Comorbidity between SCARED anxiety factors and depressive symptomatology in 8- to 12-year-old children

The aim of this study was to examine the comorbidity between the SCARED anxiety factors and depressive symptoms in 8-12-year-old children. Participants were 792 girls and 715 boys, who completed: the 41-ítem version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorder (SCARED), the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and a Socio-demographic questionnaire. Of the sample, 47% showed anxiety symptoms and 11.5% showed depressive symptoms. Heterotypic comorbidity was 82% in children at risk of depression and 20% in children at risk of anxiety. Homotypic Comorbidity between anxiety factors was 87%. Homotypic comorbidity and heterotypic comorbidity were high; their early detection will prevent the continuity of an anxious disorder and the development of depression.     

To Act or Not to Act: Nonconsequentialism in Environmental Decision-Making

Research on environmental-decision making is usually based on utilitarian models, which imply that people's decisions are only influenced by the outcomes. This research provides evidence for values and moral positions that reflect nonconsequentialist rather than consequentialist views. In doing this, this article refers to “sacred values,” which are values that are seen as not-substitutable and nontradable. Two studies were designed to examine evidence for sacred values and their role on act versus omission choices within the environmental domain. The studies revealed that sacred values were closely associated with preferences for actions, trade-off reluctance, deontological focus, and position of moral universalism. The results suggest that it is important to account for sacred values and nonconsequentialist views in environmental decision-making research.     

The Proof by Cases Property and its Variants in Structural Consequence Relations

This paper is a contribution to the study of the rôle of disjunction in Abstract Algebraic Logic. Several kinds of (generalized) disjunctions, usually defined using a suitable variant of the proof by cases property, were introduced and extensively studied in the literature mainly in the context of finitary logics. The goals of this paper are to extend these results to all logics, to systematize the multitude of notions of disjunction (both those already considered in the literature and those introduced in this paper), and to show several interesting applications allowed by the presence of a suitable disjunction in a given logic.     

Gender Biases and Therapists’ Conceptualization of Couple Difficulties

In spite of the fact that gender issues have played an important role in many family therapy training programs, little research has been developed to explore the effects of gender and gender biases in therapists’ conceptualizations of client problems. This study explores beginning and advanced marriage and family therapy (MFT) student’s inclusion of gender in the conceptualization of a clinical case. To examine clinician’s thinking, 32 therapists (18 beginning MFT students and 14 advanced MFT students) were asked to 1) view the first 20 minutes of an intake interview conducted by a sex therapist, and 2) identify the couple’s central issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were used to explore constructs associated with therapists considerations and inclusion of gender and cultural issues in their conceptualizations of marital difficulties. Results revealed that trained MFT students who considered gender may have analyzed gender issues more extensively than untrained MFT students. In addition, results of qualitative analysis of participant critiques revealed subtle forms of gender and cultural biases. Discussion focuses on how these biases, some of which are linked to clinical theory, can lead to differential expectations and inequality in the treatment of men and women in couple therapy. Implications for clinical training, curriculum development, and future research are also discussed.     

Subjective well-being and gender-typed attributes in adolescents: The relevance of emotional intelligence

Background: The link between subjective well-being (SWB), gender and emotional intelligence (EI) has been studied; however, it is not clear what kind of relationship has been established between these variables. The objective of this study was to examine the direct and indirect effects of EI in the relationship between gender-typed attributes and SWB. Method: The participants were 365 Spanish schoolchildren with a mean age of 13.9. The instruments used were the Spanish version of GRI-JUG (GRI-JUG-SP15) for gender-typed attributes, TMMS-24 for EI, PANASN for positive and negative affects, and SWLS for satisfaction with life. A mediational analysis was carried out using EI (attention, repair and clarity) as mediator in order to find out the effects on well-being. Results: The findings yielded that EI significantly mediated the relationship between gender-typed attributes and SWB. Particularly, clarity and repair are positively associated with SWB, whereas attention is negatively associated with SWB. Also, clarity and repair can be considered more important than attention in promoting SWB, according to the models of mediation and their effect size. Moreover, clarity and repair were mediators in feminine and masculine attributes while attention only was mediator for positive feminine attributes. Conclusion: For adolescents who claim to have positive feminine attributes, an aspect that would improve SWB is through the increase of clarity and repair and the decrease in attention. Further research is needed to examine the extent to which the pattern of results generalises in other contexts, and to explore the relevance of negative emotions in the development of affective-related issues.     

Development of a Family-based Program to Reduce Risk and Promote Resilience Among Families Affected by Maternal Depression: Theoretical Basis and Program Description

Depression is a family matter. It not only diminishes the quality-of-life of the depressed person, but also strains the resources of the family unit and increases the children's risk of developing significant problems that start early and persist into adulthood. Although treatment of a parent's depression is critical, many families also need professional intervention to reduce children's risk. This article reviews the evidence on needs of these families and shows that the theoretical and clinical evidence exists to support the design of interventions for families affected by maternal depression. A preventive intervention developed from this foundation is described, the Keeping Families Strong (KFS) program, that is designed to promote resilience and reduce the risk for psychological disorders in children of parents with depression. The pilot study on the KFS program, conducted in adult mental health outpatient settings, is described. Families participate in 10 meetings 90 min each, with a group for parents and for children (10 years and older) conducted concurrently. The program structure and content are described, the challenges of implementing a family preventive intervention in actual clinical settings are discussed, and a case example is provided, as well as preliminary outcome data on ten families. In sum, we provide a strong rationale for the potential of preventive interventions for families affected by maternal depression.     

Individual and group CBT and IPT for Puerto Rican adolescents with depressive symptoms

This study compared individual (I) to group (G) formats of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) for the treatment of depression in adolescents. One hundred and 12 Puerto Rican adolescents were randomized to four conditions (CBT-I, CBT-G, IPT-I, IPT-G). Participants were assessed at pretreatment and posttreatment with structured interviews to establish diagnosis and with self-report measures to assess treatment outcome. The results suggest that CBT and IPT are robust treatments in both group and individual formats. However, CBT produced significantly greater decreases in depressive symptoms and improved self-concept than IPT. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Acceptance versus distraction: brief instructions, metaphors and exercises in increasing tolerance for self-delivered electric shocks

The current study compared the effects of an acceptance versus distraction rationale on coping with experimentally induced pain. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Full-Acceptance, Full-Distraction, Instruction-only-Acceptance, Instruction-only-Distraction and No-Instructions. Participants completed a simple matching task and were intermittently given the choice either to receive an electric shock and continue, or to avoid the shock and terminate the task. Only the Full-Acceptance strategy (that included experiential exercises and a metaphor) had a significant effect on task tolerance as measured by an increase in the number of shocks delivered post-intervention relative to baseline. In addition, the participants in both of the acceptance conditions showed lower levels of believability in that they were more likely to continue with the task even when reporting more pain. The results support the prediction that acceptance-based interventions work by undermining the behavioural-control functions of pain-related thoughts and feelings, and call for a systematic analysis of how metaphors and exercises work in analogue research.