Family Therapy in India: A New Profession in an Ancient Land?

This paper examines the need for family therapy in India and its evolution as an integrated academic discipline and widespread form of clinical practice. Included is a discussion of the numerous factors placing Indian families at risk today, both common and more serious child, marital, and family difficulties, the current status of mental health services and minimal emphasis on family-based treatment, and the potential benefits of family therapy to such a radically diverse and rapidly changing society. Targets of and settings for family therapy training are highlighted, and a brief outline of a training-the-trainer approach is provided.     

奖赏结构与结果效价对儿童自我—他人成就归因与评价的影响

本研究旨在考察不同的奖赏结构和结果效价对儿童自我-他人成就归因、自我-他人奖赏评价的影响。实验采用2×2×2混合设计,其中自我-他人归因与评价为被试内设计。被试为小学五年级学生74名(男生36人,女生38人),实验通过解决一系列迷津测验来创设成功和失败情境。实验结果表明,奖赏结构对儿童自我-他人能力归因的影响、奖赏结构与自我-他人归因的交互作用对能力归因的影响、自我-他人运气归因均达到了显著性水平;努力和任务难度归因不显著;儿童对自我和他人的成就结果倾向于做能力和运气归因,较为忽略努力和任务难度在成就行为中的作用。     

初中生心理健康与气质、父母教养方式的关系

本研究从心理健康出发,采用《中学生心理健康量表》、《艾森克人格问卷》(儿童版)、《父母教养方式评定量表》对329名初中学生进行测量,探求初中生心理健康与气质、父母教养方式的关系。研究结果发现,初中生的心理健康与气质、家庭教养方式三者间存在交互作用,气质和家庭教养方式对心理健康有影响,气质是某些父母教养方式因子与心理健康的中介因素;并且气质特点与某些父母教养方式对初中生心理健康有较强的预测效应。     

戴震义理之学中的人性结构模式

戴震的人性学说是其义理之学的重要组成部分,是建构在其坚实的“血气心知”基础之上的。戴震论“性“,已不单纯局限于“性”之自身,而是具有超越“性”自身的人类学或伦理学的含义。本文将从人性的生成阶段、人性的自然结构和社会结构等方面对戴震的人性结构模式学说做一番梳理。     

The Michigan infant mental health home visiting model

Selma Fraiberg's pioneering work with infants, toddlers, and families over 40 years ago led to the development of a field in which professionals from multiple disciplines learned to work with or on behalf of infants, very young children, their parents, and the relationships that bind them together. The intent was to promote social and emotional health through enhancing the security of early developing parent–child relationships in the first years of life (Fraiberg, 2018). Called infant mental health (IMH), practitioners from fields of health, education, social work, psychology, human development, nursing, pediatrics, and psychiatry specialize in supporting the optimal development of infants and the developing relationship between infants and their caregivers. When a baby is born into optimal circumstances, to parents free of undue economic and psychological stressors and who are emotionally ready to provide care and nurturing for an infant's needs, an IMH approach may be offered as promotion or prevention, with the goal of supporting new parent(s) in developing confidence in their capacity to understand and meet the needs of the tiny human they are coming to know and care for. However, when parental history is fraught with abandonment, loss, abuse or neglect, or the current environment is replete with economic insecurity, threats to survival due to interpersonal or community violence, social isolation, mental illness, or substance abuse, the work of the IMH therapist may require intervention or intensive treatment and becomes more psychotherapeutic in nature. The underlying therapeutic goal is to create a context in which the baby develops within the environment of a parent's nurturing care without the psychological impingement that parental history of trauma or loss or current stressors such as isolation, poverty, or the birth of a child with special needs, can incur.     

Decision-making styles and mental health—A person-oriented approach through clustering

Previous research examining the associations between decision-making styles and mental health has neglected to look at the configurations of styles. The study identifies mutually exclusive groups of people according to their combination of the five decision-making styles and examines the differences between them in mental health-related variables in two studies. In Study 1, decision-making styles, mental health indicators (well-being, depression, stress) and socio-psychological protective factors (resilience, optimism, social support) were examined in university students in two rounds 1 year apart. A cluster analysis revealed three distinct decision profiles—independent/nonintuitive, avoidant/spontaneous and rational/nonavoidant. The best values of mental health-related variables were found in the rational/nonavoidant profile and the most negative values in the avoidant/spontaneous profile. The decision-making styles were stable after 1 year although they were not able to explain changes in mental health-related variables. Study 2 identified three similar clusters in a more general sample—spontaneous/irrational, dependent/avoidant and rational/nonavoidant—with the lowest level of psychological distress symptoms in the rational/nonavoidant cluster. The study highlights the usefulness of combinations of decision-making styles with regard to mental health as well as noting their specificity according to sample characteristics.     

ANTISTRUCTURE AND THE ROOTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

The cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion offer a standard model of religious representations, but no equivalent paradigm for investigating religiously interpreted altered states of consciousness (religious ASCs). Here, I describe a neo-Durkheimian framework for studying religious ASCs that centralizes social predictive cognition. Within a processual model of ritual, ritual behaviors toggle between reinforcing normative social structures and downplaying them. Specifically, antistructural ritual shifts cognitive focus away from conventional affordances, collective intentionality, and social prediction, and toward physical affordances and behavioral motivations that make few references to others’ intentional states. Using synchrony and dance as paradigmatic examples of antistructural ritual that stimulate religious ASCs, I assemble literature from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of language to offer fruitful empirical predictions and opportunities for testing based on this framework. Among the empirical predictions is that antistructural ritual may provide for cultural change in religions when religions are construed as complex adaptive systems.     

Mental Health Literacy and Peer-to-Peer Counseling Referrals Among Community College Students

Mental health literacy (MHL) has utility for promoting peer-to-peer referrals to mental health support services among university students. However, there is a gap in the extant literature about the potential usefulness of MHL for supporting the mental health of community college students, a population facing a number of mental health conditions. The authors examined the construct validity and the utility of 3 dimensions of MHL as predictors of peer-to-peer referrals to the counseling center among community college students. Results of confirmatory factor analyses supported the dimensionality of the instrumentation and a hierarchical logistic regression analysis revealed that MHL was a significant positive predictor of peer-to-peer referrals to the counseling center. Implications for counseling practice and future research are discussed.