Author Archive for kathryn

Congratulations to Eugenia Weiss, Jose E. Coll and Michael Metal the winners of the International Award for Excellence in the area of health and wellness with their paper The Influence of Military Culture and Veteran Worldviews on Mental Health Treatment: Practice Implications for Combat Veteran Help-seeking and Wellness.

 Abstract: The influence of military cultural values consisting of unit cohesion (or the subordination of individual needs over the needs of the collective) the devotion to duty and to the mission, stoicism (emotional restraint) and the importance of adhering to the chain of command become guiding belief systems for military personnel. In fact, military culture has been recognized as a distinct sub-culture of American civilian society. Thus, in order to effectively reach veterans, practitioners need to explore the culturally based constructs of the warrior mentality or worldview. Mental health workers need to consider how military cultural values held by veterans interact with perceptions of trauma and affect their help seeking behaviors in general. Data shows that service personnel tend to under-report their mental health symptoms; are reluctant to seek out mental health services and if they do engage in treatment; they prematurely drop out of services. The reasons for this are complex, from the stigma associated with mental health issues, to the potential for negative work-related repercussions especially for the active duty service personnel (i.e., loss of promotion, medical discharge, or losing security clearance).

However, the authors believe that the reluctance for seeking services has more to do with the veteran’s worldview, than with the other reasons noted. Even though the U.S. military is making a concerted effort to de-stigmatize mental health and is attempting to ensure confidentiality and minimize negative career consequences, the reluctance continues to affect early intervention. The phenomenon described here with regards to treatment participation and compliance parallels the findings from the literature on cultural diversity and seeking therapy. It has been well established, that when working with culturally diverse clients, more than half do not return to therapy for a second session (Sue & Sue, 1999).

The authors have borrowed from Brown and Landum-Brown’s (1995) worldview dimensions to help us understand how worldviews and values (as adapted to military culture and “warrior ethos”) can impact a veteran’s attitude about seeking mental health services. Practical examples will be provided of how this model can be applied to combat veterans as a method of understanding their help seeking behaviors in order to more promote wellness in the veteran client population.

The International Journal of Health, Wellness and Society seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe will become one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

• write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
• collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
• actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
• assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
• promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
• maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

• They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
• They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

1. a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
2. a curriculum vitae
3. a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@healthandsociety.com

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.