The Relationship Between Trajectories of Family/Cultural Stressors and Depression and Suicidal Ideation Among Substance Using Mexican-American Adults

We used an intersectional minority stress perspective to examine the association between family/cultural stress and mental health among substance-using Mexican-Americans. Employing a unique longitudinal sample of 239 socioeconomically disadvantaged, non-injecting heroin-using Mexican-Americans from San Antonio, Texas, we examined how culturally relevant stressors are related to depression and suicidal ideation. First, we identified depression and suicidal ideation prevalence rates for this disadvantaged sample. Second, we determined how cultural stress is experienced over time using stress trajectories. Third, we evaluated how family/cultural stressors and stress trajectories are related to depression and suicidal ideation outcomes. Results showed high rates of baseline depression (24 %) and suicidal ideation (30 %). We used latent class growth analysis to identify three primary stress trajectories (stable, high but decreasing, and increasing) over three time points during 1 year. We found that the increasing stressors trajectory was associated with higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation, and that stress trajectories had unique relationships with mental illness. We also showed that baseline stressors, sum stressors, and high but decreasing stressors maintained positive associations with mental illness after controlling for baseline depression. Our results highlight the importance of focusing on within-group, culturally specific stressors and addressing both operant and cumulative stressors in the study of mental health for marginalized populations and suggest the importance of early intervention in minimizing stressors.     

Associations between cortical thickness and general intelligence in children,adolescents and young adults

Neuroimaging research indicates that human intellectual ability is related to brain structure including the thickness of the cerebral cortex. Most studies indicate that general intelligence is positively associated with cortical thickness in areas of association cortex distributed throughout both brain hemispheres. In this study, we performed a cortical thickness mapping analysis on data from 182 healthy typically developing males and females ages 9 to 24 years to identify correlates of general intelligence (g) scores. To determine if these correlates also mediate associations of specific cognitive abilities with cortical thickness, we regressed specific cognitive test scores on g scores and analyzed the residuals with respect to cortical thickness. The effect of age on the association between cortical thickness and intelligence was examined. We found a widely distributed pattern of positive associations between cortical thickness and g scores, as derived from the first unrotated principal factor of a factor analysis of Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) subtest scores. After WASI specific cognitive subtest scores were regressed on g factor scores, the residual score variances did not correlate significantly with cortical thickness in the full sample with age covaried. When participants were grouped at the age median, significant positive associations of cortical thickness were obtained in the older group for g-residualized scores on Block Design (a measure of visual-motor integrative processing) while significant negative associations of cortical thickness were observed in the younger group for g-residualized Vocabulary scores. These results regarding correlates of general intelligence are concordant with the existing literature, while the findings from younger versus older subgroups have implications for future research on brain structural correlates of specific cognitive abilities, as well as the cognitive domain specificity of behavioral performance correlates of normative gray matter thinning during adolescence.     

Assessing the role of aggression,empathy, and self‐serving cognitive distortions in trait emotional manipulation

This study extended the examination of the predictors of emotional manipulation. Participants (N = 243) completed measures of trait emotional manipulation, emotional intelligence, social skills, psychopathy, aggression, empathy, and self‐serving cognitive distortions in a cross‐sectional correlational design. For males, higher levels of emotional intelligence, social information processing, indirect aggression, and self‐serving cognitive distortions significantly predicted emotional manipulation. For females, being younger, higher levels of emotional intelligence, indirect aggression, primary psychopathic traits, and lower levels of social awareness significantly predicted emotional manipulation. However for females, emotional intelligence acted as a suppressor. These findings support previous indications that the mechanisms behind emotional manipulation differ as a function of gender. Future research could include ability, rather than trait measures of emotional manipulation, as well as the role of context (such as intimate relationships or workplace environments), thereby allowing additional examination of the nomological network of emotional manipulation.     

Voices of African Traditional Healers: Cultural Context and Implications for the Practice of Counselling in Sub-Saharan Africa

The healing paradigm implicit in many sub-Saharan African cultures is embedded in African cosmology, and thus the recognition of this is essential for understanding Traditional African Healing practices and implementing collaborative counselling practices. To this end, this article focuses on the cultural importance, or voice, of traditional healers in sub-Saharan Africa. The current article uses an ethnographic approach to analyse systematically the cultural context of indigenous healing practices in sub-Saharan Africa. The anthropological importance of Traditional Healing practitioners, the context of healing, and the changing legal and ethical status of Traditional Healers are addressed as pivotal in furthering the development of this crucial, yet under utilized resource. The authors propose that such cultural understanding is highly relevant to the work of professional counselors.     

