violence is a STATE of mind: and ...? | |||
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My source: Financial Times. 9 September, 2026, p.1.
Individual - Person IDENTITY Personality Character Traits Spiritual identity Religious identity brain in a vat thought experiment SPIRIT level |
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Social identity (cohesion) Collective & Cultural identity Role & Family identity Relational identity Languages media(-ted) identities | Local / Regional identity National identity: North-South :: West-East divide Organisational / Inst. identity Political GLOBAL NORTH:SOUTH |
Source: 'The Bay Horse' local pub and Coffee House.
Previously: 'identity' : 'philosophy' : 'alcohol' : 'South' : 'language'
Dear Peter, we are thrilled to invite you to our upcoming Webinar:
Ebola and Mental Health, CDC Response to Ebola in West Africa in 2014-2015 on Wednesday, 15 July at 13:00-14:00 (CEST)
What can the Ebola response in West Africa teach us about mental health, trust, and outbreak preparedness today? We warmly invite you to our upcoming webinar “Ebola and Mental Health: Lessons from the CDC Response in West Africa, 2014–2015” on July 15, 13:00–14:00 CEST.
Drawing on the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and its rapid escalation, this webinar will explore why mental health and psychosocial support must be considered an essential part of outbreak response. The session will connect past lessons to current challenges, including the ongoing Ebola outbreak caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Anna Grigoryan as our keynote speaker. Based on her personal experience and deployment to Sierra Leone in 2015 as part of the CDC Ebola Response Mission, Dr. Grigoryan will share reflections on key response activities, communication challenges, and the intersection of Ebola response and mental health. The webinar will highlight why coordinated, international, and rapidly scaled-up responses are essential to reduce illness, deaths, fear, and psychosocial distress during outbreaks.
Agenda
13:00–13:30 Keynote by Dr. Anna Grigoryan
13:30–13:50 Q&A session
13:50–14:00 Wrap-up
About the speaker
Dr. Anna Grigoryan is a physician–scientist with over 20 years of international experience leading complex public health projects, fostering innovation, and building strategic partnerships. She spearheaded the WHO–CDC Collaborating Center for Global Public Health Informatics, serving as its first Program Manager. During her tenure at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), she contributed directly to emergency responses to major crises, including the Haiti and China earthquakes, the avian influenza outbreak, and the Fukushima nuclear accident.
In 2015, Dr. Grigoryan supported the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health during the Ebola epidemic as part of the CDC Ebola Response Mission.
In her more recent role at the UN/IAEA, she managed a portfolio of projects focused on laboratory strengthening, cancer control, and emergency preparedness, supporting Member States across Africa. She has also mentored emerging leaders and promoted cultures of accountability and inclusion during periods of organizational transition.This webinar is intended for public health and mental health professionals, as well as everyone interested in Ebola response, outbreak control, pandemic preparedness, and mental health and psychosocial support.
Please note: The webinar will be recorded. If you do not wish to appear in the recording, you are welcome to keep your camera turned off.
We look forward to your participation and to an engaging discussion on the role of mental health in outbreak response.
Please register even if you cannot attend and we will let you know when the video of the webinar is available.
For any questions, feel free to contact the Hub Management Team at info AT globalhealthhub.de.
Warm regards,
Katrin
------
Katrin Würfel, Global Health Hub Germany
With these lines, partitions, axes and domains in mind, when a clinical practitioner is presented with a new person, whether as a patient, client, or carer ... they can, using Hodges' model (and other tools!) approach their assessment in an open and receptive manner.
This means that the information provided by the 'patient' can be readily fielded, captured whatever the context and situation.
As noted previously, my study of Hodges' model began in the late 1980s. Application in my work as a community mental health nurse, with an interest in informatics followed quite naturally(?). Primed as I was, for various reasons to carry this forward, I also carried a mathematical learning disability. At the risk of getting bogged down in my thought, use and approach to Hodges' model I need a challenge.
Mathematics is the challenge for me. It's fascinating how we have in-built 'calculators' that can help us catch a ball, and judge fairly well where to throw a ball for interception. There seems then to be an informal or naïve mathematics, at work unconsciously. Does the same apply to Hodges' model? If so, how can I isolate, and identify it?
I was reminded of what is a Sober toy, several years ago:
All four original purposes of Hodges' model:
- are concerned with conjunction and choice, selection. So is life itself through distinction, difference, and differentiation.
Hodges' model is a selection machine, that is both fhuman and machine driven.
A clinician may obtain the referral information through an email, a history of previous contacts can be retrieved from a clinical information system; the context and purpose supporting access to the information.
