The role of a mentoring group for family therapy trainees and therapists of color

This article discusses the development, process, and impact of a mentoring group for family therapists of color. A within-group process for trainees of color in a predominantly White institution can provide a valuable resource for support, validation, empowerment, and collective action. The article examines how such mentoring promotes the effectiveness of therapists of color, as well as the practices and goals of social justice and diversity within training institutions and the field in general. Reflections and recommendations for implementing such a group are offered, as well as a personal narrative of a group member's experience of finding her voice in the group.     

Context processing in older adults: evidence for a theory relating cognitive control to neurobiology in healthy aging.

A theory of cognitive aging is presented in which healthy older adults are hypothesized to suffer from disturbances in the processing of context that impair cognitive control function across multiple domains, including attention, inhibition, and working memory. These cognitive disturbances are postulated to be directly related to age-related decline in the function of the dopamine (DA) system in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). A connectionist computational model is described that implements specific mechanisms for the role of DA and PFC in context processing. The behavioral predictions of the model were tested in a large sample of older (N = 81) and young (N = 175) adults performing variants of a simple cognitive control task that placed differential demands on context processing. Older adults exhibited both performance decrements and, counterintuitively, performance improvements that are in close agreement with model predictions.     

Discrepancies among mother,child, and teacher reports: Examining the contributions of maternal depression and anxiety

The relationship between maternal affective symptomatology and discrepancies in maternal reports of child symptoms, relative to teacher and child reports, was evaluated in a community sample of 188 children ages 9–12 years. Mothers, teachers, and children were administered a structured interview about child psychopathology. In general, mothers reported more child behavior problems than children and teachers, regardless of maternal symptomatology. However, maternal affective symptoms were associated with discrepancies between mothers' and daughters' reports and between mothers' and teachers' reports of girls' externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, mothers who reported high levels of both anxiety and depressive symptomatology tended to report a large number of symptoms that were not confirmed by either their daughters or teachers. Findings are discussed as possible evidence of the role of maternal affective symptomatology in both actual increases in child symptomatology and maternal reporting distortions. Although maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms shared variance in reporting discrepancies, only anxiety explained unique variance. Consistent with previous studies, cross-informant agreement was modest to moderate (r= .16 to .50) and all informants reported more behavior problems in boys than in girls. This work was undertaken with the support of National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH43909 and MH46717.     

Womanist Identity and Mental Health

The authors explored the relationship between Helms's “womanist identity” attitudes and the mental health of Black and White women. Results showed that Black and White women have different patterns of responses to both womanist and mental health scales. For White women in the sample, Immersion-Emersion and, to a lesser extent, Encounter attitudes were related to 7 types of psychological symptomatology. For Black women, no such relationship between womanist attitudes and mental health was found.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of workshop interventions on contraceptive use among first-year college students

This study tested the effectiveness of 4 interventions designed to affect contraceptive knowledge, attitudes, and use among first-year Syracuse University students in New York State in the US. Pre- and post-tests obtained data on demographic characteristics, sexual behavior, contraceptive knowledge, sexual opinions, contraceptive attitudes, and contraceptive progress on a 5-step scale. Group 1 (79 students) received contraceptive information (CI) only. Group 2 (76) received CI and a cognitively oriented intervention. Group 3 (73) received CI and an experience-oriented intervention. Group 4 (77) received a combined cognitively and experience-oriented intervention with CI. The control group included 57 people. 78% on the pretest, and 84% on the post-test, had engaged in sexual intercourse for the first time in high school. 200 indicated previous intercourse in the past 3 months. Groups varied significantly in their knowledge, beliefs, and practices. All groups had greater contraceptive knowledge than control groups. Greater behavior beliefs about contraceptive use occurred in Groups 1 and 2. Groups 3 and 4 showed greater increases in positive attitudes toward use. All intervention students showed greater increases in positive attitudes toward a contraceptive process. Greater increases in the intention to use birth control occurred in Groups 3 and 4. Groups 2, 3, and 4 showed greater increases in reported use of birth control. Group 4 intervention was the most effective for males. Females were influenced by all interventions. Findings affirm the importance of including attitudinal components in sexuality and contraception workshops.