Parents’ experience of child contact within entrenched conflict families following separation and divorce: a qualitative study

Child contact arrangements with parents following separation and divorce are strongly endorsed for children in both public policy and law where safe, but can be difficult to sustain. Entrenched high-conflict post-separation relationships between parents can cause substantial emotional risks to children as well as impacting severely on parents’ mental health. This paper describes a qualitative study, aimed at examining parents’ experiences of contact arrangements post-separation, undertaken within a mixed methods random allocation study of therapeutic outcomes for parents in entrenched conflict over their children. Two established semi-structured interviews with 22 parents were jointly subjected to thematic analyses. A thematic analysis across interviews revealed three main themes: ‘Dealing with contact evokes extreme states of mind’ for parents; when speaking of contact, the child is ‘everywhere and nowhere’ in the parents’ minds; ‘the hardest thing about contact is dealing with my ex-partner’. These findings indicate the immense strain children and parents are under and shed much light on the desperate states of mind for parents, particularly the anxieties driving relentless child contact disputes. This paper may contribute to the understanding of parents’ experiences of contact arrangements post-separation, potentially providing important information which can inform best practice for professionals working with this population.     

Self-Reported Questionnaire Detects Family History of Cancer in a Pancreatic Cancer Screening Program

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a leading cause of cancer death; approximately 5–10% of PDAC is hereditary. Self-administered health history questionnaires (HHQs) may provide a low-cost method to detail family history (FH) of malignancy. Pancreas Center patients were asked to enroll in a registry; 149 with PDAC completed a HHQ which included FH data. Patients with FH of PDAC, or concern for inherited PDAC syndrome, were separately evaluated in a Prevention Program and additionally met with a genetic counselor (GC) to assess PDAC risk (n?=?61). FH obtained through GC and HHQ were compared using Wilcoxon signed-rank sum and generalized linear mixed models with Poisson distribution. Agreement between GC and HHQ risk-assessment was assessed using kappa (κ) statistic. In the Prevention Program, HHQ was as precise in detecting FH of cancer as the GC (all p?>?0.05). GC and HHQ demonstrated substantial agreement in risk-stratification of the Prevention Program cohort (κ?=?0.73, 95% CI 0.59–0.87.) The sensitivity of the HHQ to detect a patient at elevated risk (i.e., moderate- or high-risk) of PDAC, compared to GC, was 82.9% (95% CI 67.3–92.3%) with a specificity of 95% (95% CI 73.1–99.7%). However, seven patients who were classified as average-risk by the HHQ were found to be at an elevated-risk of PDAC by the GC. In the PDAC cohort, 30/149 (20.1%) reported at least one first-degree relative (FDR) with PDAC. The limited sensitivity of the HHQ to detect patients at elevated risk of PDAC in the Prevention Program cohort suggests that a GC adds value in risk-assessment in this population. The HHQ may offer an opportunity to identify high-risk patients in a PDAC population.     

Cumulative parenting stress across the preschool period: relations to maternal parenting and child behaviour at age 5

Despite increasing interest in the effects of parenting stress on children and families, many questions remain regarding the nature of parenting stress and the mechanism through which stress exerts its influence across time. In this study, cumulative parenting stress was assessed across the preschool period in a sample of 125 typically developing children and their mothers. Indices of parenting stress included both major life events stress‐assessed annually from age 3 to 5, and parenting daily hassles assessed every 6 months across the same period. Naturalistic home observations were conducted when children were age 5, during which measures of parent and child interactive behaviour as well as dyadic pleasure and dyadic conflict were obtained. Mothers also completed the CBCL to assess children's behaviour problems. Results indicated that parenting daily hassles and major life stress are relatively stable across the preschool period. Both cumulative stress indices also proved to be important predictors of parent and child behaviour and dyadic interaction, although the predictions were somewhat differential. Despite meaningful relations between the stress factors and child well being, no evidence was found to support the premise that parent behaviour mediates the association between parenting stress and child outcomes. Results are discussed within a developmental framework to understand the stability and complexity of cumulative stress associations to early parent–child relationships. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Training Experiences as Mediators of the Association Between Gender-Role Egalitarianism and Women��s Adjustment to Marine Recruit Training

Women may face particular challenges adjusting to the military environment, in part due to their numerical minority status in a traditionally male culture. In addition, women are more likely than men to experience the added stressor of sexual harassment. We examined several potential mediators of the relationship between gender-role egalitarianism and adjustment to boot camp training in a sample of 658 female U.S. Marine recruits. Results indicated that sexual harassment, performance stress, and unit cohesion mediated the relationship between egalitarianism and mental health symptomatology. These findings suggest that beliefs about gender roles are important to consider in efforts to improve women??s adjustment in the military.     

