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Not only are birds rapidly vanishing from North America, but humans also need clean air. Simply put, government agencies burning millions of acres of public lands throughout the year is continually poisoning the air in much of the West. Above: Red Tail Hawk in Deschutes National Forest
Many patients worldwide experience medical gaslighting – a social phenomenon where a patient’s health concerns are not given appropriate medical evaluation and are instead downplayed, misattributed or dismissed outright. Medical gaslighting is rooted in centuries of gender bias in medicine. Women’s reproductive health issues have long been dismissed as psychological or “hysterical.” Genital and pelvic pain especially has been misattributed to psychological rather than biological causes: A century ago, Freudian psychoanalysts incorrectly believed that female sexual pain came from psychological complexes like penis envy.
In 1785 English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the perfect prison: Cells circle a tower from which an unseen guard can observe any inmate at will. As far as a prisoner knows, at any given time, the guard may be watching—or may not be. Inmates have to assume they’re constantly observed and behave accordingly. Welcome to the Panopticon.
Translation: One should occupy oneself with those matters that produce enthusiasm and joy and not waste valuable time fabricating doubts about all things great and small.
Analyzing data from the 2016-2021 National Inpatient Sample, UCLA researchers found that 25% of 7350 patients hospitalized for scooter-related injuries were using substances such as alcohol, opioids, marijuana and cocaine when injured…. the study also notes that overall scooter-related hospitalizations during the 5-year period jumped more than eight-fold, from 330 to 2705.
GHB (also sometimes called “G”, “juice”, “Gina” or “fantasy”) has gained attention globally due to associated harms. It is generally a colourless and odourless liquid which may taste bitter or salty. When taken at higher doses, GHB acts as a depressant, slowing down breathing and heart rate. At low doses (about 1ml), it can cause effects such as euphoria, increased libido and lowered inhibitions. For this reason, GHB is often used as a party drug (for example, in night clubs) and to facilitate sex.
Dr. M.C. “Terry” Hokenstad is more than a distinguished academic—he’s a global advocate for social welfare and a pioneer in social work education. With a career spanning over four decades, he has left an enduring impact on social work education and research.
It should by now be clear that the administration’s domestic agenda has major goals that are irrelevant to issues of antisemitism. Rather, these officials mean to target universities for perceived liberal leanings, to deport students on ideological grounds, to clamp down on sexual and gender freedoms, and, it is now evident, to roll back the hard-won achievements of the Civil Rights Movement…. Yet even now, astonishingly, much of this increasingly explicit far-right takeover—enforced by authoritarian measures reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s — continues to pose as a crusade against antisemitism. Perhaps even more astonishingly, this rationale continues to be taken at face value
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond – and its companion case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond – asks whether religious groups have a right not just to start public charter schools with public tax dollars but to operate them as faith-based schools.
A report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM)… shows that rising numbers of elderly and frail people are stuck in A&E, often on trolleys in corridors. Figures obtained by RCEM via the Freedom of Information Act show that 1.15 million people aged 60 and over waited more than 12 hours to be transferred, admitted or discharged in England’s major A&E departments last year.
University of South Australia scientists have developed a highly sensitive method to detect illegal opioids and a veterinary sedative in Australia’s wastewater system, providing a vital early warning tool to public health authorities.
The government said new figures showed strong progress, including in a ministerial priority for a visit once every eight weeks. But the Independent Children’s Monitor Aroturuki Tamariki said this was a lower target than what the National Care Standards demanded.
Delta cooperative farm, by Dorothea Lange, Hillhouse, Mississippi, June 1937.
Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College has announced a new partnership with Northern Michigan University. Under the agreement, students can get a general studies associate degree before transferring those credits to work toward a bachelor’s degree in social work.
On April 28, the City Council of Burlington, Vermont, voted unanimously to approve opening an overdose prevention center (OPC) in the city. The state authorized such facilities in 2024, and this is slated to be the first to open—though a number of steps remain before that will happen, including determining the exact location, so the timeline is unclear.
