Potential Bone-Marrow Donors and Their Spouses: The Effects of Volunteerism on Distress Levels1

The current study sought to provide a better understanding of the reactions of bone-marrow volunteers to the possibility of donating by examining these volunteers in the context of their closest relationships. Using Tesser's (1988) self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model as a guide, we examined the influence of spouses who are also volunteers on each member of the couple's distress levels and on the marrow volunteer's ambivalence about donating. We also examined the independent effects of known risk factors for donation-related distress and the combined effects of spouse volunteer status and these risk factors on distress levels. Questionnaire data were collected from 278 couples selected from 39 bone-marrow donor centers. Results demonstrated that when spouses of potential donors were engaged in any type of volunteer activity, members of the couple felt greater anxiety than when spouses were not volunteers. Additionally, other variables were found to have a conjoint effect with spouse volunteer status on volunteer and spouse anxiety levels.     

The Importance of Knowing your History: Perceiving Past Women as less Agentic than Contemporary Women Predicts Impaired Quantitative Performance

Research on dynamic stereotypes of women has shown that women perceive large differences between contemporary women and women who lived in the past in terms of agentic (or masculine) traits. This temporal discrepancy in agentic attributes of women may suggest that agency is not a stable trait of women and may result in impaired performance in domains associated with agency, such as quantitative reasoning. We propose that women who think that agency has always characterized their gender group would perform better in quantitative tasks. Indeed, we found that as the difference between agency attributed to present and past women decreased, U.S. college women’s (n?=?80) accuracy in a quantitative test increased (Study 1). Further, reading a text about women’s achievements in the history of science reduced the discrepancy between agency attributed to past and present women and had an indirect positive effect on quantitative performance by 150 U.S. college women (Study 2). Findings suggest that women’s participation and performance in science could be improved by raising awareness of women’s historical achievements in male-dominated areas.     

Living donation and cosmetic surgery: a double standard in medical ethics?

The commitment of transplant physicians to protect the physical and psychological health of potential donors is fundamental to the process of living donor organ transplantation. It is appropriate that strict regulations to govern an individual's decision to donate have been developed. Some may argue that adherence to such regulations creates a doctor-patient relationship that is rooted in paternalism, which is in drastic contrast with a doctor-patient relationship that is rooted in patients' autonomy, characteristic of most other operative interventions. In this article we analyze the similarities between cosmetic plastic surgery and living donor surgery as examples of surgeries governed by different ethical principles. It is interesting that, while the prevailing ethical approach in living donor surgery is based on paternalism, the ethical principle guiding cosmetic surgery is respect for patients' autonomy. The purpose of this article is not to criticize either practice, but to suggest that, given the similarities between the two procedures, both operative interventions should be guided by the same ethical principle: a respect for patients' autonomy. We further suggest that if living organ donation valued donors' autonomy as much as cosmetic plastic surgery does, we might witness a wider acceptance of and increase in living organ donation.     

Healing and Harming

As part of a volunteering program, a medical student learns the story of a sick infant whose survival was wholly dependent on modern medicine. The family was pacified by believing, during pregnancy, that the fetus would be healthy. Poor counseling and unethical physician behavior led to the trauma of the family's struggle to keep its baby alive, happy, and as healthy as possible. The need for adequate, thorough, and individualized counseling is a critical and still unfulfilled need in patient care.     

An Evaluation of the NAMI Basics Program

This brief report describes results from an evaluation of NAMI Basics, a peer-delivered family education program for family caregivers of children and adolescents with mental illness. Over six classes, family members are given information (e.g. education about mental illness and treatments), skills training (e.g. family communication skills) and advocacy support. We report data from 36 caregivers who completed pre and posttest instruments measuring self-care, empowerment, and family problem-solving and communication skills. Results showed significant improvements in self-care, empowerment, and “incendiary” family communication after participation in the program. Results suggest that NAMI Basics may improve both parental functioning and familial processes. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Students’ Perceptions of Unsafe Schools: An Ecological Systems Analysis

In the aftermath of several school shooting incidents in recent years, students’ perceptions of unsafe schools has been a major concern for parents, teachers, school officials, school practitioners, and policy-makers. Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems framework, we examined the micro-, meso-, and exosystem level factors associated with perceptions of unsafe school environments in a nationally representative sample of 10- to 15-year-old youth in the United States. We found that for the socio-demographic characteristics, students who were older, male, and poor had increased risks of perceiving higher levels of unsafe school environments. Within the microsystem of the family, our results indicate that parent-youth discussions of school activities/events decreased the risk of students perceiving unsafe schools. All of the school environment variables—ease of making friends, teachers’ involvement, observed weapon carrying, and school rule enforcement—were related in the expected direction to students’ perceiving their schools as unsafe. At the mesosystem level, findings from our study demonstrate that variables measuring parental school involvement were unrelated to perceptions of school safety. Finally, at the exosystem level, we found that students’ perceptions of residing in a safer neighborhood and residence in a non-central city metropolitan area, compared with a central city, decreased the odds of perceiving school environments as unsafe. School policy and practice implications are discussed.     

Learning new vocabulary in German: the effects of inferring word meanings,type of feedback,and time of test

In the present study, introductory-level German students read a simplified story and learned the meanings of new German words by reading English translations in marginal glosses versus trying to infer (i.e., guess) their translations. Students who inferred translations were given feedback in English or in German, or no feedback at all. Although immediate retention of new vocabulary was better for students who used marginal glosses, students who inferred word meanings and then received English feedback forgot fewer translations over time. Plausible but inaccurate inferences (i.e., those that made sense in the context) were more likely to be corrected by students who received English feedback as compared with German feedback, providing support for the beneficial effects of mediating information. Implausible inaccurate inferences, however, were more likely to be corrected on the delayed vocabulary test by students who received German feedback as compared with English feedback, possibly because of the additional contextual support provided by German feedback.     

Impulse Control Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease: A Psychosocial Perspective

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease primarily characterised by motor symptoms. However, another feature of PD which is receiving increasing attention is the phenomenon of impulse control disorders (ICDs), such as pathological gambling. To date, research into ICDs in PD has centred on a biomedical model of cause, related to the effects of dopamine replacement therapy. However, there are several areas of discrepancy in the current biomedical account of ICDs in PD. In addition, we argue that social and psychological factors also need to be considered to achieve a more complete understanding of the phenomenon. We present a novel conceptual model which combines biomedical and psychosocial factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD and use the model to identify a number of potential treatment intervention points and to highlight important outstanding questions concerning the inter-relationship between psychosocial and biomedical factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD.