Social Work Today E-Zine

According to preliminary research results from the VA, approximately 15% of recently returned female veterans utilizing the VA healthcare system report experiencing sexual trauma during military service.

The cross-sectional study, presented at the American Public Health Association’s 136th Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Diego, examined healthcare screening data of over 100,000 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom who utilized medical care at any Veterans Health Administration facility during a six-year period.

Along with the more than one in seven women, 0.7% of males also reported having experienced military sexual trauma. Both males and females reporting military sexual trauma were more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health condition than patients who did not report military sexual trauma.

“These data highlight the importance of the VA’s universal screening policy,” said Joanne Pavao, MPH, a VA researcher on the study, “as well as early intervention among veterans who have experienced sexual trauma, to prevent long-term consequences.” Veterans Health Administration policy requires that all male and female veterans are screened for experiences of military sexual trauma and that free treatment for military sexual trauma-related conditions is provided at all VA healthcare facilities.

— Source: American Public Health Association

A study conducted 13 months after same-sex marriage in Massachusetts became legal found that obtaining legal protections and making a public statement of commitment were the most often mentioned motivations for same-sex marriage. It also found that lack of family approval and difficulties planning and paying for the wedding were the most noted obstacles to marriage. The study was conducted by Pamela J. Lannutti, PhD, an associate professor of communication at Boston College, and was published in the Journal of GLBT Family Studies.

“The arrival of same-sex marriage brings up many issues that often lurk in the background in families. It forces same-sex couples and their parents to confront their deepest feelings about same-sex love,” says Robert-Jay Green, PhD, executive director of Rockway Institute, a national center for psychology research, education, and public policy on sexual orientation and gender issues.

For this study, Lannutti’s sample of 263 partners in same-sex couples had an average relationship duration of 7.5 years. Seventy-two percent had gotten legally married in the 13 months after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, and 28% planned to marry within 16 months. Attractions to marriage listed by the respondents included legal protections (24%), making a public statement of commitment (20%), feelings for partner (15%), means to acknowledgement from family (14%), legal protection for help in having children (13%), means to acknowledgement from friends (8%), political reasons (4%), and religious reasons (2%).

Obstacles to marriage included lack of family approval (41%), difficulties in funding and planning the ceremony and reception (27%), philosophical or political objections to marriage (14%), the legal limitations of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts such as no federal recognition or benefits of marriage (10%), lack of approval from friends (4%), or unresolved previous relationships (4%). “Lack of family approval” usually meant parents’ approval, Lannutti reports.

In commenting on the study, Green comments: “With the arrival of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and now in California, we are just beginning to understand the psychological deprivation that has been imposed on lesbian and gay people, who have been excluded from marriage for centuries. Dr. Lannutti’s study supports what social scientists have long suspected—nothing short of marriage conveys the same multifaceted symbolic meanings nor evokes the same sense of hopefulness about finding life-long psychological intimacy in a relationship.”

— Source: Alliant International University

Millions of patients with treatment-resistant clinical depression who have struggled for years with disability and how to cope with their condition now have an option that could help them lead more productive and successful lives. The NeuroStar TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) Therapy system, developed by Neuronetics, Inc and initiated by research at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), is the first and only approved TMS therapy device cleared by the FDA for treating severe depression.

Patients must be adults with major depressive disorder, commonly known as treatment-resistant depression, who have failed to improve their condition with other treatments or medication. Patients will have access to the therapy at MUSC by mid-December.

In the randomized controlled trial conducted for the FDA, the therapy showed significant treatment effects without systemic side effects such as weight gain or sexual dysfunction.

Throughout the TMS therapy studies, more than 10,000 treatments were safely performed with: no systemic side effects, such as sedation, nausea, or dry mouth; no adverse effects on concentration or memory; no seizures; no device-drug interactions; mild to moderate scalp pain or discomfort at the treatment area during treatment, which declined after the first week of treatment; a less than 5% discontinuation rate due to adverse events; and there were no new safety observations compared with those seen during acute treatment during a 6-month follow-up period.

— Source: Medical University of South Carolina

When a group is without a leader, you can often count on a narcissist to take charge, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups. However, while narcissists are more likely to become leaders, results of one study suggests that, once in power, narcissists don’t perform any better than others in a leadership role. The research appeared online and in print issues of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“Not only did narcissists rate themselves as leaders, which you would expect, but other group members also saw them as the people who really run the group,” says Amy Brunell, PhD, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University at Newark.

