Recent and emerging trends in marital and family therapy regulation

The number of states in the United States that formally credential marital and family therapists has tripled to 31 during the last decade. This paper reviews and compares the basic licensure and certification requirements in these states, and explores a number of broad issues currently confronting the field of marital and family therapy regulation. Several recommendations for improving the quality of MFT regulation are also provided.president of the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards.     

Establishing Clinical Neuropsychology in Germany Scientific,Professional, Political,and Legal Issues

German psychologists may have been first to establish a university curriculum in psychology with the expressed purpose to provide—after its successful completion—a certificate of professional qualification. This Diplom-Prüfungsordnung (Diploma Examination Regulation) was accepted nationwide in 1941. However, it took over fifty more years before some progress toward the political and legal acceptance of autonomous clinical activities of psychologists was made. Legislation to secure these advances is still pending. In this context the efforts to establish the profession of clinical neuropsychology are described and discussed within the historical development of professional psychology in Germany with special emphasis on the problems of compromises within the force fields of science and professional politics. Finally, the postgraduate training as well as the certification and accreditation procedures developed by the Gesellschaft für Neuropsychologie, the Society of German-speaking neuropsychologists, are presented.     

Interdivisional Healthcare Committee: Speaking with One Voice on Cross-Cutting Issues in Health Care Psychology

One of the greatest challenges facing psychology in health settings today is the need for unification on critical issues of client access, workforce oversupply, education and training, and outcomes evalutions. Health care psychology specialty areas can no longer afford to operate in parallel. A unified vision is needed to overcome threats to the viability of the profession and to maximize the potential for achieving common goals. The current paper describes the formation of the Interdivisional Healthcare Committee (IHC), whose purpose is to establish a common agenda for promoting the professional, educational, and scientific goals of health care psychology. The IHC's initiative to develop new CPT codes for increasing access to psychologists' services in health care settings is outlined.     

FIELD REPLICATION OF CLASSWIDE PEER TUTORING

We conducted a large-scale field replication study of classwide peer tutoring applied to spelling instruction (Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall, 1984). Two hundred and eleven inner-city students in four schools participated during their first- and second-grade school years. The effects of classwide peer tutoring were compared to teacher instructional procedures and pretest probes using a group replication design (Barlow, Hayes, & Nelson, 1984). Analysis of group and individual results indicated that (a) both teacher instructional procedures and classwide peer tutoring were effective in increasing spelling performance above pretest levels, (b) peer tutoring produced statistically greater gains relative to the teachers' procedures for both low and high student groups formed on pretest levels, (c) these outcomes were representative of groups, classes, individuals, and years during the project, and (d) participant satisfaction with the program was generally high. A separate analysis of the social importance of treatment outcome revealed differential findings for low and high groups related to pretest levels. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Visioning Family-Centered Care in Genetics: What Parents and Providers Have to Say

The purpose of this multisite exploratory research study involving focus groups of consumers and service providers was to generate stakeholder input for a statewide strategic plan for genetic services in the southwestern region of the United States. This article describes the qualitative methods by which the data were collected and summarizes major themes in participants’ perceptions about genetic services. It also describes processes related to obtaining genetic services and characteristics of an ideal service delivery system for children affected by genetic disorders and the families that care for them. Implications for practice and policy are also reviewed.     

Psychosocial Issues That Face Patients With Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease: The Role of Genetic Counseling

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is a hereditary debilitating progressive muscular atrophy and sensory neuropathy of the distal extremities. CMT is usually nonlife threatening. Signs of the disease usually present in childhood or in young adulthood and the level of disability can be variable within and between families. Research addressing specific psychosocial and emotional issues faced by individuals with CMT is limited. Fourteen adults with a clinical and/or molecular diagnosis of CMT (ages 32–74 years) consented to an audio taped interview. The format of the interview was based around an informal questionnaire to prompt and guide the interviewee to describe their experiences of living with a disabling genetic disorder. The interviews focused on their experiences of first symptoms and diagnosis, their life experience with CMT, their limitations due to disability and the role of genetic counseling. This study identifies and explores life issues that individuals with CMT may face, specifically grief over the loss of independence, emotional pain and stress such as embarrassment and guilt of passing on a gene mutation, impact on quality of life, the impact of wearing orthopedic devices, and fear of progressive disability. Our findings suggest that that there are emotional and psychosocial issues specific to affected individuals at different life stages and genetic counselors need to be aware of these issues in order to provide age appropriate support and advice to individuals affected by CMT.     

A rose by any other name: Maintaining the name and highlighting the uniqueness of psychology as a health care profession

In this article, we reply to the comments made by Holden and Levant (preceding articles). While we agree with their goals of expanding the scope of practice of psychology, standardizing training, and educating the public and other health care professionals about the field of clinical psychology, we do not agree that changing the discipline's name to psychological physician is a necessary or sufficient means to these ends. We outline the bases for our disagreement with the name change proposal and provide other proposals for reaching the goals set forth by Holden and Levant.     

Life events and personality predicting loneliness among centenarians: findings from the Georgia Centenarian Study

Regarding the purpose of this study, the researchers analyzed the roles that both life events (life-time positive events and life-time negative events) and personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Trust, Competence, and Ideas) played in participants of the Georgia Centenarian Study. The researchers analyzed these variables to determine whether they predicted loneliness. Analyses indicated that life-time negative events significantly predicted loneliness. In essence, the higher was the number of life-time negative life events, the higher was the loneliness score. Moreover, Neuroticism, Competence, and Ideas were all significant predictors of loneliness. The higher was the level of Neuroticism and intellectual curiosity, the higher was the level of loneliness, whereas the lower was the level of Competence, the higher was the level of loneliness. In addition, both life-time positive and life-time negative life events were significant predictors of Neuroticism. The higher was the number of life-time positive events, the lower was the level of Neuroticism, and the higher was the number of life-time negative events, the greater was the level of Neuroticism. These results indicated that life-time negative events indirectly affect loneliness via Neuroticism. Last, our results indicated that the Competence facet mediated the relationship between lifetime negative life events and loneliness. Life-time negative life events significantly affected centenarians' perceived competence, and Competence in turn significantly affected the centenarians' loneliness. These results as a whole not only add to our understanding of the link between personality and loneliness, but also provide new insight into how life events predict loneliness.     

Does the Defining Issues Test Measure Ethical Judgment Ability or Political Position?

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the construct validity of the Defining Issues Test of ethical judgment (DIT/DIT-2). Alleging a political bias in the test, Emler and colleagues (1983, 1998, 1999, 2007), show that conservatives score higher when asked to fake as liberals, implying that they understand the reasoning associated with “higher” moral development but avoid items they see as liberally biased. DIT proponents challenge the internal validity of faking studies, advocating an explained-variance validation. This study takes a new approach: Adult participants complete the DIT-2, then evaluate the raw responses of others to discern political orientation and ethical development. Results show that individuals scoring higher on the DIT-2 rank others' ethical judgment in a way consistent with DIT-2-based rankings. Accuracy at assessing political orientation, however, is low. Results support the DIT-2's validity as a measure of ethical development, not an expression of political position.