Every day there are about 6 suicides in Australia, and a further 180 attempts. Notwithstanding the enormous personal and family emotional costs, and the great financial costs, suicide is a significant concern for the criminal justice system. Since 1964, suicide rates in Australia for females (except teenagers) have fallen dramatically, and for men over 30 have fallen significantly. For teenage ...

In two studies, the robustness of anger recognition of bodily expressions is tested. In the first study, video recordings of an actor expressing four distinct emotions (anger, despair, fear, and joy) were structurally manipulated as to image impairment and body segmentation. The results show that anger recognition is more robust than other emotions to image impairment and to body segmentation. ...

1 The twentieth century has been described as the "age of melancholy" (Barker, 1992, p.24). Whilst first world countries such as New Zealand have enjoyed great improvements in life expectancy we have also become increasingly miserable. Epidemiological studies suggest a ten-fold increase in the prevalence of depression since the Second World War (Barker, 1992). The notion of 'growing' older, has...

Early childhood deprivation, attachment chaos, repeated medical traumata, and abuse set up neural networks of dread, shame, worthlessness, and hopelessness: the phenomenology of abject experience that resides in implicit memory. Abject interactions with others condense yearning and despair into complex enactments of abject suffering. Working in abject subgroups dilutes the intensity of abject m...

Through work in the field something about the reaction of bees to the brilliant colours of flowers, it was easier to believe that a scientist had come to the false conclusion that nature had made an absurd mistake. Since that time I have been constantly drawn back to the world of the bees and ever captivated anew. I have to thank them for hours of the purest joy of discovery, parsimoniously gra...

Approximately 300 children, from 0 to 18 years old, are diagnosed with cancer in Sweden every year. Of these children, 80-90 of them undergo radiotherapy treatment for their cancer. Although radiotherapy is an encounter with advanced technology, few studies have investigated the child's and the parent's view of the procedure. As part of an ongoing multicenter study aimed to improve patient prep...

Racism may well be an affect of despair. Racism may also be a central cause of despair. A telephone survey in the states of Queensland and NSW (sample 5056) examined the extent and distribution of experiences of racism. About 15 percent of Australians have experienced racism within the workplace and in education. About one-quarter of Australians report the experience of ‘everyday racisms’, such...

This paper discusses the historical geographical construction of a contaminated community in the heart of one of the largest and fastest growing Sunbelt cities in the US. Our focus is on how racial categories and attendant social relations were constructed by Whites, in late 19th and early 20th century Phoenix, Arizona, to produce a stigmatized zone of racial exclusion and economic marginality ...

This paper critically explores the political theology of Carl Schmitt. It argues that Schmitt’s analysis, which links the transcendence of God with the political concept of sovereignty, is both too nostalgic and too severe. In the place of Schmitt’s political theology that disdains democracy for the failures of modern liberalism, this paper instead draws on the recent collaborative works of Mic...