Linda Papadopoulos on the Sexualisation of Young People

A review has been published today with serious implications for the kinds of identity our young people develop. Click on the link below for the full press release: for full version click this link. For The Daily Telegraph coverage see link.

Linda Papadopolous

An independent review into the sexualisation of young people, conducted by psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos, was welcomed by Home Secretary Alan Johnson today.

Commissioned by the Home Office, the review forms part of the government’s strategy to tackle ‘Violence Against Women and Girls’ (VAWG) and looks at how sexualised images and messages may be affecting the development of children and young people and influencing cultural norms. It also examines the evidence of a link between sexualisation and violence.

Key recommendations include:

• the government to launch an online ‘one-stop-shop’ to allow the public to voice their concerns regarding irresponsible marketing which sexualises children, with an onus on regulatory authorities to take action. The website could help inform future government policy by giving parents a forum to raise issues of concern regarding the sexualisation of young people;

• the government should support the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to take steps to extend the existing regulatory standards to include commercial websites;

• broadcasters are required to ensure that music videos featuring sexual posing or sexually suggestive lyrics are broadcast only after the ‘watershed’;

• the government to support the NSPCC in its work with manufacturers and retailers to encourage corporate responsibility with regard to sexualised merchandise.  Guidelines should be issued for retailers following consultation with major clothing retailers and parents’ groups; and

• games consoles should be sold with parental controls already switched on. Purchasers can choose to ‘unlock’ the console if they wish to allow access to ad and online content.

Dr Papadopoulos has worked closely with the Home Office in developing the current national awareness campaign targeting violence within teenagers’ relationships. A pack for teachers and pupils to accompany the campaign will shortly be made available to all schools. The government is also committed to introducing the subject of violence against women and girls and gender equality into the national curriculum, both of which are recommendations outlined in t review. The full list of recommendations will now be considered in more detail.

Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos said:

“As a psychologist and as a parent, I welcomed the opportunity to take a critical look at the sexualisation of young people.

“Over the past few months I have spoken to many people including young people, parents, teachers and professionals and it is clear to me that this is a very emotive issue.

“I wanted to ensure that this was not an opinion piece, but a review based on real data and academic research which will help generate further debate and inform decisions about how to address these issues going forward.”

Dr Linda Papadopoulos is a well-known psychologist and media expert in the field of women and girls’ self-image. Her academic credentials include a PhD in psychology (City University), an MSc in Health Psychology (University of Surrey) and she has been a reader in psychology since 2001. Dr Papadopoulos is a practising clinician who has worked in various treatment settings both privately and in the National Health Service.

Her clinical interests focus on body image and self-esteem, eating disorders and facial disfigurement. The intention of the review is to contribute to a wider debate with the public about the risk to children’s developmental well-being, and the risk posed by others to children, through the sexualisation process.

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Models of Spiritual Care: any suggestions?

The Bahá’í Faith doesn’t have a priesthood so it may seem odd that we are training Chaplains in the UK. The riddle is solved when you realise that the NHS, and other organisations as well, recognise the word Chaplain and reckon they know what Chaplains do, and the NHS needs us to train and accredit people to work for them in that capacity. Also ‘Chaplain’ is easier to say than ‘spiritual caregiver.’

It’s fascinating to be involved in this kind of work and we’re building up a cohort of experienced and enthusiastic people to take it on.

There is though a challenge facing us that was not immediately obvious when we started. Because the basic front-line work seems pretty obvious and the oddities of the NHS no worse than those of any other big organisation, the task of preparing people for this work in that context didn’t seem like rocket science especially as we had the input and support of more experienced people with a long history of working in the NHS.

The catch though has now become apparent.  We lack our own overall sense of what we are doing, a sense that is rooted in our understanding of human beings and the way we solve difficult problems rather than in a model borrowed either from the medical culture of the NHS or from the predominantly Christian culture of Chaplaincy.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with either of those cultures in themselves, but their underlying assumptions are different both from each other’s and from ours. If we are to bring something of value that is uniquely ours we need our own model of spiritual care in a medical context.

Existing Models

It would be simplistic and inaccurate to claim that all the models of chaplaincy out there are either medical or Christian. There are many example that are not derived from either culture and we can learn something from all of them. Caring for the Spirit, an orientation document written under the auspices of the South Yorkshire Workforce Development  Corporation, mentions several (the website I downloaded it from is no longer operative: you can access it from this link on this site).

They describe, for example, a theoretical model of spiritual care developed from work by David Lyall and outline its characteristics which include spiritual care as a response to the spiritual needs of a person understood through exploring life events, beliefs, values and meaning and as as a means of therapeutic support to enable a person challenged by illness, trauma, or bereavement to find meaning in their experiences of vulnerability loss or dislocation. It is an holistic model.

They also look at practice models based upon a simple four stage framework such as that involving assessment, care planning, care delivery, and review.

They give examples in tabular form of how that model might be applied. Its box-like quality appeals to our need for simple clarity but may betray much of the subtlety of what is going on. They argue that, though a simple model, it is capable of use as a complex tool to explore practice and the skills/knowledge and procedures used.

They acknowledge that many of the available models are based on the biomedical model that focuses upon the pathology of the patient and its treatment. They feel though that more person-centred and holistic models are increasingly being recognised as valuable and therapeutic.

These understand disease as one aspect of an illness process and take account of wider factors and the context of the patient’s life. Different care models also support the ethical position of the patient as a person who contributes to decision-making and the care process. Chaplaincy holds a high value of personhood and is attentive to the wider context of the person. The implicit model of chaplaincy is one that needs better articulation but which has much to contribute to current developments in the care of patients.

