Psyche, Science, and Society

Most satistying jobs

The General Social Survey is administered to a representative sample of Americans every two years. The2006 GSS asked respondents about job satisfaction and general happiness.

Here are the Top 10 most gratifying jobs and the percentage of subjects who said they were very satisfied with the job:

• Clergy—87 percent percent
• Firefighters—80 percent percent
• Physical therapists—78 percent percent
• Authors—74 percent
• Special education teachers—70 percent
• Teachers—69 percent
• Education administrators—68 percent
• Painters and sculptors—67 percent
• Psychologists—67 percent
• Security and financial services salespersons—65 percent
• Operating engineers—64 percent
• Office supervisors—61 percent

Here are the 10 least gratifying jobs, where few participants reported being very satisfied:

• Laborers, except construction—21 percent
• Apparel clothing salespersons—24 percent
• Handpackers and packagers—24 percent
• Food preparers—24 percent
• Roofers—25 percent
• Cashiers—25 percent
• Furniture and home-furnishing salespersons—25 percent
• Bartenders—26 percent
• Freight, stock and material handlers—26 percent
• Waiters and servers—27 percent

In general, the jobs associated with the highest satisfaction tend to be associated with service and allow a fair degree of autonomy for workers. They do not appear to be among the highest-paying jobs.

The authors also looked at how happy the people were in various professions. The professions with the happiest people are:

• Clergy
• Firefighters
• Transportation ticket and reservation agents
• Housekeepers and butlers
• Hardware/building supplies salespersons
• Architects
• Mechanics and repairers
• Special education teachers
• Actors and directors
• Science technicians

The clergy and firefighters get the best of both worlds: high job satisfaction and high happiness.

Of course, researchers will note that we can’t know from these data alone whether some jobs lead to satisfaction, or whether certain people, those who tend to be satisfied, tend to gravitate to certain jobs. But one can’t help suspecting that service to others combined with relative autonomy is a good recipe for job satisfaction.

Add comment April 22nd, 2007

New archive on medical operations in America’s detainee prisons

Bioethicist Steven Miles informs us that his web archive of documents related to the role of medicine (including psychology) in the United States detention centers around the world will be online Monday morning here. His press release:

U of M’s Center for Bioethics and
Human Rights Library post online archive
of documents on prisoners of the war on terror
Documents focus on medical operations in prisons

MINNEAPOLIS / ST.PAUL (April 23, 2007) — The University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics and Human Rights Center have created a comprehensive archive of government documents describing medical operations in U.S. prisoner of war facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The archive, launched today, can be accessed from the homepage of the Human Rights Library (www.umn.edu/humanrts) or directly at www1.umn.edu/humanrts/OathBetrayed/index.html
The archive’s purpose is to enable scholars, journalists, policymakers, and interested citizens to study and understand the medical operations in these prisons. It contains more than 60,000 pages of indexed White House and Defense Department policies, prison medical records, autopsy reports, criminal investigations, sworn witness statements and e-mails involving the Armed Forces and the FBI.

This project was organized by physician-ethicist, Steven Miles, M.D., professor of medicine at the University. In articles and a book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror (Random House, 2006), he has tried to answer the question, “Where were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib while the notorious abuses were taking place?”
Web archivist, Leah Marks, of the Human Rights Library, built the archive.

This is not a dry compendium of documents. Examples of documents available to the public include:

• White House and Defense Department policies and memoranda showing how medical and behavioral clinicians were organized to exploit prisoners’ emotional and physical vulnerabilities for interrogation.
• Death files describing 148 prisoner deaths, including that of a child who died after having untreated tuberculosis.
• Interrogation documents showing how medical personnel cleared prisoners, even with signs of abuse, for interrogations; how the behavioral science consultation teams operated; and, how the FBI objected to harsh Army interrogation techniques. One interrogation document tells how a pregnant prisoner’s baby was delivered and sent to an orphanage or her family so that she could be interrogated.
• Silence files documenting medical personnel who remained silent about abuses, failed to record injuries, or “lost” records of prisoners who made allegations of abuse.
• Health documents describing the physical, sanitation, and mental care in the prisons.

The comprehensive nature of this archive will facilitate historical research on this prison system. For example, the thousands of pages of medical records are available, and easily searchable, for researchers who want to study prison health care.

The construction of this special archive was supported by a grant from the University of Minnesota’s Office of Public Engagement. The Human Rights Center and its Human Rights Library are supported by private gifts and foundation grants. Most, but not all, of these documents were obtained and posted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The mission of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics is to advance and disseminate knowledge concerning ethical issues in health care and the life sciences. The Center carries out this mission by conducting original interdisciplinary research, offering educational programs and courses, fostering public discussion and debate through community outreach activities, and assisting in the formulation of public policy.

The Human Rights Library http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/ houses more than twenty-five thousand human rights documents and several hundred human rights treaties and instruments and is available in eight different languages. It has more than four thousands links and a unique search engine for human rights sites. This resource is accessed by 200,000 scholars, educators, and human rights advocates from more than 150 countries every month. The Human Rights Library is a major initiative of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center located in the Law School.

