Understanding Strengths in Relation to Complex Trauma and Mental Health Symptoms within Child Welfare

Strengths can have a potent effect in mitigating the impact of trauma on mental health needs and functioning. Yet, evidence is limited on the role that strengths may have in ameliorating trauma-related or mental health symptoms over time. Providing a comprehensive assessment that includes strengths, as well as needs, is an important step in making appropriate service recommendations for youth in child welfare. This study assessed 7,483 children and adolescents entering an intensive stabilization program through the Illinois child welfare system. The interaction of individual, child strengths in relation to complex trauma exposure, traumatic stress symptoms, risk behaviors, and other mental health needs were examined. Results indicated strengths are relatively stable over time and inversely associated with several negative outcomes, including risk behaviors (?.32, p?<?.001), emotional/ behavioral needs (?.33, p?<?.001) and overall functioning (?.47, p?<?.001). Traumatic stress symptoms were also related to increases in these negative outcomes. Overall, strengths had a buffering effect on traumatic stress symptoms and outcomes over time. The role of strengths in relation to traumatic stress symptoms, however, was less consistent. Youth with histories of complex trauma exposure had significantly fewer useable strengths than youth without this exposure. However, strengths improved for both youth with and without complex trauma exposure over the course of stabilization services. These findings suggest that early identification and development of child strengths can mitigate risk-taking behaviors, mental health, and functional difficulties among youth in the child welfare system. Implications for more targeted trauma-informed and strengths-based assessment, and treatment/service planning are discussed.     

The relationship of post-event processing to self-evaluation of performance in social anxiety

Socially anxious and control participants engaged in a social interaction with a confederate and then wrote about themselves or the other person (i.e., self-focused post-event processing [SF-PEP] vs. other-focused post-event processing [OF-PEP]) and completed several questionnaires. One week later, participants completed measures concerning their evaluation of their performance in the social interaction and the degree to which they engaged in post-event processing (PEP) during the week. Socially anxious individuals evaluated their performance in the social interaction more poorly than control participants, both immediately after and 1 week later. Socially anxious individuals assigned to the SF-PEP condition displayed fewer positive feelings about their performance compared to the socially anxious individuals in the OF-PEP condition as well as controls in either condition. Also, the trait tendency to engage in PEP moderated the effect of social anxiety on participants' evaluation of their performance in the interaction, such that high socially anxious individuals with high trait PEP scores evaluated themselves in the interaction more negatively at the later assessment. These results suggest that PEP and other self-evaluative processes may perpetuate the cycle of social anxiety.     

Recalled Childhood Teasing among Non-Clinical, Non-College Adults

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Teasing Questionnaire—Revised (TQ-R) in a non-clinical community sample of adults. The TQ-R, Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Beck Depression Inventory-II, and UCLA Loneliness Scale were administered to 355 adults, aged 18–86 years. Confirmatory factor analysis showed the five-factor teasing model proposed by Storch et al. (Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 18, 665–679, 2004c) was not a good fit for these data. A three-factor model consisting of Academic, Social, and Appearance factors was found through exploratory analyses [termed the Teasing Questionnaire—Revised—Short Form (TQ-R-S)]. Internal consistency was good for the TQ-R-S Total Score and resultant TQ-R-S Academic, Social, and Appearance factors. TQ-R-S scores were directly correlated with current psychosocial functioning with correlations of a small to medium effect size. These results provide evidence that teasing during childhood is linked to later symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.     

Sex differences in the educational and occupational aspirations of rural youth

Rural girls (N = 926) and boys (N = 861) in grades 10, 11, and 12 answered questions concerning educational and occupational aspirations. The young women showed significantly higher educational aspiration, the same or higher occupational aspiration, and equal ranges of job choice. The results are discussed with respect to previous findings, and to status attainment models.     

Roles of women in the large group: Enduring paradigms in a chaotic environment

Group relations conferences offer participants and staff an opportunity to study unconscious aspects of organizational life, in particular, the projections and fantasies surrounding leaders. This paper offers an example of the way one aspect of the group relations conference, the large group, can be useful in understanding a particular set of experiences, namely that of women as leaders. Given the current social, economic, and political climate in the US, a woman working professionally as a consultant in the large group must be available for a barrage of contradictory, irrational projections. In this way, women consultants, and perhaps women leaders, represent the essential paradoxes of our existence, namely that intimacy is created through a simultaneous understanding of our separateness and our connection to one another.     

SILENCING THE SELF AND DEPRESSION AMONG WOMEN

The purpose of this study was to assess the validity and provide normative data for the Silencing the Self Scale, a newly devised instrument for measuring cognitive schemas hypothesized to be related to depression in women. The study also tested the hypothesis that race would moderate the relationship between silencing the self and depression. The sample consisted of 80 women: 40 African Americans and 40 Caucasians. Controlling for income and socially desirable response bias, a significant relationship between silencing the self and depression was found only for Caucasian women. It was suggested that differing values and socialization practices may be responsible for the findings.     

