Attributional Style, Self-Esteem, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus: A Test of the Hopelessness and Self-Esteem Theories of Depression

Research on the hopelessness and self-esteem theories of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Metalsky, Joiner, Hardin, & Abramson, 1993) suggests that HIV-infected persons with depressotypic attributional style (AS) and low self-esteem (SE) may be at risk for onset of a syndrome referred to as hopelessness depression (HD). In a prospective study conducted to test these theories, measures of anxiety and depression, AS, and SE were administered to 85 HIV+ and 43 HIV– men; symptoms were reassessed 6 months later. Results indicated that: (1) The interaction of AS, SE, and HIV status predicted change in HD symptoms, but not overall depression or anxiety symptoms; (2) HIV+ men with depressotypic AS and high SE had increased HD symptom levels while other men with high SE had decreased HD symptom levels; (3) HD symptoms remained stable over the 6-month interval among men with low SE; and (4) High SE predicted decreases in anxiety symptoms among HIV– men, but not among HIV+ men. Contrary to the study hypothesis, these findings suggest that among individuals with life-threatening illnesses such as HIV infection, those with depressotypic AS and high SE may be at highest risk for onset of HD.     

Toward a biopsychosocial model for 21st-century genetics

Advances in genomic research are increasingly identifying genetic components in major health and mental health disorders. This article presents a Family System Genetic Illness model to address the psychosocial challenges of genomic conditions for patients and their families, and to help organize this complex biopsychosocial landscape for clinical practice and research. This model clusters genomic disorders based on key characteristics that define types of disorders with similar patterns of psychosocial demands over time. Key disease variables include the likelihood of developing a disorder based on specific genetic mutations, overall clinical severity, timing of clinical onset in the life cycle, and whether effective treatment interventions exist to alter disease onset and/or progression. For disorders in which carrier, predictive, or presymptomatic testing is available, core nonsymptomatic time phases with salient developmental challenges are described pre- and post-testing, including a long-term adaptation phase. The FSGI model builds on Rolland's Family System Illness model, which identifies psychosocial types and phases of chronic disorders after clinical onset. The FSGI model is designed to be flexible and responsive to future discoveries in genomic research. Its utility is discussed for research, preventive screening, family assessment, treatment planning, and service delivery in a wide range of healthcare settings.     

Cross-Cultural Reactions to Academic Sexual Harassment: Effects of Individualist vs. Collectivist Culture and Gender of Participants

Male and female university students from the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Turkey read a standardized scenario in which a male professor was accused of sexually harassing a female graduate student. Respondents from individualist countries judged the professor to be guilty of sexual harassment more often than did those from collectivist countries. Women rendered significantly more guilty judgments and assigned more severe punishments to the accused professor than did men. Implications for the individualist–collectivist classification system and cross-cultural research are discussed.     

Priming prepositional-phrase attachment during comprehension

Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. Bock, 1986). The authors report 4 experiments that used an expression-picture matching task to investigate whether it also affects ambiguity resolution in comprehension. All experiments examined the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment. After reading a prime expression with a high-attached interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target expression as highly attached if it contained the same verb as the prime (Experiment 1), but not if it contained a different verb (Experiment 2). They also tended to adopt the high-attached interpretation after producing a prime with the high-attached interpretation that included the same verb (Experiment 3). Finally, they were faster to adopt a high-attached interpretation after reading an expression containing the same verb that was disambiguated to the high-attached versus the low-attached interpretation (Experiment 4).     

Correlation between trait hostility and faster reading times for sentences describing angry reactions to ambiguous situations

The hypothesis that trait anger is associated with an increased tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as anger-provoking was investigated in a reading time study. A total of 48 healthy volunteers read a series of short narrative passages and were asked to adopt the perspective of the main character, identified at the start of each passage. Reading times for key sentences, which described the main characters' angry or nonangry reactions to ambiguous anger-provoking situations, were recorded. Trait anger and impulsivity were negatively correlated with reading time for sentences describing both types of reaction, but anger was also correlated with relatively faster processing of sentences describing angry reactions. This study suggests that those with angrier dispositions are more likely to anticipate angry reactions from others.     

Quality and Individualization in Wraparound Team Planning

In children’s mental health, collaborative, team-based individualized service planning is most commonly known as wraparound, and has become one of the primary strategies for improving services and outcomes for children with the highest levels of need. We report on analyses of data gathered at 72 wraparound team meetings from communities around the United States. We describe the composition of the teams and the quality of the planning process they engaged in, and explore the extent to which these factors were associated with team member satisfaction and the individualization of plans. Teams in our study were numerically dominated by professionals. Parents attended a large majority of meetings, participation by youth and family advocates was frequent, participation by other family members infrequent, and participation by other members of the family’s informal or natural support networks rare. Observed teams varied considerably in the quality of their planning process and the degree of individualization of plans. Higher-quality planning was significantly associated with increased individualization of plans and with team member satisfaction with meeting productivity.     

Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment and Counseling: Recommendations of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

These cancer genetic counseling recommendations describe the medical, psychosocial, and ethical ramifications of identifying at-risk individuals through cancer risk assessment with or without genetic testing. They were developed by members of the Practice Issues Subcommittee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors Cancer Genetic Counseling Special Interest Group. The information contained in this document is derived from extensive review of the current literature on cancer genetic risk assessment and counseling as well as the personal expertise of genetic counselors specializing in cancer genetics. The recommendations are intended to provide information about the process of genetic counseling and risk assessment for hereditary cancer disorders rather than specific information about individual syndromes. Key components include the intake (medical and family histories), psychosocial assessment (assessment of risk perception), cancer risk assessment (determination and communication of risk), molecular testing for hereditary cancer syndromes (regulations, informed consent, and counseling process), and follow-up considerations. These recommendations should not be construed as dictating an exclusive course of management, nor does use of such recommendations guarantee a particular outcome. These recommendations do not displace a health care provider's professional judgment based on the clinical circumstances of a client.     

Government initiatives in autism clinical trials

Randomized clinical trials remain the most valid method of testing the efficacy and safety of treatments. While efforts to elucidate the genetic and neurodevelopmental bases of autism are underway, clinicians and families are in need of scientifically valid information on how to best treat patients with autism. The effectiveness of many interventions currently used in communities has not been adequately tested. Given the high public health relevance of autism treatment research and the low interest of the pharmaceutical industry in autism, the role of the National Institutes of Health in supporting this research is paramount. Among recently launched initiatives in autism clinical trials, there are the Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology Autism Network and the network of centers for Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment. These and other government activities in the area of autism clinical trials are here briefly reviewed.     

Awareness in memory: being explicit about the role of sleep

Sleep is crucial to the 'off-line' consolidation of procedural memory. A recent study by Robertson et al. shows that this might hold true only if the task is trained explicitly, that is, with the subject being aware of the task structure. These new data add to emerging evidence that sleep-related memory consolidation involves an interaction between different memory systems.