̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - violence

A third of people from Chicago carry concealed handguns in public before they reach middle age

fpjl2 — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 09:56:48 +0000

Around a third (32%) of people who grew up in Chicago have carried a concealed firearm on the city streets at least once by the time they turn 40 years old, according to a major study of gun usage taking in a quarter of a century of data.

Urban sociologists behind the research argue that such carry rates are likely to be similar across many other major US cities.

̽��ֱ��research suggests that almost half of men (48%) have carried a concealed gun by the age of 40, compared to just 16% of women.*

̽��ֱ��study, published in Science Advances, is one of the few to track gun usage in the same US population across decades, and reveals that two-thirds of those who carried a gun in the past year started doing so in adulthood, compared to only a third who began in adolescence.

̽��ֱ��research also found that gun carrying in adolescence and adulthood may occur in response to different concerns. Those who started carrying in their teens often picked up a handgun in response to experiencing gun violence first-hand.** This was not true of those who began carrying over the age of 21.

“Among adolescents, we found a strong association between either witnessing a shooting or being shot, and beginning to carry soon after,” said Dr Charles Lanfear, study lead author from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“ ̽��ֱ��majority of people who ever carry a concealed handgun start doing so in adulthood. For those adults, we found no link between direct exposure to gun violence and gun carrying,” said Lanfear from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“This pattern suggests that gun carrying among adults may be linked to perceived threats of a more general nature, such as the idea that the world is a dangerous place, and police are incapable of ensuring public safety. Whereas gun carrying in adolescence may more often be related to direct experiences of gun violence.

“One simple but crucial fact is clear from our study, that carrying a concealed firearm is now a common event in the life course for Americans,” Lanfear said.

In the US between 1995 and 2021 some 89% of firearm homicides were committed with a handgun. However, despite the US gun stock doubling over the past quarter-century, and homicides spiking in COVID-era America, little is known about when and why people start carrying handguns.

̽��ֱ��latest study was conducted by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Pennsylvania and Harvard ̽��ֱ��. Data was taken from a representative sample of 3,403 children originally from Chicago who were tracked over a 25-year period between 1994 and 2021.

When data-gathering began in the mid-90s, children were drawn at random from 80 of Chicago’s 343 neighbourhoods and from across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum, as part of a major longitudinal study run by Harvard.

̽��ֱ��new analysis of this huge tranche of data reveals what researchers have called ‘dual pathways’ of concealed gun carrying: those who start in adolescence and those who start in adulthood, with the cut-off being the 21st birthday – the legal age for purchasing and carrying a handgun.

In addition to findings on why people carry, the team discovered that most people who carry a gun in their teens do not continue in later life, with only 37% still carrying in 2021. Those who start carrying handguns in adulthood are more persistent, with 85% still taking a gun out in public in 2021.

Moreover, the use of guns – whether it be shooting someone, shooting at someone, or brandishing a gun in self-defence – differs among the 2 groups.

Teenage gun-carriers that fired or brandished their weapons all did so for the first time before adulthood. “We found that no one who began carrying a gun in adolescence ended up using it for the first time after the age of twenty-one,” said Lanfear.

Those who picked up a gun in adulthood had a relatively steady rate of first usage over time, so that by middle age (40 years old) both groups of carriers had reached almost identical levels of gun usage: with around 40% of carriers having used a gun.

Researchers found a racial component to gun-carrying. Black individuals carried at rates over 2 times as great as those of Hispanic and white individuals. However, a previous study by the same team showed that Black city residents were twice as likely as White residents to witness a shooting by age 40.

In fact, the research found that those least likely to witness gun violence – White residents – are the most likely to start carrying a firearm in response to gun violence exposure.

While all self-described gun-carriers – whether they started in adolescence or adulthood –are more likely to have an arrest history compared to those who don’t carry guns, the researchers say their study reveals ‘stark’ differences in why and when and for how long people take guns onto the streets.

Added Lanfear: “These findings take on new relevance given recent social changes in America. In 2020 and 2021 the nation saw a sharp increase in adult gun carrying, coinciding with an uptick in gun purchases following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd. We found the same trends in adult gun-carrying among our study sample.”

Major 25-year study reveals a ‘dual pathway’ for when people start carrying.

