Resilience-Based Intervention with Underserved Children: Impact on Self-Regulation in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Schools

Resilience and emotion regulation are crucial for optimal psychosocial functioning in children. This study assessed whether a group-based intervention, the Resilience Builder Program (RBP), improved student report of emotion regulation when administered in elementary schools. Sixty-seven students aged 9–12 years (M = 10.50, SD =.74; 82.1% male, 98.5% ethnic/racial minority) were randomly assigned to receive the RBP intervention immediately or following a semester delay. Participants reported their emotional control using the How I Feel scale. Students who received the RBP reported a significant increase in their emotional control and a significant decrease in negative emotion compared to those students in the delayed treatment sample who had not yet received the intervention. Further, students indicated a strongly positive perception of the therapy.     

Impact of Child and Parent Motivation on Social Skills Training Outcome

This study explores child and parent motivation at the start of a social skills training group program and its relationship with treatment outcome. A total of 59 children (aged 7–12) participated. Parents were more aware of, distressed by, and motivated to change the presenting problem than were their children. Greater parent awareness of their child’s difficulty making and keeping friends and perceived importance of their child learning ways to make and keep more friends significantly predicted more improved social skills. Increasing parents’ awareness and perceived importance of treating the presenting problem at the start of therapy may increase treatment effectiveness.     

Inattentive listening undermines self-verification in personal storytelling

Two studies explore the narrative construction of self-perceptions in conversational storytelling among pairs of same-sex friends. Specifically, the studies examined how listener behavior can support or undermine attempts to self-verify in personal storytelling. In two studies (n=100 dyads), speakers told attentive, distracted, or disagreeable (Study 1 only) friends about a recent experience. Distracted, but not disagreeable, friends tended to undermine participants' attempts to verify their self-perception of being interested in an activity (Study 1) or their self-perception that an event was typical for them (Study 2). These results support the notion that friends can be an important source of influence on self-perceptions and, perhaps surprisingly, suggest that responsiveness from friends, rather than agreement per se, may be crucial for supporting self-verification processes.     

Defining and Delineating a Duty to Prognosticate

Prognostication, the process offormulating and communicating a prognosis, isno longer considered by most physicians to bean essential task in caring for patients withserious illness. Because of this fact, it isnot surprising to find that when physiciansattempt to engage in prognostication, they doit poorly. What may be surprising to thoseoutside the medical community is the extent towhich professional norms have developed whichactively discourage physicians from engaging inprognostication. This article explores thecauses of this state of affairs and thejustifications offered for it. The conclusionis reached that physicians have a professionalresponsibility to competently engage inprognostication based upon the doctrine ofinformed consent, and that a failure or refusalto do so has not only potential legalramifications, but serious negativeimplications for many of the core issues inbioethics, such as the use of advancedirectives, palliative medicine, and medicalfutility.     

San Diego Suicide Study: the adolescents

The San Diego Suicide Study involved psychological autopsy and toxicological examination of 283 suicides. Of the 133 consecutive cases under age 30, 14 were under age 20. In this paper, detailed data on the 14 adolescent cases are presented and the findings compared to other studies.     

Endocrinology and suicide

The data accumulated so far suggest several tentative conclusions. First, thyroid and adrenal gland disease unquestionably can produce severe mental disturbances. Most of these are "organic" in nature, but depressive symptoms are common as well. A connection between these diseases and suicide has not been established, however. Research cannot really address this possibility adequately, since these studies are difficult, if not impossible, to do in the postmortem state at this time. Ways should continue to be sought to overcome this problem. Clinically, it seems advisable to treat all depressed, suicidal persons with the same caution, whether they have diseases of these endocrine systems or not. The differences in responsiveness of the thyroid and adrenocortical systems among depressed and perhaps truly suicidal persons are of greater theoretical as well as practical clinical interest. The TRH-TSH test and the DST may not be as specific as once thought. Nonetheless, the abnormalities do occur with regularity in specific subgroups of depressed patients. It is far too early to stop research on the DST or the TRH-TSH test. Clinically, however, it is premature to make important management decisions about suicidal patients based on these test results. At this time, we really have no means of pinpointing the persons who will eventually suicide. The hope that they may someday provide valid data for assessing real suicide potential is there, and clinicians should stay informed in this arena. Until that day comes, though, we must continue to exercise caution regarding our clinical judgments and to live with their uncertainties.     

Academic Guidance in Medical Student Research: How Well Do Supervisors and Students Understand the Ethics of Human Research?

Research is increasingly recognised as a key component of medical curricula, offering a range of benefits including development of skills in evidence-based medicine. The literature indicates that experienced academic supervision or mentoring is important in any research activity and positively influences research output. The aim of this project was to investigate the human research ethics experiences and knowledge of three groups: medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research projects; at two Australian universities. Training in research ethics was low amongst academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research. Only two-thirds of academic staff (67.9 %) and students (65.7 %) and less than half of clinicians surveyed (47.1 %; p?=?0.014) indicated that specific patient consent was required for a doctor to include patient medical records within a research publication. There was limited awareness of requirements for participant information and consent forms amongst all groups. In the case of clinical trials, fewer clinicians (88.4 %) and students (83.3 %) than academics (100 %) indicated there was a requirement to obtain consent (p?=?0.009). Awareness of the ethics committee focus on respect was low across all groups. This project has identified significant gaps in human research ethics understanding among medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians. The incorporation of research within medical curricula provides the impetus for medical schools and their institutions to ensure that academic staff and clinicians who are eligible and qualified to supervise students’ research projects are appropriately trained in human research ethics.     

Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada: An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada’s largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports are available. Little is known about the work of churches in Canada in spite of their importance to immigrant settlement and integration. In this study, we examine the services offered to immigrants by Canadian Christian churches. We show how the service provision of Christian churches is constrained by other organizations and groups in their environment, in ways consonant with the organizational ecology framework. Specifically, churches service the needs of immigrants by adapting to specific niche needs and by filling in gaps left by other service providers.     

Cognitive tuning,encoding, and the attribution of causality

Subjects were given a transmission or reception set before or after viewing a videotape of an event which involved an extreme outcome. The results indicated that transmitters made relatively extreme attributions to plausible causal agents when the set was given prior but not subsequent to viewing the event. The results also showed that subjects who had been given a transmission set before viewing the videotape exhibited relatively high recognition of aspects of the event they observed. It is suggested that the data provide support for an encoding interpretation of transmission-reception differences in the attribution of causality.