Are Reports of Life Event Stress among Suicidal Youth Subject to Cognitive Bias?

Severity of depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation were examined to determine whether they were significantly associated with the accuracy of suicidal adolescents' ratings of stressful life events. The sample included 130 inpatient adolescents who endorsed suicide‐related behaviors. Stress interviews were administered, and the severity of stressful events was rated separately by adolescents and an independent team. A residualized cognitive bias score was created by regressing adolescents' severity ratings to the independent team's severity ratings of the same events. Depressive symptoms, but not hopelessness or suicidal ideation, were significantly associated with cognitive bias scores. A negative cognitive bias in adolescents' reports of life stress may be present at higher levels of depression relative to minimal levels of depression. Further research on the relations between stress and suicide‐related behaviors is encouraged to include independent ratings of stress severity.     

Widening Choices in Motherhood of The Future

The new biomedical techniques of reproduction either currently available or being researched, such as sex predetermination of offspring, sperm banking, test tube conception with embryo transplant, development of artificial wombs and human cloning, allow greatly expanded choices in methods of procreation. A survey of attitudes among 2,138 adults, most of whom are in the early to middle stages of reproductive decision making, shows varying levels of acceptance towards the use of such techniques and towards priority values they would assign to ongoing research to perfect specific technorogies. Male-female variation in response patterns are analyzed along with racial and religious differences. Possible and probable impacts that widespread use of these new alternatives might have on the future of women in particular and on various aspects of society in general are discussed.