Carrying a concealed firearm is now a common event in the life course for Americans

Charles Lanfear

Jamie Carroll/Getty

A man drawing a conceal carry pistol from an inside the waistband holster

Notes:

* ̽��ֱ��researchers found female gun-carrying to be uncommon. However, they detected a rapid increase in some cohorts at the age of 35, but these increases all occurred during the first year of COVID-19 (2020). Researchers say this is consistent with other research finding large COVID-era increases in gun ownership among groups with historically lower rates of ownership.

**Exposure to gun violence before age 15 is associated with a doubling in the probability of carrying a concealed gun between ages 15 and 21. Around 44% of adolescent gun carriers started carrying after being exposed to gun violence. In contrast, exposure to gun violence at an older age is not statistically or substantively associated with gun-carrying. Direct exposure to gun violence after age 21 is far less frequent than during adolescence.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Medieval Murder Maps: homicidal Oxford students in the 14th century

fpjl2 — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 05:59:43 +0000

A project mapping medieval England’s known murder cases has now added Oxford and York to its street plan of London’s 14th century slayings.

Extreme weather and climate events likely to drive increase in gender-based violence

cjb250 — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 22:30:22 +0000

In a study published in ̽��ֱ��Lancet Planetary Health, a team led by a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge analysed current scientific literature and found that the evidence paints a bleak picture for the future as extreme events drive economic instability, food insecurity, and mental stress, and disrupt infrastructure and exacerbate gender inequality.

Between 2000 and 2019, floods, droughts, and storms alone affected nearly 4 billion people worldwide, costing over 300,000 lives. ̽��ֱ��occurrences of these extreme events represent a drastic change, with the frequency of floods increasing by 134%, storms by 40%, and droughts by 29% over the past two decades. These figures are expected to rise further as climate change progresses.

Extreme weather and climate events have been seen to increase gender-based violence, due to socioeconomic instability, structural power inequalities, health-care inaccessibility, resource scarcity and breakdowns in safety and law enforcement, among other reasons. This violence can lead to long-term consequences including physical injury, unwanted pregnancy, exposure to HIV or other sexually transmitted infections, fertility problems, internalised stigma, mental health conditions, and ramifications for children.

To better understand the relationship between extreme events and gender-based violence, researchers carried out a systematic review of existing literature in this area. This approach allows them to bring together existing – and sometimes contradictory or under-powered – studies to provide more robust conclusions.

̽��ֱ��team identified 41 studies that explored several types of extreme events, such as storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires, alongside gender-based violence, such as sexual violence and harassment, physical violence, ‘witch’ killing, early or forced marriage, and emotional violence. ̽��ֱ��studies covered countries on all six of the major continents and all but one focused on cisgender women and girls.

̽��ֱ��researchers found evidence that gender-based violence appears to be exacerbated by extreme weather and climate events, driven by factors such as economic shock, social instability, enabling environments, and stress.

According to the studies, perpetrators of violence ranged from partners and family members, through to religious leaders, relief workers and government officials. ̽��ֱ��relationship between extreme events and gender-based violence can be expected to vary across settings due to differences in social gender norms, tradition, vulnerability, exposure, adaptive capacity, available reporting mechanisms, and legal responses. However, the experience of gender-based violence during and after extreme events seems to be a shared experience in most contexts studied, suggesting that amplification of this type of violence is not constrained geographically.

“Extreme events don’t themselves cause gender-based violence, but rather they exacerbate the drivers of violence or create environments that enable this type of behaviour,” said Kim van Daalen, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“At the root of this behaviour are systematic social and patriarchal structures that enable and normalise such violence. Existing social roles and norms, combined with inequalities leading to marginalisation, discrimination, and dispossession make women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities disproportionately vulnerable to the adverse impacts of extreme events.”

Experiencing gender-based violence can also further increase vulnerability. When faced with the likelihood of experiencing harassment or sexual violence in relief camps, for example, some women or sexual and gender minorities choose to stay home or return to their homes even before doing so is safe, placing them in additional danger from extreme events and furthering restrict their already limited access to relief resources.

Extreme events could both increase new violence and increase reporting, unmasking existing violence. Living through extreme events led some victims to feel they could no longer endure abuse or to feel less inhibited to report the abuse than before the event. However, the researchers also noted that reporting remains plagued by a number of factors including silencing of victims – particularly in countries where safeguarding a daughter’s and family’s honour and marriageability is important – as well as fears of coming forward, failures of law enforcement, unwillingness to believe victims, and the normalisation of violence.

