Clinicians' Need for an Ecological Approach to Violence Reduction.

We now know that harmful social policies, such as those that deny health care to some people, can generate structural violence and be far more harmful than any type of direct violence. A health professional who engages in public health promotion must thus consider the adverse effects of structural violence generated by bad policies. On this view, the dictum, "first, do no harm," can be interpreted as a mandate to protect patients from injustice.

Global research priorities for interpersonal violence prevention: a modified Delphi study.

Objective: To establish global research priorities for interpersonal violence prevention using a systematic approach.

Methods: Research priorities were identified in a three-round process involving two surveys. In round 1, 95 global experts in violence prevention proposed research questions to be ranked in round 2.

Transforming Our World: Implementing the 2030 Agenda Through Sustainable Development Goal Indicators.

The United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes violence as a threat to sustainability. To serve as a context, we provide an overview of the Sustainable Development Goals as they relate to violence prevention by including a summary of key documents informing violence prevention efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) partners. After consultation with the United Nations (UN) Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDG), we select specific targets and indicators, featuring them in a summary table.

Violence, health, and the 2030 agenda: Merging evidence and implementation.

The Guest Editors introduce the Special Issue for the Journal of Public Health Policy on violence, health, and the 2030 Agenda. Emphasizing the importance of collaboration between scholars and practitioners, they outline the process of jointly imagining and designing the next generation of violence prevention strategies. They include representative works of members of the World Health Organization (WHO) Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), including the World Bank, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prevention Institute, the Danish Institute Against Torture, the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Gender Violence and Health Centre, and the Yale University Law and Psychiatry Division, among others.

Preventing gender-based violence engendered by conflict: The case of Côte d'Ivoire.

Despite a growing awareness of the increased prevalence of intimate partner violence and sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings, much less is known about the dynamics, as well as the interventions that would be effective at individual, relational, and structural levels. In addition to the human capital lost by conflict violence, gender-based violence (GBV) poses a grave threat to the post-conflict rehabilitation process. With regard to violence that occurs during and post conflict, research must take into consideration the different types of violence that share similar causes as the larger conflict as well as become widespread as a result of the conflict and use existing frameworks to build future interventions.

Detecting depressive disorder with a 19-item local instrument in Tanzania.

Background: Based on experience with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) in a Tanzanian population, this study attempted to develop a locally specific screen that employs indigenous expressions.

Aim And Method: Thirty ethnographically derived local idioms were added and the final 47-item questionnaire administered to 787 randomly selected antenatal clinic attendees.

Results: Logistic regression identified 19 items for the Dar-es-Salaam Symptom Questionnaire (DSQ), which demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.

Detecting depressive disorder with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 in Tanzania.

Background: Assessment of the growing prevalence of depression in developing countries is hampered by a lack of valid diagnostic instruments for the local settings.

Aim And Method: This study attempted to examine the validity of the 25-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-25) in a special primary care population in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Results: 787 antenatal participants were recruited, and their responses revealed good internal consistency, interrater reliability, and test-retest reliability, and the scale was validated using content, construct, and discriminant validation methods.

The Resolve to Stop the Violence Project: reducing violence in the community through a jail-based initiative.

Background: The usual modes of incarceration have not been found to curb violent crimes significantly. A jail-based programme called the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) was created with the hypothesis that exposing men with a history of serious, recent and often multiple violent crimes to a certain specifiable set of social, cultural and psychological conditions would reduce the frequency and severity of their violent behaviour.

Methods: Court and criminal records for 1 year following release were reviewed for 101 inmates who had spent 8 weeks or more in the programme and for the same number of those who had spent 8 weeks or more in regular custody.

The Resolve to Stop the Violence Project: transforming an in-house culture of violence through a jail-based programme.

Background: The usual modes of incarceration have not been found to curb violence significantly, even while in custody. A jail-based programme called the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) was created with the hypothesis that immersing men with a history of serious, recent and often multiple violent crimes in an intensive, multi-modal in-house 'culture' would serve as a possible first step to preventing further violence.

Methods: Two years of incident reports were reviewed for the programme dorm and a regular dorm, both typically serving an average of 56 male inmates of similar composition, for historic and between-dorm comparisons.

The psychopharmacologic treatment of violent youth.

Aggressive violence has been described as the greatest problem and the most frequent reason for referrals in child and adolescent psychiatry. In this country we have only partially emerged from an epidemic of violence that was really an epidemic of youth violence. Thus it is hardly surprising that psychiatrists are being asked more and more frequently whether psychiatric medications might help to diminish the toll from this behavioral plague.

Beyond the prison paradigm: from provoking violence to preventing it by creating "anti-prisons" (residential colleges and therapeutic communities).

Prisons were supposedly created for the purpose of the tertiary prevention of violence (i.e., reducing the frequency and severity of future violence on the part of people who have already become violent).