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Experience of transfer from child to adult mental health services of young people with autism spectrum disorder
- Hannah Merrick, Chris King, Helen McConachie, Jeremy R. Parr, Ann Le Couteur
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- Journal:
- BJPsych Open / Volume 6 / Issue 4 / July 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 June 2020, e58
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- Article
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Background
Transition from child-centred to adult mental health services has been reported as challenging for young people. It can be especially difficult for young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as they manage the challenges of adolescence and navigate leaving child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).
AimsThis study examines the predictors of transfer to adult mental health services, and using a qualitative analysis, explores the young people’s experiences of transition.
MethodA UK sample of 118 young people aged 14–21 years, with ASD and additional mental health problems, recruited from four National Health Service trusts were followed up every 12 months over 3 years, as they were discharged from CAMHS. Measures of mental health and rich additional contextual information (clinical, family, social, educational) were used to capture their experiences. Regression and framework analyses were used.
ResultsRegression analysis showed having an attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and taking medication were predictors of transfer from child to adult mental health services. Several features of young people's transition experience were found to be associated with positive outcomes and ongoing problems, including family factors, education transitions and levels of engagement with services.
ConclusionsThe findings show the importance of monitoring and identifying those young people that might be particularly at risk of negative outcomes and crisis presentations. Although some young people were able to successfully manage their mental health following discharge from CAMHS, others reported levels of unmet need and negative experiences of transition.
Queering Nature: Close Encounters with the Alien in Ecofeminist Science Fiction
- from Part IV - Embodying New Worlds
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- By Helen Merrick, Curtin University
- Edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Wilfrid Laurier University, Veronica Hollinger, Trent University, Joan Gordon, Nassau Community College
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- Book:
- Queer Universes
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 26 October 2011
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2010, pp 216-232
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Summary
[Q]ueering what counts as nature is my categorical imperative…
— Donna Haraway, ‘A Game of Cat's Cradle’ 60‘Queering nature’ seems an appropriate theme for enquiries into sexuality in science fiction, especially from the perspective of feminist and queer theories. While it may not immediately suggest an overt comment on sexualities, it is inarguable that ‘nature’ as well as ‘culture’ is heavily implicated in our understandings and performances of sexuality. Indeed, just as our constructions of sexuality (and the strictures of normative heterosexism) infuse every aspect of our culture/s, so too do sexualized assumptions underpin our constructions of ‘nature’. And further, the ways we think about ‘nature’ impact upon and constrain our notions of sexuality. Wendy Pearson observes that science fiction has the potential to ‘interrogate the ways in which sexual subjectivities are created as effects of the system that sustains them’ (‘Alien Cryptographies’ 34). I want to further her argument to suggest that the variety of discourses and ‘knowledges’ that have come to stand for (or take the place of) ‘nature’ are one such system.
Attention to nature is an important facet of critical considerations of sexuality, particularly considering the pre-eminence of the biological sciences in (over)determining the category or categories of ‘sex’, and the fact that ‘for many people…sexuality – and particularly heterosexuality – can be envisioned only within the category of the “natural”’ (Pearson, ‘Science Fiction’ 149).
Contributors
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- By Joanne R. Adler, David A. Alexander, Laurence Alison, Catherine C. Ayoub, Peter Banister, Anthony R. Beech, Amanda Biggs, Julian Boon, Adrian Bowers, Neil Brewer, Eric Broekaert, Paula Brough, Jennifer M. Brown, Kevin Browne, Elizabeth A. Campbell, David Canter, Michael Carlin, Shihning Chou, Martin A. Conway, Claire Cooke, David Cooke, Ilse Derluyn, Robert J. Edelmann, Vincent Egan, Tom Ellis, Marie Eyre, David P. Farrington, Seena Fazel, Daniel B. Fishman, Victoria Follette, Katarina Fritzon, Elizabeth Gilchrist, Nathan D. Gillard, Renée Gobeil, Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Jane Goodman-Delahunty, Lynsey Gozna, Don Grubin, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Helinä Häkkänen-Nyholm, Guy Hall, Nathan Hall, Roisin Hall, Sean Hammond, Leigh Harkins, Grant T. Harris, Camilla Herbert, Robert D. Hoge, Todd E. Hogue, Clive R. Hollin, Lorraine Hope, Miranda A. H. Horvath, Kevin Howells, Carol A. Ireland, Jane L. Ireland, Mark Kebbell, Michael King, Bruce D. Kirkcaldy, Heidi La Bash, Cara Laney, William R. Lindsay, Elizabeth F. Loftus, L. E. Marshall, W. L. Marshall, James McGuire, Neil McKeganey, T. M. McMillan, Mary McMurran, Joav Merrick, Becky Milne, Joanne M. Nadkarni, Claire Nee, M. D. O’Brien, William O’Donohue, Darragh O’Neill, Jane Palmer, Adria Pearson, Derek Perkins, Devon L. L. Polaschek, Louise E. Porter, Charlotte C. Powell, Graham E. Powell, Martine Powell, Christine Puckering, Ethel Quayle, Vernon L. Quinsey, Marnie E. Rice, Randall Richardson-Vejlgaard, Richard Rogers, Louis B Schlesinger, Carolyn Semmler, G. A. Serran, Ralph C. Serin, John L. Taylor, Max Taylor, Brian Thomas-Peter, Paul A. Tiffin, Graham Towl, Rosie Travers, Arlene Vetere, Graham Wagstaff, Helen Wakeling, Fiona Warren, Brandon C. Welsh, David Wexler, Margaret Wilson, Dan Yarmey, Susan Young
- Edited by Jennifer M. Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science, Elizabeth A. Campbell, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Forensic Psychology
- Published online:
- 06 July 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 April 2010, pp xix-xxiii
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Queering Nature: Close Encounters with the Alien in Ecofeminist Science Fiction
- from Part IV - Embodying New Worlds
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- By Helen Merrick, Curtin University
- Edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, Joan Gordon
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- Book:
- Queer Universes
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 09 June 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 March 2008, pp 216-232
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- Export citation
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Summary
[Q]ueering what counts as nature is my categorical imperative…
— Donna Haraway, ‘A Game of Cat's Cradle’ 60‘Queering nature’ seems an appropriate theme for enquiries into sexuality in science fiction, especially from the perspective of feminist and queer theories. While it may not immediately suggest an overt comment on sexualities, it is inarguable that ‘nature’ as well as ‘culture’ is heavily implicated in our understandings and performances of sexuality. Indeed, just as our constructions of sexuality (and the strictures of normative heterosexism) infuse every aspect of our culture/s, so too do sexualized assumptions underpin our constructions of ‘nature’. And further, the ways we think about ‘nature’ impact upon and constrain our notions of sexuality. Wendy Pearson observes that science fiction has the potential to ‘interrogate the ways in which sexual subjectivities are created as effects of the system that sustains them’ (‘Alien Cryptographies’ 34). I want to further her argument to suggest that the variety of discourses and ‘knowledges’ that have come to stand for (or take the place of) ‘nature’ are one such system.