Van Daalen added: “Disaster management needs to focus on preventing, mitigating, and adapting to drivers of gender-based violence. It’s crucial that it’s informed by the women, girls, and sexual and gender minority populations affected and takes into account local sexual and gender cultures and local norms, traditions, and social attitudes.”

Examples of such interventions include providing post-disaster shelters and relief services – including toilets and bath areas – designed to be exclusively accessed by women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities or providing emergency response teams specifically trained in prevention of gender-based violence.

Likewise, empowerment initiatives for women and sexual and gender minorities that challenge regressive gender norms to reduce vulnerability could bring opportunities to negotiate their circumstances and bring positive change. For example, women’s groups using participatory- learning-action cycles facilitated by local peers have been used to improve reproductive and maternal health by enabling women to identify and prioritise local challenges and solutions. Similar programmes could be adapted and applied in extreme event management to empower women as decision makers in local communities.

Reference
Van Daalen, KR. Extreme events and gender-based violence: a mixed-methods systematic review. Lancet Planetary Health; 14 June 2022; DOI: 10.1016/PIIS2542-5196(22)00088-2

As the climate crisis leads to more intense and more frequent extreme weather and climate-related events, this in turn risks increasing the amount of gender-based violence experienced by women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities, say researchers.

Extreme events don’t themselves cause gender-based violence, but rather they exacerbate the drivers of violence or create environments that enable this type of behaviour

Kim van Daalen

NOAA Images

Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Case studies

Hurricane Katrina, violence and intimidation

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of the USA in August 2005, gender-based violence increased, particularly interpersonal violence or intimate partner violence, and physical victimisation increased for women. Likewise, a study on internally-displaced people in Mississippi found that sexual violence and rates of intimate partner violence increased in the year following the disaster.

Furthermore, the New Orleans gay community was blamed for Hurricane Katrina, with the disaster being described as being ‘God’s punishment’. Same-sex couples were prevented from receiving relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, transgender people were threatened in shelters or prohibited access after a natural disaster, and LGBTQI people experienced physical harm and violence in post-disaster shelters.

Flooding and early marriage in Bangladesh

Studies suggest a link between flooding incidence and early marriage, with spikes in early marriages observed in Bangladesh coinciding with the 1998 and 2004 floods. Next to being viewed as a way to reduce family costs and safeguard marriageability and dignity, these marriages are often less expensive due to flood-induced impoverishment lowering expectations.

One study included an example of the head of a household explaining that the 2013 cyclone had destroyed most of his belongings, leaving him afraid that he would be unable to support his youngest unmarried daughter, who was under 18. Marrying off his daughters was a way of reducing the financial burden on the family.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Co-offenders likely to violently turn on one another, UK crime gang study shows

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:55:15 +0000

̽��ֱ��first study to take a 'network analysis' approach to patterns of violence within UK organised crime gangs (OCG) has shown that OCG members who previously offended together are likely to end up attacking one another.

̽��ֱ��research also reveals cycles of escalating violence within the criminal milieu of Thames Valley. For example, OCG members who harass other members are far more likely to become victims of violence, primarily from those they harassed.

Researchers found these 'relational effects' – whether one OCG member has worked with or fallen out with another – to be much stronger predictors of violent crime than more traditional ‘rap sheets’: prior offence lists of individuals.

̽��ֱ��study, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and using 16 years of data from Thames Valley Police, is published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. It marks an initial foray into 'networks of violence' research for the UK.

While network analyses have previously been used to help police some of the most violent cities in the USA, such as Chicago and Boston, this is the first time the technique has been deployed in a less violent European context.

“Our work shows the importance of taking relationships into account when developing policing risk factors and ‘red flags’,” said Dr Paolo Campana from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. “These techniques could help police identify at an earlier stage the social networks set to spiral into violence.”

Within the wider milieu of hardened OCG and all their known current and former associates, having co-offended – or been suspected of offending – with an OCG member dramatically increased the odds of becoming a victim of OCG violence by 56 times, typically from the former partner-in-crime.

Having harassed an OCG member or associate increased the odds of violent victimisation by a factor of 243, while those who had attacked someone in the network were 479 times more likely to become victims of violence themselves.

