Managing Elder Suicide: A Profile of American and Canadian Crisis Prevention Centers

Suicides among older adults in the United States and Canada in the last decade have accounted for an increasing share of all suicides. In both countries the use of firearms among older adults has steadily increased. Despite these trends, little is known about the extent to which crisis centers are prepared to prevent elder suicide. A survey of AAS-listed crisis prevention centers examined the training, knowledge, and current practices relevant to elder suicide among personnel in 321 crisis prevention centers in both countries. Results revealed insufficient training, a lack of familiarity with recent suicide trends, and limited outreach to older adults.     

Assessment of methods for measuring social support

A rapidly expanding literature documents the effects of social support on physical and psychological well-being. Although definitions vary, most include both tangible components (e.g., financial assistance and physical aid) and intangible components (e.g., encouragement and guidance). Social support has been implicated in the mediation of stressful life events, recovery from illness, and increased program adherence. There are many inconsistent findings in the literature, however, and it is difficult to resolve discrepancies because measures of social support vary widely from study to study. To guide in the selection of measurement methods for research and applied work, 23 techniques for assessing social support are reviewed and evaluated. Criteria for favorable evaluation included reliability coefficients greater than .8 and documentation of validity. Correlations between various social support and criterion measures are simulated in order to demonstrate the consequences of choosing a measure with low reliability. Scale developers reported reliability data for 19 of the reviewed measures. Internal consistency coefficients ranged from .31 to .98. Test-retest coefficients ranged from .22 to .96. At least some validity documentation was available for 13 of the scales. Discriminant validity evidence, however, is almost universally absent. Despite psychometric weaknesses and variability among the scales, researchers have several instruments available to them.     

Studies of psychosocial influences on coronary artery atherogenesis in cynomolgus monkeys

The cynomolgus macaque provides a suitable primate model for studying how psychosocial factors contribute to coronary artery atherogenesis. Important interactions with diet, sex, and behaviorally elicited cardiovascular reactivity are described.     

Representation by counsel: Right or obligation?

Since the Supreme Court's decision in Faretta v. California (1975), courts have generally permitted defendants to represent themselves, as long as they are competent to do so. The problem lies in the definition of competency to waive counsel, which has been vaguely defined by the courts. Little is known about the frequency of, or reasons for, attempts to waive counsel, about the process of forensic evaluation of such competency, and about the success of such attempts. The authors briefly review the case law on competency to waive representation, report on a longitudinal prospective study of these issues in a population of defendants referred to an inpatient forensic facility for evaluation of all types of competency related to their criminal prosecutions, and discuss the significance of the issue for forensic clinicians. A key question for courts, lawyers, and clinicians is whether a competency evaluation can be invoked to overcome a defendant's constitutional rights to self-representation and bail.     

On the Compatibility of Pacifism and Care

A mother's commitment to use violence if necessary to protect her children is not incompatible with pacifism, if pacifism is understood as the commitment to end war and war is understood as the use of violence as a political tool.     

Representation of on-line questionnaires in an editable,auditable database

A general way of describing multiple-choice questionnaires for on-line presentation is described. Some of the important features supported include random ordering of and sampling among questions, substitution of specific-question text into boilerplate question and response formats, a limited ability to bypass irrelevant questions, experimenter editing of response arrays, and automatic production of hard-copy versions of the questionnaire for use during computer breakdowns and for archival documentation. All editing operations on both questionnaires and response data create audit trails for future reference.     

On structural equation modeling with data that are not missing completely at random

A general latent variable model is given which includes the specification of a missing data mechanism. This framework allows for an elucidating discussion of existing general multivariate theory bearing on maximum likelihood estimation with missing data. Here, missing completely at random is not a prerequisite for unbiased estimation in large samples, as when using the traditional listwise or pairwise present data approaches. The theory is connected with old and new results in the area of selection and factorial invariance. It is pointed out that in many applications, maximum likelihood estimation with missing data may be carried out by existing structural equation modeling software, such as LISREL and LISCOMP. Several sets of artifical data are generated within the general model framework. The proposed estimator is compared to the two traditional ones and found superior.The research of the first author was supported by grant No. SES-8312583 from the National Science Foundation and by a Spencer Foundation grant. We wish to thank Chuen-Rong Chan for drawing the path diagram.     

Incorporating good programs into the larger laboratory context

The Scheduled Measurement System (SMS) is a collection of related programs for administering performance and rating tasks to human subjects. It was designed to provide a common task scheduling and data management environment for a diversity of measures. SMS has greatly reduced the effort required to analyze and archive data after experiments, but it has been less successful in reducing some of the effort required to implement experiments. While programming is not difficult, documentation and user training remain the most primitive parts of the system.     

Reflections on the idea of personal fate and its psychopathology: Helene Deutsch's "Hysterical Fate Neurosis" revisited

The idea of a psychopathology of fate or what had come to be called a fate neurosis has failed to retain any established place in the structure of psychoanalytic thought. The clinical observations and theoretical formulations, to which the idea of a fate neurosis answered, have been subsumed in the course of things by more fundamental and systematic conceptualizations. A review of Helene Deutsch's (1930) paper, "Hysterical Fate Neurosis," is therefore bound to be largely an excursion into an area of intellectual history. However, such history never fails to shed light on certain ongoing clinical and theoretical problems that may have lost too much to current developments in psychoanalytic thought. It is with this historical purpose that the present study of Deutsch's classic paper on a fate neurosis is undertaken.