchers using human-centered design. From December 2019 to March 2020, we conducted a pilot study to evaluate the usability, feasibility, and acceptability of the Tool with 10 contraceptive care providers and 40 adolescent and young adult patients (aged 12-29 years) at two Chicago clinics. We calculated descriptive statistics for patient survey data, and qualitatively analyzed provider interview transcripts for salient themes using recursive abstraction. RESULTS: Patients had positive reactions to the Tool, reporting that it allowed them to better understand how contraceptive methods work in their body and that it allowed them to make more informed decisions. Furthermore, providers commented that the Tool facilitated conversations with their patients, helped dispel myths about particular methods, and eased patients' anxieties. Limitations mentioned included storage and portability concerns, and time constraints for counseling. CONCLUSION: Hello Options is a useful, feasible, and acceptable decision aid that can support the provision of patient-centered contraceptive care for young people.

Escaping mental fixation: incubation and inhibition in creative problem solving.

The inhibition underlying retrieval-induced forgetting has been argued to play a crucial role in the ability to overcome interference in memory and cognition. Supporting this conjecture, recent research has found that participants who exhibit greater levels of retrieval-induced forgetting are better at overcoming fixation on the Remote Associates Test (RAT) than are participants who exhibit reduced levels of retrieval-induced forgetting. If the ability to inhibit inappropriate responses improves the ability to solve fixated RAT problems, then reducing the fixation caused by inappropriate responses should reduce the correlation between retrieval-induced forgetting and problem solving. We tested this hypothesis by inserting an incubation period between two 30-second problem-solving attempts: half of the participants were given an incubation period (distributed condition), half were not (continuous condition). In the continuous condition retrieval-induced forgetting correlated positively with problem-solving performance during both the initial and final 30 seconds of problem solving. In the distributed condition retrieval-induced forgetting only correlated with problem-solving performance during the first 30 seconds of problem solving. This finding suggests that incubation reduces the need for inhibition by reducing the extent to which problem solvers suffer fixation.

Selective cues to forget can fail to cause forgetting.

Recent research has found that individuals can selectively forget a subset of items through directed forgetting. The goal of the present study was to replicate this selective directed forgetting effect and elucidate its underlying mechanisms. Unfortunately, results from four experiments failed to find any evidence of selective directed forgetting. Participants failed to forget any items when instructed to forget a subset of items from a first list before learning a second list. Participants were only successful in forgetting items from the first list when they were instructed to forget all items from the first list before learning the second list.