A Royal Road to Consequentialism?

To consequentialise a moral theory means to account for moral phenomena usually described in nonconsequentialist terms, such as rights, duties, and virtues, in a consequentialist framework. This paper seeks to show that all moral theories can be consequentialised. The paper distinguishes between different interpretations of the consequentialiser’s thesis, and emphasises the need for a cardinal ranking of acts. The paper also offers a new answer as to why consequentialising moral theories is important: This yields crucial methodological insights about how to pursue ethical inquires.     

Where Have All the Children Gone? Movement from Child to Adult Mental Health Systems

The mental health histories of the 448 children 15 and 16 years of age who were admitted to state-operated children's psychiatric inpatient services in New York during 1982 were reviewed for the 11 year period through April 1993, Thirty-three percent were served as adults (after age 18) in the state-operated adult civil mental health system; 42% of these individuals were still receiving services at the end of the period. 113 of the 146 individuals served as adults were served only in the civil system. Thirteen percent of the cohort received some of their mental health services as adults in the state-operated adult forensic mental health system due to criminal law involvement. This includes nine percent who received mental health services while they were inmates in state prisons. Twenty four of the 57 forensic clients received services as adults only in the forensic system. Diagnostic, demographic, and service history characteristics of the groups were compared to foster an early understanding of policy and programmatic issues related to movement from the child mental health system to the adult system. Baseline (1982) information was used to identify predictors of later service utilization.     

Being Employed by a Co-national: A Cul-de-sac or a Short Cut to the Main Road of the Labour Market?

This paper analyses the impact of working in an ethnic economy on subsequent labour market performance for newly arrived immigrants. Is it a short cut to the labour market or does it lock immigrants into low income jobs? Working in an ethnic economy is defined as being employed by a self-employed co-national. The comparison group is a matched sample of newly arrived immigrants who were without employment during the same period. Swedish panel data for the period 1998?C2005 are used, and the sample is restricted to male immigrants, 20?C55?years of age. Using propensity score matching, we find that immigrants who were employed by self-employed co-nationals are more likely to be employed in the near future, but that the types of employment they have are associated with lower incomes. Many continue to be employed by self-employed co-nationals or become self-employed themselves.     

Parents’ Grief in the Context of Adult Child Mental Illness: A Qualitative Review

Research indicates that parents and other family members often grieve their child or relative’s mental illness. This grief appears resultant from a profound sense of loss, which has been described as complicated and nonfinite (e.g., Atkinson in Am J Psychiatry 151(8):1137–1139, 1994; Davis and Schultz in Soc Sci Med 46(3):369–379, 1998; Jones in Br J Soc Work 34:961–979, 2004; MacGregor in Soc Work 39(2):160–166, 1994; Osborne and Coyle in Couns Psychol Q 15(4):307–323, 2002; Ozgul in Aust N Z J Fam Ther 25(4):183–187, 2004; Tuck et al. in Arch Psychiatric Nurs 11(3):118–125, 1997). This paper reviews existent research in this emerging field, with a focus on parents’ grief experience in relation to their adult child’s mental disorder. Studies that explore parents’ and family members’ grief, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, are considered. Research evidence for the association between parents’ and family members’ grief and other outcomes are discussed. Findings concerning the prediction of grief in parents and family members who have a child or relative with a mental disorder will be reviewed. Finally, this paper considers methodological and theoretical issues associated with existent research and presents options for further study.     

Zones of Proximal Emotional Development — Psychotherapy Within a Neuroaffective Perspective

This article outlines a conceptual framework for assessing personal and emotional functions of a person’s zone of proximal emotional development. The framework is based on the integrative theory Neuroaffective Developmental Psychology (NADP), which brings together attachment theory, neuropsychology, developmental psychology, and trauma theory. Within the NADP framework, this article describes a way of understanding children’s normal emotional mental organization and of examining how this mental organization may be developed or disturbed by relational issues. It also describes how a child’s mental organization can be disturbed and thus, without intervention, disturb the child’s personality development on a lifelong basis. The article presents three case vignettes, describing three children growing into adolescence with three different attachment patterns and suggested individually tailored intervention plans for each of them, relevant and useful for clinicians working with vulnerable children and families. Because the nervous system retains its plasticity throughout life, attachment is not necessarily an unchangeable pattern. That is why we as clinicians should develop psychotherapeutic methods and a research-based way of determining “what works for whom” by assessing the zone of individual proximal emotional development. The text outlines the characteristics of NADP and how it can be used to structure an intervention plan.     