However, simply having a record of criminal violence, or of hard drugs offences, was found to have no significant effect on the potential for future violence.

Researchers say that such high odds ratios are due in part to limited data in this early study, but expect to see similarly strong correlations in future research. Campana is working with Cambridgeshire and Merseyside police to build bigger datasets.

“It often comes down to tit-for-tat retaliation that generates circuits of violence,” said Campana.

“In the Thames Valley data we can see how prior co-offending relationships turn sour and become a mechanism for further violence. Harassment within criminal networks also dramatically increases the potential for violence.”

“Violence is like a virus, it spreads through proximity and familiarity. Those within certain social bubbles are most at risk. In some US cities, co-offending bubbles account for over 80% of the violence,” he said.

“As we collect more data, we can expect to identify more of the chains and feedback loops that sustain violence and render it endemic within groups and locations.”

̽��ֱ��study used anonymised records from Thames Valley Police between 2000 and 2016 to build a network model for organised crime across a population of just over two million, including cities such as Oxford and Reading.

Definitions of an OCG member includes those working with others to 'commit serious crime on a continuing basis', with elements of planning, structure and coordination.

Campana and his colleague Dr Nynke Niezink from Carnegie Mellon ̽��ֱ�� in the USA analysed a criminal environment of 6,234 individuals, of which 833 were longstanding OCG: active as part of a gang for two years both before and after their first and last recorded offences.

Overall, belonging to an OCG carried a slightly lower risk of becoming a victim of violence than those in the wider criminal network, but it increased the risk of being attack by fellow gang members.

Researchers whittled over 23,000 events down to 156 OCG-instigated violent acts with sufficient data on the connections and criminal histories of the gang members involved.

Acts included murder and attempted murder, manslaughter, assault, and actual and grievous bodily harm with and without intent. Related incidents of threats and harassment were added to data models in addition to core acts of violence.

̽��ֱ��hardened OCG members were overwhelmingly male (93%), and most had been active in drug dealing. Half (51%) had been involved in a violent act, while a quarter (26%) had been a victim of violence.

̽��ֱ��few female OCG members were twice as likely as male members to be victims of violence. This was despite researchers removing incidents related to domestic violence.

Police initially supplied records on all events involving at least one OCG member as offender or victim, along with information on all others connected to the event.

Over the data period, the average size of a crime gang in Thames Valley’s jurisdiction – which includes cities such as Oxford and Reading – was 5-6 members, with the largest composed of 21 members.

Researchers use over a decade of data from Thames Valley Police to reveal 'mechanisms' that generate and sustain violence within networks of organised crime.

Violence is like a virus, it spreads through proximity and familiarity

Paolo Campana

West Midlands Police

Arrest warrant executed in West Bromwich, UK

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Young people who experience bullying are more likely to fantasise about committing acts of violence – study

fpjl2 — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 08:33:56 +0000

While research has shown that significant numbers of people fantasise about inflicting harm, little is known about the processes behind such 'violent ideations'.

A team led by a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge professor tracked the self-reported thoughts and experiences of 1,465 young people from schools across the Swiss city of Zurich at the ages of 15, 17 and 20.

Researchers gathered data on whether violent thoughts had occurred in the last 30 days, and the types of bullying or aggression experienced over the last 12 months.

They used questionnaires to probe the levels of aggression (humiliation, beatings, murder) and imagined targets (strangers, friends) within young people’s darkest fantasies.

̽��ֱ��team also asked about experiences of 23 forms of 'victimisation', such as taunts, physical attacks and sexual harassment by peers, aggressive parenting – yelling, slapping, hitting with a belt – and dating violence eg being pressured into sex.

While the majority of teenagers had been victimised in at least one way, experiencing a range of mistreatment was 'closely associated' with a higher likelihood of thinking about killing, attacking or humiliating others.

Boys were more prone to violent thinking in general, but the effect of multiple victimisations on violent fantasies was very similar in both sexes.

Among 17-year-old boys who had not been victimised in the preceding year, the probability of violent fantasies in the last month was 56%.

With every additional type of mistreatment, the probability of violent fantasies increased by up to 8%. Those who listed five forms of victimisation had an 85% probability of having had violent fantasies; for those who listed ten it was 97%.

