Feasibility of Adapting Multisystemic Therapy to Improve Illness Management Behaviors and Reduce Asthma Morbidity in High Risk African American Youth: A Case Series

African-American adolescents have the highest rates of asthma morbidity and mortality, yet there are few successful behavioral interventions to improve illness management for this group. Mental health providers have an opportunity to expand their services and impact by targeting adolescents with poor asthma management. We describe the adaptation of Multisystemic Therapy (MST), an intensive, home and community-based treatment originally used with antisocial youth, for improving asthma management. We present a case study to illustrate the treatment model. Feasibility was demonstrated with eight African American adolescents with chronic, persistent asthma, suggesting that further evaluation of MST for youth with asthma and poor illness management is warranted.     

Les unités de soins intensifs psychiatriques (USIP) : expériences françaises et internationales

Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) propose a secure setting for patients with acute behavior disturbances who can not be managed in psychiatric general wards. Physical violence acts against patients or hospital staff, substance abuse, non-compliance for care and treatment, intensity of symptoms or absconding are frequent motives for admission. Patients are compulsorily detained in secure conditions. They are admitted from psychiatric facilities of a health area or by agreement between hospitals. Multidisciplinary working in psychiatric intensive care is essential, delivered by qualified staff. Care and treatment must be centered on the patient, multidisciplinary, intensive, comprehensive with an immediacy of response to critical situations. As length of stay should not exceed 2 months in duration, interface and liaison with original services of patients are important issues. In France, PICU exist notably at Cadillac, Lyon, Paris, Nice, Eygurande, Montpellier, Pau and Prémontré. These facilities appear as a missing level, an interesting alternative in mental health care system, between psychiatric general wards and maximum security hospitals. This paper reports the creation of a National Association of PICU in France, the existence of national minimum standards and international experiences.     

Gender roles and care giving to the elderly: An empirical study

The purpose of this research was to examine care giving to the elderly from a gender role perspective. Data were collected from a randomized sample of Québec care givers (n=294) who provide various levels of care giving to people with different kinds of impairments. The results indicate that although women provide more care than men, both experience an equivalent burden. Familial obligations (Presence of a Spouse × Presence of Children) affect men and women care givers differently. An intersex generation effect is evident with regard to professional burden: husband care givers report a greater burden than wives, whereas daughters and sons report the same level. The findings suggest that men have more difficulty assuming responsibilities associated with multiple roles, whereas women have adopted new roles in addition to the traditionally ascribed care-giving role.The research reported in this paper is part of a study funded by the Conseil québécois de la recherche sociale, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux. The authors wish to thank Jocelyne Boivin for her helpful work with the documentation and Lottie White for her help with the English version of this paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers of whose judicious comments were greatly appreciated.     

Embodied temporal perception of emotion

The role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli was investigated with a temporal bisection task. Previous research has shown that individuals overestimate the duration of emotional, compared with neutral, faces (S. Droit-Volet, S. Brunot, & P. M. Niedenthal, 2004). The authors tested a role for embodiment in this effect. Participants estimated the duration of angry, happy, and neutral faces by comparing them to 2 durations learned during a training phase. Experimental participants held a pen in their mouths so as to inhibit imitation of the faces, whereas control participants could imitate freely. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. Implications for the role of embodiment in emotional perception are discussed.     

Impact of Rater Beliefs Regarding Performance Appraisal and Its Organizational Context on Appraisal Quality

The relationship between attitudes and beliefs regarding performance appraisal and its organizational context and three measures of rating quality (i.e., rating level, discrimination among ratees, discrimination among rating dimensions) were examined. Eighteen of twenty-four directional predictions about the correlations between attitudinal measures and rating behavior measures were supported. However, because of the expected weak to moderate relationships between predictors and criteria and the use of small samples, statistical power was generally low, and many of the individual observed correlations failed to reach significance. Nevertheless, the consistent pattern of support for the directional predictions suggests that the attitudes and beliefs studied here provide a useful basis for understanding performance appraisal behaviors.     

Attributions,Cognitions, and Coping Styles: Teleworkers' Reactions to Work-Related Problems1

Based on the attributional reformulation of learned helplessness theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) and Lazarus and Launier's (1978) primary-secondary appraisal theory of stress, the present study sought to examine teleworkers' reactions to their work-related problems. The role of attributions about the sources, and cognitions about the consesquences, of these problems in promoting positive adaptation was addressed. In particular, it was predicted that teleworkers who made optimistic attributions and cognitions would be more likely to employ problem-focused coping strategies and, as a result, report more positive psychological and job-related outcomes. Based on a survey sample of 192 teleworkers, the results indicated that a tendency to engage in self-blame was related to the use of emotion-focused coping strategies. In turn, there was evidence linking emotion-focused coping strategies to negative outcomes and problem-focused coping strategies to positive outcomes. The results are discussed in relation to attributional approaches to stress which highlight the importance of cognitions about the consequences of negative events. Finally, implications for the training of teleworkers are presented.     

EXTENSION TEMPORELLE DES PROJETS PERSONNELS AU COURS DE LA VIEILLESSE*

The future time perspective (FTP) of 361 elderly persons was studied. Personal projects (goal objects or concrete motivations) were collected by means of the sentence completion technique and were classified in temporal categories. The future extension index (ratio between short- and long-term projects) shows that the FTP of both sexes is similar. Concerning the relation between FTP and age, we observed that the number of subjects with a long FTP is reduced as the age increases. On the other hand, when we consider all the data, 17% of the answers are classified in the near future (less than one year) whereas 52% are related to distant future. The future is far from disappearing during the old age. The FTP is in relation with socio-economic status and schooling, but the ‘effects’ of these variables on the FTP are interwoven. The results were not inconsistent with the idea that subjects with high socio-economic status (who also have more years of schooling) are characterized by a longer FTP. From the results, we suggest implications for research and for professional practice with the elderly.     

The role of novelty detection in food memory

Memory plays a central role in food choice. Recent studies focusing on food memory in everyday eating and drinking behaviour used a paradigm based on incidental learning of target foods and unexpected memory testing, demanding recognition of the target among distractors, which deviate slightly from the target. Results question the traditional view of memory as reactivation of previous experiences. Comparison of data from several experiments shows that in incidentally learned memory, distractors are rejected, while original targets are not recognised better than by chance guessing. Food memory is tuned at detecting novelty and change, rather than at recognising a previously encountered food.