Coaching Approach Behavior and Leading by Modeling: Rationale,Principles, and a Session-by-Session Description of the CALM Program for Early Childhood Anxiety

Whereas the cognitive-behavioral treatment of childhood anxiety has been well-researched and empirically supported over the last 20 years, interventions for anxiety in young children (ages 7 and below) have garnered little attention. Because young children generally lack the required developmental skills to effectively engage in cognitive-behavioral treatment, a simple downward extension of treatments used for older children is inappropriate. The CALM program (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling) was developed as a developmentally compatible intervention to treat anxiety disorders in young children ages 3 to 7. The CALM program is an adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), and an extension of Pincus, Eyberg, and Choate's (2000) adaptation of PCIT for young children with separation anxiety disorder. It is a parent-focused treatment that teaches parents skills to effectively reinforce their children's brave behavior and coaches the use of these skills during in-session parent-child interactions. The treatment emphasizes live, bug-in-the-ear coaching of parents during in vivo exposure sessions. This article describes the CALM program in detail.     

Adapting Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Depressed Adolescents Exposed to Interpersonal Trauma: A Case Study With Two Teens

A substantial body of evidence indicates that interpersonal trauma increases risk for adolescent and adult depression. Findings from 4 clinical trials for adolescent depression show poorer response to standard cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) among depressed adolescents with a trauma history than youth without such a history. This paper reports on the development of a modified CBT (mCBT) protocol that has been adapted for treating depressed adolescents who have been exposed to traumatic interpersonal events (physical/sexual abuse or witnessing domestic violence). First, we provide an empirical rationale for targeting executive function deficits and trauma-related cognitions in the mCBT protocol. Second, we present promising results from 2 community clinic cases.     

Why Do Police Arrest Victims of Domestic Violence? The Need for Comprehensive Training and Investigative Protocols

After all the positive changes in the criminal justice system over the last ten to fifteen years concerning the response to incidents of domestic violence, there remains the problem of battered women who are arrested as perpetrators of domestic violence. The reasons for these arrests are complex and varied. They range from the patriarchal structure of criminal justice agencies, to the staffing of these agencies, and finally to the inappropriate and inadequate training of police officers. This article includes real life examples of cases where victims were arrested, and why these arrests occurred. It also includes suggestions on how to minimize these illegal arrests.     

Relationship between working memory capacity and contingent involuntary orienting

Individual differences in working memory capacity are related to the ability to control attention; where less working memory capacity is associated with less attentional control. A well-known demonstration of attentional control is contingent involuntary orienting (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992), which is the finding that visuospatial attention is captured by a salient peripheral cue, but only if the cue is featurally similar to the target of search and not if the cue is featurally dissimilar. This control of attention and ability to resist shifting attention towards an irrelevant visual cue is believed to be moderated by attentional settings for target-specific features. This study establishes that working memory capacity is related to contingent involuntary orienting of attention. Lower working memory capacity was associated with larger stimulus-driven cueing effects at short cue-to-target onset asynchronies, than at longer asynchronies, suggesting working memory capacity was associated with the ability to control covert orienting of attention at early processing stages.     

Occupational well-being as a mediator between job insecurity and turnover intention: Findings at the individual and work department levels

This study examined the relationship between job insecurity and turnover intention by applying occupational well-being (exhaustion, vigour) as a mediator. The study was inspired by two theories: the conservation of resources and emotional contagion theories. We investigated the relationships at the individual and work department levels by utilizing Multi-Level Structural Equation Modeling (ML-SEM) with the aim of clarifying whether the mediating mechanism was similar at both levels. In addition, we examined the relationships across the levels (cross-level interactions). Self-report data for the study were obtained from Finnish University staff (N = 2137 individual respondents from 78 work departments). The analyses resulted in three main findings. First, job insecurity, turnover intention, and occupational well-being were found, to some extent (2–6%), to be shared experiences within work departments. Second, we found that low occupational well-being (high exhaustion, low vigour) partly mediated the relationship between job insecurity and turnover intention at both levels of analysis. Third, the results on cross-level interactions revealed that the lower the level of well-being at the work department level, the stronger the negative effect of job insecurity on well-being at the individual level. Thus, if poor well-being characterizes the work department, this may strengthen the negative relationship between job insecurity and well-being at the individual level.     

The place of words and numbers in psychiatric research

In recent decades, there has been widespread debate in the human and social sciences regarding the compatibility and the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative approaches in research. In psychiatry, depending on disciplines and traditions, objects of study can be represented either in words or using two types of mathematization. In the latter case, the use of mathematics in psychiatry is most often only local, as opposed to global as in the case of classical mechanics. Relationships between these objects of study can in turn be explored in three different ways: 1/ by a hermeneutic process, 2/ using statistics, the most frequent method in psychiatric research today, 3/ using equations, i.e. using mathematical relationships that are formal and deterministic. The 3 ways of representing entities (with language, locally with mathematics or globally with mathematics) and the 3 ways of expressing the relationships between entities (using hermeneutics, statistics or equations) can be combined in a cross-tabulation, and nearly all nine combinations can be described using examples. A typology of this nature may be useful in assessing which epistemological perspectives are currently dominant in a constantly evolving field such as psychiatry, and which other perspectives still need to be developed. It also contributes to undermining the overly simplistic and counterproductive beliefs that accompany the assumption of a Manichean “quantitative/qualitative” dichotomy. Systematic examination of this set of typologies could be useful in indicating new directions for future research beyond the quantitative/qualitative divide.     

Informal social support characteristics and utilization of parenting support services among low‐income African American mothers of premature infants

Service delivery efforts to attenuate the risks associated with parenting premature infants in poverty often are compromised because those at greatest risk do not use available parenting support services. Yet, relatively little is known about the networks of support surrounding these parents. This study investigated both the characteristics of informal social support within a sample of 31 low‐income, African American mothers of premature infants at high risk for parenting difficulties and their use of community parenting support services. The findings suggest that mothers had small (M = 4.97, SD = 1.80), but highly mobilized, social support networks consisting primarily of family members. Among six different types of support, informational guidance and parenting support were available from the fewest people in participants' networks. Only 32.3% of the sample was aware of and 16.1% of the sample had ever used formal parenting support services. Participants who had received informal support from more than five people in the last month were significantly more likely to have knowledge about existing community parenting support services than those receiving support from smaller social networks. Patterns of knowledge about and utilization of services were examined with regard to network characteristics, perceived maternal desire for more parenting support opportunities than were available, and presence of special needs in the child. The implications of these findings for parenting support programs are discussed. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Why Some Women Consent to Unwanted Sex With a Dating Partner: Insights from Attachment Theory

Several studies have shown that many college women engage in unwanted sexual activity with a dating partner. However, little research has examined the differences between women who comply with requests for unwanted sexual activity and women who do not. This study utilized an attachment theory framework to investigate individual differences in women's compliant sexual behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 125 college women who had consented to unwanted sex with a current dating partner completed measures of their attachment style, commitment to their current relationship, perceptions of their partner's commitment, and willingness to consent to unwanted sex in a hypothetical scenario. Results showed that attachment style and commitment perceptions were associated with women's willingness to consent to unwanted sex with a dating partner in the hypothetical scenario and their reasons for this decision. As predicted, anxiously attached women were the most willing to consent to unwanted sex, and they often cited fears that their partner would lose interest in them as reasons for their compliance. Contrary to hypotheses, avoidantly attached women were not the least willing to consent to unwanted sex. They often reported passively complying with a partner's sexual request in order to fulfill relationship obligations. The importance of sexuality to attachment formation in dating relationships and the potential consequences of consenting to unwanted sex are discussed.