The first study involved 432 undergraduate students who completed assessments that measured various personality traits, including narcissism. They were then put in groups of four, and told their task was to elect the director of the student union. Each person in a group was given a profile of a different candidate and was to argue for their candidate. Following the discussion, they voted on the director, and then completed a questionnaire evaluating the leadership of themselves and the other group members.

Results showed that students who scored higher on one dimension of narcissism—the desire for power—were more likely to say they wanted to lead the group, were more likely to say they did lead the group discussion, and were more likely to be viewed as leaders by the other group members.

In a second study, 408 students were placed in groups of four and given a scenario in which they were shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and had to choose which 15 salvageable items that the group should take ashore that would best help them survive. After a group discussion, those who scored highest on the power dimension of narcissism again showed the most desire to lead the group discussion, rated themselves as leaders, and were viewed by other group members as the leaders.

This study then evaluated how well the narcissists performed as leaders. Researchers compared the lists, prepared by each individual and group, with one prepared by an expert who taught survival skills to the military. Results showed that narcissists did no better than others on selecting the items that would best help them survive. In addition, groups that overall scored highest on narcissism did no better than other groups on the task.

Brunell says she believes the results apply to many parts of life, from the politics of the presidential race to Wall Street.

— Source: The Ohio State University

A new study reveals that the general appearance of a neighborhood is the single most important factor affecting how satisfied residents are about the area where they live. But beyond general appearance, people living in different neighborhoods may be looking at distinct factors when making their overall evaluations. The study, which was published recently in Environment and Behavior, was based on a survey of 2,060 homeowners in Franklin County, Ohio.

Some areas considered to be some of the worst neighborhoods were rated the lowest and people in these neighborhoods reported that safety from crime was 3.7 times more important to their overall satisfaction than people living in satisfactory areas. Proximity to known problem areas and the amount of traffic were also major concerns for these residents, aspects that were not statistically important to those in more highly rated neighborhoods.

On the other hand, while general appearance of the neighborhood was important to people living in both types of neighborhoods, only residents in satisfactory neighborhoods were significantly interested in access to recreational opportunities and to governmental services such as police and fire.

The other major difference between the two types of neighborhoods involves how people value social interaction. Only people living in higher rated neighborhoods reported that interaction was an important factor in how satisfied they were overall in their neighborhood. People in these areas valued spending time with neighbors and participating in neighborhood activities.

Overall, this new research provides clear evidence that focusing on different factors in different neighborhoods may be the key to making residents in all neighborhoods happier, says Misun Hur, PhD, coauthor of the study and doctoral student in city and regional planning at Ohio State University.

— Source: Ohio State University

White people may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this “colorblind” approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant. These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Developmental Psychology.

In one study, 101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to be another participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender, and background color. Each white participant’s objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.

Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95% of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10% of the time.

The researchers also wanted to see how outsiders interpreted such interactions. In another experiment, 74 black and white college students evaluated videos of whites engaging in the photo task. Black observers rated whites’ avoidance of asking about race as being evidence of prejudice. What’s more, when the researchers showed silent video clips of whites from the study to another group of individuals, those whites who avoided asking about race were judged as less friendly, just on the basis of their nonverbal behavior.

“The findings suggest that when race is clearly relevant, whites who think that it is a wise social strategy to avoid talking about race should think again,” says Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University.

— Source: American Psychological Association

The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill is leading a novel clinical trial to compare the effectiveness of online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), delivered through a Web site and augmented with therapist-moderated, weekly online chat sessions, to face-to-face group therapy for the treatment of bulimia nervosa.

“For individuals with bulimia nervosa … face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT has long been considered the gold standard of treatment,” says Cynthia M. Bulik, PhD, the study’s principal investigator and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program.
The Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will also take part in the study. Marsha D. Marcus, PhD, professor of psychiatry and psychology and service chief of the Center for Overcoming Problem Eating, is the principal investigator at the Pittsburgh site. 


Unfortunately, for several different reasons CBT does not reach everyone who needs treatment. “As a way to overcome these challenges,” Bulik says, “we’ve developed a Web site that will deliver the same content as traditional, manual-based cognitive behavioral therapy, but it will take advantage of all the bells and whistles—such as sound, animation, and video—that make the best Web sites so compelling.”



