Community-Based Participatory Research for Improved Mental Health

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) focuses on specific community needs, and produces results that directly address those needs. Although conducting ethical CBPR is critical to its success, few academic programs include this training in their curricula. This article describes the development and evaluation of an online training course designed to increase the use of CBPR in mental health disciplines. Developed using a participatory approach involving a community of experts, this course challenges traditional research by introducing a collaborative process meant to encourage increased participation by special populations and narrow the parity gap in effective mental health treatment and services delivery.     

Deciding the Fate of Others: The Cognitive Underpinnings of Racially Biased Juror Decision Making

In criminal law, jurors are supposed to ignore defendant race when considering factual matters of culpability. However, when judging the merits of a criminal case, jurors’ ability (or inability) to avoid bias may affect verdicts. Fact-based decision making expend cognitive resources, while heuristic-based decisions (e.g., using criminal stereotypes) conserve resources. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive resources and prejudice attitudes about Blacks influenced trial outcomes. We tested the impact of working memory capacity (WMC), cognitive load, prejudice, and target race (Black, White) on penalties ascribed to fictional criminal defendants in ambiguous-fact cases. Results showed that when “loaded,” prejudiced-low-WMC persons supported guilty verdicts with higher confidence more often for Black than White defendants. Conversely, regardless of WMC or prejudice attitude, participants penalized White defendants more often when not loaded. We suggest that cognitive resources and prejudice attitude influence fact-based decisions. Links to juror judgments and potential trial outcomes are discussed.     

The Theoretical Aspect of Psychology

Abstract

Arlitt, A. S. Psychology of Infancy and Early Childhood. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1928. Pp. 228. $2.00.

Gesell, A. Infancy and Human Growth. New York: Macmillan, 1928, Pp. 418. $3.50.

Watson, J. B. Psychological Care of Infant and Child. New York: Norton, 1928. Pp. 195. $2.00. Reviewed by C. J. Warden

Taylor, W. S. Morton Prince and Abnormal Psychology. New York: Appleton, 1928. Pp. xi + 137. Reviewed by Edmund S. Conklin

De Sanctis, S. Religious Conversion: A Bio-psychological Study. Translated by Helen Augur. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927. Pp. 324. Reviewed by Edmund S. Conklin

Freud, S. The Ego and the Id. Translation by Joan Riviere. London: Hogarth Press, 1927. Pp. 88. Reviewed by Edmund S. Conklin

Burrow, T. The Social Basis of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927. Pp. xviii + 256. $4.00. Reviewed by Edmund S. Conklin

Brousseau, K., &; Brainerd, H. G. Mongolism: A Study of the Physical and Mental Characteristics of Mongolian Imbeciles. Baltimore: Williams &; Wilkins, 1928. Pp. 210. $4.50. Reviewed by Myra W. Kuenzel     

Cross-Ethnic Measurement Equivalence of the RCMAS in Latino and White Youth With Anxiety Disorders

In normal vision, the various “gestalt-free” combinations which form early in a percept, are repressed by the emergence of the veridical composite perception; but in schizophrenic vision, with its inadequate repressive powers, the early combinations emerge as the completed composite. This completed composite, if at all veridical, is so only partially. Rorschach studies support the idea of a range of perceptual abortions among schizophrenics, varying directly with the process-reactive range.     

Religiosity for Promotion of Behaviors Likely to Reduce New HIV Infections in Uganda: A Study Among Muslim Youth in Wakiso District

The study was done to determine the association between religiosity and behaviors likely to reduce new HIV infections among 1,224 Muslim youth. Respondents with Sujda, the hyperpigmented spot on the forehead due to prostration during prayers, were more likely to abstain from sex, be faithful in marriage, and avoid alcohol and narcotics. Males wearing a Muslim cap were more likely to abstain from sex and avoid alcohol and narcotics. Females wearing the long dress (Hijab) were also more likely to avoid alcohol. This data should be used by stakeholders in promoting behaviors likely to reduce new HIV infections among Muslims.     

