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Objectives: Research on the mental health and service needs of homeless seniors has been scant. This paper reviews the available literature and presents findings of a Toronto survey in an effort to describe the demographics of homeless seniors, their level of impairment, and their mental and physical health needs.Methods: We searched the Medline, AgeLine, and PsycINFO databases, using the following key words: elderly homeless, elderly hostel users, and urban geriatrics. To better describe the service needs of the elderly homeless, we obtained demographic data from the Community and Neighbourhood Services Department and distributed a survey questionnaire to 11 Toronto hostel directors. The questionnaire elicited data relating to reasons for shelter use, problem behaviours, and mental health needs of those over age 65 years.Results: Although seniors represent a small percentage of the homeless population, their numbers are growing. The available literature suggests a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment in this population, with a greater proportion of older women than men having severe mental illness. Further, our survey suggests that the service needs of elderly hostel users in Toronto differ from those of their younger counterparts.Conclusion: The homeless elderly are the most vulnerable of this impoverished population. Although more research is needed to define their mental and physical health needs and ways of meeting them, their characteristics appear to be unique. Geriatric psychiatrists could play a significant role in evaluating and treating this population more comprehensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of functionary skills and prerogatives deployed in process of framing, negotiating and establishing conditions for action in pentecostal assemblies. It is based upon overt non-participant observation and interviewing in 66 pentecostal institutions in England and Wales, Canada and the United States. Its focus is upon the crises that arise either when the prerogative of definition is contested by two or more 'special definers' or when there is a compelling resemblance of phenomena in the sacred domain to realities familiar in the profane. The skills which enable the professional functionary to sustain sacred definitions during such conflicts include competence in the sacred language, the management of laughter and the sacred gift of `discernment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of rethinking the social meaning and uses of education. historicizing its organized firms. and seeing educational knowledge as fully cultural has required a long detour. The current revitalization, which is believed that the critical sociology of education returns to the entire discipline flourished largely not in sociology but in educational fields like curriculum. It first appeared not in the U.S. but abroad particularly in England. It did not draw sustenance from the center of' American sociological discourse but was nurtured at its periphery in European structuralist and cultural theory. The result of a combined historic exclusion and current valuation is the danger of an apparently truncated narrative and a false impression that there is no developmental history or tradition of the work presented in this article. These papers can be said to represent a third generation in critical sociology of education. They follow the first ideology critique and general theory phase and then the more education-centered. but still diffuse structuralist derivations of the middle period.