Comprehensive soldier fitness: a vision for psychological resilience in the U.S. Army

The stress and strain on the U.S. Army's community due to nearly a decade of protracted war is well documented in the press and in scientific literature. In response, the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program is a preventive program that seeks to enhance psychological resilience among all members of the Army community, which includes soldiers, family members, and Department of the Army civilians. CSF is not a medical treatment program. Rather, CSF helps those community members who are psychologically healthy face life's adversities-including combat and prolonged separation from loved ones-by providing evidence-based training.     

Elevated social anxiety among early maturing girls

Adolescence is a key period in terms of the development of anxiety psychopathology. An emerging literature suggests that early pubertal maturation is associated with enhanced vulnerability for anxiety symptomatology, although few studies have examined this association with regard to social anxiety. Accordingly, the current study was designed to further elucidate the relation between pubertal timing and social anxiety, with a focus on clarifying the role of gender. Participants were 138 adolescents (ages 12-17 years) recruited from the general community. Level of social anxiety was examined as a function of gender and within-sample pubertal timing. As expected, early maturing girls evidenced significantly higher social anxiety, compared with on-time girls and early maturing boys, and no other differences were found as a function of gender or developmental timing. Findings and future directions are discussed in terms of forwarding developmentally sensitive models of social anxiety etiology and prevention.     

The acceptance model of intuitive eating: a comparison of women in emerging adulthood, early adulthood, and middle adulthood

The acceptance model of intuitive eating (Avalos & Tylka, 2006) posits that body acceptance by others helps women appreciate their body and resist adopting an observer's perspective of their body, which contribute to their eating intuitively/adaptively. We extended this model by integrating body mass index (BMI) into its structure and investigating it with emerging (ages 18-25 years old, n = 318), early (ages 26-39 years old, n = 238), and middle (ages 40-65 years old, n = 245) adult women. Multiple-group analysis revealed that this model fit the data for all age groups. Body appreciation and resistance to adopt an observer's perspective mediated the body acceptance by others-intuitive eating link. Body acceptance by others mediated the social support-body appreciation and BMI-body appreciation links. Early and middle adult women had stronger negative BMI-body acceptance by others and BMI-intuitive eating relationships and a stronger positive body acceptance by others-body appreciation relationship than emerging adult women. Early adult women had a stronger positive resistance to adopt observer's perspective-body appreciation relationship than emerging and middle adult women.     

The adolescent brain

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by suboptimal decisions and actions that give rise to an increased incidence of unintentional injuries and violence, alcohol and drug abuse, unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Traditional neurobiological and cognitive explanations for adolescent behavior have failed to account for the nonlinear changes in behavior observed during adolescence, relative to childhood and adulthood. This review provides a biologically plausible conceptualization of the neural mechanisms underlying these nonlinear changes in behavior, as a heightened responsiveness to incentives while impulse control is still relatively immature during this period. Recent human imaging and animal studies provide a biological basis for this view, suggesting differential development of limbic reward systems relative to top-down control systems during adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. This developmental pattern may be exacerbated in those adolescents with a predisposition toward risk-taking, increasing the risk for poor outcomes.     

Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition

All nouns in Spanish have grammatical gender, with obligatory gender marking on preceding articles (e.g., la and el, the feminine and masculine forms of "the," respectively). Adult native speakers of languages with grammatical gender exploit this cue in on-line sentence interpretation. In a study investigating the early development of this ability, Spanish-learning children (34-42 months) were tested in an eye-tracking procedure. Presented with pairs of pictures with names of either the same grammatical gender (la pelota, "ball [feminine]"; la galleta, "cookie [feminine]") or different grammatical gender (la pelota; el zapato, "shoe [masculine]"), they heard sentences referring to one picture (Encuentra la pelota, "Find the ball"). The children were faster to orient to the referent on different-gender trials, when the article was potentially informative, than on same-gender trials, when it was not, and this ability was correlated with productive measures of lexical and grammatical competence. Spanish-learning children who can speak only 500 words already use gender-marked articles in establishing reference, a processing advantage characteristic of native Spanish-speaking adults.     

The aftermath of 9/11: effect of intensity and recency of trauma on outcome

Does trauma exposure have a long-term impact on the brain and behavior of healthy individuals? The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the impact of proximity to the disaster of September 11, 2001, on amygdala function in 22 healthy adults. More than three years after the terrorist attacks, bilateral amygdala activity in response to viewing fearful faces compared to calm ones was higher in people who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on 9/11, relative to those who were living more than 200 miles away (all were living in the New York metropolitan area at time of scan). This activity mediated the relationship between group status and current symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. In turn, the effect of group status on both amygdala activation (fearful vs. calm faces) and current symptoms was statistically explained by time since worst trauma in lifetime and intensity of worst trauma, as indicated by reported symptoms at time of the trauma. These data are consistent with a model of heightened amygdala reactivity following high-intensity trauma exposure, with relatively slow recovery.