Emotional Intelligence and the Identity Negotiation of a Racial Minority Group in a Majority School Context

This article describes the possible impact of emotional intelligence on identity negotiation of a racial minority group in a majority school context. The study investigated the adjustment and functioning of racial minority groups in majority school contexts, as well as the identity negotiation associated with it, and determined whether there is a correlation between the former and the Emotional Intelligence (EI) of the participants. Participants were 16 black and 21 white learners attending two schools where they were in the minority (mean age = 16.23 years; SD = 1.49 years). The learners attended Grades 9–12. Data were first organised, after which themes and patterns were identified, and the data appraised and categorised (Creswell, 2007), after which a comparison was drawn between the identified categories of existing knowledge. Findings suggest that racial integration in both high schools actually occurred in name only; most participants chose to mingle within their own racial groups and the black participants in particular were exposed to racism, discrimination and prejudice on a regular basis. Despite the necessary steps taken and implemented by government in order to oppose racism in the country and promote racial integration in schools, it seems that the consequences of apartheid remain for the foreseeable future.     

Chinese Christianity in international perspective: some remarks on ecclesiology and fundamental concepts engaging East and West

ABSTRACT

In Chinese legislation on the Church as well as in the theological debate in China and, the concepts of religion and Christianity predominate, depending, from a historical perspective, on the influence of nineteenth-century philosophical and theological ideas from the West, conveyed by socialist political theory, by the weak ecclesiology in missionary societies operatingin China before 1949, and influential theologians setting the scene. The idea of Sinicisation contributed to the perpetuation of the nineteenth-century ideas of religion and Christianity in China. Today, however, there are signs of change. The churches in the accelerating multi-modernity in China wishto clarify what is unique for the Christian Church. Sometimes, however, what is characteristic of the Church in China is also characteristic of the Church in many other places in the world.     

One mosque and the negotiation of German Islam

In the last half century (pious) Muslims and their communities have become integral parts of German cities. They are creative cultural producers and religiously inspired urban citizens. Mosques are central nodes in urban Muslim religious and cultural geographies where believers negotiate pious identities and lifeworlds, configure pious public personae and modes of civic participation. In this paper I introduce the Al-Nour Mosque as a unique node in the religious and cultural geography of the southern German state capital of Stuttgart. I examine this mosque as an urban space where individual and communal religiosities and religious cultures are discussed, formulated, tested and practised. My central question is how urban culture and religion are negotiated in the context of a mosque community. I argue that urban culture and religion are negotiated not only in mainstream public spaces or established churches but also in invisible places like mosques. Based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork in Stuttgart, I analyse the creative role of the Al-Nour Mosque in the construction of religious subjectivities, negotiations of urban religiosities and religiously inspired urban cultures. Analysing exemplary events, activities, cultural and religious negotiations in the Al-Nour Mosque, I demonstrate that places like the Al-Nour Mosque are dynamic elements of the urban religious and cultural geography.     

Physical,Psychological and Social Adaptation of African American Nuns to Their Religious Communities as They Age: Implications for Aging in Place

ABSTRACT

This study examined the association between health status, stress, depression, satisfaction with the relationship with the religious community, alienation from significant persons, racial/cultural identity and “aging in place,” as measured by length of time in the same religious community, for a purposive sample of 72 African American nuns. Aging in place was significantly associated with perceptions of better health status, less stress and depression and greater satisfaction with relationships with the religious community. However, the study also found that the longer the nuns lived in their respective communities, the less racially/culturally identified they became. These findings underscore the need for finding ways to keep nuns in their religious communities as they age and to provide avenues of racial/cultural expression for African American nuns.     

Introducing Assertiveness Training in Hungary

Abstract

The preliminary results of an evaluation of a systematic assertiveness training programme (based on a cognitive-behavioural approach) in psychiatric care in Hungary are presented. The method adopted was specific to the Hungarian/Middle-European circumstances since people had difficulty in exercising their personal rights in the past. In groups of “neurotic” patients and comparison subjects three questionnaires (the Rathus-scale (R), the Assertiveness Inventory (AI) and the Uncertainty Questionnaire (UQ)) were administered at the beginning and at the end of the treatment. The training programme consisted of eight sessions with an emphasis on education about assertiveness and on the practice of skills such as saying “no” or standing up for oneself. A statistical analysis indicated significant improvement in the social skills of the participants, while an item analysis showed high internal consistency in all three questionnaires, and a concurrent validity analysis revealed a strong correlation between the Rathus-scale and the Assertiveness Inventory. The results indicate that assertiveness training can be used effectively in mental health care in Hungary.     

智慧:结构、类型、测量及与相关变量的关系

智慧是个体在其智力与知识的基础上,经由经验与练习习得的一种德才兼备的综合心理素质,包括聪明才智与良好品德两大成份.智慧可分为常规智慧与应变智慧、群体智慧与组织智慧、个人智慧与一般智慧、德慧与物慧等,可用三维智慧量表、自我评估智慧量表以及智慧发展量表等进行测量,并与年龄、性别、文化、教育、人格、思维方式、智力等存在重要关联.今后应该深入探究智慧的概念与结构,拓展其研究方法、测量工具与教育策略以及开展中国化研究.