They cite the model developed by Gerkin as an example (Gerkin CV – 1997 – An Introduction to Pastoral Care: Nashville: Abingdon). It recognises that an important part of the chaplaincy process takes place by way of a dialogue

between the particular life story of the individual and stories of the faith group communities and their beliefs and values. The chaplain is located in the space between the individual and the faith group she or he represents. . . . . It may be that, on occasions, the chaplain is focussed more on helping the person to articulate their story; whilst at other times the chaplain may be speaking more from the side of a faith tradition in order to enrich and inform the dialogue. The model suggests that a chaplain may move between the stories of the individual and the faith community to facilitate effective and caring dialogue.

They conclude where we need to begin:

Chaplains will need to decide for themselves whether their care of patients fits best with the biomedical model or with the social model proposed above or with some other model of their own adoption. Whichever model of care for individual patients is adopted by individual chaplains, this needs also to be aggregated into a model of the service provided for all users.

Developing a Bahá’í Model of Spiritual Care

Over the coming weeks a number of us will be thinking about how to develop a Bahá’í model of spiritual care and I will be sharing some of that thinking on this blog as time goes on. Clearly these will draw on many of the ideas explored at length in this blog, for example that we have an immortal soul (and I know we’re not the only ones to believe that), that reflection and consultation are central components of a rich spiritual life and a consciously nurtured interaction between action, reflection, consultation and Bahá’í ‘scripture’ is essential if we are to learn how to live better.  We’re working on how to build these into a model of spiritual care that will work in the NHS with patients of all faiths and of none — the model of chaplaincy being now developed on the NHS is very much a multi-faith one where all chaplains are ideally available for all patients though a patient can request someone of their own faith if (s)he so wishes.

We would love to hear from you, whether you are a Bahá’í or not, with your ideas about what a good model of spiritual care should consist of.

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Overcoming Inertia

When I was working as a clinical psychologist with people who had huge problems battling with anxiety, depression or psychosis, I noticed that the same trap had been sprung for many of them at some point and kept them stuck. What was needed to get rid of the problem seemed to them such a massive step that it was completely beyond them, and what they could manage to do seemed so paltry and inadequate to the purpose it would never help. The result was they were completely disempowered and did nothing.

At the moment, in the shadow of the injustices against the seven leaders of the Bahá’í community in Iran, I am busy preparing to help run a training course for Bahá’í spiritual caregivers in Birmingham. When we place the tiny impact such acts as these this will make on the sum total of the world’s injustices on one side of the scales and the weight of all those injustices in the other, it’s all too tempting to wonder why we bother. And when we fantasise about what seems to be required, the scale of such an intervention seems forever out of our reach. By such slithering steps we slide into the disempowerment trap I used to meet in my clinical work.

In an earlier post I wrote about a new book, The Spirit Level, which demonstrated the pernicious effects of inequality beyond all reasonable doubt. It comes as little comfort then to discover our shameful position in the inequality league table as revealed in a recent report: we are the seventh worst out of 31 developed countries, trailing behind Greece, Korea and Slovakia.

The writers of the report share their perception of a variation of the same unease I have just described, this time about policy making:

In commenting on the implications of our findings, we reject the idea that public policies make no difference. Many of the issues suggest the importance of interventions with long-run effects on people’s life chances. Equally, public policy can ensure that access to important aspects of life – from health care to safe public spaces – does not depend on individual resources.

A Bahá’í mantra with which we counter this temptation towards inertia is referred to by our international council, the Universal House of Justice, when it reminds us that a proper account of the situation has not been made if we do not include the power of divine assistance in our calculations. While this is a powerful and effective antidote to the feelings of disempowerment we all too often experience when confronted with major problems, it is not a remedy that is immediately available to the more sceptical in our society.

What has been demonstrated time and again though, both in real life and the psychological ‘laboratory,’ is that our expectations hold the key to success or failure in this kind of enterprise.

If we believe we can do nothing, then nothing will tend to be precisely what we do. If we believe we can do everything almost all at once, disillusion will rapidly set in and we will come to believe that we can do nothing. (See previous sequence of events.) If our expectations are compatible with our influence and powers and we see the kinds of outcomes we were expecting from our efforts, we will probably persist and, over time, help bring about significant changes especially if we combine our powers with others. To get to the final destination almost certainly takes more than one lifetime, but is that any reason not to start?

It’s a sad but understandable reality, that I have to keep reminding myself of these things in order to feel that the small steps I am taking will make a contribution in the end  to the reduction, maybe even the virtual elimination, of injustice and atrocity in the world.

I’d better get back to the Chaplaincy Training preparation before I blow my chance of making some kind of difference.

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Bahá’í Leaders make second court appearance

Bahá’ís and people of good will all around the world have been praying and working for these seven men and women. Sadly, not much progress was made today in court. Below is the Bahá’í World News Service‘s latest report (See the link for background information):

GENEVA — Seven imprisoned Baha’i leaders appeared in court today in Iran for a second session of their trial.

The session was once again closed, and family members were not permitted in the courtroom, the Baha’i International Community has learned.

The hearing, which lasted just over one hour, does not seem to have gone beyond procedural issues. No date was given for any future sessions.

The seven were arrested nearly two years ago and have been held in Tehran’s Evin prison since that time, spending the first year there without formal charges or access to lawyers.

After several postponements, their trial officially began on 12 January, when the seven were arraigned in Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

That session was also closed to the public, but accounts in government-sponsored news media said the defendants were formally charged with espionage, propaganda activities against the Islamic order, the establishment of an illegal administration, cooperation with Israel, sending secret documents outside the country, acting against the security of the country, and corruption on earth.

All the charges have been categorically denied. The defendants are Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm.

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