Consuming as a family: Modes of intergenerational influence on young adults

• Parents inevitably shape their young children's consumption during early years; does this influence endure as the offspring mature? We explore this phenomenon—known as Intergenerational Influence (IGI)—with survey data from 265 young adults and their parents for four product categories. Our specific focus is on two research questions: (1) By what modality is IGI transferred, and (2) does family relationship quality (FRQ) moderate IGI outcomes? Results show IGI to be present in differing degrees across products—more for utilitarian and, likewise, shared products, less for individually consumed and stylistic products. As to modality, we explore active indoctrination by parents versus passive learning by mere observation by the offspring, and find the latter to be the dominant mode. We also find a strong moderating role of so that all IGI outcomes are stronger among high FRQ than among low FRQ families. Of import to theory as well as practice, these findings confirm and extend current literature on IGI and suggest directions for future research.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Play’s the Thing: Improvisation in Group Psychotherapy

Study of improvisational theater suggests practices that can help us respond more fully in a therapeutic way. Improvisation is a powerful tool that emphasizes present-centered awareness and spontaneity. It helps us respond effectively to present moment processes, a key requirement for psychodynamic group psychotherapy. It enhances our ability to communicate with our patients when traditional interventions fail. Improvisation requires a readiness to play and a willingness to be open to the challenges of non-rational modes of relating. This article provides clinical examples of improvised group interventions.     

Building and Handling Therapeutic Closeness in the Therapist-Client Relationship in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy

The present study unpacks an important dimension of clinical practice from the therapists’ vantage point. We interviewed 26 therapists in private practice about how the personal relationship with the client works from their perspective and conducted a grounded theory analysis. Three categories emerged. One refers to scope, aims and corollaries of the connection with the client; a second to preventing harm and managing drawbacks; and a third to taking therapeutic advantage of challenges related to closeness. Together, these categories form a model that describes how the close connection modifies therapeutic effects and generates challenges the therapist needs to deal with. The closer the dyad, the easier therapists will affect and be affected by the client. Therapists try to direct closeness to where it can nourish client process without harming the relationship, the client or themselves, and when closeness backfires, they may still try to harness uninvited effects for the benefit of therapy. This model concerning therapists’ lived experience is offered to inform research on the therapist-client relationship and as a contribution to clinical competency models.     

The Genetic Counselor in the Pediatric Arrhythmia Clinic: Review and Assessment of Services

There are minimal data on the impact of genetic counselors in subspecialty clinics, including the pediatric arrhythmia clinic. This study aimed to describe the clinical encounters of a genetic counselor integrated into a pediatric arrhythmia clinic. In the 20 months between July 2015 and February 2017, a total of 1914 scheduled patients were screened for indications relevant for assessment by a genetic counselor. Of these, the genetic counselor completed 276 patient encounters, seeing 14.4% of all patients in clinic. The most expected and common indications for genetic counselor involvement were related to suspicion for primary heritable arrhythmia conditions, though patients seen in this clinic display a wide range of cardiac problems and many additional indications for genetic evaluation were identified. Roughly 75% (211/276) of encounters were for personal history of confirmed/suspected heritable disease, including cardiac channelopathies, cardiomyopathies, ventricular arrhythmias, and congenital heart defects, and 25% (65/276) were for family history of disease, including long QT syndrome and sudden unexplained death. Overall, this study shows that about 1 in 7 patients seen in a pediatric arrhythmia clinic have indications that likely benefit from genetic counselor involvement and care. Similar service delivery models embedding genetic counselors in pediatric arrhythmia clinics should be encouraged, and this model could be emulated to increase patient access to genetic counseling services.     

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for generalized anxiety disorder in older adults: a preliminary report

Some evidence suggests that acceptance-based approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may be well-suited to geriatric generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The primary goal of this project was to determine whether ACT was feasible for this population. Seven older primary-care patients with GAD received 12 individual sessions of ACT; another 9 were treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy. No patients dropped out of ACT, and worry and depression improved. Findings suggest that ACT may warrant a large-scale investigation with anxious older adults.     