A whole series of blog posts describe the role of Hodges' model to help assure parity of esteem across mental and physical health. What does this mean in practice?
For the practitioner, they take selected data from the referral, a history - if available, an initial telephone contact, a conversation with a colleague who remembers the person re-referred and starts to populate Hodges' model. What are the psychological concepts that arise? What are the physical?
If a referral in whatever form, or a database record can be viewed as a bag-of-words, then Hodges' model is a collection of care concepts. Four bags then. Sets or classes. An experienced user of Hodges' model may position care concepts that throws attention on the INDIVIDUAL↔GROUP axis. Lying between the INTRA- INTERPERSONAL and SCIENCES domains, this axis (like all the others) earns its keep. There is work to be done that is also of interest in machine learning:
'A support vector machine (SVM) is a supervised machine learning algorithm that classifies data by finding an optimal line or hyperplane that maximizes the distance between each class in an N-dimensional space.
SVMs were developed in the 1990s by Vladimir N. Vapnik and his colleagues, and they published this work in a paper titled "Support Vector Method for Function Approximation, Regression Estimation, and Signal Processing"1 in 1995.'
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/support-vector-machine
Strange to think that perhaps the VERTICAL axis and others in Hodges' model are not precisely S-N-E-W in their bearing? There may also be several vectors at work in fact?
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| Image: c/o https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/support-vector-machine |
The word 'naïve' has been bubbling away for a good-many years. A close colleague Silvana Bettiol, Univ. of Tasmania kindly read my draft on Hodges' model as a mathematical object, and mentioned the introduction points to Bayes theorem even if informally. Even in those initial 'clinical' encounters (and social meetings, that attend to empathy, rapport and engagement...) complex judgements are being made, beliefs tested, from what is often partial and disparate sources of information.
Checking other leads led to Frequentist and Bayesian Approaches
'Statistical inference is a series of methods used to make decisions and draw conclusions based on available data. There are two primary approaches for inference: Frequentist and Bayesian. Each framework relies on a different philosophical perspective on probability and modeling, leading to different techniques and interpretations. Each has its own strengths and drawbacks, so understanding the distinctions between them is vital for researchers, data scientists, and statisticians who aim to choose the most suitable approach for their specific analysis.'
https://www.statology.org/comparing-frequentist-and-bayesian-approaches/
More reading required and threads to run.
Earlier this week I posted re. Cromer's book -
Cromer, A. (1997) Connected Knowledge: Science, Philosophy, and Education, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Before passing the book on, p.198, Chapter 8 notes, #4:
'"Understanding" is a commonly used English word which has no precise meaning. It's sometimes taken to mean the ability to apply knowledge to new situations. In this sense, it is a very high-level skill. Benchmarks for Science Literacy says, "Learning to solve problems in a variety of subject-matter contexts, if supplemented on occasion by explicit reflection on that experience, may result in the development of a generalized problem-solving ability that can be applied in new contexts' (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993)." The key word here is "may." 'We really don't know how to help students develop a generalized problem-solving ability, or whether there is such an ability apart from mere knowledge of many different problem-solving strategies. Whatever the case, since we do know how to teach students to solve specific, problems. this should be the primary focus of science education' p.198.
Ack. IBM.
Take an empty [rectangular] space (A4 paper in landscape)
Blank! Isn't it?
Take a line. Yes, call it that.
Divide the space vertically, and equally, in two.
Do this again but horizontally.
You can call these lines, partitions if you wish?
Or, as per adopted convention here, axes.
Now, there are four empty spaces.
These spaces can be called quadrants, planes, or domains. The latter term usually adopted here.
Labels can be decided, and assigned to the axes and the resulting domains.
Given a purpose, in practice (initially) the 'empty' spaces have the ability to assign significance to what may be placed within them.
Such decisions are non-trivial, in the sense that context and situation determine what follows, influenced by objective and subjective considerations.
The domains can contain concepts, or keywords with decisions driven by categorical reasoning.
The content of the domains can also be viewed as classes and sub-classes.
ii to follow (with revision here?)
Dear Colleagues
Please help connect people in your network with this ERC-funded postdoc opportunity in our department.
"The project will combine computational modelling and group-based experiments to scale individual models of epistemic vulnerability (i.e., belief in misinformation/conspiracy theories) to a social level."
