Infant feeding and maternal attitudes among mothers of low-income

Demographic variables, maternal attitudes, knowledge, practices, and support systems were examined in a sample of 50 women attending a public health clinic for well baby visits. Black women were nonsystematically selected an approached as they were waiting for their babies. Because the number of white women attending the clinic was small, an effort was made to include all of them. Data were obtained through individual interviews conducted by a trained interviewer. A questionnaire was constructed to obtain demographic information, information regarding prenatal awareness, delivery, mother infant interaction in the hospital, nutrition and infant care during the 1st year of life, and attitudes. 68% of the women were black and 32% were married. Most unmarried mothers lived with parents (50%), other relatives (26.5%), or ex husbands/boyfriends (5.9%). The mean educational level of 11.8 years was higher than anticipated for studies of public health department clinic populations. Teenagers made up 38% of the sample. 74% of the women reported family incomes below $8000. 64% had more than 1 child. Only 2 mothers in the sample had attended childbirth classes. 2/3 of the mothers recalled receiving no prior information about labor and delivery procedures and medications. Practices during the 1st few days after delivery indicate that only 20% of the mothers held their babires in the 1st hour after delivery and none of the mothers had the baby rooming in with them. 54% of the babies spent some time in the high risk nursery. This limited the mothers' opportunities to interact with and feed them. Only 3 of the mothers breastfed their babies for any length of time. 2 of them decided to breastfed because that was the best nutrition for the baby, and 1 did so because her mother had breastfed. The most common reasons given for bottlefeeding were not wanting to nurse (43.5%) and inconvenience (26.1%). Only 13% mentioned the necessity of back to school/work as a reason for not breastfeeding. No differences were observed between teenage mothers and older mothers in regard to the reasons for not breastfeeding. Since the number of breastfeeding mothers in this study was too small to permit statistical analysis, only scores for bottlefeeding mothers were compared. Bottlefeeding mothers of the low income group had statistically significant higher mean scores on 3 attitudinal scales: seclusion of the mother, acceleration of development, and mother's covert attitudes toward breastfeeding. Lower scores alone or with their spouses suggest that, when the childrearing responsibility was shared with extended family, mothers tended to be stricter with their children and minimized physical and emotional dependence of the children on them. Mothers who lived with spouses or alone tended to be more nurturing and less strict with their children.     

The importance of home practice for progressive relaxation training

The efficacy of home practice assignments was evaluated as a component of standardized progressive relaxation training. Subjects reporting general anxiety and tension problems were assigned to either a home practice relaxation, no home practice relaxation or wait-list control condition. Treatment was conducted for 10 sessions over a 5-week period. In addition, subjects in both conditions engaged in in-vivo application of their relaxation skills during a final 2-week application period. Group comparisons showed that both progressive relaxation conditions significantly improved on daily self-monitored general anxiety and tension levels relative to the wait-list control condition. Group analyses of percent subject improvements supported the effectiveness of home practice assignments, especially during the application period. No systematic differences between groups, on physiological and self-report variables, were found during several laboratory relaxation evaluation sessions. This study supports the contribution of home practice assignments to progressive relaxation training.     

Male and female psychoneuroendocrine response to examination stress: A case report

Urinary catecholamine levels were investigated in one female and one male Ph.D. candidate during public defense of their Ph.D. theses as well as during 2 weeks preceding and 1 week following these examinations. Although females, in comparison to males, usually tend to show a weak adrenaline response to mental stress, a threefold increase was observed in both subjects. The results support the assumption that sex differences in adrenal-medullary responsiveness to stress is not determined by sex-specific biological factors alone and that a “male” responsiveness may be observed in achievement-oriented females exposed to a challenging real-life situation. Effects on urinary measures of cortisol obtained from the male subject resembled effects on adrenaline, showing that this kind of real-life stressor affects the sympathetic-adrenal medullary and the pituitary-adrenocortical systems similarly.     

Structure and provision of services in Black churches in New Haven, Connecticut

Historically, Black (or African American) churches have played a central role as a center of religious and political life and also as a provider of human services and a healing community. This article examined the extent to which African American churches in 1 Northeastern urban environment are involved in the delivery of health and human service programs to their communities. It also explored how comfortable Black clergy are in referring their parishioners to the formal mental health system and identified the actual level of referrals. In addition, the analyses considered the individual and organizational characteristics that predict variations in the levels of support services and the likelihood of referral. Analyses revealed that African American churches deliver a broad range of services to the community. More than two thirds of the clergy feel comfortable in making a referral to a mental health agency or professional, and more than half have actually made a referral. Both service delivery and referral levels varied by several clergy and congregational characteristics. The implications of these findings for research and health policy are considered.     

