Imposed identities and limited opportunities: Advocacy agency staff perspectives on the construction of their clients with intellectual disabilities.

Intellectual disability is commonly conceptualised as stigmatised identity; however, within the literature, the notion of a damaged identity is contested. The aim of this research was to explore the social construction of intellectual disability from the perspective of staff who work closely with people with intellectual disabilities. Informed by a contextualist perspective, this research was based on interviews with five staff members of an advocacy agency in a regional area of Australia.

Dealing with wicked problems: conducting a causal layered analysis of complex social psychological issues.

Causal layered analysis (CLA) is an emerging qualitative methodology adopted in the discipline of planning as an approach to deconstruct complex social issues. With psychologists increasingly confronted with complex, and "wicked" social and community issues, we argue that the discipline of psychology would benefit from adopting CLA as an analytical method. Until now, the application of CLA for data interpretation has generally been poorly defined and overwhelming for the novice.

Mental health of Australian Aboriginal women during pregnancy: identifying the gaps.

Despite Australia's high standard of health care provision, Australian Aboriginal women continue to experience poor pregnancy outcomes in terms of maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality. In an attempt to improve these outcomes, health care providers have developed targeted antenatal programmes that aim to address identified health behaviours that are known to contribute to poor health during pregnancy. While some areas of improvement have been noted in rates of engagement with health services, the rates of premature births and low birth weight babies continue to be significantly higher than in the non-Aboriginal population.

Capturing dynamic processes of change in GROW mutual help groups for mental health.

The need for a model that can portray dynamic processes of change in mutual help groups for mental health (MHGMHs) is emphasized. A dynamic process model has the potential to capture a more comprehensive understanding of how MHGMHs may assist their members. An investigation into GROW, a mutual help organization for mental health, employed ethnographic, phenomenological and collaborative research methods.

Public policy, participation and the third position: the implication of engaging communities on their own terms.

Policy development and implementation should be fundamental for community psychologists in their endeavors to create social change. Policy necessarily is engaged at broad social and political levels, but it is mediated through communities and individuals, and thus appealing for our discipline. We argue that there are increasing opportunities for social input in liberal democracies with the growing awareness of the need to consider social factors in policy.

The evolution of epistemology and concepts in an iterative-generative reflective practice: the importance of small differences.

Using a contextualist epistemology, it would be expected that regional differences in community psychology would develop over time. It is argued that the epistemology and theory of Western Australian community psychology, while largely based on North American approaches, has developed its own idiosyncracies. These developed through the integration of practice and theory in an "iterative-generative" fashion.