Among girls the same age, no victimisation experience had a violent fantasy probability of 23%, which increased to 59% in those who listed five types of mistreatment, and 73% in those who said they had suffered ten.

“One way to think about fantasies is as our brain rehearsing future scenarios,” said Prof Manuel Eisner, Director of Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre and lead author of the study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.

“ ̽��ֱ��increased violent fantasies among those who experience bullying or mistreatment may be a psychological mechanism to help prepare them for violence to come,” he said.

“These fantasies of hitting back at others may have roots deep in human history, from a time when societies were much more violent, and retribution – or the threat of it – was an important form of protection.”

According to Eisner, the research hints at the extent of violent ideation in societies as seemingly peaceful as Switzerland – with murderous thoughts surprisingly commonplace.

“About 25% of all 17-year-old boys and 13% of girls reported having at least one fantasy of killing a person they know during the past 30 days. Close to one in five of all the study participants at that age. These thoughts may be deeply troubling to those who experience them,” he said.

̽��ֱ��team – including researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Zurich, ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, ̽��ֱ�� of Utrecht, ̽��ֱ�� of Leiden, and Universidad de la Republica – collected and analysed a wealth of data.

As such, they were able to filter out and ‘control’ for other possible triggers for violent thinking in the teenagers. For example, they found that socio-economic status played little role in violent fantasy rates.

̽��ֱ��study also shows that 'adverse life events' such as financial troubles or parental separation had no significant impact. “Thoughts of killing others are triggered by experiences of interpersonal harm-doing, attacks on our personal identity, rather than noxious stimuli more generally,” said Eisner.

“It’s the difference between conditions that make people angry and upset, and those that make people vengeful.”

By following most of the teenagers to the cusp of adulthood, researchers could track patterns over several years. Overall rates of the most extreme thoughts decreased by the age of 20: only 14% of young men and 5.5% of women had thought about killing someone they know in the past month.

However, the effects of victimisation on violent fantasies did not lessen as they grew up, suggesting the intensity of this psychological mechanism may not fade.

“This study did not examine whether violent ideations caused by victimisation actually lead to violent behaviour. However, a consistent finding across criminology is that victims often become offenders, and vice versa,” said Eisner.

“Fantasies are unrestrained, and the vengeance taken in our minds is often wildly disproportionate to the real-world event which triggered it.

“Studying the mechanisms behind violent fantasies, particularly at a young age, may help with targeted interventions that can stop obsessive rumination turning horribly real.”

Experiencing bullying and forms of aggression in late adolescence and early adulthood is linked to a marked increase in the likelihood of having daydreams or fantasies about hurting or killing people, according to a new study.

It’s the difference between conditions that make people angry and upset, and those that make people vengeful

Manuel Eisner

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Scriptures rarely a significant motivating factor behind violence, say researchers

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 15:06:14 +0000

When acts of violence are reported in London, New York, or the Middle East, people often wonder what role religion might have played. Especially if Muslims are involved, there can also be a tendency to point fingers at the Qur’an. These knee-jerk reactions are not very helpful, the authors of Scripture and Violence suggest, and can lead to increased polarization in society, as well as unwarranted animosity against Muslims and people of other faiths.

Bringing together scholars from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and other institutions around the world, the contributors to Scripture and Violence set out to clarify the relationship between violent-sounding passages from the Bible and the Qur’an and the actions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the real world. They concluded that there is much less cause for alarm than many people think.

Contrary to popular belief, scriptures are rarely a significant motivating factor when acts of violence occur, the researchers found. One researcher interviewed potential and actual ISIS recruits, and discovered that the Qur’an had not played a significant role in motivating them to join. A desire to be involved in “bad-ass-do-goodery” was much more influential.

Another researcher analysed Muslim debates about suicide attacks, and found that while some Islamic scholars had cited verses from the Qur’an to argue that suicide attacks are permissible in certain limited contexts, other Islamic scholars had used the Qur’an to argue that Muslims are prohibited from carrying out such attacks at all. These scholars all treated the Qur’an as sacred, but they disagreed about what actions were permissible. Political arguments were also much more prominent in the debates than discussion of the Qur’an, which played only a marginal role.

̽��ֱ��authors of Scripture and Violence also argue that there is no need to be afraid of scary-looking scriptural passages.

