What a Difference Family-Driven Makes: Stories of Success and Lessons Learned

Community Psychology’s emphasis on citizen participation aligns with the nationwide children’s mental health family movement and is clearly evident in communities that have made sustainable system changes. The national family movement has long advocated for the meaningful engagement of families and youth who are the focus population of the federal Children’s Mental Health Initiative. Little rigorous research about the experience of families in leadership positions or of their impact on systems of care has been done. In the absence of scientifically acquired evidence, this article offers the reader a glimpse into the authority, influence and credibility earned by four family leaders as well as their impact on local system of care communities. Their stories occur in four distinct macro level arenas: governance, evaluation, legislative advocacy, and workforce development. In the end, common attributes emerge from their stories, providing anecdotal information useful to identifying the qualities of successful family leadership and their impact on sustainable macro level changes.     

Diverse Perceptions of the Informed Consent Process: Implications for the Recruitment and Participation of Diverse Communities in the National Children’s Study

We examined the experiences, perceptions, and values that are brought to bear when individuals from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds consider participating in health research. Fifty-three women from Latino, Asian American, Middle Eastern, or Non-Latino, White backgrounds participated in seven English or Spanish focus groups facilitated by trained investigators using a standard protocol. Investigators described the National Children’s Study (NCS) and then asked questions to elicit potential concerns, expectations, and informational needs. Group sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using qualitative thematic methods. A major theme that emerged during focus groups was participant self-identification as a member of a cultural group or community when raising issues that would influence their decision to participate in research. A related theme was the belief by some that communities may differ in the ease of participation in the NCS. Identified themes related to the informed consent process included perceived risks, anticipated burden, perceived benefits, informational needs, and decision-making strategies. Although themes were shared across groups, there were cultural differences within themes. Findings indicated that individuals from diverse backgrounds may have different perspectives on and expectations for the research process. To effectively recruit representative samples, it will be important to address a range of issues relevant for informed consent and to consider the impact of participation on both individuals and communities.     

Adolescents' Misperceptions of the Dangerousness of Acetaminophen in Overdose

Clinical observations suggest that adolescents commonly and naively use acetaminophen in suicide attempts even when they do not wish to die. It is estimated that 18 500-mg acetaminophen tablets can lead to hepatotoxicity, while death is usually associated with ingestion of 50 or more tablets. A sample comprising 569 adolescent students completed an author-designed survey assessing teenagers' knowledge of acetaminophen's therapeutic and harmful effects. The findings support our original data that adolescents have ready access to acetaminophen and use it in suicide attempts, but underestimate its potential for toxicity. Forty-two percent of this sample underestimated the dose to cause harm, believing it would require 20 or more tablets, and 50% underestimated the dose to cause death, stating 100 or more pills would be necessary. Adolescents appear to seriously underestimate the dangerousness of acetaminophen in overdose, and lack knowledge regarding side effects of overdose.     

Pre-cuing Target Location Reduces Interference but Not Negative Priming from Visual Distractors

Research on visual selective attention has shown that processing of distractors can produce (1) interference with response to a concurrent target, and (2) negative priming of response to a subsequent target. These results support late-selection accounts of attention. However, recent findings demonstrate that when conditions are optimal for attentional focusing, the interference effects are almost entirely eliminated. This result has been interpreted as supporting early-selection accounts. The present study investigates the impact of focusing attention on negative priming in addition to interference effects. In a letter-identification task, reliable interference and negative priming effects were observed from distractors. However, when the location of the target in the prime display was pre-cued, interference effects were significantly reduced, but negative priming effects did not decrease. This pattern of results provides further evidence that the absence of interference is insufficient to determine whether distractors have been semantically processed (Driver & Tipper, 1989).     

On the status of implicit memory bias in anxiety

The present study evaluated the status of mood congruent memory bias in implicit memory tasks for threat related information. A literature review complemented by three experiments on high and low trait anxiety participants found no implicit memory bias for threat-related information in anxious individuals on either word fragment completion or tachistoscopic word identification tasks. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.