Factors Influencing Women's Participation in Consciousness-Raising Groups

The results of a nationwide survey point out both commonality and diversity in the experiences of women in consciousness-raising (CR) groups. Women commonly joined CR groups through women's organizations, and their most important reason for entering CR was to examine women's roles and experiences. Most groups encouraged self-disclosure and openness and discouraged domineering and lack of commitment. The backgrounds and personal characteristics of CR participants were diverse. Housewives, women with children, and women with higher levels of symptoms more strongly valued psychological help as a reason for joining CR; in contrast, working women and students, women without children, and women with fewer symptoms more strongly endorsed strengthening their feminism. Women's reasons for joining in turn predicted which CR experiences they valued. Nearly all women were highly satisfied with CR. Satisfaction with CR was not related to members' personal characteristics, but rather to the processes occurring in their groups.     

The Impact of Exercise on Suicide Risk: Examining Pathways through Depression,PTSD, and Sleep in an Inpatient Sample of Veterans

Suicide has a large public health impact. Although effective interventions exist, the many people at risk for suicide cannot access these interventions. Exercise interventions hold promise in terms of reducing suicide because of their ease of implementation. While exercise reduces depression, and reductions in depressive symptoms are linked to reduced suicidal ideation, no studies have directly linked exercise and suicide risk. The current study examined this association, including potential mediators (i.e., sleep disturbance, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and depression), in a sample of Veterans. SEM analyses revealed that exercise was directly and indirectly associated with suicide risk. Additionally, exercise was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and better sleep patterns, each of which was, in turn, related to lower suicide risk.     

Moving Beyond Causes: Optimality Models and Scientific Explanation

A prominent approach to scientific explanation and modeling claims that for a model to provide an explanation it must accurately represent at least some of the actual causes in the event's causal history. In this paper, I argue that many optimality explanations present a serious challenge to this causal approach. I contend that many optimality models provide highly idealized equilibrium explanations that do not accurately represent the causes of their target system(s). Furthermore, in many contexts, it is in virtue of their independence of causes that optimality models are able to provide a better explanation than competing causal models. Consequently, our account of explanation and modeling must expand beyond the causal approach.