Postnatal mental health and parenting: The importance of parental anger

Parents' postnatal mental health and subjective perceptions of their baby are likely to influence the quality of their relationship with their baby. To date, this has largely been examined in mothers; therefore, this study aimed to also explore this in both parents. Semistructured clinical interviews [The Birmingham Interview for Maternal Mental Health (BIMMH); Brockingon, Chandra et al., 2006] were carried out with 85 first‐time parents. The BMMHI identifies disorders of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and parental anger. Sections of the BMMHI also elicit qualitative accounts of parenthood. These were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Differences in the frequency of themes were examined for parents with or without mental health disorders or parental anger. Themes are reported for (a) baby characteristics, needs, and development; (b) parents' emotions, responses, coping strategies, and general parenthood; and (c) parent and baby relationship. Results indicated that both the presence of parental mental health problems and, more notably, parental anger were associated with more negative accounts of the self, the baby, and parenthood. This study provides insight into first‐time parents' perceptions of early parenthood. Results especially highlight the need to consider parental experiences of anger in more detail for assessment and interventions in the early postpartum period.     

Posttraumatic growth after childbirth: a prospective study

A growing body of research has examined the potential for positive change following challenging and traumatic events, this is known as posttraumatic growth (PTG). Childbirth is a valuable opportunity to extend previous work on PTG as it allows the role of different variables to be considered prospectively. The aim of this study was to prospectively examine correlates of PTG after birth, including sociodemographic and obstetric variables, social support and psychological distress, using a prospective, longitudinal design. A total of 125 women completed questionnaires during their third trimester of pregnancy and 8 weeks after birth. At least a small degree of positive change following childbirth was reported by 47.9% of women; however, average levels of growth were lower than generally reported in other studies. A regression model of age, type of delivery, posttraumatic stress symptoms during pregnancy and general distress after birth significantly predicted 32% of the variance in growth after childbirth. The strongest predictors of growth were operative delivery (β 0.23-0.30) and posttraumatic stress symptoms in pregnancy (β 0.32). These findings emphasise the importance of assessing pre-event characteristics when considering the development of PTG after a challenging event.     

Body dissatisfaction from adolescence to young adulthood: Findings from a 10-year longitudinal study

Given mixed findings regarding the unique trajectories of female and male adolescents’ body dissatisfaction over time, comprehensive longitudinal examinations are needed. This 10-year longitudinal, population-based study, with 1902 participants from diverse ethnic/racial and socioeconomic backgrounds in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, examined changes in body dissatisfaction from adolescence to young adulthood. Results revealed that: (a) female and male participants’ body dissatisfaction increased between middle and high school, (b) body dissatisfaction increased further during the transition to young adulthood, and (c) this increase was associated with an increase in BMI over time, such that the upward trend in body dissatisfaction became nonsignificant when BMI was controlled. These results highlight a trend in which diverse female and male youth are increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies as their BMI increases from middle school to young adulthood, and emphasize the need for targeted prevention efforts to intervene in this trajectory and mitigate potential harm.     

Developmental picture norms: Relationships between name agreement,familiarity, and visual complexity for child and adult ratings of two sets of line drawings

Developmental differences in name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity in response to line drawings of common objects were obtained from children and adults. Sixty-one pictures were taken from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and 259 pictures were taken from the set normed for adults by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). Although there were some differences between the two sets of pictures, the present results replicated the relative independence of these three measures, which was reported by Snodgrass and Vanderwart for adults. Children and adults showed substantial agreement on the names of the pictures. Although the children’s ratings were lower on all measures, the differences were trivial for most pictures. We concluded that judgments of familiarity, complexity, and the names of line drawings of common objects are based primarily on information processing accomplished prior to age 7.