Search results for ‘Author:"pilgrim david"’ Sort:
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Child sexual abuse: moral panic or state denial?
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Publication year:
- 2018
- Pagination:
- 196
- Place of publication:
- Abingdon, Oxon
Child sexual abuse is a major public policy challenge. Many child protection measures were beginning to reduce its occurrence. However, that progress was impeded by online grooming, the downloading of indecent images of children and even their abuse online in real time. This now places major demands on national and international policing. The book brings together case studies from a wide range of settings. As well as family members and those near the home, offenders can also be found in religious, sporting and childcare settings.This extensive picture is drawn deliberately in order to highlight a split in the academic analysis of child sexual abuse. The mainstream or orthodox view, defended by the author, is that child sexual abuse is an under-reported crime. However, a minority view, presented but criticised, is that it is a moral panic created by public hysteria, child protection experts and campaigning politicians. By the end of the book, this division of academic opinion and its implications for public policy are explored in detail. (Edited publisher abstract)
Co-production and involuntary psychiatric settings
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Mental Health Review Journal, 23(4), 2018, pp.269-279.
- Publisher:
- Emerald
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the popular policy assumption of co-production is feasible in secure psychiatric settings. Design/methodology/approach: The assumptions of co-production are listed and then used as a basis for an immanent critique to test the feasibility described in the purpose of the paper. An explanatory critique exploring consumerism in the welfare state then follows. These forms of critique are derived from the philosophy of critical realism. Findings: A distinction is made between the co-production of knowledge about mental health services and the actual co-production of those services. It is concluded that the former has emerged but the latter is not feasible, given the limitations on citizenship imposed by psychiatric detention. Research limitations/implications: Evidence for the co-production of mental health services (rather than the co-production of knowledge about those services) remains sparse. Practical implications: The contradictions about citizenship created by the existence of mental health legislation and the social control role of mental health services requires ongoing honest reflects by mental health professionals and those responsible for the development of mental health services. Social implications: As described above, mental health legislation pre-empts confidence in the co-production of mental health services. Originality/value: Whilst there is a small literature on co-production and mental health services, alluded to at the outset, this paper uses immanent and explanatory critiques to deepen our understanding of the topic. (Publisher abstract)
Moral panics and social work: a rejoinder to Smith et al
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Critical and Radical Social Work, 5(3), 2017, pp.351-355.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
A rejoinder to a response from Mark Smith and his colleagues to the author's original article in this journal on social work and moral panics. The author makes a brief concession to a couple of points made, but goes on to defend the main propositions in his original article. (Edited publisher abstract)
Child sexual abuse, moral panics and emancipatory practice
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Critical and Radical Social Work, 5(1), 2017, pp.7-22.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article explores the shared interest of sociologists and social workers in moral panics when considering the public policy challenge of child sexual abuse. Enacted paedophilia is one aspect of the latter. The utilisation of moral panic reasoning in pro-paedophile arguments in the past 50 years is described and the recent version of that reasoning is addressed critically. A critical realist framework is adopted to offer immanent and explanatory critiques of moral panic theory when applied to child sexual abuse. Social work practitioners can reflect on the ideological struggle in the academy between an orthodox child protection position, on the one hand, and a libertarian position that endorses freedom of speech and action, on the other. (Publisher abstract)
Child abuse in Irish Catholic settings: a non-reductionist account
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Child Abuse Review, 21(6), November 2012, pp.405-413.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The reputation of the Irish Catholic Church has been damaged by the extensive evidence of child abuse in its midst. This paper focuses on child abuse in the Irish Catholic Church but also notes the more general relevance of the case study for Great Britain and other countries. By adopting a systemic approach, this account aims to avoid reductionist accounts of abuse and to discern those factors which are peculiar to the Irish case and those that have more general significance for child protection. The Irish case demonstrates a complex set of conditions of possibility for child abuse. Some of these were only relevant to Ireland and the Catholic Church but some were not. Institutional child abuse can be found in other countries, in other denominations and in secular organisations. However, the Irish Church warrants additional scrutiny because of the enmeshment of State and Church. Noteworthy salient risk factors include the conditions of systemic isolation and the social marginalisation of the victims.
