This blog post is intended to be a discussion of charities and responsibility. We will discuss the commercialization and profiteering in relation to charitable action. This post is not intended to crucify any organization or to justify action, it is simply intended to create discussion about how complicated these issues are.

We will start on a simple example, the bands depicted above. They became a common item in 2004 with the live strong bands. These bands were sold as a “fundraiser for cancer” however less than 25% was actually donated individuals with cancer. At first I thought they were simply a way for people to wear their “support” of a cause as a fashion statement, without actually contributing to the issue itself. The issue however doesn’t seem so one sided and bad at a second glance. If fashion trends are going to naturally exist, then using one to promote how “cool” supporting charity is, may not be fully negative. This is also demonstrated when cancer donation statistics are viewed. Cancer donations increased almost 30% during the period of 2004-2006, the time that live strong bands were in style. Although these actions have little to no direct effect on their related issue, they may have a very large effect in raising awareness. It is interesting to way a companies

A more recent case of this sensationalized charity was the ALS ice bucket challenge. This case is another demonstration of a charitable cause that quickly became more about the trend, and less about the issue. It was estimated that about 1 in 20 involved individuals actually donated. Many individuals who participated also had little to no idea what ALS actually was. That said a huge quantity of money was raised by these actions. And although most individuals did nothing direct to help ALS, their simple support and enthusiasm created a significant increase in donations.

The final example I would like to address involves Good Will. Good Will too many peoples surprise is a fully for profit company. Their CEO gives himself 2.3 million a year as salary, and almost all employees are paid minimum wage. The company donates 0% of its profit. This seems especially problematic given good will’s logo, “Make a difference”. Many people donate thinking that part of the profit goes to charities, or homeless shelters however this is not true. That said, good will does provide some of the cheapest goods, and rewards time spent, instead of money paid. In this way good will does “make a difference” to lower income households.

I am also stealing another example from a fellow students blog post simply because the examples fit in perfectly. the student explains how both companies and consumers use social causes to justify their own action, even when unrelated. This pink ribbon like all the previous examples seems to corrupt the cause, however has raised a huge amount of money for breast cancer research.

It seems that we believe that charity must be completely charitable to be positive, however this may not be true. A number of  selfish business campaigns end up truly helping charities as an externality. intentional or not, the positive action is concrete. i wonder then at our responsibility educated consumers. Do we allow companies to paraid hypocritical slogans and to profiteer charitable action if it helps the intended charity?

Inequality in Mental Health: Shown Through the Lens of Emergency Departments in the United States

Between 1992 and 2001, there were 53 million mental-health related emergency department contacts in the United States (Downey 2009). 23.6 out of 1,000 patients that come into the emergency department are due to mental health-related issues (Downey 2009). This is becoming a very prevalent problem in the United States, and it stems from several factors including inadequate alternatives consequently making emergency departments and their psychiatric emergency services a primary acute care setting, but also due to how we are socialized in the United States today.

I have been exposed to this issue in the Emergency Department at Oregon Health & Science University where I have been working for about six months now as a Research Assistant in the Clinical Research Investigative Studies Program. Over the past months, the part of the emergency department that has intrigued me the most is the difference in the treatment of “normal” patients who come in for “normal” clinical emergencies—motor vehicle crashes, chest pain, abdominal pain, etc.—versus patients that come in with mental health-related emergencies. There are many reasons that an individual can be classified as a psychiatric emergency including suicidal ideations (SI), violent or disruptive behavior, mania, intoxication states, and anxiety, among other presentations. Each of these chief complaints would be cause to place the individual in the psychiatric wing of the emergency department in the psychiatric rooms.

At the top of this post you can see two images depicting the differences between the psychiatric rooms at OHSU versus all of the other rooms in the department. As you can see there are huge differences, most notably that the psych room consists only of a bed on the floor in the corner of the room and has cameras in each corner to provide 24-hour surveillance of the patient in the room.

The question that comes to my mind each time I pass the psychiatric wing is: Is this subordinate treatment of mentally ill patients in terms of room type in the emergency department a form of inequality? Are these individuals being discriminated against due to their innate characteristics? In my opinion, the answer to each of these questions is yes. The treatment of individuals with mental health-related issues in a different type of room and wing of the emergency department compared to non-mentally ill related emergencies is comparable to other inequalities in society such as gender inequality and race inequality. Mentally ill patients are discriminated against due to their innate personal qualities leading to a new manifestation of inequality known as inequality in mental health. Inequality in mental health and illness is a longstanding issue in research that was initially studied by sociologists, but has now been taken up by many other scholars such as epidemiologists. In order to address the issue of inequality in mental health sociologically, we must look at the underlying issue as to how our society is socialized to perceive individuals with mental illness and consequently why they are treated differently once they arrive at the emergency room.

