Telephone counselling for adolescent suicide prevention: changes in suicidality and mental state from beginning to end of a counselling session

Telephone counselling is an accessible and confidential means by which distressed young people can seek help. Telephone counselling services were funded under Australia's National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy between 1997 and 2000. In this study, the effectiveness of telephone counselling for young people seeking help in the context of suicidal ideation or intent was evaluated in an investigation of calls made by suicidal young people to a telephone counselling service. Independent raters measured callers' suicidality and mental state at the beginning and end of 100 taped counselling sessions. Changes in suicidality and mental state were measured using a reliable rating scale developed for the study. Significant decreases in suicidality and significant improvement in mental state were found to occur during the course of counselling sessions, suggesting positive immediate impact. Limitations of the study with respect to longer-term outcomes and the relevance of the results for suicide prevention are discussed. Notwithstanding the study limitations, the results lend support for continuing development of hotline services.     

Self-help efforts in a squatter community: Implications for addressing contemporary homelessness

This analysis addresses the nature of contemporary homelessness in the United States, the historical foundations of the shelter system, and survival strategies utilized by homeless persons in meeting their physical, social, and psychological needs. A framework that examines the degree of publicness/privateness and permanency/temporariness of spaces utilized by homeless persons is applied to a case study of a self-help squatter community living on an empty lot in New York City. By looking at the members of the group, their relationship to their neighbors and the local community, and their approaches in dealing with their needs, an assessment is made of this labor-intensive, self-help effort for providing shelter. Implications of self-help approaches are related to policy development and further research.     

Gender Neutral Names: Don't Be So Sure!

Males and females were asked to rate the gender neutrality of familiar and unfamiliar names in order to identify gender neutral names for training and research purposes. A large group of non-traditional students and a group of practicing managers provided responses to a series of names. Two follow-up studies were also conducted to provide replication and verification. Initially, 26 familiar and 21 unfamiliar names were studied although in the final study that was expanded to include nine more familiar names. The most neutral names identified were Pat, Terry, Chris, and Lee.     

Sex-role orientation and relationship development in same-sex dyads

The purpose of the present study was to assess the relationship between sex-role identity, behavioral interaction, and interpersonal attraction in an initial extended encounter. Eighty-two female subjects identified as either feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated participated in the study in same-sex dyads. The design contrasted three different dyad types: (a) feminine-feminine; (b) androgynous-androgynous; and (c) undifferentiated-undifferentiated. Each dyad completed an initial 5-min unstructured interaction, a 10-min getting-acquainted exercise, and a final 5-min unstructured interaction. Results of the combined initial and final unstructured interactions indicated greater interpersonal attraction between androgynous as compared with undifferentiated and feminine dyad types. During the interactions, androgynous individuals talked, looked at, and gestured to one another longer than did nonandrogynous individuals. There were, however, no significant differences between the feminine and undifferentiated dyads in interpersonal attraction or behavioral interaction. Discussion of the results emphasized the need to examine further the relationship between sex-role identity, behavioral interaction, and attraction in interpersonal encounters.     

Trajectories of Response to Treatments in Children with ADHD and Word Reading Difficulties

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - This study investigated patterns of response to intervention in children with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and...     

Life at Home: Same Time,Different Places — An Examination of the HOME Inventory in Different Cultures

In this paper we review literature on the use of the HOME Inventory across cultures. We address issues pertaining to measurement equivalence and validity. Specifically, we focus on: (a) changes in the content of HOME made by researchers, (b) distributional properties of HOME scores, (c) the factor structure of HOME, and (d) correlations between HOME, family characteristics, child characteristics and environmental conditions. In most affluent, western countries, with their individualist orientations, HOME was used essentially as it was originally constructed. Researchers in less industrialized, more collectivist countries tended to express greater scepticism about the appropriateness of some HOME items, and several teams of researchers made modifications in the instrument. The HOME total score showed theoretically meaningful (and similar) correlations with family structure, family status and child outcome measures across many cultures. Evidence attesting to the cultural equivalence (and validity) of HOME subscales was far less plentiful and compelling. In general, there seemed greater cross-cultural equivalence for items assessing cognitively stimulating aspects of the environment than for items assessing socioemotional support. The usefulness of the Inventory in other cultures and for cross-cultural comparisons depends on the purposes one has for using a measure of the home environment. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self–Other Agreement: Comparing its Relationship with Performance in the U.S. and Europe

The use of multi‐source feedback has proliferated in the United States in recent years; however, its usefulness in other countries is unknown. Using a large sample of American managers (n=3793), this study first replicated earlier studies demonstrating that simultaneous consideration of self and other ratings of leadership skills is important for managerial performance ratings. In addition, the impact of self–other agreement on performance was investigated among 2732 managers in five European countries (U.K., Germany, France, Denmark, Italy). Results indicated that the effect of self and other ratings in the prediction of performance differs between the U.S. and the European countries in that the simultaneous inclusion of both self and other ratings is generally less useful in those countries than in the U.S. Further, the effect of self–other agreement varies among the European countries. Implications for multi‐source feedback interventions as well as multi‐national personnel management are discussed.     

Preschoolers' Understanding of Simple and Complex Emotions: Links with Gender and Language

In this study we assessed individual differences among preschoolers' emotion understanding, verbal ability, and gender role behavior. Fifty-three children (M = 3 years, 5 months; 26 girls, 27 boys) participated in task that used puppets to assess their understanding of simple (happy, sad) and complex emotions (proud, embarrassed) and a standard vocabulary task. Parents completed a questionnaire on the frequency of their children's gender-typed behavior. Results indicated positive associations between children's total emotion understanding and both general verbal ability (particularly for boys) and parents' perceptions of stereotypic feminine behaviors. Gender analysis revealed that, independent of vocabulary ability, girls scored higher than boys on emotion labeling and understanding of complex emotions, especially the concept of pride. Results are discussed in relation to individual differences and effects of sociocultural context.