Life Satisfaction and Symptoms of Mental Disorder Among Older African American Public Housing Residents

This study examines life satisfaction and symptoms of mental disorder in a sample of 831 older African American residents of urban public housing developments. Symptoms of mental disorder included measures of emotional distress, alcohol-related problems, and cognitive impairment. Subjects reporting less life satisfaction had significantly greater emotional distress. Neither lifetime alcohol-related problems nor cognitive impairment were significantly related to life satisfaction. Stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that emotional distress subscales accounted for most of the explained variance in life satisfaction. Social dysfunction was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, accounting for 17% of the variance. Having a confidant, instrumental social support, religious support, or being female also contributed to the explained variance in life satisfaction.     

Braiding Two Evidence-Based Programs for Families At-Risk: Results of a Cluster Randomized Trial

Child maltreatment is a significant public health problem best addressed through evidence-based parent-support programs. There is a wide range of programs with different strengths offering a variety of options for families. Choosing one single evidence-based program often limits the range of services available to meet the unique needs of families. This paper presents findings from a study to examine the systematic braiding of two evidence-based programs, Parents as Teachers and SafeCare at Home (PATSCH), with the goal to provide a more robust intervention for higher risk families. A cluster randomized effectiveness trial was conducted to examine if PATSCH improved parenting behaviors known to decrease the risk for child maltreatment compared to Parents as Teachers (PAT) Alone. Parents (N?=?159; 92 PAT Alone; 67 PATSCH) were enrolled to complete a baseline, 6-month and 12-month assessment. Results indicate the groups did not differ on number of environmental hazards in the home, parents’ health care decision-making abilities, child abuse potential, and physical assault over time. However, with regard to the potential for child abuse, the PATSCH group showed a decrease in nonviolence discipline and increase in psychological aggression compared to the PAT group. Further research is needed to better examine this concept and its implications for the field.     

Community-delivered infant–parent psychotherapy improves maternal sensitive caregiving: Evaluation of the Michigan model of infant mental health home visiting

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a home-based psychotherapeutic Infant Mental Health Home Visiting (IMH-HV) intervention for enhancing parenting sensitivity; a secondary aim was to evaluate whether the use of video feedback was associated with greater treatment response. Participants were N = 78 mothers and their children (age at entry ranged from prebirth to 24-month old (M = 9.8, SD = 8.4), who were initiating IMH-HV services with community mental health-based therapists (N = 51). Dyads were assessed during extended home visits via standardized interviews and observational and questionnaire methods within the first month of treatment (baseline), and again 6 and 12 months thereafter. Following each of these extended home visits, study evaluators completed a standard Q-sort to capture observations of maternal sensitivity during the visit. Therapists completed fidelity checklists used to derive the total number of IMH-HV sessions received (i.e., dosage) and frequency with which therapists provided video feedback. Results indicated a dose–response relationship between number of sessions and maternal sensitivity, and that video review with parents independently contributed to improved maternal sensitivity. Discussion focuses on the effectiveness of this community-based psychotherapeutic home visiting model for enhancing parenting, as well as the value of video feedback as a specific therapeutic strategy.     

The Role of Religion in the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement

This paper applies the concept of identity to the white racialist or separatist movement, typically referred to as the white supremacist movement in many mainstream publications. While similar racial identity and shared perceptions of the meaning of racialism bind the movement together, there are other important concerns that potentially divide the movement but also have served to attract members to it. One of these potentially divisive areas, the differences in religious views, is explored here through an analysis of the white separatist literature and interviews with movement members. Three belief systems of movement members—Christian or Israel Identity, Church of the Creator, and Odinism—are examined. All three contribute to strengthening the racial identity of white racialists, but are at the same time potentially antagonistic to each other. It is suggested that this religious divide will be a key issue in influencing the future development of the movement.     

The Temporal Unfolding of Local Acoustic Information and Sentence Context

The purpose of this study was to investigate the temporal unfolding of local acoustic information and sentence context using both cross-modal interference (CMI) and word-monitoring tasks. The timing of sentence context effects have important theoretical implications for models of language processing (e.g., initial context independence vs. initial interaction). Yet, different tasks tend to yield different results. For both experiments, stimuli from an acoustically manipulated goat-to-coat continuum were embedded in sentences whose interpretation was biased toward either goat or coat. In experiment 1 (CMI), the primary task was listening to sentences for comprehension; the interference task was a word/nonword decision to an unrelated visual probe that appeared at one of three positions within the sentence. Results showed immediate effects of the acoustic manipulation, but only delayed effects of sentence context. These results were interpreted to indicate that phonological processing is initially context-independent but is followed by rapid context integration. Experiment 2 used a word-monitoring task: Response times were significantly longer when sentence context was incongruent with the monitoring target, showing an immediate effect of context. The apparently contradictory results of the two experiments together support an account of language processing in which phoneme categorization is initially independent of sentence context unless an explicit judgment about the identity of the target is required.     

Correspondence between MMPI PTSD measures and clinical diagnosis

Correspondence of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) subscale and the clinical scale decision rules reported by Keane, Malloy, and Fairbank (1984) with clinical diagnoses of PTSD was measured on a sample of 595 veterans. The measures demonstrated good sensitivity and selectivity, but the false-positive rate was high. It is suggested the MMPI measures be used to rule out, but not to establish, the diagnosis of PTSD. The construct validity of the PTSD subscale was supported by the finding of a higher mean score in combat than noncombat veterans.     

Women's communication in Mexican organizations

This study attempts to derive a communication profile of women in Mexican organizations of the private sector. The questions that guided the study were the following: (1) Do women perceive their communication behaviors as similar to or different from those of men at their same organizational level? (2) If women do perceive differences, what is their nature? (3) Do perceived similarities to and differences from men vary by organizational level? Forty-five women in 14 Mexican organizations were intensively interviewed in the winter of 1980. The interviews were distributed equally at three organizational levels—secretarial, middle management, and upper management. It was found that women respondents perceive themselves to differ from men on 18 of 40 verbal and nonverbal communication variables. The average woman in this study perceived that verbally she is more courteous, cheerful, assertive, careful, likely to talk with males, self-confident, and directive than men, and that she expresses less agreement than men. Nonverbally, the average woman was found to look more at the eyes, smile more, give more attention to dress, be more punctual and flexible than men, and to be less rigid in posutre, touch less, invite co-workers to her home less, and take less work home. Organizational level differences were also found. The results are discussed in the light of the theoretical paradigms presented in the study.