Developing Roles and Skills in Community-Living Adults With Severe and Persistent Mental Illness

People with severe and persistent mental illness often experience a disruption in the development of social roles, and the skills within these roles. Role Development, a set of guidelines for practice, is an intervention to develop roles and skills. The purpose of this study was to continue to examine the efficacy of this intervention. Ten people attending two community mental health programs participated in evaluation and treatment based on Role Development. Quantitative pretest and posttest measures were used. Qualitative components were incorporated to get a sense of the experience involved in developing roles and skills. Quantitative results indicated statistical significance (p < .05) in the development of roles and skills. Qualitative data revealed multiple trends experienced by the participants. This study contributes to the evidenced-based knowledge regarding development of roles and skills for persons living with severe and persistent mental illness.     

The Application of Family Systems Theory to Organizational Consultation: A Content Analysis

A content analysis was performed on 43 articles published between 1970 and 1998 discerned as relating family systems theory (FST) frameworks and constructs to organizational consultation. Frameworks and constructs were coded and then investigated in relation to four independent variables: type of organization, decade of article publication, gender, and educational training of author. Results indicate that the use of FST frameworks and constructs vary depending upon the characteristics of the organization, time period, and consultant. Results highlight specific FST frameworks and constructs most common in organizational consultation.     

Short- and long-term effectiveness of two communication training modalities with distressed couples

Abstract

Communication training is a widely practiced therapeutic approach for the treatment of marital discord. Although there is some empirical support for the theoretical assumptions underlying constructive communication patterns, it has not yet been ascertained whether changing these behaviors is sufficient in bringing about stable changes in distressed marriages. The present study was designed to investigate the efficacy of this treatment approach in a conjoint and conjoint group modality. Following therapy, conjoint couples (n = 16) when compared with a waiting list control group (n = 17) showed improvement on five of the seven outcome variables. Couples in the conjoint group modality (n = 13) improved on only two of the seven variables. Follow-up assessments one year after treatment showed that initial gains had been substantially reduced. On the basis of these results it is now open to question whether conjoint group treatments are an appropriate treatment modality for even moderately distressed couples.     

Familiarity affects visual processing of words.

While previous research has demonstrated that words can be processed more rapidly and/or more accurately than random strings of letters, it has not been convincingly demonstrated that the superior processing of words is a visual effect. In the present experiment, the cases of letters were manipulated in letter strings that were to be compared on the basis of physical identity. Mean response time was shorter for words than for nonwords even for pairs of letter strings that differed only in case (e.g., site-site). This finding implies that the advantage of words over nonwords (the familiarity effect) typically observed in the simultaneous matching task is not due solely to comparison of either the word names or the letter names and, thus, that at least part of the familiarity effect must be due to more rapid formation and/or comparison of visual representations of the two letter strings when they are words. Further analysis failed to reveal a significant involvement of phonemic or lexical codes in the comparison judgments.     

Marital Equality and Satisfaction in Stay-At-Home Mother and Stay-At-Home Father Families

Two recent studies have focused on marital equality and satisfaction in couples where one of the spouses stays at home full-time with the children and the other spouse works full-time outside of the home. One study looked at couples with a stay-at-home mother/career father while the other study examined couples with a stay-at-home father/career mother. Similarities as well as differences emerged between the two samples when comparing the experiences of these couples. In general, couples in both arrangements shared positive feelings about their marriages, although the mothers across both samples reported higher levels of stress and exhaustion than fathers.     

Resilient Response to Battering

Spouse abuse remains an important social problem. Recent research has begun to explore resiliency in a variety of areas: Why, despite harsh life circumstances, do some people survive and later thrive after experiencing trauma? What are the processes associated with a successful departure from abuse? The authors worked with a local shelter to identify three groups of women: (a) those currently at the shelter; (b) those who had been away from an abusive relationship for at least one year; and (c) those who were identified by shelter staff as having demonstrated a resilient response to battering, and compared experiences and recommendations between groups and discuss clinical and service implications.     

Old Wine in New Bottles? The Case of Self‐compassion and Neuroticism

Research on self‐compassion, which is defined as being understanding and kind to oneself when confronted with negative experiences, has produced an impressive number of articles in recent years. This research shows that individual differences in self‐compassion, as measured by the Self‐Compassion Scale (SCS), are positively related to life satisfaction, health and social functioning. However, a critical and systematic test of self‐compassion from a personality perspective has not yet conducted so far. In the present study (N = 576), we (i) tested the factor structure of the SCS, (ii) examined the distinctiveness of self‐compassion with regard to the five‐factor model of personality, focusing on neuroticism, and (iii) tested the incremental predictive power of self‐compassion beyond the five‐factor model in the context of life satisfaction. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a two‐factor plus six facets solution of self‐compassion (a positive factor and a negative factor). Additional analyses revealed that the negative factor was redundant with facets of neuroticism (rs ≥ .85), whereas the positive factor had some unique variance left. However, neither the negative factor nor the positive factor could explain substantial incremental variance in life satisfaction beyond neuroticism. Recommendations for how to use the SCS are provided, and the future of research on self‐compassion is discussed. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Predictors of romantic relationship formation: Attachment style, prior relationships, and dating goals

This prospective study ( N = 90) investigated the early formation of romantic relationships within an attachment-theoretical framework. Specifically, it tested whether general attachment to romantic partners was predictive of single individuals' progressing from not dating to dating and from not dating or casual dating to a committed and exclusive relationship when simultaneously considering desire for starting a committed relationship, prior dating involvement, and self-perceived physical attractiveness. Attachment avoidance, but not anxiety, was predictive of not entering into committed dating relationships even with rival predictors included. The transition from not dating to casual or committed dating was mainly predicted by prior dating success with some support for a potential additional role of the desire to form a committed relationship.     

Trajectories of Parenting Processes and Adolescent Substance Use: Reciprocal Effects

Drawing on transactional theories of child development, we assessed bidirectional links between trajectories of adolescent substance use and parenting processes from early through mid adolescence. Hierarchical generalized models estimated trajectories for 3,317 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, exploring both between- and within-individual effects. Between individuals, adolescents reporting more regular family activities and greater father and mother knowledge of friends and teachers experienced lower levels of substance use through mid adolescence. Similarly, adolescents with more frequent substance use reported lower family activities, father knowledge, and mother knowledge, though these differences dissipated over time. More conservative within-individual differences indicated a prospective protective effect of family activities, with increases in adolescent participation in family activities predicting later declines in substance use. Results support the central importance of engagement in regular family activities, and suggest the need for further exploration of transactional processes between parents and children in the development of risk behaviors.     

Solution-focused Couples Therapy Groups: An Empirical Study

The professional literature contains numerous theoretical and case study articles regarding the development and use of solution-focused therapy. However, as with many models of systems-oriented therapy in use with couples, very little has been subjected to empirical investigation. This project was designed to make a contribution to the empirical literature regarding the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy in use with couples' groups. This study utilized pre-test comparisons of treatment and comparison groups, and examined pre- to post-test changes in the scores of the treatment group couples. Twenty-three treatment group couples participated in a six-week solution-focused couples therapy (SFCT) group. A separate group of thirteen couples served as a comparison group. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) was used to assess changes in the couples' relationships. Scores on the Marital Status Inventory (MSI), as a pre-test measure indicating the couples' likelihood of divorce, indicated no significant differences between groups. The remaining analyses revealed significant improvement in DAS scores. Self-reports from the couples involved indicate improvement in a variety of areas after completing the six-week solution-focused couples group therapy process.