Many thanks,
Mike
________________________________
The ERC-funded IDENTITY ERROR project is hiring 2 Postdoctoral Researchers (hosted in the Psychology Department in UL). The project will combine computational modelling and group-based experiments to scale individual models of epistemic vulnerability (i.e., belief in misinformation/conspiracy theories) to a social level. There is a computational post that will require some knowledge of network analysis and/or agent-based modelling, and a social psychology post that will require experience conducting behavioral experiments. We are a supportive group of interdisciplinary researchers, and we do not expect either postdoc to have full knowledge of these methods. We only expect a willingness to learn and a curious attitude. Further details on each post can be found at the links below. The closing dates for applications are October 28th (computational postdoc) and November 3rd (psychology postdoc).
Choice by dying person of how they die Anticipation of role of AI Where does mental illness 'lie'? Decision needs approval by two doctors Change in relationship between: INDIVIDUAL - | Prognosis of < 6 months Terminal diagnosis Anticipation of role of AI Seek assistance to end their life Decision needs approval by two doctors What of patients who are comatose?^ |
Profound Societal Change Quality of Life Quality of Death Impact of 'poor' death on others - friends and family Vulnerabiity of certain groups Lest we forget what happened to the nursing and care home sector during COVID* | and the STATE UK - House of Lords Oversight Panel: Legal figure e.g., King's Counsel; and a Psychiatrist Doctors and care workers not compelled to take part in assisted dying What about the psycho-POLITICS of anorexia, severe depression? |
An approach to testing and teaching
'Consider the problems of acquiring new knowledge; two ideas are particularly important. The first is that existing knowledge and conceptual structures affect the way that new materials are perceived and learned; the second is that new experiences bring about changes in our knowledge and conceptual structures. These two processes are referred to as assimilation (analogous to the way in which the stomach digests food, whose later structure cannot be recognized as being similar to its earlier structure) and accommodation (analogous to the way that the pupil of the eye adjusts itself different light levels). Biological analogies make it easier to understand these concepts but leave unresolved the question of when one accommodates and when one assimilates. In general, one accommodates (i.e. changes one's conceptual structures) when fresh knowledge provides strong challenges to what is in mind; so dramatic counter-examples to currently held beliefs, or coherent patterns in the world, which cannot be explained by existing beliefs are both likely to bring about accommodation. Assimilation (interpreting new events in terms of old ideas) can be made to work when the number of counter-examples to predictions made from old beliefs are rather low. It follows, therefore, that if misconceptions are to be remedied (i.e. the mechanism of assimilation is overcome and the mechanism of accommodation stimulated) a representative sample of questions in the domain of interest is unlikely to have the desired effect because the number of cases which violate pupils' misconceptions and which therefore might cause accommodation, will be relatively small. To foster accommodation it is necessary to provide dramatic examples which violate current conceptions and to provide these examples in quantity. Examples which are most likely to be dramatic are those in which it is obvious to pupils that the results they are obtaining using particular misconceptions are at variance with what they 'know to be true' from everyday experience.' pp.46-47.
Viewing this debate and SDGs both as information spaces, and mental health/illness can provide some insights.
'Learned helplessness' is an established phenomenon in psychological studies and history.
Adam Grant in Life&Arts, FTWeekend 29-30 March 2025, p.2.
'Many people believe that in a world of echo chambers and misinformation, it's not possible to talk anyone out of their convictions. They`re wrong. Even a bot can do it.Also helpful, as per discussion to consider AI as a new / emerging 'information space' as a literal frontier, a new territory with unknowns that businesses wish to conquer and the public must learn to trust - even as users. What knowledge - understanding is needed of what is happening in the 'box'?
In recent experiments psychologists recruited thousands of Americans who believed in unfounded conspiracy theories ranging from the moon landing being faked to 9/11 being an inside job. After the participants described their views, the psychologists randomly assigned some of them to discuss these views with an AI chatbot that was prompted to refute them.
After less than 10 minutes of conversation with a ChatGPT-based LLM, more than a quarter of participants felt uncertain about their views - and those doubts persisted two months later. Short exchanges were even enough to move the opinions of strong believers.
Why? It's not just that ChatGPT has access to infinite knowledge. It turns out that AI chatbots are better listeners than the average human. The researchers found that chatbots were persuasive because they presented information that directly challenged the reasons behind people's beliefs.'
'Two new dramas which get inside the emotional realities of dealing with ethical dilemmas. When a confused young man with no I.D. and a Doctor Who fixation is brought into hospital, the staff have clear rules about how decisions can be made on his behalf. But when he starts to make his own wishes clear, are they right to listen?
