Counseling the Aging: Some Practical Considerations

Although counseling older individuals requires the use of basic helping skills, other complementary phases of working with this special population must be addressed. This article outlines the multiple-loss aspect of the aging individual's environment and suggests some specific strategies for assisting these persons to realize their ongoing potential and residual personal strength.     

Students' Reactions to Groups in a University Counseling Center

This article describes an evaluative study of students' reactions to three types of groups—assertiveness training, personal growth, and ethnic rap—offered by a university counseling center. A 16-item questionnaire distributed to 130 group participants yielded 90 usable returns. Chi-square calculations comparing the responses of the three types of groups revealed statistically significant differences between them on eight of the 16 items. Samples of the responses to the open-ended items convey the flavor and feeling tone of the reactions to the group experience. One of the notable results of the study was the development of a new group intended to integrate the most useful elements identified by the students' reactions.     

Gender, Mentoring Experiences, and Salary Attainment among Graduates of an Historically Black University

The effects of gender and the development of mentoring relationships on salary attainment were examined among African-American graduates of an historically black institution of higher education. After controlling for a series of background, career, and organizational factors, there were no gender-based pay differences, and only those who had established mentoring relationships with white-male mentors displayed compensation advantages over graduates who had never formed mentoring relationships. These results are comparable to findings reported for majority and minority graduates of majority-culture schools of business and have implications concerning the ways in which companies and individuals work to maximize career potential.     

Genetic Counseling, Reproductive Behavior and Future Reproductive Intentions of People with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1)

Neurofibromatosis type 1(NF1) is a complex and variable inherited disorder. The complexity and variability present particular difficulty for genetic counseling. Thirty-three people with NF1 of reproductive age were interviewed about their experience of genetic counseling, their past reproductive behavior and future intentions. One third reported having had no genetic counseling or not having it until after their first child. In part, this may be due to delay in diagnosis but also indicates poor access to genetic services. Only three people had ever been offered prenatal genetic testing and only one had accepted. Although testing is still technically difficult, the greatest deterrent to uptake of prenatal testing for NF1 is the variability of the disorder. However, six of the 17 people planning future pregnancies would want a test with a view to termination if necessary. Others would welcome testing in order to be prepared but not to terminate. We discuss some of the factors which influence reproductive decision making for people with NF1 and some of the difficulties in genetic counseling in such a variable and complex disorder.     

A constraint-based lexicalist account of the subject/object attachment preference

When a noun phrase could either be the object of the preceding verb or the subject of a new clause or a sentence complement, readers and listeners show a strong preference to parse the noun phrase as the object of the verb. This can result in clear garden paths for sentences such asThe student read the book was stolen andWhile the student read the book was stolen. Even when the verb does not permit a noun phrase complement, soem processing difficulty is still found. This has led some theorists to propose models in which initial attachments are lexically blind, with lexical information subsequently used as a filter to evaluate and revise initial analyses. In contrast, we show that these results emerge naturally from constraint-based lexicalist models. We present a modeling experiment with a simple recurrent network that was trained to predict upcoming complements for a sample of verbs taken from the Penn Treebank corpus. The model exhibits an boject bias and it aloo shows effects of verb frequency which are similar to those found in the psycholinguistic literature.     

Decisions About Testing and Termination of Pregnancy for Different Fetal Conditions: A Qualitative Study of European White and Pakistani Mothers of Affected Children

The aim of this study is to explore reasons for and against prenatal testing and termination for a range of conditions in women from two different ethnic backgrounds. A total of 19 Pakistani and European women in West Yorkshire, UK, who either had a child with a genetic condition or had terminated a pregnancy for one, completed a questionnaire about their attitudes regarding prenatal testing and termination for 30 different fetal conditions and were interviewed about their reasons for their responses. There were more similarities than differences between the Pakistani and European white women. The most important factor in most women’s decisions about termination of pregnancy was their perception of the quality of the life of a child with the genetic condition, in particular, whether the child would be “suffering.” This was described as either physical suffering, as a result of medical treatment, or as emotional suffering, as a result of psychological and/or social factors. These findings highlight the need for detailed information about the potential quality of life for the child and the child’s family to enable parents to make informed choices, particularly the extent to which the child is likely to suffer, the nature of such potential “suffering” and the extent to which the child could lead a “normal” life. The findings also challenge stereotypes about cultural differences in attitudes about termination of pregnancy.     

Understanding the impact of prior depression on stress generation: Examining the roles of current depressive symptoms and interpersonal behaviours

Stress generation is a process in which individuals contribute to stressful life events. While research has supported an association between current depression and stress generation, it has been noted that individuals with prior depression tend to contribute to stressors even when they are no longer experiencing a depressive episode. The aim of the study is to elucidate the pathways through which prior major depression predicts interpersonal stress generation in women. Specifically, we examined current subsyndromal depressive symptoms and problematic interpersonal behaviours as potential mediators. Fifty‐one college women were followed prospectively for 6 weeks. Participants were interviewed to assess current and past depression as well as stressful life events they experienced over the 6‐week period. The findings suggest that prior major depression continues to have an impact even after the episode has ended, as the disorder continues to contribute to stress generation through residual depressive symptoms.     

Three preparatory studies for promoting implementation of outpatient schema therapy for borderline personality disorder in general mental health care

ObjectiveThree studies were conducted to prepare for the implementation of Schema Therapy (ST) for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in general mental healthcare settings. Two were surveys to detect promoting and hindering factors, one was a preliminary test of a training program in ST.MethodsIn 2004, a diagnostic analysis of factors promoting and hindering implementation of a new treatment for BPD was conducted among both managers (n = 23) and therapists (n = 49) of 29 Dutch mental healthcare institutes through a written survey (Study 1). Next, a training program, including a set of DVDs displaying the major therapeutic techniques, was developed and tested among eight therapists. The training program was evaluated by the participants. After the training, three independent raters evaluated therapists' adherence and competence, viewing videos of the therapists completing structured role-plays (Study 2). In 2008, a second written survey was conducted in 22 mental health institutes to study factors for future nationwide implementation of ST (Study 3).ResultsBoth surveys indicated that the situation in most institutes was favorable for implementing a new effective treatment, as participants were not satisfied with the existing treatments, had suitable professional backgrounds, worked in settings with (B)PD-oriented care programs, and expressed a need for change. The surveys yielded clear results for promoting or hindering successful implementation of ST. Promoting factors included scientific evidence for the effectiveness of the treatment, structural changes in the patient's personality, rapidly noticeable effects for the patient, low drop-out rates and a favorable cost-effectiveness. Possible barriers included implementation mandated unilaterally by management, choosing ST based on financial or organizational needs, extending implementation over a lengthy period of time and providing telephone support by therapists beyond office hours. The eight-day training program received very positive ratings. After the training, therapists were rated as sufficiently adherent and competent applying ST to treat BPD patients, with peer supervision and supervision recommended as a supplement to the training.ConclusionThis study showed that the situation in 2005 was advantageous to start implementation of ST. Evaluation of the training and the achieved competence scores of trainees concluded that the training program was a good basis for training therapists in ST. Outcome of the survey in 2008 demonstrated that there was a clear interest for implementation of ST for BPD patients in the future.