Beyond Components of Wellbeing: The Effects of Relational and Situated Assemblage

Despite multiple axes of variation in defining wellbeing, the paper argues for the dominance of a ‘components approach’ in current research and practice. This approach builds on a well-established tradition within the social sciences of attending to categories whether for their identification, their value or their meanings and political resonance. The paper critiques the components approach and explores how to move beyond it towards conceptually integrating the various categories and dimensions through a relational and situated account of wellbeing. Drawing on more fluid social sciences, wellbeing is framed as an effect, dependent on the mobilisation of resources from everyday encounters with complex assemblages of people, things and places. Through such a framing, wellbeing can be conceived of as stable and amenable to change, as individual and collective and as subjective and objective. Policy interventions then need to attend to the relationalities of particular social and spatial contexts.     

Does happiness function like a motivational state?

According to Brehm's intensity of emotion theory, if an emotion has motivational properties, its intensity should be non-monotonically affected by factors similar to those determining the intensity of motivational states. These factors are called deterrents. In the case of emotion, one category of deterrents consists of factors that can potentially interfere with feeling the emotion, such as reasons for not feeling the emotion. Two experiments were carried out to examine whether happiness is a motivational state and, thus, if its intensity is non-monotonically determined by the importance of reasons for not feeling happy. We expected happiness to be reduced by a low importance reason for not feeling happy, to remain high in the presence of a moderately important reason, and to be reduced or eliminated by a very important reason. Both experiments supported the cubic function that results from these expectations, and when the results of the two studies were combined, each of the individual legs of the cubic function was found to be reliable along with the cubic function itself. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Anxiety and disgust: Evidence for a unidirectional relationship

This paper reports the results of three studies using mood induction procedures (MIPs) designed to investigate the relationship between anxiety and disgust. Study 1 used guided imagery vignettes (i.e., asking participants to imagine themselves in a series of described situations) and music (Mayer, Allen, & Beauregard, 1995). Study 2 used video clips (Gross & Levenson, 1995). Study 3 used autobiographical recall and music (Blagden & Craske, 1996). In order to be as sure as possible that target moods were being induced, and that manipulation checks provided good evidence of mood induction, Studies 1 and 2 measured six moods (anxiety, sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, and contempt) on visual analogue scales. In addition, Study 3 included two further mood measures: a 30-adjective rating scale measuring 10 emotions, the Differential Emotion Scale (DES; Izard, 1972) and a free label questionnaire, allowing participants to record how they feel without any prior imposed structure. Results from all three studies demonstrated that induced anxiety will produce increases in reported disgust, but there was no evidence for an effect of induced disgust on reported anxiety. These findings were independent of the type of MIP (guided imagery vignette and music, video clips, and autobiographical recall and music), and the type of dependent mood measure used (visual analogue scale, differential emotion scale or a free label questionnaire). The findings have important implications for the putative role of disgust in anxious psychopathologies, and suggest that if disgust does have a causal influence in some anxious psychopathologies, this influence is not mediated simply by experienced disgust facilitating experienced anxiety.     

On the Proposed Sexual and Gender Identity Diagnoses for DSM-5: History and Controversies

In February, 2010, the American Psychiatric Association unveiled its proposed revisions to the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders for the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The proposals have reinvigorated historical controversies about whether sexual and gender diagnoses may stigmatize and medicalize behaviors that are now considered nonpathological. This article traces the recent past of these controversies, beginning with early discourse about the future DSM-5. It addresses the content of the DSM-5's proposed changes to Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and the paraphilias, outlining responses to them in mental health and activist communities. Points of contention surrounding the recent proposals are assessed within the context of historical concerns. Additionally, my opinion regarding the potential of the DSM-5 proposals to assuage versus exacerbate longstanding controversies is presented.