Woundedness and the Learning Child‐Spirit—Ontology and Epistemology of a Therapeutic Education

Spiritual education, at its best, fosters growth and helps the individual to search for meaning. These processes are by no means painless for the learner: either by ignoring the search, or by engaging in it, s/he may experience frustration, loss, confusion, sadness, anger. The argument will be that we can summarize these painful experiences and name them as woundedness. From a reading ofjungian analysis, religious classics and our own experience, we can see woundedness as a fundamental characteristic of all learners, by virtue of their humanity, but especially children. The child, as a learning spirit, can be understood to be wounded; the process of spiritual education can be understood therapeuti‐cally, knowledge can be understood as self‐recovery. In this understanding, spiritual education is not therapy in itself, but can be metaphorically understood as such, and can have some therapeutic effects. Some complexities and weaknesses of this metaphor are considered towards the end, and its considerable implications for spiritual education are sketched in outline.     

Comparative relationships of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS-R) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) to the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS)

This study investigated whether the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale — Revised (WAIS-R) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) demonstrate similar patterns of relationship with the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). Sixty VA patients were administered the WAIS-R and WMS and 60 completed the WAIS and WMS. The groups were comparable in terms of demographic variables. Pearson correlations were computed between the subtest and IQ scores from the intelligence scales and the scores from the WMS for each group. Comparison of the resulting correlations for the WAIS-R group with those of the WAIS subjects demonstrated only four significant differences, indicating that the WAIS-R and WAIS variables covary in a similar manner with the WMS scores. Following factor analysis of the test data for both groups, coefficients of congruence indicated a high degree of similarity between the two factor solutions. Essentially the same relationships emerged between intelligence variables and the WMS regardless of which scale was administered.     

Utilizing Benchmarking to Study the Effectiveness of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy Implemented in a Community Setting

Benchmarking is a program evaluation approach that can be used to study whether the outcomes of parents/children who participate in an evidence-based program in the community approximate the outcomes found in randomized trials. This paper presents a case illustration using benchmarking methodology to examine a community implementation of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (CI-PCIT) utilized as a child maltreatment prevention effort. Data were collected from 83 parent–child dyads. Change scores were compared to treatment and control effect sizes aggregated from the PCIT literature. Pre-post results indicated significant positive changes in child behavior for CI-PCIT completers. Benchmarking analyses revealed that parents who completed CI-PCIT reported significantly greater positive child outcomes than the aggregate control group benchmark, and significantly less than observed in the treatment benchmark. A summary of decision points and implications for utilizing this methodology in the child maltreatment field are postulated.     

Child abuse: is there a mandate for researchers to report?

During the past 20 years, states have increasingly expanded the lists of individuals who are obligated to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These legal requirements are juxtaposed with ethical considerations in research and professional practice. The ethical issues include the obligation to maintain both confidentiality of information provided by human participants and the safety and protection of these participants. This article reviews the types of state child abuse reporting statutes and outlines the categories of mandated reporters. I develop a model of how individual researchers should approach deciding whether they are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.     

Should One be Free to Choose the Sex of One's Child?

ABSTRACT Tests which predict the sex of a fetus have led to female feticide in India, and hence to demands that such tests be banned. This paper examines the arguments for banning such tests. These will depend partly on one's views regarding the morality of feticide: different views are discussed. However the morality of feticide is not the only relevant consideration, especially since it may become possible to choose the sex of the child at conception. Whether or not parents have the right to freedom of choice and information is analysed. Many non-western societies have special problems since the strong preference for boys may lead to the neglect of female children and to female infanticide. In heavily populated countries like India and China the need to control population growth is an additional complication. The paper concludes that in these societies the case for banning tests is weak.     

Exploring Maternal Grief: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Mothers’ Responses to the Death of a Child From Cancer

This study investigated the meaning-making phenomena underlying the responses of 13 bereaved mothers to the death of a child from cancer. Using a mixed-methods research design incorporating constructivist data collection methods, we found specific characteristics, coping processes, and factors to distinguish adaptive as opposed to complicated grief responses to this type of loss. However, the findings did not distinguish the bereaved mothers themselves as “adaptive” or “complicated grievers,” as they all evidenced both types of responses to their loss within or across different datasets. Despite this finding, the mothers’ results varied in terms of the proportions of adaptive as compared to complicated grief responses to their loss, which in turn were related to features of their self-construing, change or reinforcement of their world assumptions, ongoing relationship to their child and others in their social world, and management of loss- and restoration-oriented coping. Results suggest the utility of constructivist and cognitive coping models and methods in illuminating the experience of parental bereavement.     

