The psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina: contextual differences in psychological symptoms, social support, and discrimination

This study tested a contextual model of disaster reaction by examining regional differences in the psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina. A total of 386 individuals participated in this study. All were recruited in the primary areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and included residents of metropolitan New Orleans (Orleans Parish, Louisiana), Greater New Orleans (i.e., Metairie, Kenner, Gretna), and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (i.e., cities along the coast from Waveland to Ocean Springs, Mississippi). Participants were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, other psychological symptoms, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of social support, evacuation distance, and the extent to which they experienced hurricane-related stressful events. Results were consistent with previous research on the impact of disasters on mental health symptoms. Findings extended research on individual differences in the response to trauma and indicated that regional context predicted unique variance in the experience of discrimination, social support, and emotional symptoms consistent with the theoretical model presented.     

OUR COMMON ENEMY: COMBATTING THE WORLD'S DEADLIEST VIRUSES TO ENSURE EQUITY HEALTH CARE IN DEVELOPING NATIONS

In a previous issue of Zygon (Carvalho 2007), I explored the role of scientists—especially those engaging the science-religion dialogue—within the arena of global equity health, world poverty, and human rights. I contended that experimental biologists, who might have reduced agency because of their professional workload or lack of individual resources, can still unite into collective forces with other scientists as well as human rights organizations, medical doctors, and political and civic leaders to foster progressive change in our world. In this article, I present some recent findings from research on three emerging viruses—HIV, dengue, and rotavirus—to explore the factors that lead to the geographical expansion of these viruses and the increase in frequency of the infectious diseases they cause. I show how these viruses are generating problems for geopolitical stability, human rights, and equity health care for developing nations that are already experiencing a growing poverty crisis. I suggest some avenues of future research for the scientific community for the movement toward resolution of these problems and indicate where the science-religion field can be of additional aid.     

Context blocking in rat autoshaping: Sign-tracking versus goal-tracking

Prior experience of unsignaled food can interfere with subsequent acquisition by birds of autoshaped key-pecking at a signal light. This has been understood to indicate that unsignaled food results in context conditioning, which blocks subsequent learning about the keylight-food relationship. In the present experiment with rats lever insertion as the conditioned stimulus (CS) preceded sucrose delivery as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Half the rats initially received unsignaled USs in the conditioning context, while the remainder did not. Both lever-presses (sign-tracking) and magazine-entries (goal-tracking) were recorded. Under immediate reinforcement conditions, prior unsignaled US interfered with sign-tracking, but had no effect on goal-tracking. In two further groups, a trace condition prevented development of sign-tracking. In this case, prior context conditioning interfered with goal-tracking. These results suggest that interference with sign-tracking may reflect response competition, while interference with goal-tracking under trace conditions may reflect failure to acquire a CS-US association.     

The Distractor Picture Paradox in Speech Production: Evidence from the Word Translation Task

Several naming studies show that distractor pictures, even when intentionally ignored by the speaker, are still capable of activating their respective phonological representations. However results from word translation studies suggest that distractor pictures are only conceptually activated. Here we tested the reliability of the word translation results. In four experiments, bilingual participants translated words from one language to the other one while ignoring the presentation of pictures. In Experiment 1a phonological related pictures sped up translation latencies. However, the effect disappeared when the percentage of related trials was reduced (Experiment 1b). In Experiment 2a translation latencies were faster when the words were accompanied by semantically related pictures than by unrelated pictures. Importantly, the effect was still reliable when the proportion of related trials was reduced and the total number of semantic categories was increased (Experiment 2b). Theoretical implications of the influence of distractor pictures during speech production are discussed.     

Acceptance of cosmetic surgery and celebrity worship: Evidence of associations among female undergraduates

The present study examined the association between acceptance of cosmetic surgery and celebrity worship in a sample of British female undergraduates. A total of 401 women completed the Acceptance of Cosmetic Surgery Scale (ACSS; Henderson-King & Henderson-King, 2005), the Celebrity Attitude Scale (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002), and provided their demographic details. Results showed that there were highly significant correlations between all subscales of the ACSS and CAS, as well as with participant age, and body mass index (BMI). A series of multiple regressions showed that celebrity worship and participant demographics explained about half of the variance in acceptance of cosmetic surgery, with Intense-personal celebrity worship emerging as the strongest predictor. Limitations of the current study are discussed in conclusion.     

Some functions of the self personified by the father.

I have presented clinical material in order to illustrate a series of fantasies of parental intercourse which represent the self in successive stages of individuation from early projective identification to later introjective identification. From this is abstracted the idea of 'father' both as a component of the self representation and as the personification of the urge towards continuing development. Evidence is also gathered from the clinical material, supported by mythological parallels, to suggest that the whole process, including those components explicitly identified with the mother, is subsumed under an identification of the deintegrating self, its identity and integrity, with 'the father'.     

Psychiatry of the Elderly: A Consensus Statement

This document is a consensus statement on Psychiatry of the Elderly jointly produced by WHO and the Geriatric Psychiatry Section of the World Psychiatric Association, with the collaboration of several pertinent NGOs and the participation of experts from countries in several WHO regions.     

Undecidability,incompleteness and Arnol'd problems

We present some recent technical results of us on the incompleteness of classical analysis and then discuss our work on the Arnol'd decision problems for the stability of fixed points of dynamical systems.Partially supported by FAPESP and CNP_q (Brazil, Philosophy Section).     

Influence of life event stress on physical illness: substantive effects or methodological flaws?

This study tests the hypothesis that the reported relationship between life event stress and physical illness is primarily a function of criterion and other content contamination in the stress measure. In particular, conventional life event measures include events related to physical health, which overlap with the criterion; events related to neuroticism, which influences the criterion; and events that are vague or subjective and could be affected by individual differences in psychological distress, response sets, and retrospective bias. In this study 386 adult males and females completed standard measures of life events and physical illness. Illness was significantly related to event subscales containing, respectively, health-related events, neuroticism-related events, and subjective events, but not to an "uncontaminated" event subscale. These results support the hypothesis of contamination and suggest that alternative approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of stress may need to be developed.