Rethinking a Familiar Model: Psychotherapy and the Mental Health of Refugees

This paper examines with a somewhat critical eye the primary role that psychotherapy and other clinic-based services currently play in addressing the mental health needs of political refugees in the industrialized countries. Two factors are considered which suggest that refugee mental health needs might be better served by complementing clinic-based treatments with a variety of community-based interventions. The first factor concerns the pervasiveness of psychological distress within refugee communities, coupled with the reluctance of many refugees to utilize formal psychological and psychiatric services. This calls into question both the adequacy and appropriateness of clinical-based services as cornerstones of our response to the mental health needs of refugees. More precisely, it suggests the need to complement such services with a variety of culturally grounded, community-based strategies that do not require attendance in formal mental health settings. Second, recent findings have shown consistently that a considerable amount of the distress reported by refugees is related not to prior exposure to violent events, but to a constellation of exile-related stressors such as the loss of one's community and social network, the loss of important life projects, changes in socioeconomic status and related concerns about economic survival, the loss of meaningful structure and activity in daily life, and the loss of meaningful social roles. It is suggested that while psychotherapy can play an important adjunctive role in helping people confront these exile-related stressors, they may most effectively be addressed through targeted community-based interventions. Examples of such community-based approaches are briefly described, and suggestions are offered for community-level strategies that might be explored. The paper concludes by emphasizing the complementary nature of clinical and community-based programs, and by suggesting that psychotherapy might best be conceptualized as one component of a more comprehensive approach to addressing the mental health needs of refugee communities.     

Genetic and environmental contributions to the co-occurrence of depressive personality disorder and DSM-IV personality disorders

One of the main controversies with regard to depressive personality disorder (DPD) concerns the co-occurrence with the established DSM-IV personality disorders (PDs). The main aim of this study was to examine to what extent DPD and the DSM-IV PDs share genetic and environmental risk factors, using multivariate twin modeling. The DSM-IV Structured Interview for Personality was applied to 2,794 young adult twins. Paranoid PD from Cluster A, borderline PD from Cluster B, and all three PDs from Cluster C were independently and significantly associated with DPD in multiple regression analysis. The genetic correlations between DPD and the other PDs were strong (.53-.83), while the environmental correlations were moderate (.36-.40). Close to 50% of the total variance in DPD was disorder specific. However, only 5% was due to disorder-specific genetic factors, indicating that a substantial part of the genetic vulnerability to DPD also increases the vulnerability to other PDs.     

Facilitating the Pygmalion effect: The overlooked role of subordinate perceptions of the leader

For many years, the Pygmalion effect has served as a colourful, conceptual reminder of the power of supervisory expectations in enhancing subordinate performance. However, regardless of the myriad of studies that have sought to replicate this effect and identify its parameters, little attention has actually been paid to the processes underlying this phenomenon. Rather, the existing model implies that the subordinate is an ‘always‐willing’, yet somewhat ‘passive’ recipient of Pygmalion‐oriented leader efforts. Our theoretical paper unpacks the role of subordinate perceptions of the leader and considers how it can influence receptiveness to the leader's Pygmalion‐oriented efforts. By revisiting and building upon the original Pygmalion model, we attempt to enrich our understanding of this phenomenon, as well as to offer insight into why not all Pygmalion leader efforts are equally successful.     

Factor structure of the primary scales of the Inventory of Personality Organization in a nonclinical sample using exploratory structural equation modeling

Using exploratory structural equation modeling and multiple regression, we examined the factor structure and criterion relations of the primary scales of the Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO; Kernberg & Clarkin, 1995) in a nonclinical sample. Participants (N = 1,260) completed the IPO and measures of self-concept clarity, defenses, affect and emotion regulation, and risky and self-injurious behavior. In contrast to that of Lenzenweger, Clarkin, Kernberg, and Foelsch (2001), a 4-factor measurement model was derived with factors representing instability of sense of self and other, instability of goals, instability of behaviors, and psychosis. The 1st of these factors related most strongly to external measures of self-concept clarity, defenses, and affect, whereas the 3rd factor related most strongly to measures of risky behavior and self-injury. These results suggest that the IPO's factor structure does not conform to the hypothesized 3-factor model, although it does capture important elements of Kernberg's (1996) theory of personality organization, especially the central construct of representations of self and others. The results point to several areas in which the IPO might be refined to provide a more comprehensive and theoretically appropriate measure of the borderline personality organization construct.     

