COVID-19 Pandemic: Applying a Multisystemic Lens

The COVID-19 pandemic has a pervasive effect on all aspects of family life. We can distinguish the collective societal and community effects of the global pandemic and the risk and disease impact for individuals and families. This paper draws on Rolland’s Family Systems-Illness (FSI) model to describe some of the unique challenges through a multisystemic lens. Highlighting the pattern of psychosocial issues of COVID-19 over time, discussion emphasizes the evolving interplay of larger systems public health pandemic challenges and mitigation strategies with individual and family processes. The paper addresses issues of coping with myriad Covid-19 uncertainties in the initial crisis wave and evolving phases of the pandemic in the context of individual and family development, pre-existing illness or disability, and racial and socio-economic disparities. The discussion offers recommendations for timely family oriented consultation and psychoeducation, and for healthcare clinician self-care.     

Assessing adolescents' personality with the NEO PI-R

The suitability of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to assess adolescents' personality traits was investigated in an unselected heterogeneous sample of 469 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. They were further administered the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) to allow an examination of convergent and discriminant validity. The adult NEO PI-R factor structure proved to be highly replicable in the sample of adolescents, with all facet scales primarily loading on the expected factors, independent of the age group. Domain and facet internal consistency coefficients were comparable to those obtained in adult samples, with less than 12% of the items showing corrected item-facet correlations below absolute value .20. Although, in general, adolescents reported few difficulties with the comprehensibility of the items, they tend to report more problems with the Openness to Ideas (05) and Openness to Values (06) items. Correlations between NEO PI-R and HiPIC scales underscored the convergent and discriminant validity of the NEO facets and HiPIC scales. It was concluded that the NEO PI-R in its present form is useful for assessing adolescents' traits at the primary level, but additional research is necessary to infer the most appropriate facet level structure.     

Toward a biopsychosocial model for 21st-century genetics

Advances in genomic research are increasingly identifying genetic components in major health and mental health disorders. This article presents a Family System Genetic Illness model to address the psychosocial challenges of genomic conditions for patients and their families, and to help organize this complex biopsychosocial landscape for clinical practice and research. This model clusters genomic disorders based on key characteristics that define types of disorders with similar patterns of psychosocial demands over time. Key disease variables include the likelihood of developing a disorder based on specific genetic mutations, overall clinical severity, timing of clinical onset in the life cycle, and whether effective treatment interventions exist to alter disease onset and/or progression. For disorders in which carrier, predictive, or presymptomatic testing is available, core nonsymptomatic time phases with salient developmental challenges are described pre- and post-testing, including a long-term adaptation phase. The FSGI model builds on Rolland's Family System Illness model, which identifies psychosocial types and phases of chronic disorders after clinical onset. The FSGI model is designed to be flexible and responsive to future discoveries in genomic research. Its utility is discussed for research, preventive screening, family assessment, treatment planning, and service delivery in a wide range of healthcare settings.     

A family-based mental health program of recovery from state terror in Kosova

Family processes of communication, mutual support, and sustenance of cultural values can play vital roles in recovery from psychological and material damage in societies afflicted by terror. This is particularly the case when a campaign of terror has specifically targeted family life and its traditions, when the culture is one whose identity has been centered in its families, and when public mental health resources have been scarce. At the end of the 1999 war in Kosova, the Kosovar Family Professional Educational Collaborative (KFPEC) was initiated to counter mental health sequelae of war in Kosova. This initiative focused upon the recovery and strengthening of Kosovar families, rather than the psychiatric treatment of individuals for post-traumatic symptoms. Findings and outcomes from this project may usefully inform the design of other international public mental health initiatives.     

