Sustaining and Expanding Systems of Care to Provide Mental Health Services for Children, Youth and Families Across America

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has been instrumental in supporting the development and implementation of systems of care to provide services to children and youth with serious mental health conditions and their families. Since 1993, 173 grants have been awarded to communities in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the District of Columbia, and 21 American Indian/Alaska Native communities. The system of care principles of creating comprehensive, individualized services, family-driven and youth-guided care and cultural and linguistic competence, supported by a well-trained and competent workforce, have been successful in transforming the field of children's mental health and facilitating the integration of child-serving systems. This approach has achieved positive outcomes at the child and family, practice and system levels, and numerous articles have been published using data collected from system of care communities, demonstrating the effectiveness of this framework. This article will describe lessons learned from implementing the system of care approach, and will discuss the importance of expanding and sustaining systems of care across the country.     

Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Political Psychology

The idea of narrative has become increasingly appropriated in empirical research in both psychology and politics, yet there is a notable absence of integrative frameworks that specify a conceptual and methodological approach to narrative research in political psychology. An integrative conceptual framework is proposed and anchored in four principles of a narrative approach: (1) the mutual constitution of language and thought, (2) the need for personal coherence through narrative identity development, (3) the need for collective solidarity through shared meaning, and (4) the mediational property of narrative in social activity and practice. Theory and empirical research related to these principles are reviewed. We argue that a narrative framework has the potential to enhance the relevance and amplify the voice of political psychology within and beyond the academy and to offer new knowledge on the complex and dynamic relationship between context and mind.     

Existential Boundary Crossings: An Archival Exploration of Identity Projects in Nineteenth-Century American Parricides

As a domain of philosophical enquiry that examines what it means to be, existentialism is a moral project that is centered on the self. While a few have applied the precepts of existentialism to the philosophical implications of homicide offenders, one question that has been overlooked in previous literature is ‘what is the offspring attempting to do by killing his/her parent(s)’? Using historical work on nineteenth century parricides in America, this paper examines parricide as an identity project.     

Cues To Consumer Susceptibility To Salesperson Influence: Implications For Adaptive Retail Selling

Consumer susceptibility to salesperson influence (CSSI) is developed as a multidimensional construct and segmentation base for adaptive retail selling strategies. Differences in informational, recommendational and relational CSSI by gender, age, and purchase pal utilization are investigated in a stratified national random sample of new vehicle purchasers. Specific retail and salesperson strategies are discussed.     

The Dark Triad and animal cruelty: Dark personalities,dark attitudes,and dark behaviors

Research examining the interpersonal interactions of those high on the Dark Triad has proliferated in recent years. Extant research, however, has not examined other types of relationships such as attitudes and behaviors towards animals. Further, there has been limited research examining the associations between personality and attitudes and behaviors towards animals generally. In this study, participants (N = 227) completed an online survey measuring the Dark Triad, attitudes towards animals, and acts of animal cruelty. The results revealed that individuals with higher levels of the Dark Triad demonstrated less positive attitudes towards animals and reported engaging in more acts of animal cruelty. Age and sex were found to be significant predictors of less positive attitudes and behaviors towards animals, independent of the Dark Triad. These results suggest that those callous and manipulative behaviors and attitudes that have come to be associated with the Dark Triad are not just limited to human-to-human interactions, but are also consistent across other interactions.     

Structure of the Basque emotion lexicon

Using a prototype approach to emotion concepts, two studies were conducted in the Basque Country, where an ancient non-Indo-European language is still spoken, to identify the mental state words that Basque speakers are most certain name emotions (emozioak) and to map the hierarchical and family resemblance structure of the most prototypical 124 emotion concepts. Cluster analysis of sorting data collected in the Basque Country revealed five basic level emotion categories similar to those found in American English and Indonesian (love, happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) as well as five other small positive emotion categories. All major categories found at the basic level contained several terms that are not traceable to Romance languages. Also in line with the American and Indonesian results, the basic level categories in Basque fell within two large superordinate categories: positive and negative emotions. Each of the five large basic level categories contained several subordinate level categories. The results suggest that the emotion lexicons, and corresponding conceptualisations of the emotion domain, in the Basque Country, Indonesia, and the US are similar, although there are some important differences.     

Immediate and delayed recall of a small-scale spatial array

The study examined people's spatial memory of a small-scale array of objects. Earlier work has primarily relied on short-retention intervals, and to date it is not known whether performance is affected by longer intervals between learning and recall. In the present investigation, university students studied seven target objects. Recall was tested immediately after learning and after an interval of seven days. Performance was found to be similar in the immediate and delayed conditions, and the results suggested that recall was facilitated by egocentric and intrinsic cues. The findings are discussed with reference to recent investigations that have shown task parameters can influence spatial recall.     

The Effects of Imagery Training on Swimming Performance: An Applied Investigation

A multiple-baseline design was used to examine the influence of an imagery intervention on the performance of swimmers’ times on a thousand-yard practice set. Performance times for four swimmers were collected over a 15-week period during preseason training. The intervention took place over a 3-week period and was introduced after the fourth week of the study. The results revealed that three out of four participants significantly improved their times on the one thousand-yard practice set after being introduced to the imagery intervention. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of using imagery to improve athlete's performance on continuous tasks.     

Boosting Attachment Security to Promote Mental Health,Prosocial Values,and Inter-Group Tolerance

In this article, we conceptualize the sense of attachment security as an inner resource and present theory and research on the broaden and build cycle of attachment security generated by the actual or symbolic encounter with external or internalized loving and caring relationship partners. We also propose that the body of research stimulated by attachment theory offers productive hints about interventions that might increase positive experiences and prosocial behavior by bolstering a person's sense of security. On this basis, we review recent experimental studies showing how interventions designed to increase attachment security have beneficial effects on mental health, prosocial behavior, and intergroup relations, and discuss unaddressed issues concerning the mechanism underlying the beneficial effects of these interventions, the temporal course of these effects, and their interaction with countervailing forces.