Addressing Relationship Health Needs in Primary Care: Adapting the Marriage Checkup for Use in Medical Settings with Military Couples

The overall objective of this study was to pilot the Marriage Checkup (MC), a brief intervention for enhancing marital resiliency tailored to a military population, for use by internal behavioral health consultants (IBHCs) working in an integrated primary care clinic. The MC was revised to fit into the fast-paced environment of primary care (e.g., streamlined to fit within three 30-min appointments), and military-relevant material was added to the content. IBHCs working in primary care were then trained to offer the intervention. Thirty participants were enrolled in the study and completed a relationship checkup and one-month follow-up questionnaires. Analysis of post-test and one-month follow-up data showed statistically significant improvements in participants’ marital health compared to pre-treatment. The MC intervention appeared to be well received by both couples and IBHCs.     

College Students’ Perceptions of and Responses to Academic Dishonesty: An Investigation of Type of Honor Code,Institution Size,and Student–Faculty Ratio

College students (n = 928) from small, medium, and large institutions with either a modified or no honor code were presented with cheating scenarios and asked to rate how dishonest they perceived the behavior to be and the likelihood that they would report it. No main effects were found for institution size or type of honor code. Student–faculty ratio was not correlated with responses to the cheating scenarios. Students from modified honor code schools perceived more severe punishments for cheating and understood the reporting process better than students from non–honor code schools. Implications for modified honor code systems are discussed.     

Sexual Health Risk Behaviors Among Older Men Who Have Sex With Men: Implications for Interventions

Sexual health risk behaviors, HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) transmission, substance use, stigma, and loneliness among older men who have sex with men are discussed. Implications for interventions are provided, including (a) assessment of health‐related risk behaviors, (b) brief interventions, (c) HIV and STI screening, and (d) relevant developmental and contextual factors.     

Drawing the Eczema Aesthetic: The Psychological Effects of Chronic Skin Disease as Depicted in the Works of John Updike, Elizabeth Bishop, and Zelda Fitzgerald

How might the psycho-social effects of chronic skin disease, its treatments (and discontents) be figuratively expressed in writing and painting? Does the art reveal common denominators in experience and representation? If so, how do we understand the cryptic language of these expressions? By examining the works of artists with chronic skin diseases—John Updike, Elizabeth Bishop, and Zelda Fitzgerald—some common features can be noted. Chronically broken skin can fracture the ego or self-perception, resulting in a disturbed body image, which leads to personality disorders and co-morbid affective disorders such as anxiety and depression. The vertiginous feeling that results can be noted in the paradoxical characters, figures, and psyches portrayed in the works of these artists. This essay will examine the more specific ways in which artists disclose and/or conceal their experiences and the particular ways in which these manifest in their works. While certain nuances exist, the common denominators give us a starting point for developing an eczema aesthetic, a code for interpreting the ways in which artists’ experiences with skin disease manifest in their works.     

Suicide coverage in U.S. newspapers following the publication of the media guidelines

A nationally representative sample of 968 local and national newspapers was examined to determine whether the 2001 U.S. media guidelines were followed in articles published in 2002-2003, and featuring individual cases of suicidal behavior (N = 157). We found that, during this period of time, U.S. newspaper suicide coverage did not consistently reflect the influence of the media guidelines. On the positive side, only 19% of stories included inappropriate imagery. On the negative side, suicide stories often detailed suicide method (56% of stories) and location (58%), and rarely provided information about warning signs and risk factors (1%), the roles of depression (4%) and alcohol (2%), and prevention resources (6%). Our findings, together with previous evidence, suggest the need for sustained dialogue with the media about suicide reporting.     

College Students’ Perceptions of and Responses to Cheating at Traditional,Modified, and Non-Honor System Institutions

To address growing concerns about academic integrity, college students (n?=?758) at honor system and non-honor system institutions were presented with eight scenarios to determine the influence of an honor system on their perceptions of and responses to academic dishonesty. Main effects for honor code status emerged. Students from traditional honor system schools considered the behaviors to be more dishonest, and were more likely to respond that they would report the incident when compared to students attending modified and non-honor system institutions. Findings suggest traditional honor systems, with specific rules and regulations in place, are more effective at cultivating academic integrity among students; modified honor systems may not be as effective as previous research suggests.     

Influence of Church Attendance and Spirituality in a Randomized Controlled Trial to Increase Mammography Use Among a Low-Income, Tri-Racial, Rural Community

Background The influence of church attendance and spirituality on mammography use was studied among Native American, White, and African American women living in a rural county. Methods A randomized trial was conducted to increase mammography use. Women (n = 851) were randomly assigned to receive either an educational program delivered by a lay health advisor or a physician letter and brochure about cervical cancer screening (control group). Church attendance and spirituality were measured at baseline and mammography use was evaluated 12 months after enrollment using medical record review. Results Almost two-thirds of the women reported that they attended church at least once a week, and less than 4% were classified as having low spirituality. Church attendance (P = 0.299) or spirituality (P = 0.401) did not have a significant impact on mammography use. Conclusions Church attendance and spirituality did not impact mammography use.     

Role of response imagery on stimulus recognition*

This experiment investigated the role of response imagery on recognition of stimulus terms following associative training. Ss learned to associate 12 high-imagery or low-imagery responses with trigram stimuli by the study-associative matching procedure. Half the pairs were consistently paired and half were re-paired anew on each trial. Following associative training, Ss were given a stimulus recognition and an associative matching task The results indicated that the probability of stimulus recognition, given correct associative matching, was greater when the responses were high-imagery rather than low-imagery. In contrast, no rehable response imagery effects were found for the probability of stimulus recognition, given incorrect associative matching. It was argued that the locus of the response imagery effect was primarily during retrieval rather than during encoding.