Attention to nature is an important facet of critical considerations of sexuality, particularly considering the pre-eminence of the biological sciences in (over)determining the category or categories of ‘sex’, and the fact that ‘for many people…sexuality – and particularly heterosexuality – can be envisioned only within the category of the “natural”’ (Pearson, ‘Science Fiction’ 149). I want to re-visit the loaded space of ‘the natural’ and consider how ‘queering nature’ might further question normative notions of sexuality and gender. While queer theory obviously engages with ‘nature’ on the level of regulatory discourses around notions of biology, feminist science studies and ecofeminist theory have a particular (and different) investment in the discursive positioning and uses of nature. Such theories are engaged in critiquing a broad range of biological and life sciences in which the construction of ‘human nature’ and ‘nature’ are implicated in often unstable and contradictory ways.
18 - Gender in science fiction
- from Part 3 - Sub-genres and themes
- Edited by Edward James, University College Dublin, Farah Mendlesohn, Middlesex University, London
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
- Published online:
- 28 May 2006
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2003, pp 241-252
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Summary
Traditionally, sf has been considered a predominantly masculine field which, through its focus on science and technology, 'naturally' excludes women and by implication, considerations of gender. To varying degrees over its history, sf has in fact functioned as an enormously fertile environment for the exploration of sociocultural understandings of gender. My use of the rather slippery term 'gender' here refers to the socially constructed attributes and 'performed' roles that are mapped on to biologically sexed bodies in historically and culturally specific ways. Rather than a comprehensive account of representations of masculinity and femininity, this chapter explores sf's potential to engage with gender issues, highlighting texts that have served to disrupt or challenge normative cultural understandings.
Despite populist notions of the overwhelmingly masculinist nature of sf, the problematic spaces signaled by ‘gender’ are crucial to sf imaginings. The presence of ‘Woman’ – whether actual, threatened or symbolically represented (through the alien, or ‘mother Earth’ for example) – reflects cultural anxieties about a range of ‘Others’ immanent in even the most scientifically pure, technically focused sf. The series of ‘self/other’ dichotomies suggested by ‘gender’, such as human/alien, nature/technology, and organic/inorganic, are also a central (although often unacknowledged) facet of the scientific culture informing much sf.
‘Fantastic Dialogues’: Critical Stories about Feminism and Science Fiction
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- By Helen Merrick, University of Western Australia
- Edited by Andy Sawyer, David Seed
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- Book:
- Speaking Science Fiction
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2000, pp 52-68
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Summary
Within the sf field, ‘feminist science fiction’ is not the misnomer it once was, although its existence still evokes surprise from some (mainstream) quarters. Feminist sf, while subject, as is sf generally, to definitional uncertainty, can now claim its own history, canonical authors, fans and dedicated branch of criticism. Indeed, as Veronica Hollinger observes,
the large number of feminist science fiction texts produced over the last twenty years or so now comprises a body of work no longer well served by criticism that reads it as a unified undertaking, i.e., individual texts all grounded upon the same ideological foundations and all working together for the promotion of a single coherent feminism.
‘Feminist sf’ is thus a rather indeterminate and contested signifier, entailing potential disagreement over which texts fall under its rubric. A better approach may well be to focus on the impact of ‘feminisms’ (varying according to historical period, culture and generation) within sf. Lacking space to explore this further, I continue to employ the term ‘feminist sf’, while recognizing that it can refer to a broad and disparate range of texts, reflecting multiple articulations of feminism(s).
Despite postmodernist claims for the dissolution of hi/lo culture boundaries, and arguments claiming sf's special status as a literature of the postmodern, within the literary mainstream sf is still devalued as a pop culture product to be consumed by the masses rather than analysed by literary critics. Nevertheless, there is an array of critical stories about feminist sf both within and without the field, although for the most part, dialogue across the genre–mainstream border has been rare.
Feminist sf criticism is the most visible and authoritative discourse to speak of (and for) feminist sf. A less recognized source of critical knowledge within the sf field is the body of feminist authors and fans, who, at least within the sf (fan) community, are intimately engaged in the construction and development of ‘feminist sf’. Outside the field, significantly different analyses are found in feminist literary criticism, utopian studies and genre studies, where sf is often incorporated into a more palatable tradition of feminist writing.