Spatial cognition and perseveration by horses, donkeys and mules in a simple A-not-B detour task

We investigated perseveration and detour behaviour in 36 equids (Equus caballus, E. asinus, E. caballus × E. asinus) and compared these data to those of a previous study on domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). The animals were required to make a detour through a gap at one end of a straight barrier in order to reach a visible target. After one, two, three or four repeats (A trials), the gap was moved to the opposite end of the barrier (B trials). We recorded initial deviations from the correct solution path and the latency to crossing the barrier. In the A trials, mules crossed the barrier significantly faster than their parental species, the horses and donkeys. In the B trials, following the change of gap location, all species showed a reduction in performance. Both dogs and horses exhibited significant spatial perseveration, going initially to the previous gap location. Donkeys and mules, however, performed at chance level. Our results suggest that hybrid vigour in mules extends to spatial abilities.     

What Really Happened: A Tribute to John C. Fletcher

John C. Fletcher, a pioneer in the field of bioethics and friend and mentor to many generations of bioethicists, died tragically on May 27th at the age of 72. The son of an Episcopal priest from Bryan, TX, Fletcher graduated in 1953 with a degree in English Literature from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. After completing a Masters in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a stint as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Heidelberg in 1956, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church and received a doctorate in Christian ethics from the Union Theological Seminary in New York. After ordination, Fletcher worked in various Episcopal churches and founded the Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. However, despite his religious faith, he was also a skeptic, and renounced his ordination in the mid-1990s due to his need for ‘intellectual honesty.’

Fletcher began his bioethics contributions in the early 1970's, when he became a founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and eventually the first Chief of the Bioethics Program at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor of biomedical ethics at the medical school, and became the Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics until his retirement in 1999. Fletcher was a prominent authority and voice in the national and international bioethical dialogue through his talks, his testimonies before scientific and congressional panels, his many articles, and his bioethical and religiously-orientated books, including: An Introduction to Clinical Ethics (1997), Coping with Genetic Disorders: a Guide for Clergy and Parents (1982), Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1989), which he wrote with sociologist Dorothy C. Wertz. Dr. Fletcher received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in 2000. With the passing of Dr. John C. Fletcher, bioethics has lost one of its great voices, a dedicated teacher and mentor, and a friend and colleague to scholars in bioethics and a host of other fields. Below is a touching tribute from one of his former students.     

The Orthodox Church and Commercial Fortune-Telling and Magic in Russia

Abstract

Based on field work in St Petersburg and supplemented by a range of other sources and material, the article examines the vibrant and visible market for commercial fortune-telling and magic in postsoviet Russia and its relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate. It opens with an estimate of the relative strength of belief in the occult and in Orthodoxy, noting that though large numbers claim to be Orthodox, many do not commit to a Christian life or even to the basic tenets of the Orthodox faith. Others mix Orthodox and heterodox religious attitudes eclectically. Belief in magic and fortune-telling is strongest among members of these two large groups, which indicates a magico-religious mindset that perceives their personal troubles as externally caused. Examining the placatory attitude of magic specialists to the Russian Orthodox Church, I argue that, given the overlap with services offered by the Church (rituals to cure alcoholism and addiction, for example), magic specialists are in direct competition with the Patriarchate. Combating their influence has been hampered by a series of factors. Teaching Orthodox believers to distinguish between magic and religion is made more difficult by the Patriarchate's own promotion of wonder-working sites and shrines. Furthermore, its campaign against occultism has until recently paid scant attention to everyday magic and fortune-telling, concentrating instead on external evil in the form of cults and sects. Where it did turn its attention in this direction, it tended to brand magic and fortune-telling as demonic, a characterisation likely to be effective only with those who believe in the devil. Recently, there are indications of a change of tack, but it is unclear how successful the new campaign will be.     

The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia by Harold F. Searles

Abstract

Somatic psychology, the interplay of the body, the mind, the emotions, and the social context, significantly contributes to the theory and practice of group therapy. The processing of sensory experiences in the here-and-now of the therapy group helps group members to develop self-awareness, the ability to understand their relationships with others, and the capacity for empathy. When group members know what they experience, they can understand how others feel and resonate emotionally with those feelings. Neurobiology, sensory processing, and attachment theories help us to understand how the sense of self develops somatically. Principles of somatic therapies are applied to group therapy practice in working with attachment disorders, transference impasse, and trauma. The importance and implications of the group therapist’s embodied attunement are explored.