Lessons from the Mental Health Act Commission for England and Wales: the limitations of legalism-plus-safeguards
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 41(1), January 2012, pp.61-81.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
The Mental Health Act Commission for England and Wales was closed down in 2009. This article uses data from its final report to provide a snapshot between social group membership and mental health status in modern society. The focus of the report was on race, gender and age in settings that have become more coercive and less therapeutic over time. This article uses some aspects of the report to discuss the implications of lawful psychiatric coercion being predicted by social group membership. The work of the Commission furnished useful information in this regard, but its framework for data collection could not illuminate a more established picture of the class gradient in mental health problems. This article considers how material adversity may explain the racial patterning of coercively detained psychiatric populations, and how normative aspects of risk-taking in the community and in hospital may explain the findings on age and gender. The article concludes by querying the ameliorative impact of government appointed ‘visitorial’ bodies. It argues that legalism-plus-safeguards is a questionable basis for meaningfully bringing discriminatory powers to book, or for reversing the differential impact of pathogenic social forces.
Key concepts in mental health
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Publisher:
- Sage
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 216p.
- Place of publication:
- London
- Edition:
- 2nd ed.
Drawing together perspectives from sociology, psychiatry, psychology and ethics, this book aims to cover the central concepts and debates shaping contemporary views about mental health and illness. It covers theories and understandings of mental health and mental health problems, the structure and organisation of mental health service delivery, and the social context of mental health. It is designed for student and trainee health professionals, including clinical psychologists, social workers, nurses, counsellors and psychotherapists.
The child abuse crisis in the Catholic Church: international, national and personal policy aspects
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 39(3), July 2011, pp.309-324.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article provides a systematic analysis of child abuse by Catholic Church personnel. Reports on this abuse in the past few decades have come from all over the world and have been linked to political responses from the Church and at times have implicated national governments. Because of the breadth and depth of the crisis, the article provides a framework offering 3 levels of conceptualisation. The macro level refers to global and trans-historical factors relevant to understanding abuse in the Church, specifically looking at the centralised authority of the Catholic Church. The meso level refers to the emergence of this recent crisis inside particular nations. At the micro level, consideration is given to the particular personal aspects of Catholic-setting abuse for perpetrators and victims to distinguish it from similar forms of offending that lie conceptually between intra-familial and stranger predation. The particular conditions that allowed for the abuse of children in Catholic settings are discussed. Four broad programmatic suggestions are offered in conclusion.
The survival of psychiatric diagnosis
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, 65(3), August 2007, pp.536-547.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Past and current debates about applying medical diagnoses to psychological difference in society are examined. Beginning with a brief historical overview from antiquity to ‘anti-psychiatry’ and a summary of recent debates, the article then offers two case studies of common diagnoses (‘depression’ and ‘schizophrenia’). The main challenge for social science is no longer about what is wrong with psychiatric diagnosis (that is now well rehearsed) but how to account for how and why it has survived. In answering this question about survival, inter-disciplinary work could attend to the pre-empirical positions of mental health researchers; the ways in which mental disorders are similar and different to physical disorders; and the interest work of different social groups defending or attacking psychiatric diagnoses in varying contexts.
New 'mental health' legislation for England and Wales: some aspects of consensus and conflict
- Author:
- PILGRIM David
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 36(1), January 2007, pp.79-95.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
The faltering emergence of new ‘mental health’ legislation in England and Wales between 1998 and 2005 is described. The slow progress largely reflected widespread opposition to the content of the government's plans to replace the Mental Health Act of 1983. That opposition was formalised in the Mental Health Alliance, an umbrella organisation which included user and professional groups as well as voluntary sector bodies. This article highlights the main points of dispute between the government and its opponents. In particular, concerns about compulsion and the duty of the state to guarantee good quality care in every locality divided the government and its critics. The implications of these disputes are discussed, along with some questions about interest work within the Alliance.