What is the question you need to answer? How consultation can prevent professional systems immobilizing families

Consultation to an outside agency is an important part of the work of departments of child and adolescent psychiatry. This article describes and illustrates one particular approach to such consultations based on the principles of structural family therapy. It is premised on the belief that outside agencies have the capacity to arrive at a decision which is in the best interest of their clients. To do this the agency needs to define what is the question they need an answer in order to make a decision regarding their client. The consultants' role is to clarify what decision the consul tee agency needs to make by following up the question, What is the question you need to answer? How this question is followed up is discussed.     

Therapeutic factors in two forms of inpatient group psychotherapy: Music therapy and verbal therapy

Therapeutic processes in one type of creative arts group psychotherapy, music therapy, were compared with verbal group psychotherapy. Sixty-one short-term inpatients ranked group psychotherapy curative factors and completed satisfaction ratings. Therapists rated 201 group therapy sessions— 109 music therapy and 92 verbal therapy. Statistical analysis revealed that patients highly valued both group formats. The mean curative factor rankings for both groups included cohesiveness, instillation of hope, and altruism among the most helpful factors. Therapists' ratings indicated qualitative differences between the two groups. Music therapy involved more therapeutic interaction among patients and emotional expression, whereas verbal therapy emphasized concrete problem solving.Supported in part by Biomedical Research Support Grant Program grant #S07-RR05755 from the Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health.     

Suicide and the contemporary woman: Are male and female suicide rates converging?

Nationwide statistics on White suicide rates for the years 1960–1978 are examined to assess whether the suicide rates of women are increasing relative to those of men. This is accomplished by calculating for the total population and for several age groupings the sex differential (SD), which is defined as the percentage of suicides which are female after adjustments are made for the sex distribution in the population. The data reveal that the SD narrowed from 1960–1967, held steady from 1968–1972, and then widened slightly from 1973–1978. The most important aspects of these trends are that (a) the narrowing of the SD is due more to declining suicide rates among older (over-40) males than to increasing female suicide rates, and (b) the narrowing of the SD and the small increases in female suicide rates occurred prior to 1970 and thus were earlier than would be expected on the basis of changing sex-role expectations. Post hoc explanations of these patterns refer to methodological factors and to changes in social integration resulting from a variety of sociohistorical factors.     

Estimating rates of chronic fatigue syndrome from a community-based sample: A pilot study

Most of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) epidemiological studies have relied on physicians who refer patients having at least 6 months of chronic fatigue and other symptoms. However, there are a number of potential problems when using this method to derive prevalence statistics. For example, some individuals with CFS might not have the economic resources to access medical care. Other individuals with CFS might be reluctant to use medical personnel, particularly if they have encountered physicians skeptical of the authenticity of their illness. In addition, physicians that are skeptical of the existence of CFS might not identify cases. In the present pilot study, a random community sample (N=1,031) was interviewed by telephone in order to identify and comprehensively evaluate individuals with symptoms of CFS and those who self-report having CFS. Different definitions of CFS were employed, and higher rates (0.2%) of CFS were found than in previous studies. Methodological benefits in using more rigorous epidemiological methods when estimating CFS prevalence rates are discussed. The authors appreciate the generous financial support of the CFIDS Association and Minnan, Inc. We also are grateful for many helpful suggestions provided by Judith A. Richman, William McCready, Wendell Richmond, and Stephen E. Goldston. Finally, we are very thankful to the many undergraduate volunteers who helped us complete this study, and they include Cheryl Stenzel, Georgina DeLa Torre, Vickie Chrisos, Don Banik, Hillary Loeb, Leslie Ramesack, Ellen Diamond, Rob Bleeker, Gib Garza III, Mindy Silverstein, Kadip Sen, Meredith Lombrazo, Brian Miller, Caroline Marsden, Lorraine Whitmore, Stan Gayot, Karen Costakis, and Dave Sobotka.     

The effect of verbal elaborations on memory in young and older adults

The Stein paradigm was used to examine the circumstances under which verbal elaborations enhance memory in young and older adults. Subjects studied target adjectives that were embedded in one of three sentence contexts that varied in elaboration of the subject-adjective relationship: (1) nonelaborated base sentences; (2) base sentences with semantically consistent, but arbitrary verbal, elaborations; and (3) base sentences with explanatory verbal elaborations that clarified the significance of the subject-adjective relationship. The presence of the elaborations was varied at encoding and retrieval, and cued recall of the target adjectives was tested with incidental and intentional learning procedures. In Experiments 1A and 1B, explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval yielded the largest memorial facilitation for both young and older adults, and the benefit was comparable for the incidental and intentional learning measures. In Experiment 2, age-related differences in recall were minimal with explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval, but larger age differences occurred in the nonelaborated comparison conditions. In Experiment 3, explanatory elaborations present at encoding but not at retrieval enhanced recall when the original Stein stimuli were used, but not with the present stimuli. The implications of these results with regard to the mnemonic efficacy of verbal elaborations for young and older adults are discussed.     

Pluralistic Ignorance and Health Risk Behaviors: Do College Students Misperceive Social Approval for Risky Behaviors on Campus and in Media?

Pluralistic ignorance is a psychological state in which individuals believe that their own beliefs and feelings differ from others' in a group despite the fact that they all behave similarly (Miller & McFarland, 1991). For example, college students reported that they were less comfortable with campus drinking than were other students on their campus (Prentice & Miller, 1993). We replicated this finding and investigated whether college students would show this pluralistic ignorance effect for other health-related risk behaviors (smoking, sexual behavior, and illegal drug use). In addition, we tested whether media portrayals of these behaviors also might result in pluralistic ignorance. The results show that a significant effect of pluralistic ignorance occurred for all 4 health-related risk behaviors, both in ratings of campus behaviors and in ratings of media portrayals of these behaviors. Participants indicated that other students on their campus would have higher comfort ratings with campus patterns of smoking, drinking, illegal drug use, and sexual behaviors than their own comfort ratings. Participants also indicated that other students would have higher comfort ratings with the same 4 behaviors as they are portrayed in the media than their own comfort ratings.     

Transactional Leadership Revisited: Self–Other Agreement and Its Consequences

In a field study involving 209 leader–follower dyads, we examined leader–follower agreement regarding perceptions of the leaders' behavior style and follower outcomes of performance, organizational citizenship behavior, affective commitment, and trust in the leader. Using the self–other agreement paradigm, we found that agreement about a leader's style as transactional was positively related to these outcomes, whereas there was no relationship between agreement about a leader's transformational style and any of the outcomes. These findings support our view that a shared interpretation of the leader's transactional behavior is essential for positive follower outcomes, and may also be a necessary precondition for the effective use of transformational leader behavior. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.     

Applying a Randomized Interdependent Group Contingency Component to Classwide Peer Tutoring for Multiplication Fact Fluency

Researchers have documented the positive effects of classwide peer tutoring on academic performance, engagement, and other social behaviors of students with and without disabilities. Commonly, in classwide peer tutoring, students are paired and the class is divided in half. Points are awarded for tutoring behavior and academic responding during the tutoring session. At the end of the session, the half of the class with the most points earns a reward. In the current study, a fifth-grade teacher implemented classwide peer tutoring for multiplication facts. Instead of the traditional reinforcement system, a randomized classwide interdependent group contingency was implemented. Applying a multiple-probe design across problem sets, students demonstrated increased multiplication fact fluency across three problem sets. Discussion focuses on applied implications for contingency management when implementing classwide peer tutoring programs.