Systems-Centered Therapy: A Protocol for Treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder

The systems-centered short-term therapy protocol was adapted and applied in three single case studies with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients in a ten-session individual treatment over a two week period. All three subjects showed substantial improvement and no longer met diagnostic criteria post-treatment. Changes were maintained at follow up both six months and one year later. These results are promising and suggest the importance of further research on SCT as a viable, alternative treatment for generalized anxiety disorder.     

Report from the UK and Eire Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC) Supervision Working Group on Genetic Counselling Supervision

The Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC) is the professional organisation which represents genetic counsellors and genetic nurses in the United Kingdom (UK) and Eire. The AGNC recognises that genetic counselling supervision is instrumental to the practice, training and registration of genetic counsellors in the UK. The AGNC formed a Supervision Working Group, whose terms of reference were to collate information on supervision and create a list of ‘best practice’ recommendations for its genetic counsellor members. This report delivers the findings from the Supervision Working Group and has been peer reviewed by the AGNC membership in the UK and Eire and ratified by the AGNC Committee. It offers a working definition of genetic counselling supervision, gives an overview of some of the literature on supervision and concludes with practice recommendations. Group Authorship: AGNC Supervision Working Group Membership of the AGNC Supervision Working Group     

Understanding the Labour Market Participation of Skilled Immigrant Women in Switzerland: The Interplay of Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

Switzerland has recently adopted immigration policies that give preference to skilled migrants, the assumption being that migrants with higher education will integrate easily. Our study of 57 skilled immigrant women from Latin America, the Middle East and Southeastern Europe shows that this assumption is largely unjustified. Most of the women cannot use their social and cultural capital to establish themselves in the upper segments of the labour market. A third are not integrated in the labour market and a quarter occupy positions below their skill-level. A further third work at their skill-level but only irregularly. The differentiated participation of these immigrants in the labour market is well explained by analysing the interplay of class, ethnicity and gender.     

Providing Information to Parents of Children with Mental Health Problems: A Discrete Choice Conjoint Analysis of Professional Preferences

We used discrete choice conjoint analysis to model the ways 645 children’s mental health (CMH) professionals preferred to provide information to parents seeking CMH services. Participants completed 20 choice tasks presenting experimentally varied combinations of the study’s 14 4-level CMH information transfer attributes. Latent class analysis revealed three segments. Open Access professionals (32.2%) preferred that intake workers automatically provide all parents with CMH information. They preferred information prepared by professional organizations and located at accessible settings such as public schools. They responded favorably to the internet as a source of information for parents. Controlled Access professionals (22.2%) preferred information that was approved and recommended by a child’s therapist, prepared by an experienced clinician, and located at hospitals and CMH clinics. Process Sensitive professionals (45.6%) showed a stronger preference for active learning materials with parenting groups and therapist “coaching” calls supporting the knowledge transfer process. Simulations suggested that realizing the benefits of CMH information requires the development of knowledge transfer strategies that align the preferences of professionals with those of the families they serve.     

Hypothesizing about signaling networks

The current knowledge about signaling networks is largely incomplete. Thus biologists constantly need to revise or extend existing knowledge. The revision and/or extension is first formulated as theoretical hypotheses, then verified experimentally. Many computer-aided systems have been developed to assist biologists in undertaking this challenge. The majority of the systems help in finding “patterns” in data and leave the reasoning to biologists. A few systems have tried to automate the reasoning process of hypothesis formation. These systems generate hypotheses from a knowledge base and given observations. A main drawback of these knowledge-based systems is the knowledge representation formalism they use. These formalisms are mostly monotonic and are now known to be not quite suitable for knowledge representation, especially in dealing with the inherently incomplete knowledge about signaling networks. We propose an action language based framework for hypothesis formation for signaling networks. We show that the hypothesis formation problem can be translated into an abduction problem. This translation facilitates the complexity analysis and an efficient implementation of our system. We illustrate the applicability of our system with an example of hypothesis formation in the signaling network of the p53 protein.     

Oral Health-Quality of Life Predictors Depend on Population

In the framework of the development and evaluation of oral health interventions that take into account people’s oral health-related quality of life (OH-QoL), it is important to know what determinants and effects of OH-QoL are. Because the processes involved in the experience of OH-QoL may differ for different populations, this study mapped the relations of general health perception, social factors, dental anxiety and oral hygiene behavior on the one hand with OH-QoL on the other hand, in two different samples that mainly differed on the experience they had with dental care and dental pathology: In 112 patients of the Center for Dentistry and Oral Hygiene and in 339 first year psychology students. The relations of three of the four variables with OH-QoL differed in both samples. Although not all relations could be interpreted unequivocally in this cross-sectional design, the data illustrate that the main difference between both samples (i.e., patients indicated for oral treatment versus students outside treatment) influenced the psychological processes involved in OH-QoL. This implicates that oral health interventions directed at increasing OH-QoL may have to be adapted to populations.     

Satellite babies in transnational families: A study of parents' decision to separate from their infants

This study examines a practice which is characteristic of an era of intensifying globalization: As part of a transnational lifestyle, an increasing number of immigrants to North America send infants thousands of miles back to their country of origin to be raised by members of their extended families—a culturally sanctioned tradition. After several years of separation, the children return to the biological parents to attend school in the adopted country, a custom which, according to Western mental health models, could have significant sequelae for attachment relationships and other facets of development. This practice is particularly prevalent among immigrants from the People's Republic of China, but a modified version of it can be found in other groups as well. The work described here is the first phase of a longitudinal project that explores the advantages and potential repercussions, for both infants and parents, of a transnational lifestyle. The current study reviews the decision‐making process of a group of Chinese Canadian immigrant parents who are considering a separation from their infants. Preliminary findings show that the expected concerns about disrupting attachment relationships are embedded in more salient considerations of economic need and cultural perspective. These exploratory data exemplify an emergent field of culture‐focused research and practice in infant mental health, and support the call for innovative models to situate infant developmental pathways in global and transcultural contexts.     

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a Measure of Implicit Relative Preferences: A First Study

The Psychological Record - The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) was designed to examine implicit beliefs or attitudes. In Experiment 1, response latencies obtained from Irish...     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Science: Processes,Principles, and Analytic Strategies

The Psychological Record -