Bulik and colleagues plan to recruit 180 people with bulimia nervosa to take part in the study: 90 at UNC and 90 at Pittsburgh. One half will be randomized to receive CBT with weekly face-to-face group therapy sessions over a 20-week period. The other half will receive Web-based CBT with weekly online group therapy chat sessions. To measure the effectiveness of the intervention, follow-up assessments on each participant will be conducted at 3, 6, and 12 months after the end of treatment.

Marcus says, “If [online treatment] is as effective as CBT delivered in an in-person format, we will be able to provide CBT to individuals who currently are unable to obtain specialty care for the disorder.”

— Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

Stimulant medications like those often prescribed for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) raise blood pressure and heart rate, and some drugs carry warning labels for patients with heart problems. Two professional organizations are at odds over whether routine electrocardiogram (ECG) testing is necessary before a child starts taking a medication for ADHD, reports the Harvard Mental Health Letter.

The controversy is about whether routine ECG testing is necessary before a child starts taking ADHD medication. ECG measures the electrical activity of the heart. In April 2008, the American Heart Association released a statement recommending that it was reasonable—although not mandatory—for clinicians to consider ordering an ECG in children diagnosed with ADHD before beginning treatments with stimulants or other medications.

In August, however, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a statement recommending against routine ECGs—supporting earlier recommendations made by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry—citing data that sudden cardiac deaths, while tragic, are rare. Such deaths occur in about two children for every million taking ADHD medications—fewer than the eight to 62 sudden deaths per million that occur in the general pediatric population.

The discussion about the relationship between heart risk and ADHD medication is likely to continue. For now, Michael Miller, MD, editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter, says the best advice is for doctors to assess heart disease risk by doing a physical exam and taking a careful medical history and to rely on a mental health professional to evaluate for ADHD.

— Source: Harvard Health Publications

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced $36 million in new grant programs to 28 states to help older Americans and veterans remain independent and to support people with Alzheimer's disease to remain in their homes and communities. Just over $19 million of this funding involves a new collaboration with the VA.

HHS secretary Mike Leavitt and VA secretary James Peake, MD, announced the joint effort to provide essential consumer-directed, home- and community-based services to older Americans and veterans of all ages, as part of a Nursing Home Diversion (NHD) grants program. The new initiative builds on the similar missions of HHS and the VA with regard to caring for the populations they serve. In addition, Secretary Leavitt announced a $17 million investment to improve the delivery of home and community-based services to people with Alzheimer's disease and their family caregivers.

"Our mission is to honor and support America's veterans, and this collaboration provides an additional opportunity to do that by offering more services, choices and control over decisions to veterans in the least restrictive environment consistent with their needs and preferences," Peake said.

"The HHS funding is specifically designed to reach people who are not eligible for Medicaid, but who are at high risk of nursing home placement and spend-down to Medicaid -which often occurs when private pay individuals enter a nursing home," said assistant secretary for aging Josefina G. Carbonell. "The program will also offer consumers more control over their long-term care, including the ability to determine the types of services they receive and the manner in which they receive them, including the option of hiring their own care workers."

— Source: Health and Human Services

Compared to their younger counterparts, older problem gamblers who ask casinos to bar them from returning are three to four times more likely to do so because they fear they will kill themselves if they don’t stop betting, according to a new study.

Researchers Lia Nower, JD, PhD, of the Rutgers University Center for Gambling Studies, and Alex Blaszczynski, PhD, of the University of Sydney, Australia, looked at 1,601 self-described problem gamblers who asked between 2001 and 2003 to be banned from Missouri casinos. The results of their study were published in Psychology and Aging.

Older adults, aged 55 and older in this study, reported gambling an average of 17 years before “self-exclusion”—more than twice the length of time reported by younger adults. All participants were asked to cite the main reason or reasons why they sought to be barred from casinos. Younger, middle-aged, and older adults all gave as the primary reasons gaining control, needing help, and hitting rock bottom. However, nearly 14% of older adults surveyed, a higher proportion than any other group, indicated they sought help because they wanted to prevent themselves from committing suicide.

“This is particularly troubling because, irrespective of age, problem gamblers have reported rates of suicidal ideation and/or attempts as high as six times those found in the general population,” Nower says.

