Youth Suicide Intervention Using the Satir Model

Youth suicide is a social issue that needs serious consideration among families, therapists and helping professionals. This article presents an actual case of a youth who completed suicide, and discussion of the hypothetical Satir model treatment of this youth while alive. The Satir model has numerous interventions that have current applications toward dealing with suicidal youth in a humanist and hopeful way, fostering youths' desire to live and to become more positively involved in their lives. In the past, Satir focused on coping stances in communication, and now the coping stances give a deeper understanding into the internal world.     

The psychology of psychiatric genetics: evidence that positive emotions in females moderate genetic sensitivity to social stress associated with the BDNF Val-sup-6-sup-6Met polymorphism

Previous work indicated protective effects of positive emotions on genetically influenced stress sensitivity. Given the fact that expression of brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor (BDNF) is associated with stress-induced behavioral changes, it was hypothesized that the BDNF Val-sup-6-sup-6Met genotype may mediate genetic effects on stress sensitivity, conditional on the level of concurrent positive emotions. Subjects (n=446) participated in a momentary assessment study, collecting appraisals of stress and affect in the flow of daily life. Multilevel regression analyses examined moderation of daily life stress-induced negative affect (NA) by BDNF genotype, and to what degree this was conditional on concurrent positive emotions. Results showed that heterozygous BDNF "Met" carriers exhibited an increased NA response to social stress compared with "Val/Val" subjects. Positive emotions at the time of the stressor decreased BDNF genetic moderation of the NA response to social stress in a dose-response fashion. This effect was most pronounced in BDNF Met carriers. Thus, the impact of BDNF genotype on stress sensitivity is conditional on the experience of positive emotions. Interdisciplinary research in psychology and psychiatric genetics may lead to the improvement of treatment choices in stress-related disorders.     

How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance

The authors examined White and Black participants' emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants' race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern--White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes.     

Speech perception development in children with dyslexia

Several studies have indicated that dyslexics show a deficit in speech perception (SP). The main purpose of this research is to determine the development of SP in dyslexics and normal readers paired by grades from 2nd to 6th grade of primary school and to know whether the phonetic contrasts that are relevant for SP change during development, taking into account the individual differences. The achievement of both groups was compared in the phonetic tasks: voicing contrast, place of articulation contrast and manner of articulation contrast. The results showed that the dyslexic performed poorer than the normal readers in SP. In place of articulation contrast, the developmental pattern is similar in both groups but not in voicing and manner of articulation. Manner of articulation has more influence on SP, and its development is higher than the other contrast tasks in both groups.