In modern research, there have been two contrasting theories as to why inequality in mental health exists. The first theory is known as social selection and it states that people become poor because they are mentally ill and thus unable to function in society (Ramon 2007). The second theory is known as social causation and states that individuals become mentally ill because of being poor (Ramon 2007). In each theory, however, we see the word social. This emphasizes the point that mental illness in it of itself and how society views mental illness is a social construction of reality in which we are socialized to view in a certain way. In modern society, we are socialized in such a way that creates a stigma that erodes confidence that mental disorders are real health conditions. We have allowed this stigma to grow an unwarranted sense of attitudinal, structural, and financial barriers to effective treatment and recovery, which has led to this problem of inequality in mental health that is emphasized by this example in emergency departments across the country.

 Mentally ill individuals do not have access to proper health care, medications, housing and other necessities that they cannot provide for themselves, which leads to another separate, but related issue in modern society. That is, mentally ill individuals make up more than 1/3 of the United States homeless population, or 250,000 people (Downey 2009). We can see the relationship between the two issues of homelessness and frequent emergency room department visits in that the deinstitutionalization, inadequate community resources, and the large number of uninsured homeless individuals causes the emergency room to act as a sort of primary care facility. Because emergency departments are acting as primary care facilities, the inequality in mental health is reinforced through the subordinate treatment of mentally ill individuals once they arrive to the emergency department—in terms of their room type as well as their actual medical treatment. The source of this disparate treatment is our social construction of reality that individuals with mental health-related issues are dangerous and outliers of society, therefore they must be kept in a special room, in a special wing of the emergency department. The ideas of fear and uncertainty toward mental illness have been ingrained in our minds through different agents of socialization, which has led to these evident disparities in treatment.

This problem could be avoided entirely however, if we, as the United States population and taxpayers of the country, were able to provide the support that these individuals need. Research has shown that if taxpayers in the United States were to provide the support in terms of housing, healthcare, etc., for individuals with mental illness, that taxpayers would actually save money each year. The frequent visits to the emergency room cost taxpayers more money and contribute to this inequality in mental health.  More importantly than saving taxpayers money, providing these necessities would help to end the inequality in mental health that we see across the United States in emergency departments, but also in many other situations, that stems from our socialization and apathy towards action to help.

References

Downey LV, Zun LS, Gonzales SJ. Utilization of emergency department by psychiatric patients. Primary Psychiatry 2009;16:60–4.

Ramon, Shulamit. Inequality In Mental Health: The Relevance of Current Research and Understanding To Potentially Effective Social Work Responses. Radical Psychology 2007.

Tartakovsky, M. (2012). What Many People Don’t Get About Mental Illness. Psych Central. Retrieved on December 1, 2014, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/11/04/what-many-people-dont-get-about-mental-illness/

Morals? Laws?

Taken at a gas station on I5

For the past few years, every time that I have seen the sign above at a gas station, I have done a double take. “It’s not just wrong, it’s illegal.” Does this mean that, as a society, we value law over morals? The structure of the statement sets up an inequality, so because it isn't phrased as "It's both wrong and illegal", it makes illegal actions more important to put our attention than moral wrongs. For a while, I even thought that the signs had been misprinted, and it was supposed to read "It's not just illegal, it's wrong."

When I told my friend that I was thinking about writing my blog on this, she commented that actually, laws are intended to be representations of morals as interpreted by the government. Although I think that it is very true that this was the original intent of law in primitive society (ex: "Dhama" was a word used in ancient India that meant both law and morals), things have changed drastically since that time. The question now is if laws are successfully representing what we as a society deem as moral. Laws are external and have external consequences where are morals are internal and have internal consequences.

I looked at some headlines on cnn.com to see how much the people of our society are in agreement with the laws that govern us. Below are some screenshots of various articles through the years that show a tiny fraction of the disagreement that many Americans feel towards laws or methods of law enforcement.

2014

2012

2009

When viewing this issue with a sociological imagination, the first thing that I think of is socialization and how interesting it is that, since laws and morals have been separated, everyone has to learn about laws as somewhat arbitrary restrictions that you will be punished if you break. If we were better at aligning our laws with morality, how would things be different? Why do we care more about rules than making sure that citizens act in accordance with their goodness? I am not proposing that we do away with laws and see what happens when everyone tries to act in a way that makes them feel positive about their impact on the world, but when laws are prioritized above morals and we socialize an entire people to either follow the laws or revolt, a key aspect of humanity is lost. No longer can we come together as a people to govern ourselves with integrity.

Revolution: An Ideology or a Death-Sentence?