“Some people think that the best strategy for preventing violence is to pretend certain scriptural passages don’t exist,” explains co-editor and New Testament scholar Julia Snyder. “But that’s counterproductive. Instead, find out how people within these religious traditions actually understand these scriptures.

“When the Qur’an or the Bible talks about violence, religious people most often understand that as linked to specific historical contexts. Or they say that very specific conditions would have to be met for violent action to be taken. They don’t think these passages call for violence now – even people who view their scriptures as the Word of God.”

Clearing up misunderstandings about these issues will help overcome existing divisions within society, the researchers hope, and enable people of all faiths and none to focus on tackling urgent economic and social issues together.

“As lockdowns end and societies open up again, and as we seek to rebuild our communities together, it’s important not to let unwarranted anxiety about people of other backgrounds or religious faiths get in the way,” emphasizes co-editor Daniel H. Weiss from Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity. “This is a great time to let go of polarizing and inaccurate ideas about how religion and scripture actually work. In fact, within these religious traditions, active grappling with tough passages can generate creative new solutions for dealing with present-day concerns.”

According to the researchers, addressing fears about scripture and violence can enable people to recognize other prominent aspects of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scriptures – such as concern for the underprivileged and an emphasis on justice – and use scripture to reflect and debate together about what a good society would look like.

Scripture and Violence is available from 1 September 2020. Published by Routledge, the book includes contributions from international experts on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim texts and traditions, who discuss key issues in interpretation of the Bible and the Qur’an, and highlight the diverse ways in which Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities understand scriptural texts. A variety of contexts are visited, from British India to Nazi Germany, from the Jerusalem Pride Parade to American evangelicals and the US military, and from CNN to European university classrooms.

Many people misunderstand the relationship between religion, scripture and violence, a new book argues. Some people worry that scriptures such as the Qur’an and the Bible fan the flames of violence in the world today, while others insist that they are inherently peaceful. According to an international team of researchers, the reality may be more complicated than either set of people think.

Some people think that the best strategy for preventing violence is to pretend certain scriptural passages don’t exist. But that’s counterproductive. Instead, find out how people within these religious traditions actually understand these scriptures

Julia Snyder

slagheap

World Trade Centre 9/11

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Have we misunderstood post-traumatic stress disorder?

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:08:30 +0000

It’s long been assumed that war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stems from how well a person copes psychologically with exposure to violence or the threat of violence. A new study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, finds that this is only half the story, however.

̽��ֱ��researchers behind the study say that the context through which war is experienced – based on a person’s cultural, professional and organisational background – may be equally important in determining how warfare can be traumatic for some and not for others.

̽��ֱ��research focused on military doctors in Afghanistan, and found that the “dissonance” between what the medics experienced on the ground and their values as dedicated professionals resulted in “senselessness, futility and surreality” – factors that can lead to PTSD and other mental health problems.

“This understanding of the connection between PTSD and the context of those who suffer from it could change the way mental health experts analyse, prevent and manage psychological injury from warfare,” said Mark de Rond of ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Judge Business School, who co-authored the study with Jaco Lok of the ̽��ֱ�� of New South Wales Business School in Australia.

“ ̽��ֱ��study highlights the urgent and serious nature of dealing with PTSD – beyond the very real impact on many veterans, to others who work in the theatre of war, such as medical personnel,” says Lok.

Between 20 and 30 per cent of the 2.7 million US troops sent to Iraq or Afghanistan between 2001 and 2011 returned with some form of psychological injury, says the US Department of Veterans Affairs, while the British charity Combat Stress reported a four-fold increase in former service personnel seeking help for mental disorders in the past 20 years. In 2013, a former commander of Australian forces in the Middle East warned of a “large wave of sadness coming our way.”

̽��ֱ��new study is based on fieldwork by de Rond, Reader in Strategy & Organisation at Cambridge Judge Business School, who was “embedded” with a team of military surgeons at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan for six weeks in 2011 – and includes tales both harrowing and tragi-comic.

“ ̽��ֱ��doctors I was embedded with were known as Rear Located Medics, who don’t have a combat role, so they have less reason to fear for their lives than frontline personnel,” says de Rond. “Studying this group was an excellent way to look beyond psychological reaction to the horrors of warfare in order to also analyse contextual elements that lead to PTSD.”