— Source: American Psychological Association

Researchers have found that infants who had an opportunity to use a plastic cane to get an out-of-reach toy were better able to understand the goal of another person’s use of a similar tool than were infants who had previously only watched an adult use a cane to retrieve a toy.

“Acting on the world is one way infants learn about the world, and only recently have there been studies showing that active, hands-on experience is a more effective way of learning than watching. This study indicates that there is a benefit to actual hands-on experience early in human development,” says Jessica Sommerville, PhD, a University of Washington assistant professor of psychology and lead author of a study published in Developmental Psychology.

The researchers divided 51 infants—26 boys and 25 girls—into three groups for the new study. Those in the training group were trained in how to use the crook of a cane to retrieve a toy. Finally, they were given two trials to see if they could pull the toy to them by themselves. A second group of infants, the observational group, watched an adult mimic the babies in the first group learning how to use the cane to get a toy. Finally the infants in those two groups, as well as those in the third, or baseline, group individually watched training trials in which a researcher seated behind a table used one cane to retrieve a toy and then picked up the toy.

Sommerville says the experiment was designed to see if the infants would play attention to a change in the experimenter’s goal of getting a new toy rather than using a different tool. Infants in the observational and baseline groups spent equal amounts of time looking at the new cane and toys trials. But the trained group spent more time looking at the new toy trials, suggesting they understood that the adult was using the cane as a tool.

“We speculate that for infants to really understand the tool use event, and, in particular, for them to anticipate upcoming actions and action outcomes while watching the event, they need to be able to perform the tool use sequence themselves,” says Sommerville. “Merely watching another person perform the sequence does not appear to be enough for them to understand it.

— Source: University of Washington

While many congregations of different faiths preach against drug abuse, it has been unclear whether a youth’s religious involvement has any effect on his or her risk of drug abuse. Now a new national study finds that religious involvement makes teens one half as likely to use marijuana. The study, published this week in the Journal of Drug Issues, settles a question scholars have disagreed on in the past.

"Some may think this is an obvious finding, but research and expert opinion on this issue have not been consistent," says Brigham Young University (BYU) sociology professor Stephen Bahr, PhD, an author on the study. "After we accounted for family and peer characteristics, and regardless of denomination, there was an independent effect that those who were religious were less likely to do drugs, even when their friends were users."

Two data sets were used in the study, 13,534 students who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and 4,983 adolescents in a state-wide survey of Utah schools.

The study, coauthored by BYU sociologist John Hoffmann, PhD, also found individual religiosity buffered peer pressure for cigarette smoking and heavy drinking. The term religiosity as used in the study has to do with people's participation in a religion and not the particular denomination. Hoffmann says the protective effect of church and spirituality supplements the influence of parents.

"The power of peers is less among youths who are religious," Bahr says. "Meaning if you are religious, the pressure from peers to use drugs will not have as much effect."

— Source: Brigham Young University

Heavy advertising by both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates may actually make voters in battleground states more confused about which candidate to vote for, a new study suggests. The results appeared in a recent issue of Political Psychology.

A nationwide study found that voters in heavily contested states like Florida and Ohio become more ambivalent when they are exposed to a lot of opposing messages from the two candidates.

“In battleground states especially, both candidates will invest a lot of money in television commercials. So people in these states are getting a lot of competing messages from both candidates and that translates into voters in these states wrestling with conflicting ideas,” says Luke Keele, PhD, coauthor of the study and assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University.

“But if you live in a state that is not competitive, you’re probably seeing one-sided messages from a single candidate or few messages at all, so you’re less likely to be ambivalent. So the state in which you live can influence your decisions.”

The study was based on survey responses from the 2000 edition of the American National Election Study, a nationally representative survey of voters that examined the race between George Bush and Al Gore, as well as House of Representatives’ races. The survey, which is performed every two years by the University of Michigan, included face-to-face interviews with more than 1,800 people.

— Source: Ohio State University

Uninsured children in families earning between approximately $38,000 and $76,000 a year are about as likely to go without any healthcare as uninsured children in poorer families.

Nearly one half of uninsured children in the United States went without any medical care or prescriptions during the year they had no insurance, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. An even larger percentage of uninsured children went without preventive care, meaning they didn’t get a yearly physical and may not have received necessary vaccinations.

The study, by Laura Shone, DrPH, MSW, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, dispels the myth that the uninsured middle class are simply paying for their children to receive healthcare.

