When your friends matter: The effect of White students' racial friendship networks on meta-perceptions and perceived identity contingencies

Prior research suggests that people expect to be perceived negatively in interracial interactions but positively in intraracial interactions. The present research demonstrates that an interaction partner's racial network of friends can moderate these expectations in interracial interactions but not intraracial interactions. Across two experiments, we led Black and White college students to believe they would have conversation with a White student on campus. The results revealed that Black students expected to be perceived more positively and anticipated a less challenging conversation, when their interaction partner had a racially diverse network of friends compared to a racially homogeneous network of friends. In contrast, White students expected to be perceived positively and anticipated few challenges in the conversation, regardless of their interaction partner's racial network of friends. The implications of racial friendship diversity are discussed.     

Example

No abstract available for this article.     

Sex Differences in Women's Mental Health Problems and Their Causes

No abstract available for this article.     

Treatment of Depression in Disadvantaged Women

Low-income minority women are underrepresented in mental health service settings, yet they are clearly at risk for psychiatric disorders. We staff a clinic specialized in the treatment of depression in economically disadvantaged medical patients. We will share our experience treating disadvantaged and ethnic minority women and will discuss the ingredients necessary to provide quality therapy for these women. We will begin by discussing how poor and minority women access treatment, and the strategies we have used to keep these women in treatment. Then we will consider how services can be made sensitive to the special needs of disadvantaged women, including particular techniques we have found useful in their treatment. Finally, we will discuss common therapeutic issues for these women, as well as successful strategies for helping with the common issues.     

An Exploration of the Content of Stereotypes of Black Politicians

Do voters have the same stereotypes of Black politicians that they have of Black people in general? We argue that common stereotypes of Blacks (e.g., lazy, violent) may not apply to perceptions of Black politicians. Instead, we hypothesize that Black politicians are a unique subtype of the larger group Blacks, different enough to warrant their own stereotypes. We take an inductive approach to understanding the stereotypes of Black politicians. Employing a classic psychology research design ( Katz & Braly, 1933 ) in which respondents list traits for a target group, we find that there is little overlap of stereotype content between Black politicians and Blacks. Our results therefore indicate that Black politicians constitute a separate and unique subtype of Blacks. Our analysis explores similarities and differences between stereotypes of Black politicians and two other groups: Black professionals (another subtype of Blacks) and politicians. We discuss the implications of our findings for the relationship between stereotypes and voter decisions.     

Ethnicity/race, paranoia, and psychiatric diagnoses: Clinician bias versus sociocultural differences

Two contradictory assumptions underlie research on race differences in psychiatric diagnoses: (1) the clinician bias (CB) hypothesis, which assumes that Blacks and Whites exhibit symptomatology similarly, but diagnosticians mistakenly judge them differently; and (2) the cultural relativity (CR) hypothesis, which assumes that Blacks and Whites have different modes of expressing psychopathology but diagnosticians are unaware of or insensitive to such cultural differences. The purpose of the present study is to conduct a comparative test of the CB and CR hypotheses focusing on paranoid symptoms. The study examines race differences on the scales of Distrust (DST), Perceived Hostility of Others (PHO), and False Beliefs and Perceptions (FBP) from the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview (PERI), which measure different types of symptoms ranging from relatively ordinary suspiciousness (i.e., mild paranoia) to the severe kind of paranoia often observed in schizophrenia, in relation to rigorous research diagnoses of depression and schizophrenia-like disorders. In effect, the CB and CR hypotheses become the null and alternative hypotheses, respectively, under conditions where the diagnoses are made according to research criteria. The present findings support the CR hypothesis over the CB hypothesis. The implications of these results for the psychiatric misdiagnosis of Black individuals are discussed.     

Trajectories of Posttraumatic Stress Among Urban Residents

Urban residents experience a wide range of traumatic events and are at increased risk of assaultive violence. Although previous research has examined trajectories of posttraumatic stress (PTS) through latent class growth analysis (LCGA) among persons exposed to the same index events (e.g., a natural disaster), PTS trajectories have not been documented among urban residents. The aims of this study were to conduct LGCA with a sample of trauma survivors from Detroit, Michigan (N = 981), and to explore predictors of trajectory membership. Participants completed three annual telephone surveys, each of which included the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Checklist-Civilian Version. Four PTS trajectories were detected. Although the majority evidenced a trajectory of consistently few symptoms (Low: 72.5 %), 4.6 % were in a trajectory of chronic severe PTSD (High), and the remainder were in trajectories of consistently elevated, but generally subclinical, levels of PTS (Decreasing: 12.3 %; Increasing: 10.6 %). Socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., lower income), more extensive trauma history (e.g., childhood abuse), and fewer social resources (e.g., lower social support) were associated with membership in higher PTS trajectories, relative to the Low trajectory. The results suggest that efforts to reduce PTS in urban areas need to attend to socioeconomic vulnerabilities in addition to trauma history and risk for ongoing trauma exposure.     

Women's Mental Health Issues

No abstract available for this article.     

African American Women Survivors of Sexual Assault:

More attention has recently focused on the psychological experiences of women survivors of sexual assault. However, little work has examined the experiences of African American women survivors, particularly with regard to the impact of race and class on survivors' experiences. We address these limitations by presenting a socio-historical analysis of African American women's rape experiences. This analysis considers the relationship between sexual and economic oppression in African American women's lives. Second, we discuss the influences of these socio-historical factors on African American women's post-assault experiences. Finally, recommendations for therapy with African American women survivors are provided.