Discrimination and Eating Disorder Psychopathology: A Meta-Analysis

Eating disorders occur in diverse populations, and discrimination may be a specific factor that is related to higher eating disorder psychopathology among marginalized individuals. To evaluate the current evidence on this topic, a meta-analysis was used to quantitatively synthesize the literature on discrimination and eating disorder psychopathology across a heterogeneous range of studies. Searches were conducted in peer-reviewed journals and accessible unpublished dissertations of all years through January 2020. Studies were coded by two authors using a tailored coding form, and zero-order bivariate correlations were used as effect size measures. There were 55 cross-sectional studies extracted for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Results showed a small-to-medium association between discrimination and eating disorder psychopathology that was consistent across domains. Effect sizes were typically higher for weight discrimination. For binge eating and general eating disorder pathology, effects were smaller in studies that had larger proportions of women, and for binge eating only, effects were higher in college samples. These findings could suggest that discrimination represents a contributory factor related to eating disorder psychopathology across types of discrimination and eating disorder psychopathology. Implications are discussed for future research on discrimination and psychopathology including possible mechanisms.     

Racial‐ethnic Identity in Context: Examining Mediation of Neighborhood Factors on Children's Academic Adjustment

Research consistently shows that neighborhood socio‐demographic characteristics and residents’ neighborhood perceptions matter for youth well‐being, including a positive sense of racial‐ethnic identity. Although elementary‐school children are likely in the earlier phases of identity formation, the authors examined whether objective and subjective neighborhood characteristics are related to their racial‐ethnic identity and, in turn, their academic adjustment. A diverse sample (30.4% African American, 35.2% White, 12.3% Latino, & 22.0% Other) of 227 children in Grades 2 through 5 were surveyed in afterschool programs. Bivariate correlations showed that youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods reported more barriers due to their race‐ethnicity, but these barriers were not related to their sense of academic efficacy. Residing in a disadvantaged neighborhood was unrelated to youth's academic self‐efficacy. However, path analyses showed that positive neighborhood perceptions were associated with a stronger sense of race‐ethnicity (i.e., affirmation and belonging), which was in turn related to greater academic efficacy. These results suggest that neighborhood connection provides a source of affirmation and value for young children, helping them to understand who they are as part of a racial‐ethnic group and helping to foster a sense of future achievement opportunities. This study provides additional evidence that along with other important proximal contexts (e.g., family, school), young children's neighborhood context is important for development. Results are discussed to highlight environmental influences on young children's awareness of race‐ethnicity and the implications of the combined impact of neighborhood and racial‐ethnic identity on psychosocial adjustment.     

Depressive thoughts limit working memory capacity in dysphoria

Dysphoria is associated with persistence of attention on mood-congruent information. Longer time attending to mood-congruent information for dysphoric individuals (DIs) detracts from goal-relevant information processing and should reduce working memory (WM) capacity. Study 1 showed that DIs and non-DIs have similar WM capacities. Study 2 embedded depressive information into a WM task. Compared to non-DIs, DIs showed significantly reduced WM capacity for goal-relevant information in this task. Study 3 replicated results from Studies 1 and 2, and further showed that DIs had a significantly greater association between processing speed and recall on the depressively modified WM task compared to non-DIs. The presence of inter-task depressive information leads to DI-related decreased WM capacity. Results suggest dysphoria-related WM capacity deficits when depressive thoughts are present. WM capacity deficits in the presence of depressive thoughts are a plausible mechanism to explain day-to-day memory and concentration difficulties associated with depressed mood.     

Improving understanding and recall of the probation service contract

The role of the probation service within the Criminal Justice System is to provide support to probationees so they can serve out their probation orders in accordance with certain regulations. These regulations are expressed in a formal contract. The current article reports an assessment of the readability of the current Kent Probation Service's users' contract. A Flesch (1948) analysis of the original document indicated that it required an IQ of 111+ for full comprehension. Using several criteria suggested by the Flesch formula and other literature, the document was revised to improve its readability. Analysis revealed the revised document to require an IQ of 84+ for full comprehension, indicating that the revised contract should be considerably easier to understand than the original. An exploratory study revealed that both understanding and recall were significantly greater for the revised contract than for the original. We conclude that in assessing readability of written materials, it is important that (in conjunction with a Flesch analysis) documents are actually tested on the intended readership. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Not to Prove the Existence of ‘Atomless Gunk’

In his ‘Could Extended Objects Be Made Out of Simple Parts?: An Argument for “Atomless Gunk’’, Dean Zimmerman defends the claim that no physical object has a complete decomposition into simples but instead has among its parts a piece of ‘atomless gunk’ His argument for this claim rests in part upon a theory of the impenetrability of physical objects. In that theory, Zimmerman distinguishes ‘[t]he sort of impenetrability that is a part of the concept of’ a physical object from ‘a power to resist the pressure of other objects’. He says that impenetrability is but ‘an essential inability’ of two physical objects to occupy one and the same region of space, an essential inability that is not a power of one physical object to exert repulsive forces on others in its vicinity. I argue that this theory of impenetrability is false and that Zimmerman's argument for the existence of ‘atomless gunk’ fails.     

Grief Therapy: An Experiential Workshop

The authors conducted a workshop at a family therapy conference in South Africa in 1997 to explore the use of healing rituals in grief work. There were two levels involved: First, an experiential workshop, and, second, a metalevel in exploring the use of rituals as a rite of passage to facilitate transitions. A draft of the authors' paper was sent to all participants for their comments, which are included in the text.     

Dismantling institutional racism: theory and action

Despite a strong commitment to promoting social change and liberation, there are few community psychology models for creating systems change to address oppression. Given how embedded racism is in institutions such as healthcare, a significant shift in the system's policies, practices, and procedures is required to address institutional racism and create organizational and institutional change. This paper describes a systemic intervention to address racial inequities in healthcare quality called dismantling racism. The dismantling racism approach assumes healthcare disparities are the result of the intersection of a complex system (healthcare) and a complex problem (racism). Thus, dismantling racism is a systemic and systematic intervention designed to illuminate where and how to intervene in a given healthcare system to address proximal and distal factors associated with healthcare disparities. This paper describes the theory behind dismantling racism, the elements of the intervention strategy, and the strengths and limitations of this systems change approach.