Development of the Perth Adolescent Worry Scale (PAWS)

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Tools to assess worry among adolescents exist but do not capture the content of worries. This study reports on the development of a brief,...     

Exploring the Construct of Perceived Burdensomeness Among Suicidal Adolescents: An Intervention Development Study

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide has a growing base of empirical support for use with adolescents. Of the two interpersonal constructs that...     

The Relationship Between Neuropsychological Functioning and Mental Health Outcomes of Chronic Alcohol Users Involved in Counselling: Prediction of Treatment Outcome

This study examined the neuropsychological profile, mental health outcomes, and coping strategies of chronic alcohol users involved in drug and alcohol counselling and investigated whether these factors could predict treatment outcome. The findings indicated that as compared with controls, chronic alcohol users demonstrated significant deficits in visuospatial, memory and executive functioning, and a higher level of emotional distress. At a 3‐month follow‐up, memory ability was found to significantly predict the percentage of goals achieved in counselling, the likelihood of dropout from therapy, and the likelihood of remaining abstinent. The value of further research into the influence of additional factors, such as executive functioning, mood, and coping strategies, on treatment outcomes in a larger sample was also supported.     

Society matters: The mediational role of social recognition in the relationship between victimization and life satisfaction among gay men

This article examines the role of social recognition in the relationship between gay men's victimization and their life satisfaction. Using a comprehensive catalog of victimization, we obtained empirical evidence that strongly suggests that victimization negatively affects gay men's life satisfaction and that this relationship is mainly mediated by a perceived lack of social recognition in society. In addition, although active involvement in the gay community served as a coping mechanism, concealment of one's sexual identity played no role in the victimization–life satisfaction relationship, neither as a coping mechanism nor as a competing mediator. The mediational role of societal recognition underlines the importance of the symbolic meaning of victimization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing an Understanding of Race Talk

The aim of this paper is to give an outline of the discursive psychological literature focussing on prejudice and race talk and to show how recent findings suggest a development in this understanding. The paper begins with an outline of the discursive approach and the way in which it conceptualises race talk. Next, an overview of the ways in which people attempt to make prejudicial arguments so as to prevent them from appearing to be prejudiced, because of a norm against prejudice, is presented. It is then shown how challenges are being made to this norm against prejudice so that in some cases, prejudice can be viewed as acceptable, and in others, the taboo against prejudice is presented as being discriminatory on the grounds of preventing freedom of speech and proper debate.     

The effect of visual complexity and word frequency on eye movements during Chinese reading

Eye movements of native Chinese readers were monitored when they read sentences containing single-character target words orthogonally manipulated for frequency and visual complexity (number of strokes). Both factors yielded strong main effects on skipping probability but no interaction, with readers skipping visually simple and high frequency words more often. However, an interaction between frequency and complexity was observed on the fixation times on the target words with longer fixations for the low frequency, visually complex words. The results demonstrate that visual complexity and frequency have independent influences on saccadic targeting behaviour during Chinese reading but jointly influence fixation durations and that these two factors differently impact fixation durations and saccade targeting during reading.     

A phenomenological survey of auditory verbal hallucinations in the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states

The phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) occurring in hypnagogic and hypnopompic (H&H) states has received little attention. In a sample of healthy participants (N = 325), 108 participants reported H&H AVHs and answered subsequent questions on their phenomenology. AVHs in the H&H state were found (1) to be more likely to only feature the occasional clear word than to be clear, (2) to be more likely to be one-off voices than to be recurrent voices, (3) to be more likely to be voices of people known to the individual than unknown persons, (4) to be more likely to talk directly to the person rather than not, and (5) to only rarely give commands, ask questions, or to result in an interactive conversation. Their phenomenology was similar to normative AVHs in wakefulness (as established by previous research) in that the voice-hearer was usually the target of the voice, and the voice was more likely to be of a recognized person. However, H&H AVHs differed from AVHs in wakefulness in that commands and questions were rare, and there was typically no dialogical engagement with the voice. We conclude by proposing that two distinct types of H&H AVHs may exist (which we term “dialogic” and “monologic”), based on an analysis of the phenomenology of the experience, and suggest avenues for future research.     

The CORE‐10: A short measure of psychological distress for routine use in the psychological therapies

Background: There is a need for a generic, short, and easy‐to‐use assessment measure for common presentations of psychological distress in UK primary care mental health settings. This paper sets out the development of the CORE‐10 in response to this need. Method: Items were drawn from the CORE‐OM and 10 items were selected according to a combination of usefulness, coverage of item clusters, and statistical procedures. Three CORE‐OM datasets were employed in the development phase: (1) a primary care sample, (2) a sample from an MRC platform trial of enhanced collaborative care of depression in primary care, and (3) a general population sample derived from the Office of National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Follow‐up survey. A fourth dataset comprising a sample from an occupational health setting was used to evaluate the CORE‐10 in its standalone format. Results: The internal reliability (alpha) of the CORE‐10 was .90 and the score for the CORE‐10 correlated with the CORE‐OM at .94 in a clinical sample and .92 in a non‐clinical sample. The clinical cut‐off score for general psychological distress was 11.0 with a reliable change index (90% CI) of 6. For depression, the cut‐off score for the CORE‐10 was 13 and yielded sensitivity and specificity values of .92 (CI=.83–1.0) and 0.72 (CI=.60–.83) respectively. Conclusion: The CORE‐10 is an acceptable and feasible instrument that has good psychometric properties and is practical to use with people presenting with common mental health problems in primary care settings.     

Landscape,nation and globe: Theoretical nuances in the analysis of Asian Christianity

This brief afterword comments on the papers from this special issue, arguing that each explores current complexities of interactions between national and transnational orientations, but also helps to nuance understandings of the global through the invocation of history. As a result, we not only observe the interplay between colonial and post-colonial regimes of religion and politics, but also gain an appreciation of transnational religious impulses that were in operation well before the last few decades of explicitly ‘global consciousness’. Christianisation has a significant history in the regions covered, but it cannot be understood through crude, unilinear models of development or progress.