Attitudes towards psychological treatment among older Australians

Reasons behind older adults' under‐utilisation of mental health services are complex. Barriers to access to mental health services for this group include service access and availability, attitudes of medical and mental health professionals, and attitudes of older people themselves. This questionnaire‐based study sought to investigate variables that may influence attitudes towards psychological help seeking among a late mid‐age–young‐old Australian sample of 159 community‐dwelling adults. The results suggest that attitudes towards seeking psychological help in this population were relatively positive. In addition, >50% of participants in the sample indicated that they had sought treatment for emotional or psychological difficulties in the past, with the greatest proportion of those who sought help noting that it was for “family problems” (56%). The findings suggest that negative attitudes to help seeking in this age group may not be as pervasive as previously assumed, and that help‐seeking behaviours may be high among those with positive attitudes towards help seeking.     

Publication trends in individual DSM personality disorders: 1971–2015

Growth in personality disorder research has been documented by previous authors up to 1995. The aim of the present study was to extend this by examining publications rates for individual DSM personality disorders over the period 1971–2005, and making projections to 2015 based on these data. It was found that personality disorder research has grown in absolute terms, and as a proportion of overall psychopathology research. Research output is dominated by borderline personality disorder, with strong publication rates in other conditions such as antisocial and schizotypal personality disorders. In contrast, several personality disorders such as schizoid and paranoid personality disorder have failed to attract research interest. Based on current projections, there is expected to be no research output in 2015 for schizoid personality disorder. It was found that the rate of publications for personality disorders was not influenced by the publication of the last three revisions of the DSM diagnostic criteria. Several potential explanations such as the difficulty in conducting certain types of personality disorder research, and the validity of the current DSM diagnostic taxonomy are discussed.     

Advances in Latino Family Research: Cultural Adaptations of Evidence-Based Interventions

The stark contrast between frequent calls for research and practice that are applicable across a broad spectrum of cultural and ethnically diverse groups and the dearth of empirical knowledge about Latino families provided the impetus for this special issue on advances in Latino family research. A focus on empirically based practice frames the issue, focusing specifically on how concepts (expressed emotion, parenting style) can be used within interventions, how Latino parents perceive efforts to deliver evidence-based interventions, and how pilot projects that delivered culturally adapted interventions in three separate cities impacted family functioning. In all, the introduction highlights the complexities for researchers in meeting the needs of the field to ensure that effective interventions are applicable across cultural groups. Meeting the challenges is important to address the need of the growing Latino population. Advances in intervention research with ethnic minorities also stand to contribute to the advancement of intervention research broadly. This special issue provides examples of efforts that are underway to better understand what treatments work for Latino families, provided by whom, for what specific problems, and in which specific circumstances, paving the way to begin attempting to answer a challenge posed more than 40 years ago by Gordon Paul.     

Human‐Animal Bonds I: The Relational Significance of Companion Animals

The importance of human‐animal bonds has been documented throughout history, across cultures, and in recent research. However, attachments with companion animals have been undervalued and even pathologized in the field of mental health. This article briefly surveys the evolution of human‐animal bonds, reviews research on their health and mental health benefits, and examines their profound relational significance across the life course. Finally, the emerging field of animal‐assisted interventions is described, noting applications in hospital and eldercare settings, and in innovative school, prison, farm, and community programs. The aim of this overview paper is to stimulate more attention to these vital bonds in systems‐oriented theory, practice, and research. A companion paper in this issue focuses on the role of pets and relational dynamics in family systems and family therapy ( Walsh, 2009a ).     

Multidimensional Family Therapy HIV/STD Risk-Reduction Intervention: An Integrative Family-Based Model for Drug-Involved Juvenile Offenders

Drug and juvenile justice involved youths show remarkably high rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted disease (STD) risk behaviors. However, existing interventions aimed at reducing adolescent HIV risk behavior have rarely targeted these vulnerable young adolescents, and many approaches focus on individual-level change without attention to family or contextual influences. We describe a new, family-based HIV/STD prevention model that embeds HIV/STD focused multifamily groups within an adolescent drug abuse and delinquency evidence-based treatment, Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT). The approach has been evaluated in a multisite randomized clinical trial with juvenile justice involved youths in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies ( http://www.cjdats.org ). Preliminary baseline to 6-month outcomes are promising. We describe research on family risk and protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors, and offer a rationale for family-based approaches to reduce HIV/STD risk in this population. We describe the development and implementation of the Multidimensional Family Therapy HIV/STD risk-reduction intervention (MDFT-HIV/STD) in terms of using multifamily groups and their integration in standard MDFT and also offers a clinical vignette. The potential significance of this empirically based intervention development work is high; MDFT-HIV/STD is the first model to address largely unmet HIV/STD prevention and sexual health needs of substance abusing juvenile offenders within the context of a family-oriented evidence-based intervention.     