Who Wants to go First? Order Effects Within a Series of Competitive Sales Presentations

This research uses organizational buyers to examine whether the order in which a sales presentation occurs within a series of competitive sales calls influences a buyer’s choice of the Market Leader and a similarly positioned Me-Too product. The Me-Too product is most successful when presented last—a recency effect. The Market Leader also fares better in the last position, but in addition, it is also chosen more often when it is presented first—a primacy effect. The salesperson for the Me-Too product is able to reduce the Market Leader’s primacy advantage by using an agenda selling strategy, in which the seller encourages the buyer to directly compare products and eliminate those that fail to meet minimum criteria.     

Morphological Development in the Speech of a Persian–English Bilingual Child

The present study aims at testing the two dominant hypotheses regarding the development of inflections and other functional categories namely the Structure-Building Model and the Continuity Hypothesis within the generative theory. According to the first view, functional categories are entirely absent in children’s early grammars, which contain only projections of lexical categories, most importantly ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs.’ This hypothesis holds that utterances produced by children are actually small clauses or verb phrases, and functional categories such as copula, determiners, and genitive are not acquired during the single-word or early multiword stages, but are implemented in the course of further acquisition, at around age 2 or later. The proponents of the second, i.e., the ‘Continuity Hypothesis,’ on the other hand, argue that functional categories are in fact present in children’s early syntax. These two hypotheses will be tested here against empirical data in English and Persian. Thus, longitudinal data will be provided on the acquisition of a few morphemes in the two languages acquired by the subject of the present study (i.e., English and Persian) including determiners, plural marker, genitive, and copula. The significance of the present study lies in the fact that it provides data on two typologically different languages in bilingual first language acquisition and thereby making a contribution to the field.     

Interaction Between the Parenting Alliance and Parent–Child Activities in a Clinic-Referred Sample of 2 to 18-year-olds

Several decades of research have demonstrated a link between marital, parenting, and child domains. The present study examined the nature of these links by testing the moderating effect of the parent–child relationship on the association between the parenting alliance and internalizing and externalizing problems in 324 dual-parent families of 2-to-18-year-old clinic-referred youth. Findings indicated that positive parent–child activities directly related to children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, and modified the nature of the association between the parenting alliance and internalizing problems in families of 6-to-10-year-olds. Interestingly, in families where parents engaged in fewer positive activities with their children, a strong parenting alliance actually related to greater child internalizing problems. Findings support the importance of understanding the interaction between the marital and child domains in order to effectively intervene with families of children experiencing behavior problems.     

A Psychometric Analysis of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale—Parent Version in a Clinical Sample

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale—Parent Version (RCADS-P) is a 47-item parent-report questionnaire of youth anxiety and depression, with scales corresponding to the DSM-IV categories of Separation Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). The RCADS-P is currently the only parent-report questionnaire that concurrently assesses youth symptomatology of individual anxiety disorders as well as depression in accordance with DSM-IV nosology. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the RCADS-P in a large (N = 490), clinic-referred sample of youths. The RCADS-P demonstrated favorable psychometric properties, including high internal consistency, convergent/divergent validity, as well as strong discriminant validity—evidencing an ability to discriminate between anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as between the targeted anxiety disorders. Support for the DSM-related six-factor RCADS-P structure was also evidenced. This structure demonstrated superior fit to a recently suggested alternative to the DSM-IV classification of anxiety and affective disorders—namely, the MDD/GAD “distress” factor.     

A Psychometric Analysis of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scales—Parent Version in a School Sample

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale—Parent Version (RCADS-P) is a parent-report questionnaire of youth anxiety and depression with scales corresponding to the DSM diagnoses of separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and major depressive disorder. The RCADS-P was recently developed and has previously demonstrated strong psychometric properties in a clinic-referred sample (Ebesutani et al., Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 38, 249–260, 2010b). The present study examined the psychometric properties of the RCADS-P in a school-based population. As completed by parents of 967 children and adolescents, the RCADS-P demonstrated high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and good convergent/divergent validity, supporting the RCADS-P as a measure of internalizing problems specific to depression and five anxiety disorders in school samples. Normative data are also reported to allow for the derivation of T-scores to enhance clinicians’ ability to make classification decisions using RCADS-P subscale scores.     

“To Enter One’s Skin”: The Concrete and Symbolic Functions of the Skin in the Social Unconscious,as Expressed in Fairy Tales and Group Therapy

This article deals with different modes of skin-related experiences in the social unconscious as expressed in two social products: fairy tales and group therapy processes. The phenomenon of the realization of a skin-related idiomatic expression that appears in fairy tales will be analyzed in order to touch upon the relations between concrete and symbolic modes of expressions in the social unconscious. This is based on previous works, showing that fairy tales reside along the seam line between thinking in words and thinking in images. A vignette from a therapy group shows its relevance to group psychotherapy.