Author Archives: llaurenmary

Recently, Professor Lindsay Smith sent me an article from the New York Times about California’s controversial three strikes sentencing law. In case you have not heard of this law before, the three strikes law significantly increases the prison sentences of persons … Continue reading →

In my first blog post I wrote about the Declaration of Human Rights and the passing of the Affordable Health Care Act in the United States under President Barack Obama. Health Care is a form of social change with the … Continue reading →

A banned book is a book that had something important to say; something that others found so obsence, so grotesque, so objectionable, that they had to ban others from reading it, from engrossing in the hideousness of the text. Mrs. … Continue reading →

For the second to last week of the course, I have been assigned to read Sherman Alexie’s beautifully written novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I am an avid reader, and this is one of the most quotable novels … Continue reading →

“It’s impossible to understand what good psychological health means if we don’t understand the economic, social, biological and physical context in which people live.” – Dr. James S. Jackson PhD. The article “All I Eat is ARVs” written by Ippolytos … Continue reading →

In the United States, police officers are usually the first to respond to a mentally ill person in crisis. Every law enforcement officer is trained on how to intervene in situations where a person or persons suffering from a mental … Continue reading →

Believe it or not, the U.S. government once thought it was fine to test on mentally disabled persons and prison inmates. In a previous blog post, I wrote about several cases where medical experiments were performed on these two vulnerable … Continue reading →

Vulnerability is defined as the susceptibility to harm that results from an interaction between the resources available to individuals and communities and the life challenges they face. Vulnerability can result for numerous reasons; developmental problems, personal incapacities, disadvantaged social status, … Continue reading →

The article “When Wounds and Corpses Fail to Speak: Narratives of Violence and Rape in the Congo,” discusses the limitations that exist among the human rights discourse and the need to examine the rhetoric, styles, and genres of the discourse … Continue reading →

The article “Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in U.S. Soldiers Returning from Iraq” discusses one of the most pressing concerns in America today: the long-term effects of returned U.S. soldiers with PTSD and other psychiatric symptoms. Their study found that out … Continue reading →