Health Locus of Control After Lung Transplantation: Implications for Managing Health

Health locus of control (HLC) beliefs may influence the health behaviors that patients perform on their own behalf. Likewise, the HLC beliefs that clinicians consider desirable may influence how active they encourage patients to be in managing health. It remains unclear how involved lung recipients want to be and how involved transplant clinicians believe they should be. The aims of this study were to describe HLC beliefs and behaviors manifested by recipients and clinicians in the setting of lung transplantation. Mixed-methods were used, including quantitative techniques to measure demographics, clinical characteristics, and HLC using the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC), and qualitative techniques to explore how HLC beliefs were manifest in the clinical setting. Nearly all participants manifested behaviors consistent with high internality and externality, highlighting the importance of holding ‘dual health locus of control’ beliefs for optimal health management and lending support for recipients and clinicians to share responsibility for managing post-transplant health.Funded by the Nursing & Social Sciences Council of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation.     

Unraveling Cultural Threads: A Qualitative Study of Culture and Ethnic Identity Among Urban Southwestern American Indian Youth Parents and Elders

We utilized qualitative methods to explore ethnic and cultural identity among urban Southwestern American Indian youth, parents, and elders. Twenty-four respondents ranging in age from approximately 13 to 90 years were interviewed in focus groups divided by age. Six major themes and seventeen sub-themes related to tribal and pan-American Indian ethnic identity were identified. Two important findings emerging from our study were that common ethnic identity constructs can be validated and new identity constructs discovered through qualitative methods. These and other findings suggest the importance of qualitative methods in better understanding cultural and ethnic identity. Of particular significance was the notion that the most salient and relevant identity constructs can be learned from the voices and perspectives of ethnic identity members themselves across generations, age, tribal groups, gender, and reservation and urban residence.     

Family Involvement in Residential Treatment: Staff, Parent, and Adolescent Perspectives

We conducted interviews with staff members, parents, and adolescents at a residential treatment center to examine the frequency, nature, and satisfaction with contact between parents and adolescents and parents and staff. We also assessed perceived barriers to family involvement and possible solutions for improving this involvement. Results indicated that there is more contact between parents and adolescents than in previous studies. In addition, contact between parents and staff occurred frequently, although there were discrepancies regarding their reasons for the contact. Most parents and adolescents reported that the amount of contact was adequate, but the majority of staff members perceived there to be not enough contact. Adolescents reported that there was not enough contact with secondary sources of support, most often other family members. Barriers to family involvement included transportation, parent responsibilities and personal problems, and legal issues. In addition, parents reported that strained family relationships and problematic adolescent behavior interfered with their involvement. The need for residential treatment centers to broaden services to include parents as well as members of the larger support network is discussed.     

亚里士多德关于以音乐教育培养少儿道德品行的思想探析

在快乐中培养少儿的道德品行是亚里士多德音乐教育思想的道德目标。在审美通感的基础上,通过道德移情进行理性灵魂的德性活动,是音乐教育培养少儿道德品行的心理机制。“执中”为善、积习成德是音乐教育培塑未来道德公民的基本途径。     

Tuning in emotionally: Associations of cultural exposure with distal and proximal emotional fit in acculturating youth

The more immigrant minorities are exposed to the majority culture, the more their emotional pattern fits that of majority culture members—a phenomenon termed emotional acculturation. To assess emotional fit, earlier studies compared minorities’ emotional experience with that of separate samples of “distant” majority members in their country of residence. We added “proximal” fit with the emotional experience of majority members in their social environment. Drawing on large random samples of immigrant minority and majority youth in Belgian high schools (N = 2,543), our study aimed (i) to test majority culture exposure and contact as predictors of emotional fit and (ii) to distinguish emotional fit with distal and proximal variants of majority culture. Minorities’ majority culture exposure predicted both distal and proximal emotional fit. In addition, contact with majority peers better predicted proximal fit. Our findings suggest that emotional acculturation is socially grounded in interactions with proximal majority members.     

Physicians’ gender bias in the diagnostic assessment of medically unexplained symptoms and its effect on patient–physician relations

Nonspecific, functional, and somatoform (NFS) syndromes is an umbrella term for various diagnoses with medically unexplained symptoms. These syndromes are more prevalent among women than among men, and associated with negative preconceptions that can impede rehabilitation. In two studies, we quantitatively assess how patients’ gender affects the diagnostic assessment of NFS syndromes, as well as the healthcare experiences of individuals diagnosed with NFS syndromes. In the first study, our vignette‐based experiment showed that Swedish general practitioners (N = 90) were gender biased in their diagnostic assessment of NFS syndromes, such that a female patient with back pain was more likely to be assigned a NFS syndrome compared to an otherwise identical male patient. In the second study, a large community sample of Swedish individuals with medically explained (n = 432) and unexplained pain (n = 521) evaluated their treating physician's relational conduct. Even after accounting for a variety of sociodemographic variables and other pain characteristics, women with at least one NFS syndrome percieved their physician's relational conduct as significantly poorer than other women as well as men with and without NFS syndromes. When women's pain is more likely than men's to be assessed as NFS, their rehabilitation could be prolonged as pertient alternative diagnoses and treatments are omittied and their negative healthcare experiences lower their volition to partake and persevere in treatment.     

New Perspectives on the Child‐ and Youth‐Serving Workforce in Low‐Resource Communities: Fostering Best Practices and Professional Development

The professionals and paraprofessionals who work daily with youth in low‐resource, marginalized communities are integral to youth wellbeing; yet, their professional development, and the factors that promote it, are not well understood. In this introduction to the special issue, Understanding and Strengthening the Child‐ and Youth‐Serving Workforce in Low‐Resource Communities, we focus on understudied practitioners operating in an array of sectors and settings, such as home visitors, mental health paraprofessionals, early childhood assistant teachers, teachers in low‐income countries, school resource officers, juvenile justice staff, and after‐school and community‐based program workers. We put forward a conceptual model detailing the interactive, layered set of proximal‐to‐distal ecological factors that influence the practice and professional development of these workers, and show how papers in the current issue address these layers in their examination of workforce development. We conclude with a summary of the contributions and lessons from this work – including the value of a whole‐person approach, the importance of sharing process across research stages, and the need to build on the foundation provided by community psychology and implementation science – toward the twin goals of understanding and building the skills and strengths of the workforce, and ultimately, enhancing youth development.     

An outcome evaluation of Functional Family Therapy for court‐involved youth

This article presents results of a study on the effectiveness of Functional Family Therapy (FFT), a family intervention designed to prevent delinquency. The sample includes 155 court‐involved youth. This study employs two complementary outcomes: court‐obtained data on recidivism and the clinical data on clients’ psychosocial functioning, the Strengths and Needs Assessment (SNA). Adolescents in the treatment and in the comparison groups experienced statistically significant improvements on the majority of the SNA domains. Although youths in the treatment group improved more, the differences between the groups were not statistically significant. Multivariate analysis showed that youths in FFT had significantly lower odds of recidivism as measured by reconvictions for drug offenses, property offenses and technical violations. The results suggest that FFT was effective in reducing recidivism, however, such reductions cannot be attributed to improvements in the SNA scores.