It depends on how you look at it: Scanpath comparison in multiple dimensions with MultiMatch, a vector-based approach

Eye movement sequences??or scanpaths??vary depending on the stimulus characteristics and the task (Foulsham & Underwood Journal of Vision, 8(2), 6:1?C17, 2008; Land, Mennie, & Rusted, Perception, 28, 1311?C1328, 1999). Common methods for comparing scanpaths, however, are limited in their ability to capture both the spatial and temporal properties of which a scanpath consists. Here, we validated a new method for scanpath comparison based on geometric vectors, which compares scanpaths over multiple dimensions while retaining positional and sequential information (Jarodzka, Holmqvist, & Nystr?m, Symposium on Eye-Tracking Research and Applications (pp. 211?C218), 2010). ??MultiMatch?? was tested in two experiments and pitted against ScanMatch (Cristino, Math?t, Theeuwes, & Gilchrist, Behavior Research Methods, 42, 692?C700, 2010), the most comprehensive adaptation of the popular Levenshtein method. In Experiment 1, we used synthetic data, demonstrating the greater sensitivity of MultiMatch to variations in spatial position. In Experiment 2, real eye movement recordings were taken from participants viewing sequences of dots, designed to elicit scanpath pairs with commonalities known to be problematic for algorithms (e.g., when one scanpath is shifted in locus or when fixations fall on either side of an AOI boundary). The results illustrate the advantages of a multidimensional approach, revealing how two scanpaths differ. For instance, if one scanpath is the reverse copy of another, the difference is in the direction but not the positions of fixations; or if a scanpath is scaled down, the difference is in the length of the saccadic vectors but not in the overall shape. As well as having enormous potential for any task in which consistency in eye movements is important (e.g., learning), MultiMatch is particularly relevant for ??eye movements to nothing?? in mental imagery and embodiment-of-cognition research, where satisfactory scanpath comparison algorithms are lacking.     

Deconstructing the age-prevalence curve of alcohol dependence: why "maturing out" is only a small piece of the puzzle

Epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated that heavy alcohol use and alcohol dependence (AD) tend to increase in adolescence and emerging adulthood and then show a large decline in the late 20s, a phenomenon called maturing out. This decline has been explained as an effect of "role incompatibility" in which involvement in new roles and activities interferes with a heavy drinking lifestyle. However, maturing out has been conceived mostly as a decrease in offset, with little attention paid to reductions in new onset or recurrence across decades of life. Moreover, although role incompatibility processes have been studied with young samples, little is known about the effect of life transitions (e.g., marriage, parenthood, changes in employment status) on AD later in life and whether similar effects are observed. Using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a nationally representative epidemiologic survey, we examined the patterns of stability and change in AD across the life span and the differential effect of life transitions on AD across different age strata. Results showed that persistence of AD tended to increase with age, although not dramatically, and that onset and recurrence tended to decrease with age. Moreover, the effects of life transitions on the course of AD varied across the life span and were different for men and women. These results indicate that life transitions differentially affect the patterns of stability and change in younger versus older people, have a different impact for men and women, and highlight the need to consider the unique aspects of each stage of adult development on the course of AD.     

The feature-positive effect in allocations of responsibility for collaborative tasks

People commonly believe they have contributed more to collaborative tasks than others give them credit for. We distinguish between two types of contributions – additions (such as adding words to a co-authored paper) and deletions (such as removing extraneous words) – and show that individuals are especially prone to receive less credit from others than they believe they deserve when their contributions consist of taking something away rather than adding something. Participants who shortened some writing believed they improved it just as much as did participants who lengthened some, but were seen by others as having contributed less. Although one can hardly fail to notice one's own deletions, these contributions – like any contributions that, by their very nature, leave little trace of themselves – are easy for others to overlook.