Individual differences in sensitivity to health communications: consideration of future consequences.

There are reliable individual differences in the extent to which people consider the long- and short-term consequences of their behaviors. Such differences, assessed by the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) Scale (A. Strathman, F. Gleicher, D. S. Boninger, & C. S. Edwards, 1994), are hypothesized to influence the impact of a persuasive communication. In an experimental study, the time frame of occurrence of positive and negative consequences of engaging in a new colorectal cancer-screening program was manipulated in a sample of two hundred twenty 50-69-year-old men and women. CFC moderated (a) the processing of short- versus long-term consequences and (b) the persuasive impact of the different communications on behavioral intentions. Low CFC individuals produced more positive thoughts and were more persuaded when positive consequences were short term and negative consequences were long term. The opposite was true for high CFC individuals.     

The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior: implications for science, policy, and practice

This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations. The current article articulates 5 key evolutionary insights into risky adolescent behavior: (a) The adolescent transition is an inflection point in development of social status and reproductive trajectories; (b) interventions need to address the adaptive functions of risky and aggressive behaviors like bullying; (c) risky adolescent behavior adaptively calibrates over development to match both harsh and unpredictable environmental conditions; (d) understanding evolved sex differences is critical for understanding the psychology of risky behavior; and (e) mismatches between current and past environments can dysregulate adolescent behavior, as demonstrated by age-segregated social groupings. The evolutionary model has broad implications for designing interventions for high-risk youth and suggests new directions for research that have not been forthcoming from other perspectives.     

Obese, older adults with knee osteoarthritis: weight loss, exercise, and quality of life.

This study examined the effects of dietary weight loss and exercise on the health-related quality of life (HRQL) of overweight and obese, older adults with knee osteoarthritis. A total of 316 older men and women with documented evidence of knee osteoarthritis were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 18-month interventions: dietary weight loss, exercise, dietary weight loss and exercise, or healthy lifestyle control. Measures included the SF-36 Health Survey and satisfaction with body function and appearance. Results revealed that the combined diet and exercise intervention had the most consistent, positive effect on HRQL compared with the control group; however, findings were restricted to measures of physical health or psychological outcomes that are related to the physical self.     

Multiple Imputation for Bounded Variables

Missing data are a common issue in statistical analyses. Multiple imputation is a technique that has been applied in countless research studies and has a strong theoretical basis. Most of the statistical literature on multiple imputation has focused on unbounded continuous variables, with mostly ad hoc remedies for variables with bounded support. These approaches can be unsatisfactory when applied to bounded variables as they can produce misleading inferences. In this paper, we propose a flexible quantile-based imputation model suitable for distributions defined over singly or doubly bounded intervals. Proper support of the imputed values is ensured by applying a family of transformations with singly or doubly bounded range. Simulation studies demonstrate that our method is able to deal with skewness, bimodality, and heteroscedasticity and has superior properties as compared to competing approaches, such as log-normal imputation and predictive mean matching. We demonstrate the application of the proposed imputation procedure by analysing data on mathematical development scores in children from the Millennium Cohort Study, UK. We also show a specific advantage of our methods using a small psychiatric dataset. Our methods are relevant in a number of fields, including education and psychology.     

Working with Italian patients in Munich – The case of Penelope1

Abstract

With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their “new country” plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of “migration and identity” is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation.     

Dyadic coping mediates the relationship between parents’ grief and dyadic adjustment following the loss of a child

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to examine forms of dyadic coping (DC) as mediators of the association between parents’ grief response and dyadic adjustment and to determine whether these indirect effects were moderated by the child’s type of death, timing of death, and age.

Design: The study design was cross-sectional.

Method: The sample consisted of 197 bereaved parents. Participants completed the Prolonged Grief Disorder Scale, Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and Dyadic Coping Inventory.

Results: Significant indirect effects of parents’ grief response on dyadic adjustment were found through stress communication by oneself and by the partner, positive and negative DC by the partner, and joint DC. The timing of death moderated the association between grief response and dyadic adjustment and between joint DC and dyadic adjustment. Grief response was negatively associated with dyadic adjustment only when the death occurred after birth. Grief response was negatively associated with joint DC, which, in turn, was positively associated with dyadic adjustment, when the death occurred both before and after birth. However, the association was stronger in the latter.

Conclusions: Specific forms of DC might be mechanisms through which grief response is associated with dyadic adjustment and should be promoted in clinical practice.