Drugs & Violence (Part Two)

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 27th Jun 2022

Goldstein (1990), concluded that illicit drug use contributed to violence in three ways: psychopharmacologically, economically and systemically. From a psychopharmacological perspective there are certain drugs that cause mood swings, lower inhibitions, and increase aggression etc., which can/may result in violent offending e.g., a person who may not have otherwise engaged in an act of violence, but due to consumption of an illicit drug, reacts violently to a benign threat due to a state of heightened anxiety etc. Illicit drugs also contribute to violence economically; a user may engage in violent street robberies in order to finance their habit. Simply being...Click To Read More

Drugs & Violence (Part One)

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 20th Jun 2022

This is the first of two articles looking at how drugs can affect violence. In the first article I share perhaps one of my own experiences of dealing with a pain-resistant assailant on drugs, back in the early 1990’s when I first started working pub/club/bar security, and in the second I will look at drugs and violence in a broader context.   I have seen the effects of PCP (Phencyclidine) on pain tolerance firsthand and understand why one of its street names is “rocket fuel”. Although you do your best to prevent the use of drugs in a club, invariably someone...Click To Read More

Are The Mentally Ill More Violent?

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 13th Jun 2022

In the UK a new – non-medically defined – personality disorder was created, after Michael Stone, was convicted of the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell, and the attempted murder of Josie Russell. Five days before these killings, Stone had announced to a psychiatric nurse, that he was intending to kill his probation officer, his family, along with staff members at the psychiatric facility. In the U.S. – in most states - Stone could have been admitted/committed because, he had demonstrated that he intended to harm others; the two other criteria for such, are if the person is intending...Click To Read More

Interpreting Emotions

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 6th Jun 2022

There is a difference between emotions and feelings, even though we often use the terms interchangeably. Feelings are the conscious processing of our emotional state – they are the “words” we use to describe our emotions. Sometimes, we don’t even have the words to describe our emotions e.g., people suffering from depression often can’t describe or explain why they “feel” the way they do i.e., their emotional state. Emotions are, our physiological responses, to thoughts and experiences, whereas our feelings are our understanding of these. This is of course an over-simplification of the relationship between the two, as our conscious...Click To Read More