For example, the Camp Bastion army medics were particularly disturbed by rules of the camp’s small 50-bed field hospital that required the quick transfer of badly mutilated children (often double amputees due to Improvised Explosive Devices encountered while playing) and other Afghan civilians to inferior local hospitals, often within 48 hours, to make way for new battlefield casualties. This was a specific, local organisational requirement.

“(It was) difficult for them to come terms with rules, practices and experiences on the ground that appeared contradictory to their purpose and values, thus amplifying feelings of senselessness,” the study says.

As an example of the surreal hopelessness faced by the medics, the study relates a conversation between two medics: “They talked about the frustration of bringing a stable, anesthetised patient over to some hospital only to be met by an empty van, having to hand over a wired-up patient to someone with no equipment at all.”

This practice tore at the fabric of their professional purpose and responsibility and highlighted the contrast between the medics’ actual experience in a warfare setting with their professional expectations as doctors – a life of “the meaningful, the good and the normal.”

̽��ֱ��doctors’ real names are not used, but the study instead substitutes the names of characters such as “Trapper,” “Hawkeye” and “Potter” from the hit TV show “M*A*S*H”. Among de Rond’s field notes chronicled in the study, some incidents seem like they could have come out of the “M*A*S*H” gallows-humour playbook:

“One of the theatre nurses told me of an experience over Easter weekend, when a double amputee had come in… One of his legs had come off, and (the nurse) was asked to please take it to the mortuary (and from there to the incinerator). As he crossed the ambulance bay carrying a yellow (container) with a leg, he ran into the Commanding Officer and a TNC (Travel Nurse Corps) nurse walking the other way, dressed in bunny ears and carrying Easter eggs.”

Such a contrast “between the human gravity of the situation on the one hand, and the casual nature of everyday rituals and routines on the other” can have a very disorienting effect, the study says.

When such disorientation is sustained over time, it can also permanently damage the ability of everyday rituals and routines to provide a sense of meaning and predictability to life back home. This may be one important reason why many war veterans find it so difficult to adjust back to home life.

Camp Bastion, which was constructed in 2005 and handed over to Afghan forces in 2014, was the largest British overseas military camp since World War II, accommodating 32,000 people. ̽��ֱ��field hospital was staffed by mostly British and American doctors, with some Danes and Estonians, many of them “battle-hardened” by previous deployments to other war zones such as Bosnia and Sierra Leone.

Reference:
Mark de Rond and Jaco Lok. ‘Some things can never be unseen: the role of context in psychological injury at war.’ Academy of Management Journal (2016). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2015.0681

Adapted from a Cambridge Judge Business School press release.

In understanding war-related post-traumatic stress disorder, a person’s cultural and professional context is just as important as how they cope with witnessing wartime events, which could change the way mental health experts analyse, prevent and manage psychological injury from warfare.

This understanding of the connection between PTSD and the context of those who suffer from it could change the way mental health experts analyse, prevent and manage psychological injury from warfare.

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Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 17:35:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��fossilised bones of a group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were massacred around 10,000 years ago have been unearthed 30km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya, at a place called Nataruk.

Researchers from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES) found the partial remains of 27 individuals, including at least eight women and six children.

Twelve skeletons were in a relatively complete state, and ten of these showed clear signs of a violent death: including extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men.

Several of the skeletons were found face down; most had severe cranial fractures. Among the in situ skeletons, at least five showed “sharp-force trauma”, some suggestive of arrow wounds. Four were discovered in a position indicating their hands had probably been bound, including a woman in the last stages of pregnancy. Foetal bones were uncovered.

̽��ֱ��bodies were not buried. Some had fallen into a lagoon that has long since dried; the bones preserved in sediment.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest these hunter-gatherers, perhaps members of an extended family, were attacked and killed by a rival group of prehistoric foragers. Researchers believe it is the earliest scientifically-dated historical evidence of human conflict – an ancient precursor to what we call warfare.

̽��ֱ��origins of warfare are controversial: whether the capacity for organised violence occurs deep in the evolutionary history of our species, or is a symptom of the idea of ownership that came with the settling of land and agriculture.

̽��ֱ��Nataruk massacre is the earliest record of inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were largely nomadic. ̽��ֱ��only comparable evidence, discovered in Sudan in the 1960s, is undated, although often quoted as of similar age. It consists of cemetery burials, suggesting a settled lifestyle.

