physics

Patricia Casey

Patricia Casey is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Patricia Casey rather than just read about it. In short: Patricia Rosarie Casey is an Irish psychiatrist, academic, journalist and conservative commentator on social issues. She is Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and consultant psychiatrist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin.

Key takeaways

Patricia Casey belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Patricia Casey to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Patricia Casey from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Patricia Rosarie Casey is an Irish psychiatrist, academic, journalist and conservative commentator on social issues. She is Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and consultant psychiatrist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin. She is known for her regular column with the Irish Independent newspaper, and her conservative views on a variety of social issues.

Background and personal life Brought up in Ballynoe in County Cork, Casey's father was a council worker and farmer, while her mother worked as a public health nurse. She has one sibling; a younger sister, Terry. Excelling at school, she went on to study medicine at University College Cork, graduating in 1976 with Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery. She is married to barrister John McGuiggan. Casey notes that she and her husband are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Casey is a practising Roman Catholic.

Medical career After graduating from medical school, Casey received specialist psychiatric and research training in Britain. Between 1977 and 1985 she held the positions of senior house officer, registrar, honorary senior registrar, and research fellow at Mapperley Hospital, Nottingham, and the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. From 1985 to 1991, she worked as a senior lecturer and consultant psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Cork University Hospital. She has been Professor of Psychiatry and director of an Acute Unit at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin since 1991. Casey has authored or co-authored several books and edits The Psychiatrist, a publication of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Her clinical and research interests include depression, personality disorder and suicide prevention. From 1994 to 1999, she chaired the Irish Fitness to Practise Medical Council Committee.

Memberships and Fellowships Casey is associated with several professional organisations:

Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Member of the Medico-Legal Society of Ireland

Positions on social issues Casey is a patron and co-founder of the Iona Institute, a think tank, often described as a pressure group, which promotes a Catholic point of view. Casey is known for her opposition to divorce, advising the Irish government against holding a referendum to legalise divorce in 1995. She also maintains that "the sense of loss children feel when parents separate is greater than when a parent dies". She does not, however, disagree with divorce in the case of a violent or abusive spouse. Casey also opposes abortion, surrogate pregnancy, anonymous donor in vitro fertilisation, non-traditional family units, adoption by gay parents, and same-sex marriage. She is a proponent of heterosexual adoption. Casey has testified before the Irish Government, at the British House of Commons, and in Irish legal cases on a number of these issues, in particular suicide and deliberate self-harm. She also writes a regular opinion column for the Irish Independent newspaper and in the past has contributed to the Sunday Business Post and to the letters page of the Irish Times, as well as appearing on national television and radio.

Newstalk interview In a November 2009 interview on Newstalk's The Wide Angle programme, Casey criticised the way in which the Catholic Church dealt with child sexual abuse. She called for reform of the Church hierarchy in Ireland and for the resignation of bishops named in the Murphy Report. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland later found the interview to have been conducted in an "unfair and non-objective manner" and described Karen Coleman's questioning of Casey as "inappropriate" and "unjustified". Newstalk broadcast an apology following the interview.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin row In July 2012, Casey accused the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin of undermining the confidence of young priests by both criticising them for being "traditional" and referring to them as "fragile". In addition she criticised him for being unable to talk about the Catholic Church in an "upbeat" way, offering "no solutions" and merely analysing problems rather than solving them. Responding on behalf of the Archbishop in August 2012, his Director of Communications accused Casey of "mispresenting" his comments, saying she had "conveniently forgotten" the Archbishop's upbeat comments at the Eucharistic Congress 2012. She also said Casey "grossly misrepresented" the Archbishop's comments on young priests being "fragile", saying "his actual comments [...] indicate the opposite".

Misrepresentation of research

Uppsala University study Swedish scientists faulted Casey for presenting their research data in order to support her position against same-sex marriage and same-sex couple adoption. Casey had made repeated reference to a parenting study from Uppsala University, Sweden, claiming that it showed that "children...do best when raised by their married biological parents". The University and the authors of the report rejected as invalid Casey's interpretation of their results. They have stated that her claim that children do better when raised by married heterosexuals is "not valid based on our findings... no comparisons were made with gay or lesbian family constellations in the studies included in the review. Therefore, there is nothing whatsoever in our review that would justify the conclusion that same-sex parents cannot raise healthy children who do well." Anna Sarkadi, the study's lead author, also commented, "I find it interesting that, since the report was published, we have been contacted by many ultra-conservative groups who are saying that it supports their point. But I think it's very important to be cautious about what conclusions you come to." Casey said that she was "just taking the results of the report to its logical conclusion."

UNICEF report Casey has claimed that a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report supported her position on same-sex parenting. This was disputed by the then Executive Director of UNICEF Ireland, Melanie Verwoerd. Verwoerd stated that "Unicef does not make any judgments on the well being of children growing up with same-sex parents" and that Casey's claim of UNICEF support was "incorrect and unacceptable".

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Patricia Casey

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Patricia Casey claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Patricia Casey before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Patricia Casey ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Patricia Casey

In research: Patricia Casey appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Patricia Casey in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Patricia Casey is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century Irish medical doctors, 20th-century Irish women medical doctors, 21st-century Irish medical doctors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Patricia Casey outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Patricia Casey in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Patricia Casey means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Patricia Casey out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Patricia Casey in simple terms?

Why does Patricia Casey matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Patricia Casey?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Patricia Casey.