Motivated aggressiveness perpetuated by exposure to aggressive films and reduced by exposure to nonaggressive films

Under conditions of both minimal and extreme initial provocation, the effect of exposure to neutral vs aggressive films on subsequent aggressive behavior was assessed relative to a no-exposure condition. Excitatory changes were also recorded. Under minimal provocation, communication conditions were found to have no differential effect on aggressive behavior. Under extreme provocation, relative to the no-exposure condition the neutral film significantly reduced subsequent aggression, whereas the aggressive film reduced it to an insignificant degree only. The excitatory changes observed in the extreme-provocation conditions coincided with these differences in aggressive behavior. The findings, obviously countercathartic, were interpreted as inconsistent with the proposition that filmed aggression elicits aggressive behavior. Bandura's reasoning on attentional shift was modified to account for the data. An alternative explanation was developed from considerations of the aggression-modifying effect of residual excitation.     

A Patient-Tailored Evidence-Based Approach for Developing Early Neuropsychological Training Programs in Addiction Settings

Neuropsychology Review - Substance use disorders (SUDs) are associated with impairments of cognitive functions, and cognitive training programs are thus rapidly developing in SUD treatment....     

Anticipatory loss: a family systems developmental framework

This article provides a family-systems developmental framework for anticipatory loss in situations of physical illness, disability, and long-term psychiatric disorders, and offers a conceptual base for theory building, clinical practice, and research. A family systems-illness model that integrates psychosocial types and phases of illness with family variables, in particular, developmental patterns and beliefs systems, provides a foundation to rethink and expand our approaches to threatened loss.     

Provoked and unprovoked aggressiveness in athletes

In a factorial design, athletic involvement (no varsity sport, varsity noncontact sport, varsity contact sport) was varied with induced disposition (unprovoked, provoked). Under conditions of no provocation, no significant differences in aggressiveness were observed between nonathletes and athletes, nor between noncontact- and contact-sport athletes. In contrast, under conditions of provocation, nonathletes displayed more aggressiveness than athletes. Non-contact-sport athletes behaved significantly less aggressively than both nonathletes and contact-sport athletes. Contact-sport athletes failed to behave significantly less aggressively than nonathletes, however. The findings were explained as the result of an acquired superior ability in athletes to cope with provocation under competitive circumstances, which is partially counteracted in contact-sport athletes by their aggressiveness habits and disinhibition training.     

How to Assess a Model's Testability and Identifiability

Formal definitions are given of the following intuitive concepts: (a) A model is quantitatively testable if its predictions are highly precise and narrow. (b) A model is identifiable if the values of its parameters can be ascertained from empirical observations. (c) A model is redundant if the values of some parameters can be deduced from others or if the values of some observables can be deduced from others. Various rules of thumb for nonredundant models are examined. The Counting Rule states that a model is quantitatively testable if and only if it has fewer parameters than observables. This rule can be safely applied only to identifiable models. If a model is unidentifiable, one must apply a generalization of the Counting Rule known as the Jacobian Rule. This rule states that a model is quantitatively testable if and only if the maximum rank (i.e., the number of linearly independent columns) of its Jacobian matrix (i.e., the matrix of partial derivatives of the function that maps parameter values to the predicted values of observables) is smaller than the number of observables. The Identifiability Rule states that a model is identifiable if and only if the maximum rank of its Jacobian matrix equals the number of parameters. The conclusions provided by these rules are only presumptive. To reach definitive conclusions, additional analyses must be performed. To illustrate the foregoing, the quantitative testability and identifiability of linear models and of discrete-state models are analyzed. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Socially desirable responding and the factorial stability of the NEO PI-R

The goal of the present investigation is to compare the factor structure of the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) in samples of respondents differentially motivated to respond in a socially desirable manner. In the French sample, the authors compared the NEO PI-R structure of job applicants (N=12,631) subgrouped by relative degree of socially desirable responding with that of a normative sample (N=801). In the Belgian sample, the authors compared the NEO PI-R structure in naturally occurring groups, including job applicants (N=3,028), individuals receiving career counseling (N=221), and a normative sample (N=549). Results indicate that the NEO PI-R factor structure remained stable across all samples.