The One Love Danger Assessment app, available free for both Apple and Android devices, was released this month to help aid victims of domestic abuse. The app is specifically tailored to woman, and allows victims, health professionals and other concerned parties to determine whether abuse is occurring and how to seek help.

The app is also available online through a web browser.

The Danger Assessment was developed by Dr. Jackie Campbell in the 1980s. Tina Bloom, a researcher at MU’s Sinclair School of Nursing and a partner with Teen Relationship Education, an affiliated project with the Center, helped develop the app to expose a wider audience to the assessment.

For more information, contact Bloom via email or by phone (660-537-4213). Also, visit the Missouri Health Cares about Domestic Violence website.

 

A paper uniting the fields of health care, psychology, religious studies, medicine and social work titled “Relationships among Spirituality, Religious Practices, Personality Factors, and Health for Five Different Faiths” and co-authored by four current MU professors furthers the position that spirituality can improve mental health. The five faiths examined in the study were Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism; and across all religions, surveys showed a greater involvement in religious ceremonies and practices correlated with indicators of better mental health.

“Spiritual beliefs may be a coping device to help individuals deal emotionally with stress,” one of the co-authors of the study, assistant professor Dan Cohen of the Religious Studies Department at MU, told the MU News Bureau of the findings.

In the paper, published online first in May in the Journal of Religion and Health, the researchers discuss the implications of the survey results, and suggest that health psychologists should use religious counseling strategies in therapy of patients facing particularly stressful prognoses.

The lead author of the paper is Brick Johnstone, a professor in MU’s Department of Health Psychology. In addition to Cohen, MU researchers involved in the project include Dong Yoon of the School of Social Work and James Campbell of the School of Medicine. The paper, in its entirety, is available via SpringerLink.

For more information, contact Johnstone via email.

Religion News Service (RNS) is launching a new website covering Columbia religion news. There will be an interactive forum for local faith groups and they can submit news releases and event information.

 

Check out the article in the Columbia Tribune!

The Center on Religion & the Professions, in partnership with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), released a three-year content analysis of news stories on Apr. 12, 2012 that shows a disproportionate number of anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues. The study examined 316 stories citing more than 1,350 sources with a religious identification, a vast majority of which had formal church policies opposing LGBT equality.

For more information, read the full press release from GLAAD, or contact GLAAD Director of Communications Rich Ferraro at (646) 871-8011 or via email; or GLAAD Director of Religion, Faith and Values Ross Murray at (646) 871-8040 or via email.

CORP Executive Director Debra Mason served as project director for the study, and was assisted by Cathy Ellen Rosenholtz, a Ph.D. candidate in Communications at MU and master’s graduate of the Divinity School at Harvard University.

For more specifics, (.pdf) read the report in its entirety from the Center on Religion and & the Professions website.

Greg Perrault, a Ph.D. candidate at MU’s School of Journalism, presented an analysis of five current-generation video games and how they depicted religion in January at the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture’s International Conference on Digital Religion at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Perrault’s paper, titled “RPG Religion: Depictions of Religion in Contemporary Role-Playing Games,” examines five games: Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed, Final Fantasy XIII, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and how religion is presented in each. Perrault found that, in all five games, a violent side to religion is presented that the protagonist must overcome.

Perrault concludes that it is not an agenda on the part of game developers to present religion as a problematized institution plagued by violence, but rather that religion is used as a narrative device in the games to introduce conflict for the player to resolve.

“Religion appears to get tied in with violence because that makes for a compelling narrative,” Perrault told the MU News Bureau.

A recently published study from two MU professors and supported  by the Center on Religion and the Professions found evidence to suggest that religious and spiritual support can help alleviate stress and physical symptoms related to chronic illness for both men and women. The study was co-authored by a team of researchers from the MU Health Psychology Department and School of Social Work and was recently published in the Journal of Religion, Disability & Health. MizzouWeekly published a summary of the findings and interview with two of the paper’s authors, Stephanie Reid-Arndt, an associate professor of health psychology, and Brick Johnstone, a professor health psychology and director fo the MU Spirituality and Health Research program. The full text of the study can be found online through the Taylor & Francis Group.

From the City of Columbia website:

“Through the Human Rights Enhancement Program, the city is interested in contracting with local organizations to provide human rights educational services in our community.  Services pertaining to the issues of discrimination, diversity, inclusion, tolerance, multicultural education and related human rights issues are considered for funding.  The HREP is also intended to encourage collaboration between organizations and individuals concerned with human rights issues and assist them with leveraging other monies in the support of these issues.”

The city urges organizations and individuals applying for funding to consider how their proposal should address human rights issues in the community as per the city’s Human Rights Ordinance. The City of Columbia Commission on Human Rights considers applications on a rolling basis throughout the year. Applications received by the 15th of each month will be assessed during the next scheduled commission meeting (calendar). Projects submitted for funding must be completed within a calendar year of when funds are awarded.

For more information: Contact the City of Columbia Human Rights Commission by phone at (573) 874-7488, by fax at (573) 874-7756, via email or by snail mail:
The Division of Human Services
P.O. Box 6015
1005 W. Worley
Columbia, MO  65205-6015

For additional information on the grant application process, refer to the Human Rights Enhancement Program policy (.pdf). Also on the commission’s website, you can find detailed reports of previous funding through the HREP program.

The MU Equity Office, part of the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative at the University of Missouri, has launched a campaign this fall to raise awareness of bias incidences on campus related to issues such as race, gender and religious affiliation. The office urges students, faculty and staff to report any bias incidences on campus either through their online form or brochures distributed to departments across campus. The office will then investigate the issue and offer constructive ways to resolve potential conflicts. Additionally, the department offers training and workshops on how to deal with bias incidences and a list of resources detailing common equity issues that may arise on campus.

For more information, contact the MU Equity Office via email or at (573) 882-9069.