Starring Gunnar Cauthery, Clare Perkins, Simon Bubb, and Carl Prekopp. With Peter Polycarpou, Gerard McDermott, Jonathan Forbes, James Lailey, Alex Tregear, Susie Riddell and Elaine Claxton. Script Consultant: Jim Blair, St George's Healthcare NHS Trust. Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.'
My source:
Jim Blair @jimgblair - https://x.com/jimgblair/status/1906993515038429252
Spring and summer reading includes Our Housing Disaster. Julian Richer's weekly column in the Sunday Times is very interesting; business yes, but socially oriented and positive in the values conveyed.
I'm 100 pages into The Systems View of Life, posts to follow, but before getting to OHD, I noticed another of Richer's columns:
Sunday 14th July 2024
"... all the successful bosses I’ve ever worked with encourage an open flow of communications in all directions (internally — up, down, across — and with the outside world, too) with no taboos. They try to surround themselves with good people who can see the world independently, draw their own conclusions and have the confidence to express their ideas."
"It’s very difficult to craft a culture of critical thinking and open debate in a business unless it’s been taught at school, as our parents tend to be more stuck in their ways. Unfortunately, schools spend so much time on teaching and testing reading, and particularly writing, that they don’t have enough time to teach thinking and speaking. These require practice, too. And they are also very important life and business skills."
"An added benefit is that kids who have learnt calm and reasoned debate will use this knowledge to help them in their adult life. Certainly, those going on to join the business world will be very pleased to have received these negotiating and people skills, both essential."
"Transcendental standpoint Uses "thin" concepts such as "good" or "ought" in the process Take the question "Is it really true that I ought not to tell lies?" In order to answer this question some moral authority or standard must be referred to. No answer can be found because there is no universal moral standard to appeal to. SUBJECTIVE | OBJECTIVE |
A culture Moral truths exist These are: 1. Non-objectivist truths (belong to and are valid within this particular culture) 2. Non-reflective (use the "thick" concepts of the culture, e.g. "liar", "bully." These carry within them their moral meaning. For this reason, no conscious reflection is needed in identifying a truth)" p.28. | "The evaluative perspective The perspective of the person living in the culture who is stating and thinking about moral truths." |
SOCIO - TECHNICAL
The Digital Human BBC Radio 4 Aleks Krotoski | The TERRITORY | ||||
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belief my purpose |
1+1=2 0,1 ... |
| society social groups social networks |
1+1= ? "When people talk about how math is or should be apolitical, because "1+1=2" does not depend on politics and neither does the Riemann hypothesis, it seems that the only math that they can think of is pure math. This line or argument completely falls apart for applied math." @imathematicians [thread] |
My source:
https://twitter.com/imathematicians/status/1530724466073952261?s=20&t=eF1XRD9HbkSJ2XWWbIk2qQ
Previously: 'maths' , '2 + 2 = ?'
https://twitter.com/imathematicians/status/1530724466073952261?s=20&t=eF1XRD9HbkSJ2XWWbIk2qQ
... "Quine bases his “confirmation holism” upon observations of
Pierre Duhem (1914 [1954]), who drew attention to the myriad ways in
which theories are supported by evidence, and the fact that an
hypothesis is not (dis)confirmed merely by some specific experiment
considered in isolation from an immense amount of surrounding theory.
... |
... Thus, a thermometer will be a good indication of ambient temperature
only if it’s made of the right materials, calibrated
appropriately, and there aren’t any other forces at work that
might disturb the measurement—and, of course, only if the
background laws of physics and other beliefs that have informed the
design of the measurement are sufficiently correct. A failure of the
thermometer to measure the temperature could be due to a failure of
any of these other conditions, which is, of course, why experimenters
spend so much time and money constructing experiments to
“control” for them. Moreover, with a small change in our
theories or background beliefs, or just in our understanding of the
conditions for measurement, we might change the tests on which we
rely, but often without changing the meaning of the sentences whose
truth we might be trying to establish (which, as Putnam 1965 [1975]
pointed out, is precisely what practicing scientists regularly
do)." ... |
3.4 Verification and Confirmation Holism, In -
Rey, Georges, "The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
forthcoming URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/analytic-synthetic/>.
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Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to invite you to a webinar to commemorate International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation:
Thursday 3 February 2022 at 8am EST/2pm CET/4pm EAT
The webinar will bring together global stakeholders and experts to discuss the economic burden of FGM and the urgent action needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal target 5.3 on the abandonment of FGM.
The webinar will coincide with the publication of the “Economic Burden of Female Genital Mutilation in 27 High-Prevalence Countries” by BMJ Global Health, a study, conducted by WHO, in collaboration with Triangulate Health Ltd.
