Cumulative trauma and midlife well-being in American women who served in Vietnam: effects of combat exposure and postdeployment social support

Background and Objectives: Research increasingly demonstrates that trauma exposure can have cumulative effects, yet much remains to be learned about effects of cumulative trauma, particularly regarding longer term adjustment. One such trauma, combat exposure, is insufficiently understood, especially for women, who are increasingly engaged in professional combat activities. Design: The study comprised a cross-sectional survey assessing multiple aspects of current well-being in women approximately 25 years after their service in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Methods: Participants were 1374 women (78% military and 22% nonmilitary; mean age = 59.7). This study investigated the relations between three separate categories of trauma exposure (childhood, adulthood, and combat) and well-being and examined whether perceived social support at return from Vietnam moderated the association between combat exposure and well-being. Results: While both childhood and adulthood trauma exposure related to midlife well-being, combat exposure still uniquely predicted outcomes. Further, postdeployment perceived social support moderated the association of combat and well-being: recollected higher perceived social support at homecoming buffered participants from the links between combat exposure and well-being. Conclusions: These results may have important implications for interventions to reduce the impact of traumatic experiences, particularly in light of the increasing exposure of women to direct combat events.     

Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS) Scores: Stability and Relationships With Psychological Adjustment

A humor test composed of cartoons, comic strips, and jokes was administered to 30 college couples (26 single, 4 married) who rated them for humor. Subjects also stated how much they loved and liked their partner, their probability of marrying the partner, and filled out Rubin's Liking and Love Scales. The hypotheses were that similarity of rating of the humorous stimuli would be associated with loving, liking, and predisposition to marry. Hypotheses were confirmed.     

Evaluating Differences in Cognitive Appraisal and Coping Over Stages of a Transaction

We evaluated appraisal of and coping with a college examination over three stages of the transaction for 138 American undergraduate students. The transactional process approach allowed for the identification of differences in the magnitude and direction of appraisal and coping between adjacent stages and stages separated by an intervening stage. Repeated measures tests revealed that differences in appraisal and coping could occur between all pairs of stages, suggesting that, in research limited to investigating changes between adjacent stages only, the concept of a transactional process may be attenuated and important changes overlooked as the process of a stressful encounter unfolds.     

Promoting Healthy Behavior from the Pulpit: Clergy Share Their Perspectives on Effective Health Communication in the African American Church

African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from health disparities when compared to other ethnicities (ACS 2010; CDC 2007). Research indicates that the church and the pastor in the African American community could be enlisted to increase effectiveness of health programs (Campbell et al. in Health Edu Behav 34(6):864–880, 2007; DeHaven et al. in Am J Public Health 94(6):1030–1036, 2004). The objective of this study was to investigate African American pastors’ perceptions about health promotion in the church and how these perceptions could serve as a guide for improving health communication targeting African Americans. Semi-structured interviews with African American clergy revealed that pastors feel strongly about the intersection of health, religion and spirituality; they also believe that discussing health screening and other health issues more frequently from the pulpit and their own personal experiences will ultimately impact health behavior among congregants. This study suggests that African American clergy see themselves as health promoters in the church and believe this communication (i.e., pastor-endorsed health information materials) will impact health behavior among underserved and minority populations.     

An Introduction to Normalization and Calibration Methods in Functional MRI

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal is often interpreted as a measure of neural activity. However, because the BOLD signal reflects the complex interplay of neural, vascular, and metabolic processes, such an interpretation is not always valid. There is growing evidence that changes in the baseline neurovascular state can result in significant modulations of the BOLD signal that are independent of changes in neural activity. This paper introduces some of the normalization and calibration methods that have been proposed for making the BOLD signal a more accurate reflection of underlying brain activity for human fMRI studies.     

The effects of interleaving versus blocking on foreign language pronunciation learning

Many studies have shown that students learn better when they are given repeated exposures to different concepts in a way that is shuffled or interleaved, rather than blocked (e.g., Rohrer Educational Psychology Review, 24, 355–367, 2012). The present study explored the effects of interleaving versus blocking on learning French pronunciations. Native English speakers learned several French words that conformed to specific pronunciation rules (e.g., the long “o” sound formed by the letter combination “eau,” as in bateau), and these rules were presented either in blocked fashion (bateau, carreau, fardeau . . . mouton, genou, verrou . . . tandis, verglas, admis) or in interleaved fashion (bateau, mouton, tandis, carreau, genou, verglas . . .). Blocking versus interleaving was manipulated within subjects (Experiments 1–3) or between subjects (Experiment 4), and participants’ pronunciation proficiency was later tested through multiple-choice tests (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or a recall test (Experiment 3). In all experiments, blocking benefited the learning of pronunciations more than did interleaving, and this was true whether participants learned only 4 words per rule (Experiments 1–3) or 15 words per rule (Experiment 4). Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Heart failure patients’ desires for spiritual care,perceived constraints,and unmet spiritual needs: relations with well-being and health-related quality of life

Little information is available about HF patients’ desires regarding having their healthcare providers address their spiritual concerns, feeling constrained in doing so, and the extent to which their spiritual needs go unmet. Nearly half of our sample reported high levels of unmet spiritual needs and reported moderately strong desires to have their doctor or other healthcare professional attend to their spiritual needs, and moderately strong feelings of constraint in doing so. Spiritual constraint and unmet spiritual needs were associated with poorer spiritual, psychological and physical well-being, but these effects varied, depending on patients’ desire to discuss spiritual needs. These findings have important implications for clinical management of HF patients.     

Psychoanalytic inpatient psychotherapy of depression – Two naturalistic samples throughout the course of a decade

Background: While the general effectiveness of psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy has been established, very few studies have specifically investigated the effectiveness of psychodynamic inpatient treatment of depression, though depressed patients represent the largest group of inpatients.

Method : This study investigated two naturalistic samples of depressed patients regarding treatment outcome as well as clinical and treatment characteristics. Patients were treated in a psychoanalytical psychosomatic hospital unit. Data was collected from 2000 to 2002 (N=234) and from 2008 to 2010 (N=514). Data was acquired at admission and discharge.

Results: The findings reveal high pre-post effect sizes for symptom reduction (SCL-90-R), general functioning (GAF) and medium changes of interpersonal problems (IIP). The improvement on the IIP was significantly higher for patients with comorbid personality disorder. Based on therapist ratings, the sample treated from 2008-2010 showed higher levels of impairment on several levels: chronic, complex, functional (GAF) and structural (OPD).

Conclusion: Findings indicate that patients show substantial short-term benefit following psychoanalytic inpatient psychotherapy, as practiced under naturalistic conditions. Open questions remain regarding the long-term nature of these benefits and the possible influence of placebo-effects.