“ ̽��ֱ��deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war,” said Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge’s LCHES, who directs the ERC-funded IN-AFRICA Project and led the Nataruk study, published today in the journal Nature.

“These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers,” she said.

̽��ֱ��site was first discovered in 2012. Following careful excavation, the researchers used radiocarbon and other dating techniques on the skeletons – as well as on samples of shell and sediment surrounding the remains – to place Nataruk in time. They estimate the event occurred between 9,500 to 10,500 years ago, around the start of the Holocene: the geological epoch that followed the last Ice Age.

Now scrubland, 10,000 years ago the area around Nataruk was a fertile lakeshore sustaining a substantial population of hunter-gatherers. ̽��ֱ��site would have been the edge of a lagoon near the shores of a much larger Lake Turkana, likely covered in marshland and bordered by forest and wooded corridors.

This lagoon-side location may have been an ideal place for prehistoric foragers to inhabit, with easy access to drinking water and fishing – and consequently, perhaps, a location coveted by others. ̽��ֱ��presence of pottery suggests the storage of foraged food.

“ ̽��ֱ��Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources – territory, women, children, food stored in pots – whose value was similar to those of later food-producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life,” said Mirazón Lahr.

“This would extend the history of the same underlying socio-economic conditions that characterise other instances of early warfare: a more settled, materially richer way of life. However, Nataruk may simply be evidence of a standard antagonistic response to an encounter between two social groups at that time.”

Click on images to enlarge

Antagonism between hunter-gatherer groups in recent history often resulted in men being killed, with women and children subsumed into the victorious group. At Nataruk, however, it seems few, if any, were spared.

Of the 27 individuals recorded, 21 were adults: eight males, eight females, and five unknown. Partial remains of six children were found co-mingled or in close proximity to the remains of four adult women and of two fragmentary adults of unknown sex.

No children were found near or with any of the men. All except one of the juvenile remains are children under the age of six; the exception is a young teenager, aged 12-15 years dentally, but whose bones are noticeably small for his or her age.

Ten skeletons show evidence of major lesions likely to have been immediately lethal. As well as five – possibly six – cases of trauma associated with arrow wounds, five cases of extreme blunt-force to the head can be seen, possibly caused by a wooden club. Other recorded traumas include fractured knees, hands and ribs.

Three artefacts were found within two of the bodies, likely the remains of arrow or spear tips. Two of these are made from obsidian: a black volcanic rock easily worked to razor-like sharpness. “Obsidian is rare in other late Stone Age sites of this area in West Turkana, which may suggest that the two groups confronted at Nataruk had different home ranges,” said Mirazón Lahr.

One adult male skeleton had an obsidian ‘bladelet’ still embedded in his skull. It didn’t perforate the bone, but another lesion suggests a second weapon did, crushing the entire right-front part of the head and face. “ ̽��ֱ��man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon’s shallow water,” said Mirazón Lahr.

Another adult male took two blows to the head – one above the right eye, the other on the left side of the skull – both crushing his skull at the point of impact, causing it to crack in different directions.

̽��ֱ��remains of a six-to-nine month-old foetus were recovered from within the abdominal cavity of one of the women, who was discovered in an unusual sitting position – her broken knees protruding from the earth were all Mirazón Lahr and colleagues could see when they found her. ̽��ֱ��position of the body suggests that her hands and feet may have been bound.

The Nataruk remains are now housed at the Turkana Basin Institute, Turkwell Station, for the National Museums of Kenya.

While we will never know why these people were so violently killed, Nataruk is one of the clearest cases of inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers, says Mirazón Lahr, and evidence for the presence of small-scale warfare among foraging societies.

For study co-author Professor Robert Foley, also from Cambridge’s LCHES, the findings at Nataruk are an echo of human violence as ancient, perhaps, as the altruism that has led us to be the most cooperative species on the planet.

“I’ve no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving. A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin,” Foley said.

Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago on the shores of a lagoon is unique evidence of a violent encounter between clashing groups of ancient hunter-gatherers, and suggests the “presence of warfare” in late Stone Age foraging societies.

̽��ֱ��deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Left: Skull of a man found lying prone in the lagoons sediments. ̽��ֱ��skull has multiple lesions consistent with wounds from a blunt implement. Right: ̽��ֱ��skull in situ.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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