Effects of Spirituality on Health‐Related Quality of Life in Men With HIV/AIDS: Implications for Counseling

This study examined the association of spirituality and health‐related quality of life among 226 HIV‐positive men. Two measures of spirituality were used: the Spiritual Growth subscale from the Health‐Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (S. N. Walker, K. R. Sechrist, & N. J. Pender, 1987) and the Spirituality subscale of the HIV Coping Instrument (L. Moneyham, A. Demi, Y. Mizuno, R. Sowell, & J. Guillory, 1998). Health‐related quality of life was measured with the HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (R. D. Hays et al., 1998). Spiritual coping (i.e., relying on religion‐based coping techniques) was not associated with health‐related quality of life at baseline or 12‐month follow‐up. Spiritual growth (i.e., existential feelings of connection with a force greater than oneself) improved some aspects of mental and emotional well‐being but did not affect physical functioning or pain management.     

Adolescent Depression: Stressful Interpersonal Contexts and Risk for Recurrence

ABSTRACT— High rates of diagnosable depression in adolescence, especially among young women, present challenging clinical and research issues. Depression not only portends current maladjustment but may also signal risk for recurrent or chronic depression and its associated impairment. Because depression is most often a response to stressful events and circumstances, it is important to understand the stress context itself. Individuals with depression histories are known to contribute to the occurrence of interpersonal and other stressors at a high rate, and for young women particularly, the occurrence of interpersonal stressors and conditions in turn predicts recurrences of depression, in a vicious cycle. Interpersonal dysfunction in early adolescence predicts the likelihood of continuing maladaptive functioning in peer, family, romantic, and parenting roles. The transmission of depression from one generation to the next involves not only heritable factors but also the likelihood that depressed youth become caught in life contexts of marital and parenting discord that portend dysfunction for their offspring and continuing depression for themselves.     

Coping Style and Depression in Early Adolescence: Relationships to Gender,Gender Role,and Implicit Beliefs

Three studies were designed to investigate the interrelationships among coping styles, gender roles, and level of depression for early adolescents. Girls displayed more depression than boys, and more highly depressed girls demonstrated coping patterns similar to those of depressed adolescent and adult women. Individuals who identified with the feminine gender role showed increases in depression with age. Participants' implicit beliefs about what constituted appropriate coping behavior were also linked to gender. Both genders believed that men should not ruminate but that they should distract themselves from problems. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Does perceptual learning in speech reflect changes in phonetic category representation or decision bias?

Recent studies show that perceptual boundaries between phonetic categories are changeable with training (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). For example, Kraljic and Samuel (2005) exposed listeners in a lexical decision task to ambiguous /s-integral/ sounds in either s-word contexts (e.g., legacy) or integral-word contexts (e.g., parachute). In a subsequent /s/-/integral/ categorization test, listeners in the /s/ condition categorized more tokens as /s/ than did those in the /integral/ condition. The effect--termed perceptual learning in speech--is assumed to reflect a change in phonetic category representation. However, the result could be due to a decision bias resulting from the training task. In Experiment 1, we replicated the basic Kraljic and Samuel (2005) experiment and added an AXB discrimination test. In Experiment 2, we used a task that is less likely to induce a decision bias. Results of both experiments and signal detection analyses point to a true change in phonetic representation.     

Maternal borderline personality disorder symptoms and adolescent psychosocial functioning

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe disruption of interpersonal relationships, yet very little research has examined the relationship between maternal BPD and offspring psychosocial functioning. The present study examined 815 mothers and their 15-year-old children from a community-based sample to determine (1) if there is an association between mothers' BPD symptoms and the interpersonal functioning, attachment cognitions, and depressive symptoms of their offspring, and (2) if the association of maternal BPD and youth outcomes is independent of maternal and youth depression. Measures of youth psychosocial functioning included self, mother, interviewer rated, and teacher reports. Results indicated that there was a significant association between maternal BPD symptoms and youth outcomes, and that this association remained even after controlling for maternal lifetime history of major depression, maternal history of dysthymic disorder, and youth depressive symptoms. This study provides some of the first empirical evidence for a link between mother's BPD symptoms and youth psychosocial outcomes.     

Stress Sensitization and Adolescent Depressive Severity as a Function of Childhood Adversity: A Link to Anxiety Disorders

The goal of the present study was to determine whether exposure to adversity in childhood contributes to a differential threshold at which stressful life events provoke depressive reactions in adolescence. In addition, to address empirical and conceptual questions about stress effects, the moderating effect of anxiety disorder history was also explored. This examination was conducted in a sample of 816 children of depressed and nondepressed mothers, who were followed from birth to age 15. Information on adversities experienced in childhood was collected both from mothers during the first five years of their youth's life and from the youths themselves at age 15, and included information on the mother's relationship with her partner, maternal psychopathology, as well as youth-reported abuse. Results indicated that youths with both greater exposure to adversity in childhood and a history of an anxiety disorder displayed increased depressive severity following low levels of episodic stress compared to youths with only one or neither of these risk factors. The results are speculated to reflect the possibility that early anxiety disorders associated with exposure to adversity in childhood may be a marker of dysregulated stress responses, and may help to account for the comorbidity of depression and anxiety in some individuals.     

Directed forgetting in obsessive-compulsive disorder: replication and extension

Previous research indicates that patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show impaired ability to forget negative material (Behav Res Ther 34 (1996) 633). The present study was intended to replicate and extend these findings by separating emotional valence from personal relevance, using idiographic stimulus selection to control for heterogeneity of OCD concerns, and the addition of an anxious control group. We used a directed forgetting paradigm, in which participants were instructed to either remember or forget a series of words. No differences in impairment were found among the groups during a free recall test, in which they were asked to recall both "remember" and "forget" words. However, during a recognition test, OCD patients showed greater impaired forgetting for OCD-relevant words than did nonanxious and anxious controls. Valence of words did not emerge as a contributing factor to impaired forgetting.     

Personality change over 40 years of adulthood: hierarchical linear modeling analyses of two longitudinal samples

Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.