The Parent Alienation Syndrome: A Family Therapy and Collaborative Systems Approach to Amelioration,by L. Gottlieb

No abstract available for this article.     

Critical Issues in Causation and Treatment of Autism: Why Fads Continue to Flourish

The increasing incidence of autism and the lack of specific answers regarding causation have given rise to unproven educational interventions and medical treatments. Parents of a newly diagnosed child can easily fall prey to interventions that promise cures. These interventions may be harmful and, thus, pose one of the critical issues in special education today. This article will discuss some of the suspect interventions that have been popularized through the media (i.e., celebrities, journalists, and professional organizations). The authors argue that using the scientific method is clearly the antidote for pseudoscience; the need for accurate research-based decision making is apparent.     

Fostering Students’ Appraisals of the Relevance of History by Comparing Analogous Cases of an Enduring Human Issue: A Quasi-Experimental Study

To identify the challenges that students must meet to engage in effective self-directed inquiry, a class was followed for three years, from the fourth through the sixth grades, as they engaged in a sequence of progressively more demanding inquiry activities. Students made substantial progress in understanding the objectives of inquiry, identifying questions, attending to evidence, identifying patterns, making controlled comparisons, interpreting increasingly complex data, supporting claims, and drawing justified conclusions. Retaining awareness of inquiry objectives and integrating influences of multiple variables in predicting outcomes were two areas that remained challenging. A comparison group of seventh graders who had not been involved in the program displayed strikingly different approaches to an inquiry task, indicating that the skills identified here are not ones that develop in the absence of appropriate kinds of educational experiences.     

Child Personality as Moderator of Outcome in a School‐based Intervention for Preventing Externalising Behaviour

Studying moderators of intervention effects is essential to elucidate what works for whom. The present study investigated whether child personality moderates short‐term and follow‐up effects of an individualised preventive school‐based intervention for children with externalising behaviour. The sample consisted of 48 schools, with 264 fourth‐grade children displaying externalising behaviour (M_age = 10.2 years), randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 191) or no intervention control (n = 73) condition. Teachers and children reported at pretest, posttest and follow‐up test about reactive and proactive aggression. Child personality was assessed by teachers at pretest. Child conscientiousness moderated short‐term intervention effects, indicating that more organised and planful children benefited more from the intervention. Child extraversion moderated both short‐term and follow‐up intervention effects, with low extraverted children showing larger effects. These results affirm the importance of including personality as moderator of intervention effects in future studies, as interventions adapted to specific child traits might yield larger effects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Short‐term cognitive‐behavioral treatment in multicultural primary care of patients with longstanding backache

The efficacy of cognitive‐behavioral therapy in multi‐cultural primary care patients with longstanding backache is not evaluated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcome of a four weekly‐treatment given by primary care physicians regarding pain‐related worry, depression and severe pain and to determine which social, clinical or gender factors were associated with outcome.The study group consisted of 245 patients in consecutive order from 19 countries, 18 to 45 years, entering rehabilitation program because of longstanding backache. Prevalences of pain‐related worry and depression and severe pain was counted and compared before and after. Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds (OR; 95% CI) for persistent pain‐related worry and/or persistent depression and severe pain (VAS ≥ 50). The prevalences of pain‐related worry and depression were both significantly lower after treatment (pain‐related worry 83% before vs. 38% after; depression 43% before vs. 31% after). Also the number of patients scoring ≥ 50 VAS was a little, but significantly, fewer (68% vs. 61%). Use of interpreter doubled the risk of having persistent pain‐related worry (OR 2.1; 95% CI 1.1–4.1) but the risk was not significant regarding persistent depression (OR 1.8; 0.6‐5.4). The rating of VAS rating ≥ 50 after treatment was twice as high, OR 2.3 (95% CI 1.1–4.6) in the 38–45 year old age group. To conclude, a focus on pain ideas reduced pain‐related worry and depression in these patients with various sociocultural backgrounds and longstanding backache.     

Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History,Religion, and Culture

Although Rodney Stark is best known for his work on religious economies, he has recently turned his attention to the social effects of monotheism. If we look carefully on the theoretical trajectory evident in this recent work, what we find is a social-evolutionary approach to religion that was prevalent in the 19th century, but long ago assumed by most academics to be discredited. Furthermore, as becomes increasingly evident going through this series, the particular social-evolutionary sequence that Stark constructs has been shaped by a vision of Protestant triumphalism, and a privileging of evangelical Protestantism, that also belongs to an earlier time. While it would easy to ignore Stark's work (and the last two books in this series do seem to have been ignored in academic circles), there are reasons (which include the popular appeal of his work and his treatment of Islam) for taking his work seriously.     

Boehme's mysticism

David Walsh, The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfilment: A Stud.)' of Jacob Boehme. Gainesville, University of Florida Humanities Monographs, 53. x + 139 pp.     

Psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and adolescents: a critical review of the evidence base

For many years psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies have been considered to lack a credible evidence-base and have consistently failed to appear in lists of ‘empirically supported treatments’. This study systematically reviews the research evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and young people. The researchers identified 34 separate studies that met criteria for inclusion, including nine randomised controlled trials. While many of the studies reported are limited by sample size and lack of control groups, the review indicates that there is increasing evidence to suggest the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for children and adolescents. The article aims to provide as complete a picture as possible of the existing evidence base, thereby enabling more refined questions to be asked regarding the nature of the current evidence and gaps requiring further exploration.     

Effect of the Healthy MOMs Lifestyle Intervention on Reducing Depressive Symptoms Among Pregnant Latinas

Depression during the prenatal and postpartum periods is associated with poor maternal, perinatal and child outcomes. This study examines the effectiveness of a culturally and linguistically tailored, social support-based, healthy lifestyle intervention led by trained community health workers in reducing depressive symptoms among pregnant and early postpartum Latinas. A sample of 275 pregnant Latinas was randomized to the Healthy MOMs Healthy Lifestyle Intervention (MOMs) or the Healthy Pregnancy Education (control) group. More than one-third of participants were at risk for depression at baseline. MOMs participants were less likely than control group participants to be at risk for depression at follow-up. Between baseline and 6 weeks postpartum, MOMs participants experienced a significant decline in depressive symptoms; control participants experienced a marginally significant decline. For MOMs participants, most of this decline occurred during the pregnancy intervention period, a time when no change occurred for control participants. The change in depressive symptoms during this period was greater among MOMs than control participants (“intervention effect”). From baseline to postpartum, there was a significant intervention effect among non-English-speaking women only. These findings provide evidence that a community-planned, culturally tailored healthy lifestyle intervention led by community health workers can reduce depressive symptoms among pregnant, Spanish-speaking Latinas.