Preschool Depression: The Importance of Identification of Depression Early in Development

The empirical finding that school-aged children could suffer clinical depression refuted the widely held assumption that this age group would be too developmentally immature to experience depressive symptoms. Currently childhood depression is a well-recognized and widely treated clinical disorder. Following more recent developmental findings emphasizing the emotional sophistication of very young children, scientific studies have demonstrated that depression can arise early in life, during the preschool period of development. Preschool depression is characterized by typical symptoms of depression such as anhedonia; changes in sleep, appetite, and activity level; and excessive guilt. Further, longitudinal continuity of preschool depression into school age has been established, suggesting that preschool depression is an early manifestation of the later childhood disorder. Based on the known efficacy of early developmental intervention in a number of domains and disorders related to the greater neuroplasticity of the brain earlier rather than later in childhood, it is important to identify depression at the earliest possible point. Early intervention strategies for preschool depression that focus on enhancing emotional development are currently being tested.     

Psychometric properties of the Psychosocial Risk Evaluation Battery for medium and small companies

The assessment of the presence and intensity of psychosocial risks is constant in research into Work Psychopathology. Many questionnaires and diagnosis systems are partial or else there is no standardization process or reliability and validity study. The main purpose of this work is to present the psychometric data of a multidimensional system to assess psychosocial risks, elaborated conjointly by the Universitat of Barcelona and the MC Mutual. This battery assesses companies, using information from the prevention technicians, the directive staff and the workers. With the diverse types of information, a triangulation proposal is established to offer a psychosocial risk profile linked to the evaluation needs.     

Communal Responsiveness in Relationships with Female versus Male Family Members

Two studies of college students in the US utilized a new methodological approach in which participants arranged their multiple family members (i.e. parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles) within a series of relationship network grids. These grids measured participants’ own feelings of communal responsiveness toward and perceived feelings of communal responsiveness from each family member relative to one another. The results of Study 1 (N = 86) and Study 2 (N = 111) supported the hypotheses that (1) people perceive more responsiveness from female family members than from male family members and (2) people feel more responsive toward female than toward male family members. Study 2 provided evidence that these associations were mediated by felt and perceived intimacy, dependence, and obligation, but not liking.     

2007 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL: POWER, PERFECTIONISM, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN

Anecdotal evidence and popular culture suggest that fear of losing control of oneself is common among North American women, yet there is little in the way of data or theory to show why so many women fear loss of control or how to help them to leave that fear behind. In this article a commonly accepted definition of self-regulation is examined through a feminist lens to see how gender-role socialization might affect women's sense of whether and when they can regulate (or control) themselves. Particular attention is paid to eating behavior, body image, and reproductive phases (e.g., premenstrual syndrome) as areas where fears of loss of control are often expressed. Intervention points suggested here are women's standards for body and behavior; the extent of the areas that doing femininity requires them to control; and their beliefs, not only about what they can control, but what they are allowed to do.     

Intergenerational transmission of values: family generativity and adolescents' narratives of parent and grandparent value teaching

In this longitudinal study, we compared family stories told by 32 Canadian adolescents at ages 16 and 20 about how parents and grandparents had taught them values. Relations to parents' and children's levels of generativity were also examined. Adolescents' stories of grandparent value teaching were less readily recalled and less interactive in their content compared with stories about parents. Stories of value teaching by more generative parents were more likely to involve specific episodes, to be more interactive, to be more likely to emphasize caring content, and to be less likely to have their message rejected by the teens. Similarly, when parents were more generative, adolescents' stories about grandparents' value teaching were also more likely to involve specific and interactive episodes. Finally, stories told about parents and grandparents that were more positive on these dimensions predicted higher generative concern scores for the adolescents themselves, measured subsequently at age 24. Adolescents' stories about parent and grandparent socialization in more generative family contexts thus have features that suggest a more compelling process of intergenerational value transmission.     

Would Socio-Economic Inequalities in Depression Fade Away with Income Transfers?

A number of recent studies have questioned the conventional view regarding the existence of income-related inequalities in depression and have suggested that other factors have a more marked impact, most notably those socio-environmental effects linked to professional status and educational attainment. This paper seeks to measure and decompose the degree of socio-economic inequality in the factors underlying reported depression by drawing on data from Spain (Spanish National Health Survey, 2003), a country in which mental care coverage is somewhat limited, but where a marked social transformation has been apparent in recent decades. Contrary to recent evidence, our findings point towards the existence of significant income-related inequalities in the prevalence of reported (diagnosed) depression. However, the results from our decomposition analysis are more mixed. While a modest proportion of overall inequalities (6–13%) is accounted for by income alone, labour status, demographics and education appear to be more relevant. However, when controlling for potential endogeneity between income and depression by using instrumental variables (IV), income is found to account for more than 50% of overall inequality in reported depression.

Godly play: an intervention for improving physical, emotional, and spiritual responses of chronically ill hospitalized children

An experimental two-group comparison pilot study of forty chronically ill hospitalized children was carried out at Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Three Godly Play interventions were given to participants in the experimental group. Children in the control group did not participate but received a fairy tale book as a control. The sample was evenly distributed with twenty (20) males and twenty (20) females. Ages ranged from six (6) to fifteen (15) years and all participants were chronically ill. Five (5) variables were studied. Of the five (5), three (3) showed significant differences before and after Godly Play: the Staic-Trait Anxiety Scale (p = .049), the Children's Depression Inventory (p = .011), and the McBride Spirituality Assessment (p = .033). A marginal difference in parent satisfaction with hospital care of children in the experimental and control groups was also determined (p = .058). Findings suggest that Godly Play had a significant effect on anxiety, depression, and spirituality of children and support the idea that the parents of children who participated in Godly Play were more satisfied with hospital care than those parents whose children did not engage in Godly Play.     

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,HEALING, AND ALTRUISM: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This essay introduces the five articles that follow, whose aim is to show how altruism emerges out of spiritual transformation and is integral to healing process in four kinds of ritual healing systems—popular, folk, an indigenous religious healing tradition, and complementary and alternative medicine represented by consciousness transformation movements. In this introduction I situate these largely marginalized religious and spiritual practices within the context of the religion‐science discourse, which has focused for the most part on the relationship between the established, mainstream religions and the dominant biomedical system. Antecedents of two of these types of religious practices, Spiritism and consciousness transformation movements, were part of the development of the psychological sciences in the nineteenth century but lost ground in the twentieth. Despite discrimination and persistent negative attitudes on the part of the established religions and biomedicine, these healing traditions have not only survived through the twentieth century but appear to have gained both followers and interest in the twenty‐first. In future decades, at least for complementary and alternative medical practices and perhaps also for spirit healing centers, there may be a reversal in status through greater acceptance of their unique combination of scientific and religious perspectives.