Is 'Normal Grief' a Mental Disorder?

I argue that grief (including 'normal grief') is a mental disorder. I discuss the main concepts involved briefly, and state the prima facie case in favour of the view that grief is a disorder. I consider objections that grief is not a disorder because (a) it is a normal response; (b) it is more healthy than failing to grieve; (c) it involves cognitive good; (d) it is a rational response; (e) it ought not to be medicalized or treated; (f ) it has a 'distinct sustaining cause'. Each objection is flawed, and I conclude that there is a strong case for regarding even 'normal' grief as a disorder. Alternatively, the arguments in this paper may be taken as attacking 'orthodoxrsquo; definitions of mental health (e.g., in DSM 4th edn) by providing an extended discussion of one particular counter-example.     

Positive aspects of caregiving as a moderator of treatment outcome over 12 months

The authors examined the influence of positive aspects of caregiving (PAC) as a moderator of treatment outcome across 12 months in 1 of the original sites of the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health I project. They used multilevel random coefficients regression analysis to predict time-varying PAC, depression, behavioral bother, and daily care burden in Alzheimer's caregivers (N = 243; mean age = 60.89, SD = 14.19). They found that time-varying PAC was predicted by time-varying daily care burden. They also found significant effects of time-varying PAC for depression, behavioral bother, and daily care burden. Notably, a PAC x Phase x Treatment effect was found for daily care burden, such that individuals who endorsed less PAC benefited most from the intervention across 12 months. The tendency to positively appraise the caregiving experience (i.e., PAC) in response to chronic stressors such as Alzheimer's caregiving may affect individuals' responsiveness to, and benefit from, interventions, whereas only daily care burden affected the tendency to find enjoyment in caregiving across 12 months. Future intervention research should assess individual PAC in order to better tailor interventions to caregiving needs.     

Sexism, Hostility toward Women, and Endorsement of Beauty Ideals and Practices: Are Beauty Ideals Associated with Oppressive Beliefs?

Relationships between the endorsement of Western beauty ideals and practices and measures of hostility toward women and sexism were studied in 159 college men and 194 college women. The participants were predominately 18 or 19 years of age and of European American ethnicity. Correlations were computed between five factor analytically derived measures of beauty ideals and practices, two measures of the thin body ideal, and the following measures: Hostility toward Women Scale (HTWS; Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1995), Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence & Helmreich, 1978), and the two subscales of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996): hostile sexism (ASI-H) and benevolent sexism (ASI-B). It was found that endorsement of Western beauty ideals and practices was associated with hostility toward women, traditional sexism, hostile sexism, and, to a lesser extent, benevolent sexism. Results support feminist critiques of beauty practices as oppressive.     

The role of control functions in mentalizing: dual-task studies of theory of mind and executive function

Conflicting evidence has arisen from correlational studies regarding the role of executive control functions in Theory of Mind. The current study used dual-task manipulations of executive functions (inhibition, updating and switching) to investigate the role of these control functions in mental state and non-mental state tasks. The 'Eyes' pictorial test of Theory of Mind showed specific dual-task costs when concurrently performed with an inhibitory secondary task. In contrast, interference effects on a verbal 'Stories' task were general, occurring on both mental state and non-mental state tasks, and across all types of executive function. These findings from healthy functioning adults should help to guide decisions about appropriate methods of assessing ToM in clinical populations, and interpreting deficits in performance in such tasks in the context of more general cognitive dysfunction.     

Human and Animal Subjects of Research: The Moral Significance of Respect versus Welfare

Human beings with diminished decision-making capacities are usually thought to require greater protections from the potential harms of research than fully autonomous persons. Animal subjects of research receive lesser protections than any human beings regardless of decision-making capacity. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely animals’ lack of some characteristic human capacities that is commonly invoked to justify using them for human purposes. In other words, for humans lesser capacities correspond to greater protections but for animals the opposite is true. Without explicit justification, it is not clear why or whether this should be the case. Ethics regulations guiding human subject research include principles such as respect for persons—and related duties—that are required as a matter of justice while regulations guiding animal subject research attend only to highly circumscribed considerations of welfare. Further, the regulations guiding research on animals discount any consideration of animal welfare relative to comparable human welfare. This paper explores two of the most promising justifications for these differences␣between the two sets of regulations. The first potential justification points to lesser moral status for animals on the basis of their lesser capacities. The second potential justification relies on a claim about the permissibility of moral partiality as␣found in common morality. While neither potential justification is sufficient to justify the regulatory difference as it stands, there is possible common ground between supporters of some regulatory difference and those rejecting the current difference.     

Body image issues in women with breast cancer

Diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer affects women physically as well as psychologically. There are many obvious and real factors that are related to psychological distress in women coping with breast cancer, such as facing a life-threatening illness, painful and impairing treatments, and significant role changes. Although these factors are clearly important, issues related to body image in women faced with breast cancer can also add to psychological distress. Women, in general, are concerned with their appearance, their weight, and their body, with recent studies suggesting 89% of women reported concerns with weight. Such premorbid concerns are often deeply ingrained and can contribute to psychological distress in women treated for breast cancer. The present article is a summary of the literature that has examined body image issues and related psychological adjustment in women with breast cancer. Implications for clinical practice and recommendations for future investigations are discussed.     

Prediction of toddlers’ expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers’ anger expressions: A developmental perspective

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months. At each age, mothers reported on their toddlers’ expressive language, and mothers’ sensitive parenting behavior was observed during an unstructured free-play task. Toddlers’ anger expressions were observed during an emotion-eliciting task. Using path modeling, results showed few relations at T1. At T2, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to anger, and in turn, anger was associated with lower language skills. However, moderation analyses showed that these findings were significant for boys but not for girls. In addition, T1 maternal sensitivity and anger positively predicted expressive language longitudinally for both sexes. Findings suggest that the relations between maternal sensitivity, anger reactivity and expressive language may vary depending on the child's developmental stage and sex.     

Gender Differences in the Association of Intimate Partner Violence and Relationship Values among College Students

Although research has indicated that cognitions and situational factors play a role in relationship satisfaction and aggression, few studies have investigated the association between intimate partner violence (IPV) and relationship values. We addressed this gap by measuring college students’ perpetration of and victimization by four types of IPV; namely, physical violence, sexual violence, threats, and psychological aggression over the past year. One-way ANOVAs and multiple regression analyses were used to measure the association between IPV and the endorsement of relationship values. The results suggest that past IPV perpetration and victimization correlated with the current endorsement of relationship values for males more than females. In general, male perpetrators rated relationship values such as security, investment, others’ approval, and daily conflict as less important than non-perpetrators. Although male victimization explained significant variance in security, investment, and others’ approval, the results were somewhat mixed as to whether victimization related to higher or lower ratings of relationship values, with the majority of the results suggesting an inverse correlation between relationship value endorsement and IPV experience. Future research can investigate mediating factors in the relationship between IPV and relationship value endorsement, as well as look at how IPV and relationship values influence decisions concerning relationship maintenance.