Custodial suicide and class action remedies: Current obstacles and future directions

Custodial suicide is a foundational concern for correctional systems. The incarcerated population is at an increased risk for suicide as compared with people living in the community. Sufficient suicide prevention is a critical component of a constitutionally adequate system of correctional mental health care. The remedial phases of class action litigations have animated improvement in suicide prevention in many correctional systems across the United States. In the current climate, many legal obstacles make it more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail in such cases, but it is expected that advocates will find novel approaches in response to these legal hurdles, such as greater reliance on state law remedies, and will seek to expand the scope of potential actions in emerging areas such as immigration detention. Defendants and courts will, in turn, need to respond to these changes. This article explores the history of relevant litigations, and the legal obstacles currently faced by plaintiffs, as well as future directions the authors consider will likely be taken. Practical issues such as appropriate measurement of improvement in the area of suicide prevention are also explored.     

The relationship between spirituality and depressive symptom severity,psychosocial functioning impairment,and quality of life: examining the impact of age,gender, and ethnic differences

Research has documented the contribution of spirituality on overall health and mental health among college students. However, very few studies have explored the impact of cultural and ethnic differences on the effect of spirituality on mental health outcomes in this population. The aims of this study were to examine the relationships among spirituality, depressive symptom severity, psychosocial functioning impairment, and quality of life in a large multi-ethnic sample of college students and explore the impact of age, gender, and ethnicity on these relationships. The sample consisted of Latino, African-American, Caucasian, and Caribbean/West Indian college students. Findings indicated that spirituality, believing in God's presence, age, gender, and ethnicity were significantly related to depressive symptoms. These factors were also associated with impairment in psychosocial functioning and quality of life related to depression.     

Effects of Interest,Thematic Congruence,and Typicality on Memory for Television,Radio, and Press Advertisements of New Products

Little is known about how the content of advertisements is remembered. We studied how product interest, thematic congruence between advertisement and programme, and the typicality of the elements of an advertisement affect memory for new product ads in television, radio, and printed media. Participants were exposed to a single type of media with two embedded ads. After a filler task, they completed a true/false recognition task. In television and radio, accuracy was higher for the interesting product ads. In three experiments, we found no effect of thematic congruence, and the standard effect of typicality. In printed media, where participants are free to read the ads or not, the differences in hits and false alarms in typicality were due to a change in the response criterion and not to an effect on memory. We conclude that different results can be obtained depending on the exposure to different media. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coping strategies,stress and health of grandmothers caring for ascending and descending relatives / Afrontamiento,estrés y salud en abuelas cuidadoras de familiares ascendentes y descendentes

The progressive increase in life expectancy and the verticalization of the family mean that the provision of family care can be stressful and risky for the health of grandmothers who act as caregivers. One hundred and twenty grandmothers were interviewed in southwest Spain; they were daughters of a generation still characterized by high levels of dependence. A questionnaire with standardized psychological scales and items specifically designed for the study was used. Results showed that the burden of the instrumental and economic support had a detrimental effect on their health through stress, which in turn increased when they used coping strategies of denial and self-blame, and decreased with acceptance of reality and when they sought emotional support.     

Materialism and the Bright and Dark Sides of the Financial Dream in Spain: The Positive Role of Money Attitudes—The Matthew Effect

Research suggests that materialism leads to the dark side of the financial dream. In this study, we treat love of money as a mediator and test a theoretical model's direct path (Materialism to Financial Satisfaction) and indirect path (Materialism to Love of Money to Financial Satisfaction) simultaneously using the whole sample and across several demographic variables based on 1,011 citizens in Spain. Results for the whole sample showed that the positive indirect effect suppressed the negative direct effect creating an overall small positive effect. Furthermore, we found a significant negative direct path for rural dwellers, the 30–44‐year‐old age group, and married people, but a positive indirect path for rural residents, the 45–59‐year‐old age group, married, males, and urban dwellers. Overall, those in the 30–44 age group, rural residents, and married people experienced the dark side of the financial dream, whereas old (over‐60 age group), unmarried, urban, and young people (18–29 age group) enjoyed the bright side of their financial optimism. People's money attitudes and demographic variables play a positive role in our understanding of materialism and financial satisfaction, i.e. the Matthew Effect. Our novel, counterintuitive, and original theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions foster theory development and testing and improved practice.     

Intersubjectivity in infancy: A second-person approach to ontogenetic development

The aim of this paper is to present the principles of intersubjectivity as a second-person relational account of mind, set against individualist first- and third-person accounts of the sharing of mental representations. I will set out a summary of these positions and defend the claim that understanding proto-conversations as “expressive communications” allows one to understand them as genuine communications, as in, mutually manifest communications that entail intersubjectivity. To support this interpretation, I will propose a novel explanation of expression, understood as constitutive of the mental state.