The government’s planned disability benefit cuts will hit 700,000 families who are already in poverty, according to internal Department for Work and Pensions forecasts obtained by the Guardian. The figures, sourced under the Freedom of Information Act, are in addition to the projected 250,000 people who will be newly driven below the poverty line by the cuts, as set out by the government’s impact assessment in March.
I’ve been running Four Square, a charity supporting people who are homeless in Edinburgh, for almost seven years now – and this model serves us well. Our charity shop, Edinburgh Furniture Initiative, employs over 20 staff and provides over 4,000 hours of volunteering each year.
Key national officials of the country’s leading social workers organization at its 28th national forum and convention in Metro Manila.
In 1987, the year of the first American Catholic Laity survey, nearly half of American Catholics said that faith was “the most” or “among the most” important parts of their life. Now, only 37% say the same. Others are leaving the Catholic Church completely. The General Social Survey, a national survey conducted every year or two since the 1970s, asks people about the faith they grew up with, as well as their present religious identity. According to our analysis of its data, in 1973 only 10% of Americans who grew up Catholic had changed religions, and another 7% had left religion altogether. By 2018, each of those percentages had increased to 18%.
Sexually diverse identity was associated with depression, anxiety, and stress, but only stress was in turn associated with riskier cannabis use.
The tentative deal announced Sunday covers nearly 2,400 Kaiser mental health therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, and psychologists represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to a text revision of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a guidebook referenced by clinicians around the world. Too much grief had become an official diagnosis. The idea of prolonged grief came about in the 1990s and has sparked controversy among experts since.
Bisignano (above) “is a Wall Street CEO with a long history of slashing the companies he runs to the bone, including massive layoffs,” she noted. “He is also a liar. He claims he was not involved in all the chaotic and destructive changes at the Social Security Administration: the hollowing out of the agency, the stealing of our most sensitive data, the harmful and poorly rolled out policy changes, their sudden reversals, and more. However, there are well over a dozen long-serving civil servants, identified by a brave whistleblower, who can validate that he is lying.”
A harsh, right-wing authoritarianism is rising, casting a shadow of unfreedom as classic conservatism fades.
Assam University is at the centre of a growing controversy after multiple students from the Department of Social Work formally accused an Assistant Professor of sexual harassment, misconduct, and abuse of authority.
Under SB 37, hiring for faculty positions in liberal arts, communication, education and social work — but no other fields — become the responsibility of a state governing board whose members would not necessarily have either disciplinary expertise in the relevant academic subjects or training in college-level teaching and learning.
Clinicians at the Department of Veterans Affairs say the president’s return-to-office order is forcing many of them to work from makeshift spaces where sensitive conversations can be overheard.
Researchers have created a hairlike device for long-term, non-invasive monitoring of the brain’s electrical activity. The lightweight and flexible electrode attaches directly to the scalp and delivers stable, high-quality electroencephalography (EEG) recordings.
The Clothing Center has been open and operating since 1935 to help children within the school system get necessary clothing. The students are supplied with five sets of clothes per semester. The need for this service is critical for many those in Knox County. “We have served 263 students since February,” Social Work Supervisor Heather Willis said during Monday’s workshop meeting.
Maggie Mellon says officials failed to protect children by ignoring existing equality laws and ordering staff to impose “harmful gender ideology” rather than risk criticism from trans lobby groups. The former director of children’s services Children 1st and ex-chairwoman of the Scottish Child Law Centre said: “Care bosses failed to uphold existing equality law and stood by while social workers who bravely challenged ideology were bullied and lost jobs.
The university ethics committee that reviewed a controversial study that deployed AI-generated posts on a Reddit forum made recommendations the researchers did not heed, Retraction Watch has learned.
The Walang Gutom (No Hunger) Kitchen in Pasay City serves “clients” in this January 2025 photo. The country’s first public and private food bank collaboration/soup kitchen has been feed individuals experiencing involuntary hunger since the Department of Social Welfare and Development launched it on Dec. 16, 2024.
