Rural Communities Under Stress

Rural Communities Under Stress
Author: Jonathan Barker
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1989
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521313582

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African Society Today: Peasant farmers and the state in Africa: Disaster in rural sub-Saharan Africa has become a regular, almost annual event in recent years. In 1985 it was estimated that 10 million Africans left their homes and fields because they were unable to support themselves and that an additional 20 million were reported to be at risk of debilitating hunger.

Crisis in the American Heartland

Crisis in the American Heartland
Author: George W. Doherty
Publisher: Loving Healing Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1615990755

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Who will step up to meet the challenge of the next rural crisis? Rural practice presents important yet challenging issues for psychology, especially givenuneven population distribution, high levels of need, limited availability of rural services, and ongoing migration to urban centers. It is critical that mental health professionals andfirst responders in rural areas become aware of recent research, training and approachesto crisis intervention, traumatology, compassion fatigue, disaster mental health, critical incidentstress management, post-traumatic stress and related areas in rural environments.Critical issues facing rural areas include: Physical issues such as land, air, and water resources, cheap food policy, chemicalsand pesticides, animal rights, corruption in food marketing and distribution, and landappropriation for energy development.Quality of life issues such as rural America's declining share of national wealth, problems ofhunger, education, and rural poverty among rural populations of farmers and ranchers.Direct service issues include the need to accommodate a wide variety of mental healthdifficulties, client privacy and boundaries, and practical challenges.Indirect service issues include the greater need for diverse professional activities, collaborativework with professionals having different orientations and beliefs, program developmentand evaluation, and conducting research with few mentors or peer collaborators.Professional training and development issues include lack of specialized relevantcourses and placements.Personal issues include limited opportunities for recreation, culture, and lack of privacy. Doherty's first volume in this new series "Crisis in the American Heartland" explores theseand many other issues.Social Science: Disasters & Disaster Relief For more information please visit www.RMRInstitute.org

Communities in Action

Communities in Action
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Rural Families and Communities in the United States

Rural Families and Communities in the United States
Author: Jennifer E. Glick
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2020-03-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3030376893

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This book examines the implications of rural residence for adolescents and families in the United States, addressing both the developmental and mental health difficulties they face. Special attention is given to the unique circumstances of minority families residing in rural areas and how these families navigate challenges as well as their sources of resilience. Chapters describe approaches for enhancing the well-being of rural minority youth and their families. In addition, chapters discuss the challenges of conducting research within rural populations and propose new frameworks for studying these diverse communities. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for reducing the barriers to health and positive development in rural settings. Featured topics include: Changes in work and family structures in the rural United States. Rural job loss to offshoring and automation. The opioid crisis in the rural United States. Prosocial behaviors in rural U.S. Latino/a youth. Demographic changes across nonmetropolitan areas. Rural Families and Communities in the United States is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, family studies, public health as well as numerous interrelated disciplines, including sociology, demography, social work, prevention science, educational policy, political science, and economics.

Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment in Rural America

Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment in Rural America
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2006-02-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309180570

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Throughout much of its history, the United States was predominantly a rural society. The need to provide sustenance resulted in many people settling in areas where food could be raised for their families. Over the past century, however, a quiet shift from a rural to an urban society occurred, such that by 1920, for the first time, more members of our society lived in urban regions than in rural ones. This was made possible by changing agricultural practices. No longer must individuals raise their own food, and the number of person-hours and acreage required to produce food has steadily been decreasing because of technological advances, according to Roundtable member James Merchant of the University of Iowa. The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Science, Research, and Medicine held a regional workshop at the University of Iowa on November 29 and 30, 2004, to look at rural environmental health issues. Iowa, with its expanse of rural land area, growing agribusiness, aging population, and increasing immigrant population, provided an opportunity to explore environmental health in a region of the country that is not as densely populated. As many workshop participants agreed, the shifting agricultural practices as the country progresses from family operations to large-scale corporate farms will have impacts on environmental health. This report describes and summarizes the participants' presentations to the Roundtable members and the discussions that the members had with the presenters and participants at the workshop.