I would never claim to be an expert on Islamic, or even Muslim, culture in a million years. Born in raised in Lutheran family, my exposure to this religion was very limited until high school. At that point, the amount of required reading we did on the three core faiths from the Middle East expanded my knowledge and understanding of the Muslim religion. The most extreme, ancient, and conservative of the Muslim denominations is Islam. One terrorist group that identifies as such, a branch from al-Quaida, has started to take over parts of both Syria and Iraq. They identify themselves as the Islamic State in Iraw and Syria (ISIS).

A photo of Zhara Balane before joining ISIS

Zhara Balane posted this photo after traveling to Syria

A recent surge in numbers suggest that women from many parts of Europe, as well as an unknown amount of Americans, are leaving their educations and futures to travel to Syria and Iraq to join the “sisterhood in the caliphate.” Lured by Internet predators, religious leaders, and the desire to make a difference in the world, many girls are leaving behind families for false promises of beautiful land, housing, and compensation for the children they birth. Many of these girls are not even from strict or practicing muslim families. Some have been converted by school friends and stories of children being bombed by the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. In total, there have been 50 documented cases of girls leaving in Britain, 40 from Germany, 14 from Austria, and an unknown, but suggested much larger number, from France. Total of both men and women that have left their homes to fight with Islamic rebel extremists is around 3,000. To me, the question is not why they are joining, but why they are giving up everything in their lives. After vigorous research through many articles about the disappearance, I found a quote in an article of a 20 year old originally from Glasgow:

“Most sisters I have come across have been in university studying courses with many promising paths, with big, happy families and friends, and everything in the Dunyah [material world] to persuade one to stay behind and enjoy the luxury. If we had stayed behind, we could have been blessed with it all from a relaxing and comfortable life and lots of money. Wallahi [I swear] that’s not what we want.”

Other psychologists have suggested that the romantic ideas of marrying a soldier and the raw power that the ISIS shows upon its enemies. To become a revolutionary in this modern day and participate in something radical, one cannot simply protest the 99% like Occupy Wall Street. Many of the protests in the European Union and the United States are not radical enough to make the difference that many girls, and boys, long to make on the world. Historically, this phenomenon has been equated to men and women joining communist groups, except this is both more dangerous and extreme.
The average runaway will call their parents after crossing the Turkish border and tell them that they never want to return. Supposed text conversation interviews and social media profiles suggest that many of the girls are happy and devoted to their cause. Experts say this may all be fabricated, though. The image I found that struck me the most was this one.

This girl tweets like a normal teenager yet not exactly. Her entire string of messages have to do with the actions Sharia law or the stupidity of Western civilization. Adding the hashtag “#checkyourself” to the end of a tweet about people not enjoying a beheading is a little bit of a terrifying juxtaposition of cultures. Another girl, @Al_Khanssaa, tweeted “Lol I have American journalists asking me questions about why muhajirahs like nutella while dawla is capturing and killing their colleagues.” They even talking about wanting to behead other people, ending their tweets with “plz.” These text terms and language have been so iconisized into modern culture that the idea of a young woman, some as young as 13, leaving this culture and willingly placing themselves into a place where the women are often sold as sex slaves or become malnourished. Some tweets even suggest the slavery of non-Islamic women. There are even memes to describe their alliance. As said before, the juxtaposition between Western social media culture and the extremist and chilling opinions of the young ISIS girls creates a resocialization of the media.

Meme found on tumblr

Sociologically, this idea of girls leaving their homes to join a radical group does not seem extremely strange. The way that they are treated once they are there, though is another story. The larger problem is that the girls are so willing to believe in this big concept that they disregard reports of women being beaten, killed, and used as sex objects in the caliphate state. They want to believe that they will be the one with a husband who has one wife; that the husband will fight and bring her honor. So, is there no room for a young girl to make a life of her own and assert herself as part of a broader system in Western cultures?
Not really.
Today's institutions make it so that women that decide to go to universities usually are not completely independent until after they graduate from college. Fifteen year old girls are caught by this idea of beginning their life now and romanced by the great adventure it would be. Obviously, their religion has much to do with their devotion to the ideology, but what seems to catch them is the idea that they would belong because they are needed as wives to the ISIS ranks. A woman from the US even joined a military cadet program in Texas so that a year later she could go to Syria and supply information to the ISIS soldiers.
National Security is asking what they can do to keep Internet predators from finding the girls. I say we challenge that and ask what we can do to keep these girls satisfied in the culture into which they were born. What about western culture is so unfulfilling that they need to join an oppressive, violent, and merciless extremist group?

Distorted Damnation

Where do we go when we seek answers to challenging questions? Perhaps news broadcasts, websites, or textbooks hold these sought out solutions to modern dilemmas, but I decided to look elsewhere. I yearned to explore one of the most acclaimed and condemned manuscripts of the last two millennia and decipher its take on the controversial matter of homosexual monogamy. This sudden investigation was spurred by the inspirational preaching of Matthew Vines, founder of The Reformation Project which encourages Christians to support LGBT people. Presented below, his in-depth analysis of various scriptures concerning homosexuality offers a new perspective on monogamy that might cool the conflict between the church and committed gay couples.

