Treatment Techniques for Adult Female Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

The author reviews recent empirical, case study, and conceptual literature that examines or discusses treatment techniques for adult female survivors in individual therapy. These techniques are divided into the following 11 categories: relationship-building techniques; questioning: family-of-origin techniques; writing techniques; gestalt work, role playing, and psychodrama; transactional analysis and inner-child work: hypnotherapy and guided imagery; cognitive techniques; behavioral techniques; life-skills training; and other techniques. The author concludes with implications for researchers and practitioners.     

Responsiveness of pre- and non-delinquents to incentive aspects of a reinforcing event

A learning task, a six-position modification of a Fellows (1967) sequence, was used to examine the differences in responsiveness to symbolic and tangible incentives with 24 pre-delinquent and 25 non-delinquent 15-yr.-old boys. Under the low-incentive condition, only the symbolic incentive was available while under the high-incentive condition a symbolic and material reinforcer was employed. The high-incentive condition had no significant effect on the non-delinquents but did significantly affect the delinquents. Also, the high-incentive delinquent group performed similarly to both non-delinquent groups. Recommendations for research are given.     

Suicidal behavior among urban,African American young adults

The objectives of the present study were four-fold. First, to determine the lifetime, last year, and 6-month prevalence and demographic correlates of suicidal behavior in a defined population of urban, African American young adults. Second, to determine the degree of mental health service utilization among attempters. Third, to study the comorbidity between mental disorders and suicidal behavior, along with the variation in the numbers and types of psychiatric disorders associated with attempts versus ideation only. Fourth, to examine gender differences in the psychiatric diagnoses associated with attempts and ideation. Data relevant to each of these objectives were gathered through structured interviews of 1,157 economically disadvantaged, African American young adults. Lifetime, last year, and 6-month prevalence rates for attempts were 5.3%, 1.2%, and 0.4%, respectively, whereas the lifetime and 6-month prevalence of ideation were 14% and 1.9%, respectively. Approximately two thirds of those who reported lifetime ideation, and a similar proportion of those who reported lifetime attempts, had a history of at least one lifetime psychiatric disorder. There were no gender differences in terms of the degree of risk for suicidal behavior (ideation or attempts) associated with any of the comorbid psychiatric diagnoses assessed. Despite the severity of most attempts, few attempters received mental health services in their lifetime or at the time of their most recent attempt.     

Attempted suicide among young rural women in the People's Republic of China: possibilities for prevention

This article reports on a sample of 147 women under age 35 living in rural areas in China who had attempted suicide and were treated in the emergency room of hospitals in four different locations. The interview instrument took 2 to 3 hours to complete and included audiotaped in-depth interviews with the patient and family members (separately); detailed evaluation of the circumstances surrounding the attempt, life events, and the family environment; and a formal psychiatric evaluation by an attending-level psychiatrist. Overwhelmingly, the method used by the attempters was poisoning with highly lethal pesticides and organic fertilizers. The women's suicidal behavior was characterized by high levels of impulsivity; little effort to seclude themselves before and after ingesting poison; and low rates of mental illness, including depression. Detailed suggestions are made about ways to implement suicide prevention strategies within the particular social and economic context of China.     

THE IMPACT OF DEPRESSION ON MATERNAL RESPONSES TO INFANT FACES IN PREGNANCY

Research has suggested that prenatal depression may be associated with disrupted maternal responses to infant stimuli, with depressed pregnant women not showing the bias toward distressed infants as that observed in nondepressed pregnant women. The current study examined the effects of depression on self‐ reported responses to infant stimuli, in early pregnancy. Women with clinical depression (n = 38), and nondepressed women (n = 67) were recruited from a wider cognitive behavioral therapy trial. They completed Maternal Response Scales in which they were presented with images of distressed, neutral, and happy infant faces, with no time limit. The women rated their responses to these images along three dimensions—wanting to comfort, wanting to turn away, and feelings of anxiety—using Likert scales via a computerized task. There was evidence that women with depression in pregnancy showed different responses than did women without depression. Women with depression were substantially more likely to be in the highest quartile for ratings of wanting to turn away, odds (OR) ratio = 4.15, 95% confidence intervals (CIs) = 1.63–10.5, p = .003, and also were substantially less likely to be in the highest quartile for wanting to comfort a distressed infant face, OR = 0.22, 95% CIs = 0.09–0.54, p < .001. Findings are consistent with there being both a heightened avoidant and a reduced comforting response toward distressed infants in depressed pregnant women, providing some support that depression disrupts maternal preparations at a conscious level.     

Coparenting Interventions for Fragile Families: What Do We Know and Where Do We Need To Go Next?

With a large and growing share of American families now forming outside of marriage, triangular infant–mother–father relationship systems in “fragile families” have begun to attract the interest of family scholars and clinicians. A relatively novel conceptualization has concerned the feasibility of intervening to support the development of a sustained and positive coparenting alliance between mothers and fathers who have not made an enduring relationship commitment to one another. At this point in time, there are very few published outcome studies of programs explicitly conceived to help build coparenting alliances in such families. This article reviews what we currently know from this evolving field of study, and from those related responsible fatherhood and marriage and relationship enhancement (MRE) initiatives that included any explicit targeting, strengthening, and assessment of fragile family coparenting in their designs. We summarize lessons learned thus far from Access and Visitation (AV) programs for non‐residential fathers, from MRE programs for low‐income, unmarried couples, and from newer programs for fragile families directly designed to target and support coparenting per se. We close with recommendations for charting this important new family process terrain.     

Multiple intelligences and the therapeutic alliance: Incorporating multiple intelligence theory and practice into counselling

Many of the main theoretical traditions in the sociology of the emotions have limitations in their explanations of the institutionalized styles of emotional work, of the menu of emotions available to be felt in particular settings, and of the causal processes by which particular emotions are elicited in those settings. A promising way forward is to apply neo-Durkheimian institutional theory, which also overcomes some of the limitations of Durkheim's own theory of the emotions. Central to this approach is the distinguishing of affect styles and the identification of styles of social organization that elicit these affect styles. The theory puts great weight on ritual, understood in the post-Goffman sense which encompasses quotidian everyday forms as well as grand public ceremonial, as the principal causal process by which forms of social organization produce certain emotions and styles of managing those emotions within ‘affect styles’. The latent social function, in this tradition, of the elicitation of affect is to be understood in terms of the conflictual and rival mobilization of accountability. The theory meets, the article argues, the four key criteria by which sociological theories of affect should be judged.