Relationship among gender-related stress,resilience factors,and mental health in a Midwestern U.S. transgender and gender-nonconforming population

Background: Transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals experience more discrimination than their cisgender peers, and this discrimination can be associated with poorer mental health. This study used the gender minority stress model as a framework to examine the relationship among gender-related stressors and resilience factors and mental health outcomes. The study particularly aimed to increase knowledge of the gender-nonconforming population.

Methods: A community sample of 83 individuals that identify as a gender different than the sex assigned to them at birth completed an online survey. Depression and anxiety were assessed using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), respectively. The Gender Minority Stress and Resilience measure was used to assess distal and proximal stressors and resilience factors.

Results: The median CES-D and BAI scores were 16 and 13, respectively. Forty percent had a history of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), 75% had experienced suicidal ideation, and 45% had attempted suicide. Proximal stress was found to be a positive predictor of depressive symptoms. Resilience was a weak negative predictor of anxiety symptoms. Distal stress was a positive predictor of suicide attempts, and resilience factors and hormone use were marginal negative predictors of suicide attempt. Trans women were significantly less likely to have engaged in NSSI, but had a significantly higher proximal stress score than trans men and gender-nonconforming individuals.

Conclusion: Our study found high rates of mental health problems in the trans and gender-nonconforming sample. Our findings in part support the gender minority stress model, with gender-related stress predicting certain mental health problems and resilience being a negative predictor. Overall, gender-nonconforming individuals have had similar experiences and mental health findings as transgender individuals.     

Coordinating spatial referencing using shared gaze

To better understand the problem of referencing a location in space under time pressure, we had two remotely located partners (A, B) attempt to locate and reach consensus on a sniper target, which appeared randomly in the windows of buildings in a pseudorealistic city scene. The partners were able to communicate using speech alone (shared voice), gaze cursors alone (shared gaze), or both. In the shared-gaze conditions, a gaze cursor representing Partner A’s eye position was superimposed over Partner B’s search display and vice versa. Spatial referencing times (for both partners to find and agree on targets) were faster with shared gaze than with speech, with this benefit due primarily to faster consensus (less time needed for one partner to locate the target after it was located by the other partner). These results suggest that sharing gaze can be more efficient than speaking when people collaborate on tasks requiring the rapid communication of spatial information. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Meta-analysis of the effects of third-wave behavioural interventions on disordered eating and body image concerns: implications for eating disorder prevention

Third-wave behavioural interventions are increasingly popular for treating and preventing mental health conditions. Recently, researchers have begun testing whether these interventions can effectively targeting eating disorder risk factors (disordered eating, body image concerns). This meta-analysis examined whether third-wave behavioural interventions (acceptance and commitment therapy; dialectical behaviour therapy; mindfulness-based interventions; compassion-focused therapy) show potential for being effective eating disorder prevention programs, by testing their effects on eating disorder risk factors in samples without an eating disorder. Twenty-four studies (13 randomized trials) were included. Most studies delivered selective prevention programs (i.e. participants who reported elevated risk factor). Third-wave interventions led to significant pre–post (g = 0.59; 95% CI = 0.43, 0.75) and follow-up (g = 0.83; 95% CI = 0.38, 1.28) improvements in disordered eating, and significant pre–post improvements in body image (g = 0.35; 95% CI = 0.13, 0.56). DBT-based interventions were associated with the largest effects. Third-wave interventions were also significantly more efficacious than wait-lists (g = 0.39; 95% CI = 0.09, 0.69) in reducing disordered eating, but did not differ to other interventions (g = 0.25; 95% CI = –0.06, 0.57). Preliminary evidence suggests that third-wave interventions may have a beneficial effect in ameliorating eating disorder risk.     

Accommodating variation: dialects, idiolects, and speech processing

Listeners are faced with enormous variation in pronunciation, yet they rarely have difficulty understanding speech. Although much research has been devoted to figuring out how listeners deal with variability, virtually none (outside of sociolinguistics) has focused on the source of the variation itself. The current experiments explore whether different kinds of variation lead to different cognitive and behavioral adjustments. Specifically, we compare adjustments to the same acoustic consequence when it is due to context-independent variation (resulting from articulatory properties unique to a speaker) versus context-conditioned variation (resulting from common articulatory properties of speakers who share a dialect). The contrasting results for these two cases show that the source of a particular acoustic-phonetic variation affects how that variation is handled by the perceptual system. We also show that changes in perceptual representations do not necessarily lead to changes in production.     

Leverpress escape/avoidance conditioning in rats: Safety signal length and avoidance performance

Leverpress escape/avoidance is an excellent model for assessing coping in rats. Acquisition of the leverpress response is determined by the interstimulus (signal-shock) interval, as well as the type and duration of the aversive event. One factor that has received less research attention is the safety or feedback signal. The safety signal presumably negatively reinforces leverpress responding through fear reduction. Here, we present a parametric manipulation of safety signal length and avoidance performance. All rats were trained with a 60-s tone conditioned stimulus and an intermittent 1-s, 1.0-mA footshock. Training was further accomplished with a 1−, 2−, 4−, or 6-min safety signal. Acquisition of the avoidance response was comparable at all safety signal durations. Rats trained with the shortest safety signal (1 min) exhibited more leverpresses during the safe period, a measure of anxiety. Thus, acquisition of the leverpress avoidance response was efficient regardless of safety signal duration, even though shorter periods were associated with greater anxiety.     

Adolescent well‐being and supporting contexts: A comparison of adolescents in Ireland and Florida

The purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which social support and wider community perceptions/engagements among adolescents are connected with well‐being. We compared adolescents in two different societal contexts, Florida in the United States and County Offaly, in Ireland, and posed the questions: What are the key predictors of subjective well‐being from the various sources of support, and to what extent does the impact of social support on well‐being vary across these two societies? Questionnaires were completed and returned for 607 respondents (322 in the Irish study and 285 in the Florida study). A variety of scales were adopted and designed to operationalize our key concepts of: Adolescent well‐being, social support, school satisfaction, neighbourhood quality of life and community/voluntary participation. Our results indicate that informal social support and school satisfaction were the strongest predictors of youth well‐being in both locations, despite some differences in terms of individual influencing variables. From informal sources, emotional support from friends and advice/concrete/esteem support from parents emerged as important predictive dimensions. Liking school, perceptions of doing well in school were the main predictors of school satisfaction in Ireland while, in Florida, student camaraderie and the experience of bullying emerged as significant. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Social Disorganization Perspective on Bullying-Related Attitudes and Behaviors: The Influence of School Context

Social disorganization theory suggests that certain school-level indictors of disorder may be important predictors of bullying-related attitudes and behaviors. Multilevel analyses were conducted on bullying-related attitudes and experiences among 22,178 students in 95 elementary and middle schools. The intraclass correlation coefficients indicated that 0.6–2% of the variance in victimization, 5–10% of the variance in retaliatory attitudes, 5–6% of the variance in perceptions of safety, and 0.9% of the variance in perpetration of bullying was associated with the clustering of students within schools. Although the specific associations varied somewhat for elementary schools as compared to middle schools, the hierarchical linear modeling analyses generally suggested that school-level indicators of disorder (e.g., student–teacher ratio, concentration of student poverty, suspension rate, and student mobility) were significant predictors of bullying-related attitudes and experiences. Student-level characteristics (i.e., sex, ethnicity, status in school) were also relevant to students’ retaliatory attitudes, perceptions of safety, and involvement in bullying. Implications for school-based research and violence prevention are provided.