Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

There is a critical need to identify proximal factors associated with help-seeking following a suicide attempt (SA; i.e., attempt to kill oneself). Many individuals receive emergency department care following a SA; however, little is known about factors distinguishing individuals who present to the emergency department voluntarily (i.e., played an active role in presentation through their own action to obtain help or through requesting help) and those who do not (i.e., brought to the emergency department due to no action of their own) following a SA, which could improve suicide prevention efforts. It was hypothesized that using a poisoning SA method and experiencing social support would increase the likelihood of help-seeking following SA. This study utilized electronic health record data for 553 emergency department patients (Mage = 37.94 [SD = 15.67], 53.30 % female, 94.40 % white) presenting within 24-hours after SA during a two and a half year period across six hospitals within a rural healthcare system. Within 24-hours of SA, 34.4 % engaged in help-seeking. The use of a poisoning SA method and a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder increased the likelihood of help-seeking, whereas a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and being in a romantic relationship decreased the likelihood. Results can inform suicide prevention initiatives to promote help-seeking immediately following SA, a critical period that may represent the last opportunity for self-intervention prior to the occurrence of lasting serious injury or death by suicide.

This research investigates the opportunities and challenges in sourcing locally produced ingredients within Pennsylvania’s craft beer industry. While Pennsylvania ranks as the second-largest craft beer producer in the United States, sourcing core beer ingredients like hops and barley locally remains difficult because of climate and production limita­tions. Survey results show that the majority of brewers in our survey agree that buying local products supports economic growth and believe it benefits farmers. Several barriers to local sourcing were identified, with price, variety, and accessibility ranking as major challenges. Smaller breweries, those close to population centers, and breweries with higher taproom sales are more inclined to adopt local inputs.

In 1917 Solomon Gurevich presented Smolenskii vestnik ’s readers with analysis of events from a defensist Socialist Revolutionary perspective. After surveying Gurevich’s biography, this essay considers his editorials on the war, peace, defensism, and internationalism. Gurevich hoped democratic revolution in Germany would end the war, but maintained Russia must continue fighting towards victory. He believed a democratic peace and repudiation of imperialism would hasten the coming of democratic socialism, and welcomed Wilsonian peace proposals and US intervention. He insisted that Russia’s revolutionary democratic future depended on sustaining the war effort and justified this defensism as harmonious with socialist internationalism.

Although writing almost a century after George Berkeley, Lady Mary Shepherd engaged with his works on various issues. I focus on Berkeley and Shepherd's conception of, and reaction to, indirect perceptual realism (IR) and note Berkeley and Shepherd's rejection of a familiar form of IR. After a short introduction, I outline Shepherd's version of IR, which, though denying direct sensory access to external objects, gives evidence of what that world is like in significant respects. I include Shepherd as an exponent of IR since she accepts a mind-independent world, in principle non-observable, but models mind-dependent content in meaningful ways. I then critically consider Shepherd's claim that Berkeley thinks sense organs are external to the mind. I note Shepherd, like Berkeley, believes an early modern form of IR I call 'Humean IR' is incoherent. Finally, I discuss why Shepardian IR, though consistent, might rule out certain explanations of natural phenomena.