There will be live interpretation in French and Arabic. You can register here.
Please join us and please share the link to the event with your networks.
Kind regards,
Christina
Christina Pallitto, PhDMy source: GANM and IBPnetwork lists (and the images above).
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My source: EPI-WIN maillist: From the website ...
"Infodemic managers understand the potential for misinformation to grow rapidly and cause harm. There is evidence of rumours spreading quickly and impacting poorly on public health, public trust and vaccine acceptance. Yet every piece of viral misinformation starts small, as seen in the third frame above. At this stage, the little piece of misinformation looks innocent enough, all alone and quite innocuous. It probably doesn't have lots of social media interactions attached to it, it probably isn’t being shared very much.
Narrator: Friends, that little piece of misinformation had big plans
The image highlights why identifying information voids and emerging information hazards before they go viral is so important. If we can use the tools we have to listen to emerging concerns and questions and proactively identify information voids in conversations, we may be able to intervene early by filling in that conversation space in the third frame with high quality information before that piece of misinformation progresses to frame four. At WHO we are working with our partners on some useful tools for managing the COVID-19 infodemic. Keep an eye on the News Flash for more information."
Image credit: Man Martin/Manoverboard
I could instantly relate the image to the domains of Hodges' model as above.
"Virtually all techno-scientific decisions from the selection of research problems, to the acceptance of particular theories, to clinical, therapeutic decisions involve important and appropriate socioeconomic and political dimensions. The point here must be strong: not just that politics currently plays a role in science, but that it always has and always will. |
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The most effective teaching strategy relies on first developing the idea of a new type of topic politics as a humanity in contradistinction to the students' current dominant images of the scientific enterprise. This establishes a broader framework and prepares the way for presentation of a more sophisticated hybrid model of politics, one that allows an appreciation of both the classical humanities and social scientific traditions. Through this process one can create a legitimate and permanent place for politics on the student's intellectual map of reality." p.93. |
Bristol, T. (1986). Teaching Politics to Nurses. Politics and the Life Sciences, 5 (1), 92-102. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4235487
sub-conscious pattern recognition "Differences in belief have substantial impacts ranging from personal identity formation ... | "Our ancestors once saw the faces of gods in the stars - joining the dots in the heavens to create a celestial pantheon." Whipple |
| ... to social/group affiliation and exclusion ... |
... to national and international political dynamics." |
Sources:
Whipple, T. (2020) Join the dots for a glimpse of the Almighty, The Times, September 10. p.17.
Adam B. Weinberger, Natalie M. Gallagher, Zachary J. Warren, Gwendolyn A. English, Fathali M. Moghaddam, Adam E. Green. Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan. Nature Communications, 2020; 11: 4503 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18362-3
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| Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient |
| mind (soul - personhood) subjective (inc. PAIN) quality subject Psychotherapy & others psycho- Diagnosis: classification DSM.. dispositions, cognition, bias, beliefs mental health PURPOSE(S) 2. -PSYCHO- Intrapersonal Interpersonal (skills) Reflection - Reflexive (individual) psychology | (em-)body (machine) objective (inc. PAIN) quantity object Physiotherapy & others -somatic scientific methodBayesian formula, analgesia biomedical model, treatment Diagnosis: classification ICD SNOMED.. 1. Yes. The BIO- Thresholds, intensity, prediction cause, causality, explanation, reductionism dispositional causality, relation - flow PROCESS(ES) TIME events, clinical 'content', [Sciences(Physics,Chemistry,Biology..)] |
| (group) psychology relationships, support 3. SOCIAL model sociology (of PAIN, disease) Medical Sociology phenomenological - lived experience PRACTICE CLINICAL ENCOUNTER | political - power - autonomy Where is the individual | within the collective? 4. ... is incomplete (p.83) POLICY CLINICAL ENCOUNTER |
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| Brian E. Hodges - c/o Brian's family. |
Born in Liverpool, NW England, UK.
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS, Part-time Lecturer,
Researcher Nursing & Technology Enhanced Learning
Registered Nurse - Mental Health & General
Community Psychiatric Nursing (Cert.) MMU
PG Cert. Ed.
BA(Joint Hons.) Computing and Philosophy - BIHE - Bolton
PG(Dip.) Collaboration on Psychosocial Education [COPE] Univ. Man.
MRES. e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster Univ.
Live and work in NW England - seeking a global perspective.
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise.
Comments are disabled.
If you would like to get in touch please e-mail me at
h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