Form and content: looking at visual features of television.

Television viewing at home by 50 individuals in 5 age groups (2-, 5-, 8-, 12-year-olds, and adults) was recorded on 1-s time-lapse videotapes over 10-day periods. Coding was based on 5-min point samples. Analysis examined looking at the TV screen in relation to the visual presence of the features cuts, movement, animation, man, woman, child, and nonhuman; content features were child vs. adult programming and overt purposeful character behavior. Cuts, movement, and overt purposeful character behavior were positively related to looking independent of child vs. adult programming. Associations with looking for the remaining features depended on the viewer's age or sex or type of content within which they occurred.     

Visual acuity improvement following fading and feedback training—II. Relationship to changes in refractive error

The present study evaluated the effects of behavioral training on visual acuity and refractive error in myopic adults. Twenty volunteers were matched on the basis of refractive error and one member of each matched pair was randomly assigned to either Fading and Feedback training or a no-treatment control condition. Visual acuity was measured with both recognition and resolution measures. Refractive error was measured subjectively using the LaserSpec optometer, and objectively by two retinoscopic examinations performed by an ophthalmologist with and without cycloplegia. The results indicated significant increases in recognition visual acuity, but not resolution visual acuity for trained subjects compared to the no-treatment controls. Trained subjects did not show improvement in refractive error on any measure, and refractive error changes were not correlated with changes in either measure of visual acuity. These data suggest that the visual acuity improvements typically found with behavioral training are not associated with changes in refractive error.     

Sound-induced seizure: asymmetries exhibited are related to the latency of seizure onset

Audiogenic seizures of SJL/J mice sensitized before 3 weeks of age were found to be of two distinct types. Seizures with short latencies to onset were without clear asymmetries of either run or fall direction, whereas seizures occurring after a longer latency were characterized by asymmetries of both of these behaviors.     

Personal involvement and the evaluation of group products

This research examined favouritism in group product evaluations as a function of personal involvement. After being divided into groups on an arbitrary basis, subjects worked at a group brainstorming task. Some subjects then assessed the merits of their own group's product relative to that of an outgroup's product, whereas other subjects assessed the merits of an ingroup's product relative to that of an outgroup's product. In both conditions, a significant bias was observed such that owngroup and ingroup products were rated as superior to outgroup products. Moreover, this bias was equally strong regardless of whether subjects were appraising a product they had personally helped create. The implications of the findings for understanding the antecedents of group bias are considered.     

Keeping the therapist alive

This article focuses on ways in which therapists can mamtain vitality in their work with people. Becoming more aware of personal dynamics, particularly of the need for control and power, is essential. To remain open to new theories and approaches avoids the pitfall of professional encapsulation. Experiencing the client as a person not only facilitates empathy but involves therapists in the growth process as well. Developing a tragic awareness of life enables therapists to maintain a sense of awe, wonder, and grace toward the human predicament, thus bringing depth or spirituality to their work.He is also editor of TheHarding Journal of Religion and Psychiatry.     

Exploring environments by hand or foot: time-based heuristics for encoding distance in movement space

In Experiment 1, blindfolded observers judged (a) the distance of pathways felt by hand and (b) the straight-line distance between pathway endpoints inferred from such exploration. In Experiment 2, blindfolded observers made corresponding estimates after traversing similar pathways on foot. Pathways were explored under three different speeds. Under both manipulatory and ambulatory exploration, there was substantial length distortion of inferred distance: The straight-line distance was increasingly overestimated with increases in the length of the explored pathway. With manipulatory exploration, slower movements increased length distortion, but duration effects proved secondary to effects of spatial extent. For ambulatory exploration, no duration effects were obtained. Observers used time-independent heuristics, that is, a footstep metric for estimating the pathway actually travelled and a spatial imaging strategy for estimating the inferred line between pathway endpoints. The studies establish length distortion as a general phenomenon in movement space and identify its major causes as spatial rather than temporal.