Even neuroscience needs sociology

Summer in Australia means a lot of time traveling in a car, often to the extent of completing an abridged audiobook and/or several podcasts.  One episode of BBC’s The World This Week caught my ear, not because it is titled “Australia Burning” but for the opinion piece by Martin Bashir (17 minute mark). Bashir discusses …

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A curious omission from NY Times well-being article in The Age

Another article reporting on Dr William Fleming’s workplace wellness research appeared recently in the New York Times, reproduced in some Australian newspapers like The Age (not available online). Newspapers are entitled to edit other newspaper’s articles for many reasons. Most tweaks are legitimate, but, in this case, The Age dropped an entire paragraph, which does …

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Plants, cake and mental health

On mental health, a clinical psychologist, Dr Sanah Ahsan wrote in The Guardian recently that: “…. I’ve seen first hand how we are failing people by locating their problems within them as some kind of mental disorder or psychological issue, and thereby depoliticising their distress.” The Guardian, 6 September 2022 This perspective, enlightened for psychologists, is …

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Not all suicides have a mental health condition

Most suicide prevention conferences I have attended have been dominated by mental health analyses, strategies and spruikers. The slow change in that dominance began around Professor Allison Milner’s research in 2018 and her questioning of the evidence of a mental health base but stalled with her untimely death a year later. A recent research paper …

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Some OHS approaches need the Industrial Relations touch

Several years ago, there was a proposal to produce a book of research linked to the work and themes of Professor Michael Quinlan. That book became “The Regulation and Management of Workplace Health and Safety“, and I recently obtained an affordable copy for my Summer break. (An excellent book review has been written by Eric …

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OHS and Wade Needham

It’s been a while since SafetyAtWorkBlog offered a profile on one of its subscribers. Wade Needham was generous enough to answer some questions about himself. His responses are intriguing and he provides excellents links to other resources. If you are a SafetyAtWorkBlog subscriber and would like to follow Wade’s lead, email your responses to the … Continue reading “OHS and Wade Needham”

Asia, maturity, grief, zero and data-collecting mouthguards – the SafetyConnect conference

Zero Harm is hardly ever mentioned in Australia’s academic occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences, except maybe with a little snigger. But it was prominent at the NSCAV Foundation’s SafetyConnect conference in late August 2019. This was partly because this conference has more of a commercial bent compared to other conferences but also because several …

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