1 comment April 22nd, 2007

American troops shoot, wound Iraqi hero

A paragraph in a recent New York Times article illuminates, without comment or emphasis, the role of American troops in Iraq:

“I saw a flash,” he said. “Then I jumped out of my car. I remember the doors were blown off. Shukriya and Adnan stayed in the car.” His family members say he has asked repeatedly for his cousin and aunt. They will wait until he is stronger to tell him his passengers were killed in the explosion.

In many countries, Rahim Kareem Himet would be lauded as a hero. In Iraq, he lies in a hospital bed with three bullet wounds. Mr. Himet was visiting a friend near Sadriya when the car bomb exploded. He ran to the scene with dozens of other passersby.

“I dragged the wounded away from the fire, I put them on handcarts and pushed them away from the scene,” he says, his account confirmed by another patient wounded in the attack. “I found a minibus nearby with no driver, we put 10 wounded in the back and I began to drive them to the hospital.”

As he neared the Babasher police station, about 100 yards from the blast site, soldiers that Mr. Himet says were Americans opened fire. He was wounded and crashed the bus in front of the police station. Iraqi soldiers were afraid to rescue him, he says, for fear the nervous American soldiers would shoot them, too. Bleeding badly, he was eventually taken to the hospital with the other victims he had tried to save.

US troops are too scared to help anyone. The idea that they can rescue the country they have done so much to destroy is ludicrous. Absent any real comprehensible mission, their one goal is, understandably, to get home alive. anyone who gets in the way, or even appears to do so, is in danger. Next time you hear how US troops have to stay in order to prevent Iraq descending into chaos, think of Rahim Kareem Himet.

1 comment April 22nd, 2007

The life of an Iraqi child psychiatrist

In an article I missed a month ago, the BBC described the “life” of Iraqi psychiatrist, now child psychiatrist, Dr. Haidr al-Maliki:

My Iraq: Child psychiatrist

Dr Haidr al-Maliki was an army psychiatrist during Saddam Hussein’s regime.

He now works as a child psychiatrist at Ab Ibn Rushed Hospital in Baghdad. He lives with his wife and four children.

There used to be about 80 psychiatrists in Iraq, now there are just 20 to 25.

And some of them will leave. Fifteen or so will eventually go to the UAE or to Jordan; it’s difficult.

About a year ago, during Ramadan, four boys aged about 15 to 20 came into my private clinic, in front of my patient.

They asked “Are you Dr Haidr?” I said yes. And they shot me several times.

One bullet went into my right shoulder, another into my right arm. I am left with nerve injury and muscle atrophy.

Afterwards they told me I couldn’t go to my clinic and that I had to leave the country. They didn’t say why.

So, now I don’t go out, I just stay at home. My own private jail.

During Saddam’s regime we could take our families to the cinema.

I want to drink, I want to dance, I want to visit my friends. But I can’t do anything. If I even think about going for a drink in my club 500m from my house, I will be killed.

Iraqi people are living in difficult times. Most of us have been exposed to aggression: attacks in the street, car bombings, kidnappings.

Most Iraqi people now deal with each other in an aggressive way; they show disturbed behaviour; they have lost their civility.

We don’t know how to treat these problems really.

But I can’t leave Iraq. If I and my friends leave, who will help our people?

Limitations of care

I was asked to open the child psychiatry centre in Ab Ibn Rushed hospital, but I have no training in children, really.

I read books and I try to help.

Most of the children are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, especially those who have been exposed to kidnapping.

Most of the children I see are bedwetting. They have disturbed behaviour or epilepsy.

We treat them with simple medication; it is very difficult.

Most of the families come here for help and sometimes we can do nothing for them, except offer support and advice.

Add comment April 22nd, 2007

Vertebrates and earthworm nervous systems share common origin

A new study examining the microstructure of the central nervous system (CNS) of earthworms suggests that they share the same evolutionary origin as do th CNS of vertebrates, in contrast to received wisdom:

Vertebrates have a spinal cord running along their backs, but insects and annelid worms such as earthworms, which have simple organs that barely resemble a brain, have clusters of nerves organized in a chain along their bellies. So biologists have long assumed these systems—key to ultimately putting a brain to use—arose independently, only after the split.

In the new study, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg examined they embryos of a marine annelid worm called Platynereis dumerilii, which has a nervous system unchanged for eons. They documented the molecular fingerprints of the developing nerve cells.

“Our findings were overwhelming,” says study team member Alexandru Denes. “The molecular anatomy of the developing CNS [central nervous system ] turned out to be virtually the same in vertebrates and Platynereis. Corresponding regions give rise to neuron types with similar molecular fingerprints and these neurons also go on to form the same neural structures in annelid worm and vertebrates.”

“Such a complex arrangement could not have been invented twice throughout evolution , it must be the same system,” said Gáspár Jékely, another team member. “It looks like Platynereis and vertebrates have inherited the organization of their CNS from their remote common ancestors.”

Add comment April 22nd, 2007