Made in America: Perspectives on Friendship in West African Immigrant Families

This qualitative study compared West African immigrant parents’ and adolescents’ perspectives on parental monitoring of adolescents’ peer groups. Parents (n = 31) and adolescent children (n = 25) were interviewed using focus groups and individual interviews, and data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Parents expressed a general concern about external influences on their children, particularly their mistrust of their children’s friends. Adolescents reported that they were aware of their parents’ fears and described their attempts to manage their parents’ concerns while simultaneously maintaining friendships with same-ethnic and other-ethnic peers. This study offers both parent and adolescent perspectives in an effort to better understand adolescents’ peer socialization and parental monitoring among West African immigrant families, one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the United States. Recommendations for mental health professions are discussed.     

Engaging the Borders: Empathy,Religious Studies,and Pre‐Professional Fields

This article proposes that religious studies instructors can gain pedagogical insights regarding the value and teaching of empathy from pre‐professional health care and counseling fields. I present research findings from these fields to support claims that empathic skills are teachable. I then show that empathy has been established within the field of religious studies as important in order to understand the beliefs of the religious other. I conclude that religious studies educators should be concerned about how to teach empathy, and suggest that pre‐professional research findings point us in the direction of how to do this. Experiential exercises such as role‐playing and other simulation exercises seem to be most effective in teaching empathic skills. I present examples that demonstrate how listening exercises and the role‐playing of cases can be used in the religious studies classroom and can assist in the development of empathy for the religious other.     

Does Working Memory Mediate the Link Between Dispositional Optimism and Depressive Symptoms?

The aim of this study was to explore the interplay between working memory (WM), dispositional optimism, and depressive symptoms in participants across a wide age band (16–79 years) in a nonclinical sample using a computer‐based interface. We administered tests of visuospatial WM (processing and recall), dispositional optimism (optimism and pessimism), and self‐reported depression. There were two main findings: 1) both optimism and pessimism were independent predictors of a self‐rated depression score; 2) WM recall scores predicted both optimism and pessimism. The findings suggest the following pattern: according to the negativity bias, a pessimistic outlook presents as a strong stimulus for attentional allocation, which results in depression. However, a strong WM can counter this pattern, as individuals can allocate attention to the weaker stimulus, which is an optimistic outlook. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Socially Valued Roles,Self‐Determination,and Community Participation among Individuals Living with Serious Mental Illnesses

Decades after deinstitutionalization, individuals living with serious mental illnesses remain isolated, socially disengaged, and devalued members of communities. Burgeoning research and services need conceptual clarity to improve such social conditions. This qualitative inquiry used grounded theory and participatory approaches to conduct an in‐depth exploration of community participation for individuals living with serious mental illnesses based on key stakeholder perspectives (n = 45). Results revealed that community participation is a multifaceted construct with layers of meaning for individuals living with serious mental illnesses. Overarching themes are contextualized in Self‐Determination Theory and presented with deidentified illustrations. Implications for services, research, and policy are discussed.     

Microstructural integrity of white matter moderates an association between childhood adversity and adult trait anger

Amongst a number of negative life sequelae associated with childhood adversity is the later expression of a higher dispositional tendency to experience anger and frustration to a wide range of situations (i.e., trait anger). We recently reported that an association between childhood adversity and trait anger is moderated by individual differences in both threat-related amygdala activity and executive control-related dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity, wherein individuals with relatively low amygdala and high dlPFC activity do not express higher trait anger even when having experienced childhood adversity. Here, we examine possible structural correlates of this functional dynamic using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from 647 young adult men and women volunteers. Specifically, we tested whether the degree of white matter microstructural integrity as indexed by fractional anisotropy modulated the association between childhood adversity and trait anger. Our analyses revealed that higher microstructural integrity of multiple pathways was associated with an attenuated link between childhood adversity and adult trait anger. Amongst these pathways was the uncinate fasciculus (UF; ΔR ² = 0.01), which not only provides a major anatomical link between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex but also is associated with individual differences in regulating negative emotion through top-down cognitive reappraisal. These findings suggest that higher microstructural integrity of distributed white matter pathways including but not limited to the UF may represent an anatomical foundation serving to buffer against the expression of childhood adversity as later trait anger, which is itself associated with multiple negative health outcomes.     

Attachment Change in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and Sexual Satisfaction Outcomes in a Two-year Follow-up Study

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated attachment based approach to couple therapy. From an EFT perspective, sexual functioning is viewed within the context of an attachment bond, but sexual satisfaction in EFT has not been empirically tested. We examined self-reported sexual satisfaction across 24?months in a sample of 32 couples who received an average of 21 EFT sessions. We found that sexual satisfaction increased across six time points from pre to post therapy and across follow-up (6, 12, 18, and 24?months), and that decreases in attachment avoidance from pre to post therapy predicted increases in sexual satisfaction across time. These findings provide evidence that EFT may help couples improve their sexual satisfaction by reducing attachment avoidance in therapy.     

Drinking to belong: The effect of a friendship threat and self-esteem on college student drinking

The current study examined how implicit and explicit self-esteem and time spent drinking with friends influence college student drinking after a friendship threat manipulation. Poisson regression analyses revealed that students with low implicit self-esteem showed a greater increase in alcohol consumption when drinking with friends after experiencing a friendship threat than in the control condition. These effects were not found among students with high implicit self-esteem. A similar, but weaker, pattern emerged when testing the independent effects of explicit self-esteem. We suggest that low self-esteem students are drinking because they lack the self-resources to deal with unmet belongingness needs. These findings suggest that low implicit self-esteem may be a risk factor for college student drinking.