Dr. Jeff Karabanow is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Today, largesse once again represents a potent form of government coercion. A devil’s bargain is on the table, with freedom up for sale—a bargain involving unconscionable conditions: losing largesse is the price paid for asserting constitutional rights. That was the lesson taught at Columbia University (above) last month, an example of the unfreedom so worrying to Reich a half century ago. At Columbia, $400 million purchased the abandonment of a lot of academic freedom, a deal prompting some belated university repentance about ill-gotten gains and avowals of independence.
The knowledge, skills and expertise of social workers must be fully recognised throughout the Commission’s work. Social workers play a vital role in adult social care, particularly in promoting rights-based, person-centred care and support planning, using professional judgement to balance individual needs, safeguarding duties, and the promotion of independence. Prevention, early intervention, integration across services, and effective safeguarding must be central pillars of any future vision for adult social care.
The two ruling parties sold the con of neoliberalism to deindustrialize the country, impose punishing austerity, eradicate the freedoms to organize and gut regulations to protect the public from exploitation. They empowered corporations to pillage and consolidate their wealth and power, giving rise to monopoly capitalism and some of the greatest levels of income inequality and wealth inequality in American history. The banks, communications, oil, weapons, agricultural and food industries guarantee profits by fixing prices, skirting or even abolishing financial, health and environmental protections, and abusing their workers….The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called this form of government “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control. It uses the international legal system to plunder resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. It prioritizes profit over justice. It weakens labor laws and eviscerates workers’ protections and rights…. There is a word for those who did this to us.
Traitors.
Kim Raff saw constant turmoil growing up in an abusive, addiction-laden family. She was moved between at least seven states, attended five middle schools, spent the 10th grade unhoused and went through the foster care system twice.
Burbank Mayor Nikki Perez MSW ‘2018 at her swearing in with other members of the Burbank City Council. She’s the youngest mayor to serve the Southern California city in its history as well as the first Indigenous and openly LGBTQIA+ mayor.
“Many people experiencing homelessness are even more deeply attached to their animals than people who have homes,” Christine Kim, MSW, told NASW. Kim is the founder of My Dog Is My Home, a nonprofit that works to ensure that unhoused “human-animal families” have safe, low-barrier co-sheltering and co-housing options. “Their animals may be their only consistent source of support and companionship.”
Neoliberalism opposes government regulation and spending, and supports the free market. It also fosters an individualistic worldview. Instead of seeing themselves as workers, citizens or members of a collective, people are persuaded to internalise market logic – to see themselves as individuals who are out to maximise their personal profit. The cultural shift from more communitarian and egalitarian ideals towards an ideology based on the self-driven individual and the free market has been quite successful. Empirical evidence from 41 countries shows that individualist practices and values around the world have surged significantly over the past 50 years.
Department of Health and Social Care will not renew Think Ahead’s contract to deliver programme to train mental health social workers, with 2025 cohort being its last
Lakindra Mitchell Dove, PhD, MSW, has been named the SSW’s Researcher of the Year for 2025. Dr. Mitchell Dove is a practice-informed researcher with more than 15 years of post-MSW practice experience, working primarily with children and families.
The burning of buildings, infrastructure and cars releases a cocktail of pollutants into the air and soil that science is only beginning to unravel. The toxins have been linked to cancer, respiratory ailments and other chronic diseases. At the same time, numerous studies have shown that wildfire smoke exposure places survivors at risk for chronic respiratory problems, with some research linking it to skin diseases, eye ailments and cancer.
The Lake County jail has two roughly 30-square-foot cells used to isolate prisoners, including people in a mental health crisis. Some are held there for months as they wait for an open bed at the Montana State Hospital.
Selas’s biggest takeaway from her time at Howard? Research isn’t just about data, it’s about impact.
A phone holder hangs in a classroom at Delta High School… in Delta, Utah. At the rural Utah school, like in schools across the country, there is a strict policy requiring students to check their phones at the door when entering every class.
Woke culture emerged from elite shifts in identity politics, abandoning the economic roots of social justice.
An open letter signed by more than 75 health organisations and others is urging the Irish government to guarantee that the introduction of alcohol health labelling goes ahead next year. The signatories want to make sure that the planned introduction is not ‘derailed or delayed by alcohol industry lobbying’, says the Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI) charity.