'My capital secret': Literature and the psychoanalytic agon

Taking as my departure point Freud 's unequivocal claim in The Question of Lay Analysis that psychoanalytic education should include "the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the science of literature" ( Freud, 1926b, p . 246), I advocate for an integration of psychoanalysis with the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences in psychoanalytic training. Foundations in these fields are not only acceptable as preliminary to clinical training but will also provide the diverse intellectual climate that is urgently needed in psychoanalytic institutes whose discursive range is often quite narrow. To provide one example of the salutary effect of such disciplinary integration on clinical practice, I illustrate how the transformative power of literature provides compelling metaphors for the psychoanalytic encounter. Through an example drawn from within my own experience as literary critic and psychoanalyst, I describe the ways that the troubling tensions in Milton's Samson Agonistes functioned to illuminate, for me, an analysand 's 'capital secret'.     

Learning, risk attitude and hot stoves in restless bandit problems

This research examines decisions from experience in restless bandit problems. Two experiments revealed four main effects. (1) Risk neutrality: the typical participant did not learn to become risk averse, a contradiction of the hot stove effect. (2) Sensitivity to the transition probabilities that govern the Markov process. (3) Positive recency: the probability of a risky choice being repeated was higher after a win than after a loss. (4) Inertia: the probability of a risky choice being repeated following a loss was higher than the probability of a risky choice after a safe choice. These results can be described with a simple contingent sampler model, which assumes that choices are made based on small samples of experiences contingent on the current state.     

Parental involvement in children's learning: Comparing parents of children with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

The present study examined involvement in children's learning among parents of 101 children between 8 and 12 years of age (53 parents of children with ADHD, 48 parents of children without ADHD). Compared to parents of children without ADHD, parents of children with ADHD reported lower self-efficacy in their ability to help their children, felt less welcome and supported by their children's schools and teachers, and perceived less time and energy for involvement in their children's academic lives. Mothers of children with and without ADHD reported similar types and levels of involvement behaviors in the home. Fathers of children with ADHD reported being more disengaged from their children's learning and using more coercive and punitive interactions regarding their children's achievement compared to fathers of children without ADHD. These findings underscore the difficulties in parent-supported learning practices and home-school collaboration initiatives faced by parents of children with ADHD and educators alike. Implications for school psychology practice are discussed.     

Is knowledge a natural kind?

The project of treating knowledge as an empirical object of study has gained popularity in recent naturalistic epistemology. It is argued here that the assumption that such an object of study exists is in tension with other central elements of naturalistic philosophy. Two hypotheses are considered. In the first, “knowledge” is hypothesized to refer to mental states causally responsible for the behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the relational character of truth creates a problem. In the second hypothesis “knowledge” is hypothesized to refer to mental states causally responsible for the evolutionarily successful behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the problem lies in the fact that evolution by natural selection is not necessarily conducive to truth. The result does not necessarily amount to eliminativism, however, since the naturalist may consistently reject the condition of truth that lies behind these problems.     

Determination,realization and mental causation

How can mental properties bring about physical effects, as they seem to do, given that the physical realizers of the mental goings-on are already sufficient to cause these effects? This question gives rise to the problem of mental causation (MC) and its associated threats of causal overdetermination, mental causal exclusion, and mental causal irrelevance. Some (e.g., Cynthia and Graham Macdonald, and Stephen Yablo) have suggested that understanding mental-physical realization in terms of the determinable/determinate relation (henceforth, ‘determination’) provides the key to solving the problem of MC: if mental properties are determinables of their physical realizers, then (since determinables and determinates are distinct, yet don’t causally compete) all three threats may be avoided. Not everyone agrees that determination can do this good work, however. Some (e.g., Douglas Ehring, Eric Funkhauser, and Sven Walter) object that mental-physical realization can’t be determination, since such realization lacks one or other characteristic feature of determination. I argue that on a proper understanding of the features of determination key to solving the problem of MC these arguments can be resisted.