Preventing Substance Abuse Among American-Indian Adolescents: A Bicultural Competence Skills Approach

Tobacco, alcohol, and drug use are problems for American-Indian people. We reviewed these problems and the explanations for them and described a bicultural competence skills approach for preventing substance abuse with American-Indian adolescents. Data from a study of that approach suggest its efficacy with American-Indian youth. At posttest and a 6-month follow-up, American-Indian subjects who received preventive intervention based on bicultural competence skills concepts improved more than did American-Indian subjects in a no-intervention control condition on measures of substance-use knowledge, attitudes, and interactive skills, and on self-reported rates of tobacco, alcohol, and drug use. Our findings have implications for future substance-abuse prevention research with American-Indian people.     

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HOLLAND'S TYPOLOGY AND COGNITIVE STYLES

This paper combines the results of two studies across different cultures which included an investigation into the relationship between field-dependence-independence and vocational orientations within the framework of Holland's theory of career choice and Witkin's theory of psychological differentiation. The samples included 179 Canadian senior high school students and 376 Pakistani college and university students. Both samples were administered Self-Directed Search and Group Embedded Figures Test. The results indicated a significant relationship between cognitive styles and vocational orientations. It was evident from the findings of these two studies that the theories of Holland and Witkin dove-tail nicely with each other.     

Family Therapy in Trouble: Psychoeducation as Solution and as Problem

The authors cite clinical literature attesting to the importance of recognizing the family, rather than the individual, as the proper locus of conceptualizing, diagnosing, and treating mental illnesses. Specifically with regard to severe psychiatric illnesses, in particular schizophrenia, family dysfunction contributes to the emergence of the illness, significantly affects its course, and strongly influences the achievement and maintenance of treatment gains. Currently, a movement is afoot to limit sharply the amount and kind of treatment offered to schizophrenic patients and their families. Rooted in a “medical model” or “biogenic” view of the etiology of schizophrenia, this school of thought prescribes psychoeducation as the family treatment of choice. The present article looks at some misconceptions regarding treatment that prompted a widespread turning away from psychoanalytically oriented family psychotherapy for schizophrenic patients and their families, examines the reductionism (biological and behavioral) inhering in the exclusive use of psychoeducation, and looks at the clinical dangers of such reductionism. Finally, it proposes that family psycho-therapists should not abandon a concern with the inner lives of severely ill patients and their families in the face of spuriously generalized claims made by reductionist researchers.