Two condemning passages, Leviticus 19:22 and Romans 1:26-27, caught my attention long before Vines had the opportunity to explain his perspective and counter these negative statements. The command, "You shall not lie with a me as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination" (Leviticus 19:22) proved particularly troubling as I struggled to come up with rebuttal to it. Fortunately, Mathew Vines addresses the issue by stating that the old testament law code was fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth who "is the end of the law for the justification of everyone who has faith" (Romans 10:4). Furthermore, he presents an array of once ridiculed actions so commonly practiced today including charging interest on loans and eating pork to demonstrate the changing of practices through time. The second passage, Romans 1:26-27, as interpreted by Vines, condemns lustful and gluttonous homosexual actions but does not denounce faithful, committed, and loving gay relationships. Ultimately, Vines' context analysis and clarification demonstrates that the Bible neither damns the LGBT community nor supports attacks on them.

If we define sociology as the systematic study of human societies, examining possible shifts in norms and values within this social institution is our fundamental duty as socialists. Discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance against homosexuality has for so long been the institutionalized norm among many cultures. The Christian Church was no exception. "Born gay" and "sinful choice" dichotomy was once a widely adopted characterization of this religious view, and this belief still holds sway over a many people. But today, voices cry out for equality. They proclaim their God's love for all people regardless of sexual orientation, and one need not venture far to find these voices. The Reformation Project is but a single example of a diversity of groups and people fighting for homosexual monogamy within the United States. Even the Catholic Church, an institution once notorious for its anti-gay propaganda, has seen a change in its followers. 62% of American Catholics are in favor of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted February 23-27, 2013. This movement represents the process of resocialization for these preachers, lovers, and teachers. By promoting the legitimacy of gay union, these activists stand against the anti-gay crusade that spawned during the early 1970s, and the adoption of a new system of beliefs, norms, and values constitutes the process of resocialization.

Mathew Vines is not alone in his pursuit of marriage equality. A great deal of followers including members of the Catholic Church strive to make a change to help the persecuted and ridiculed. My title distorted damnation possess two sides. One ridicules the condemnation of other human beings and pleads for the loving acceptance of all people; the other seeks to dispel the idea that a leader's power does not dictate the beliefs of all followers. This blog post is nothing more nor less than a call to love and respect those around you. Neither condemn nor assume others condemn. Search for the goodness of humanity and pursue it.

Victims of Pride?

     After seeing post after post of people rallying for women's rights and equality I found myself compelled to look deeper into the subject. I found many empowering videos on YouTube and Facebook with thousands and even millions of hits and comments supporting the calls to stop domestic violence against women. Then I stumbled upon 2 different videos, one from the UK and one form the US. Both depicted social experiments where men and women publicly fell victim to their partners of opposite sex physically. Both were filmed in largely populated urban areas, the disparity being that the UK video was posted in late May and the US version was posted in September.

     As both videos show, the social norm is to stop violence enacted by a man against a woman immediately. These two videos do demonstrate that the acceptance of male on female violence
 that feminists have striven to reduce over the last few decades has diminished greatly in urban areas. They also show the social norm that it's acceptable for women to beat up and abuse their partners with very little interference while out in broad daylight. I believe there are two key contributing factors to this inequality, one is the concept of masculinity and the other is the social norm that is in place today.
      Masculinity, or the preservation of it, is the reason so many cases of men physically falling victim to their partners go unrecorded each year. Men don't want to admit they've been beaten up or pushed around by women because they're supposed to be physically stronger and better able to protect themselves, based on today's social norms. A lack of action or reaction enables further confrontations and incidences to take place with greater regularity and force just as it happens with women in the opposite situation.
    The other contributor, the norms set in place about what types of contact between men and women are acceptable. If a woman is being assaulted and reacts with violence and defended herself by harming the man physically, its accepted and even encouraged. Every college has a "Woman's self defense class" where they learn to protect themselves from such a situation. What if the tables were turned? And the man who was being assaulted struck back at his perpetrator and punched her out of self defense while in public. I strongly believe that would not be followed by cheers and applause from the surrounding people. Though this is not supported by either video because they did not factor this reaction into the experiment, I still think it would pan out with the man being heckled and possible fall victim to more violence from the people surrounding the confrontation.
      On a side note, the differences in support of the two videos within their own countries is intriguing. The UK video received 6 million views within a month of its posting, the American counter part has only 8,617 in a month and a half (both posters have an similar number of subscribers). This disparity suggests that in America, we are less informed on the phenomena or may simply not care as much about it when compared to the UK.