Treatment Seeking for Anxiety and Depression Among Black Adults: A Multilevel and Empirically Informed Psycho-Sociocultural Model

Black adults with anxiety and/or depressive disorders underutilize outpatient psychotherapy and pharmacological treatment compared to White adults. Notably, anxiety and depressive disorders tend to be chronic and Black individuals with these disorders experience greater functional impairment than White individuals. Documented racial disparities in mental health treatment initiation indicate a need for research that addresses culture-specific barriers to treatment. This review paper critically evaluates existing theoretical models of treatment seeking among Black adults to inform a novel integrated, culturally contextualized model. This model extends previous ones by incorporating factors relevant to treatment seeking among Black adults (e.g., racial identity, perceived discrimination, medical mistrust) and critically examines how these factors intersect with key factors at three levels of influence of the treatment seeking process: the individual level, the community level, and the societal level. We posit interactions among factors at the three levels of influence and how these may impact treatment seeking decisions among Black adults. This model informs suggestions for enhancing interventions designed to support outpatient service use among Black adults.     

The Effects of Images of African American Women in Hip Hop on Early Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Physical Attractiveness and Interpersonal Relationships

This qualitative study was designed to identify African American early adolescents’ subjective meanings of African American women’s sexuality through an examination of Stephens & Phillips (2003) sexual images—the Diva, Gold Digger, Freak, Dyke, Gangster Bitch, Sister Savior, Earth Mother, and Baby Mama. These eight sexual images both inform and reflect beliefs about African American women’s physical attractiveness. Interpersonal relationship decision making processes also were influenced by these conceptual frameworks of African American women’s sexuality. Findings from this study are important given the tendency of previous researchers to ignore race and intraethnic variations in studies of beliefs about attitudes toward sexuality.     

Infant observation: A range of questions and challenges for contemporary psychoanalysis1

The author attempts to integrate several perspectives within the field of infant observation that reflect the analyst's personal experience as a clinician, as a professor at the analytic institute and as a researcher in the field of psychoanalysis. Can infant observation contribute to analytic technique, theory and training? If so, what would be the nature of such contribution? To answer these questions, the author reviews the literature on infant observation from Freud to the present, highlighting Latin American contributions to this subject. She makes reference to the role of technological innovations, which have allowed videotaping, repeated observations, temporal segmentation and computerized programs, thus giving rise to microanalytic research. This discussion prompts the question about the contributions made by systematic research to clinical practice. To tackle this question, the author presents both a clinical vignette taken from her personal experience, and the current debate on this subject as it appears in the work of Daniel Stern and André Green. Finally, she presents some conclusions that are part of an ongoing debate in the psychoanalytic field.     

Unfair treatment and self-regulatory focus

Ample correlational evidence exists that perceived unfair treatment is negatively related to well-being, health, and goal striving but the underlying process is unclear. We hypothesized that effects are due in part to contextual priming of prevention focus and the negative consequences of chronic prevention-focused vigilance. Indeed, reasonable responses to unfair treatment—to avoid situations in which it occurs or if this is not possible, confront it head on—fit prevention self-regulatory focus response patterns. Results from three experiments support this notion. Priming stigmatized social category membership heightened students’ prevention (not promotion) focus (n = 117). Priming non-stigmatized social category membership (i.e., white) did not change prevention focus (n = 46). Priming prevention (not promotion) increased perceptions of unfair treatment (and aroused prevention-relevant fight or flight responses) in response to a negative ambiguous job situation among low and moderate income adults (n = 112).     

Indigenization and the history of psychology

This article argues for the development of a historical perspective to help understand the process of indigenization in psychology. The indigenization of psychology in both the United States and India is shown to be part of larger social, economic, and political processes. A center and periphery model of knowledge production and praxes is deployed to show how practices of scientific imperialism are used to maintain the hegemony of the center. It is argued that historical approaches may be useful to challenge and counter such practices. Finally, the authors call for a polycentric history of psychology that will correspond to the emerging polycentrism exemplified in indigenous psychologies.     

Finding a Way Back Home: A Spirituality of Exile after Hurricane Katrina

Three years ago breath took the form of Hurricane Katrina and passed through our bodies and our lives, leaving us forever changed. We all breathed her, but for those of us living on the Gulf Coast our encounter with Katrina was more intimate, our breathing more conscious, our memory more charged, our lives forever changed. My story takes me from the winds of Hurricane Katrina blasting through the Gulf Coast, through the tube of a machine that helped keep my son’s lung expanded, through the Sinai dessert and the valley of the dry bones, through the in-between spaces of grounded groundlessness, to the forests and rivers of the Berskhire Mountains, where I have relocated and started my life over. My spiritual journey “home” is a dynamic story of Earth, wind, fire, water, flesh, and Spirit.     

The bimodal bilingual brain: effects of sign language experience

Bimodal bilinguals are hearing individuals who know both a signed and a spoken language. Effects of bimodal bilingualism on behavior and brain organization are reviewed, and an fMRI investigation of the recognition of facial expressions by ASL-English bilinguals is reported. The fMRI results reveal separate effects of sign language and spoken language experience on activation patterns within the superior temporal sulcus. In addition, the strong left-lateralized activation for facial expression recognition previously observed for deaf signers was not observed for hearing signers. We conclude that both sign language experience and deafness can affect the neural organization for recognizing facial expressions, and we argue that bimodal bilinguals provide a unique window into the neurocognitive changes that occur with the acquisition of two languages.     

Christian Bioethics in Europe: In Defense against Reductionist Influences from the United States

Christian ideas have continued to inspire European bioethicsuntil now. The central thesis of this essay is that the open-mindednessof Roman Catholic and other Christian denominations in Europeis crucial for understanding why Christian ethics is so wellintegrated in the European culture. The essay describes firstthe institutional frameworks in which these Christian mainlyRoman Catholic ideas are developed. It analyzes further thedifference between the secular Anglo-American and European bioethicsas it has been influenced by these Christian ideas. It finallysummarizes the challenges to which Europe's Christian bioethicalidentity is presently exposed to. The essay states that theChristian inspiration of European bioethics is mainly connectedwith the ideologically moderate, tolerant, and dialogical participationof Christian bioethicists in the bioethical debate in Europe.