Endangered Spaces, Enduring Places

Endangered Spaces, Enduring Places
Author: Janet M. Fitchen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429719051

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Rural America as a place and a way of life is undergoing major transformation. The farm crisis and the decline of manufacturing dealt a double blow to the rural economy in the 1980s. Rural communities continue to lose farms, factories, and young people. Rural lands are increasingly being sought as places for vacation homes, state prisons, and waste dumps. Rural people are ambivalent about new residents and activities that are coming in and unsure of their own rural identity. Old assumptions about rural life and rural community are now open to question. Based on years of field observations and hundreds of interviews in fifteen rural counties in upstate New York, Fitchen's book explores these interconnected changes. It describes the financial stress in dairy farming and the efforts families made to hold onto their farms. It records the stunned disbelief and difficult adjustment of rural factory workers and small communities as local plants shut down. The author chronicles the struggles of communities plagued by toxic chemicals in their drinking water and of young families slipping farther into poverty. She reports on some communities that are campaigning to "win" a state prison and others that are protesting against a proposed radioactive waste dump. The book illustrates the persistence of rural ingenuity and determination but argues that these alone cannot solve the problems of rural America. A well-informed federal and state commitment is necessary. With policies and programs appropriate for rural situations, most communities could adapt creatively to the changes, integrate around a new rural identity, and survive into the twenty-first century as enduring social settings for their residents.

Families in Troubled Times

Families in Troubled Times
Author: Glen Holl Elder
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 324
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202366050

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The turbulent decade of the 1980s began with financial calamity in several sectors of the United States economy, from automaking to agriculture. The rural Midwest experienced its worst economic decline since the Depression years. Thousands of farmers lost their operations, and the small rural communities that serve agriculture often changed from prosperous business centers to struggling villages with many empty buildings and boarded-up storefronts along their main streets. Families in Troubled Times examines the plight of several hundred rural families who have lived through these difficult years. The participants in the Iowa Youth and Families Project, the subjects of the present study, include farmers, people from small towns, and those who lost farms and other businesses as a result of the "farm crisis." The book traces the influence of economic hardship on the emotions, behavior, and relationships of parents, children, siblings, husbands, and wives. The results of the study show that although economic stress has a powerful adverse effect on individuals and families, countervailing social influence can help to blunt these negative processes and to assist in the repair of the personal and interpersonal damage they produce.

Psychoneuroimmunology

Psychoneuroimmunology
Author: Karl Goodkin
Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2008-11-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1585628182

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Psychoneuroimmunology has emerged as a discipline advancing our knowledge of the relationships among psychosocial factors, the central nervous system, the immune system, and disease. The growing volume of evidence suggests that psychological states, including exposure to stressors and the presence of depressive states, may influence health and disease by altering immunologic states. Psychoneuroimmunology, a collaborative work of 50 international experts, expands on the American Psychiatric Association's symposium on this topic to present never-before-compiled scientific research from this evolving field. Maintaining a clinical focus, this book illustrates clinical effects by examining relevant research studies and models including Psychoneuroimmunological factors involved in specific illnesses such as cervical cancer, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS The role psychoneuroimmunology plays in carcinogenesis and the progression of established tumors, as well as findings on the progression of cancer that have general clinical relevance The effects of specific psychotropic medications; the effects of life stressors, bereavement, and and social support; the response to those stressors; and stress management and psychosocial predictors of disease The impacts of gender-specific factors, diurnal variation, and behavioral genetics on the immune function The Stressor-Support-Coping model, which integrates existing psychoneuroimmunology findings and lays the groundwork for use in support group intervention This book is a first step toward organizing psychoneuroimmunology findings into coherent theoretical models and concludes with a look at future clinical applications. Complete with charts, references, and a detailed index, it is the most comprehensive source on psychoneuroimmunology.