“There’s a great need for healthcare coverage for children and it’s not isolated to the poor. It’s moving up the income scale,” Shone says. “This study shows that a large percentage of both lower-income and middle class children who are uninsured don’t receive any care at all. We need to be aware that these children need help, too, as we make more coverage options available, especially in this difficult economy.”

Overall, almost 3 million uninsured U.S. children had no medical care of any kind and no prescription use for a full year, according to an analysis of nationally representative data from the 2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Of those, about 1.6 million children already qualify for public coverage but are not enrolled, and about 1 million more could gain coverage through expansion of the state children’s health insurance program.

— Source: University of Rochester Medical Center

As soon as children are old enough to interact socially, some become entrenched in chronic and increasing patterns of victimization by their peers, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Children who are aggressive in infancy and are from families with harsh parenting styles and insufficient income appear more likely to be consistently victimized.

Edward D. Barker, PhD, of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and colleagues studied 1,970 children (51% boys) born in Québec, Montreal, Canada, between October 1997 and July 1998. Participating children were assessed at the ages of 4.5 months, 16.6 months, and 2.4, 3.4, 4.1, 5.1, 6.2, and 7.2 years. At each point, mothers provided information on factors such as victimization, family adversity, parenting styles, physical aggression, hyperactivity, and internalizing symptoms. At the age of 7.2, teachers and children reported on victimization by classmates.

“Three trajectory groups were identified with respect to victimization by peers between 3.4 and 6.2 years of age,” the authors wrote. “As expected, most of the children (71 percent) fell on a low/increasing trajectory, whereas 25 percent and 4 percent of the children followed moderate/increasing and high/chronic trajectories, respectively. The overall age-related increase in preschool peer victimization is consistent with the view that, as preschool children progressively spend more time interacting with peers, they are more likely to experience negative peer experiences.”

Children who were on the high/chronic and moderate/increasing trajectory according to their mothers’ reports at young ages also had the highest levels of victimization at the age of 7.2, as reported by themselves and their teachers. Children who were aggressive at a young age (17 months) were more likely to become victims in preschool than children who were less aggressive, but neither early internalizing symptoms (for example, sadness, fear, and anxiety) or hyperactivity were associated with later victimization. Children exposed to harsh parenting were more likely to be chronic victims, and insufficient family income also predicted high/chronic and moderate/increasing victimization trajectories.

— Source: American Medical Association

The American Psychological Association (APA) sent a letter to President Bush, informing him of a significant change in the association’s policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated, such as has occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture),” says the letter, from APA President Alan E. Kazdin, PhD. “In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention.”

The roles of psychologists at such sites would now be limited to working directly for the people being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights, or to providing treatment to military personnel. The new policy was voted on by APA members and is in the process of being implemented.

— Source: American Psychological Association

About 44% of individuals who had bipolar disorder as children continue to have manic episodes as young adults, according to a report in Archives of General Psychiatry. This rate, along with the severity of the disease at young ages, strongly suggest that bipolar disorder can be continuous from childhood to adulthood, the authors noted.

Researchers studied 115 children (an average age of 11.1) diagnosed with bipolar disorder beginning in 1995 to 1998. At the beginning of the study and again during nine follow-up visits conducted over eight years, the children and their parents were interviewed separately about their symptoms, diagnoses, daily cycles of mania and depression, and interactions with others.

At the end of the follow-up period, 54 patients were aged 18 or older. Of those, 44.4% continued to have manic episodes and 35.2% had substance use disorders, a rate similar to those diagnosed with bipolar disorder as adults.

“In grown-up subjects with child bipolar disorder I, the 44.4 percent frequency of manic episodes was 13 to 44 times higher than population prevalences, strongly supporting continuity between child and adult bipolar disorder I,” the authors wrote. “Subjects with child bipolar disorder I who were grown up at the eight-year follow-up constituted approximately half the sample. However, even if all subjects younger than 18 years at the eight-year follow-up never had episodes of bipolar disorder I as adults, the overall significance of the findings would be similar, because the rate would still be six to 22 times higher than population prevalences.”

“In conclusion, mounting data support the existence of child bipolar disorder I, and the severity and chronicity of this disorder argue strongly for large efforts toward understanding the neurobiology and for developing prevention and intervention strategies,” they wrote.

— Source: American Medical Association

Magnetic resonance brain imaging reveals that patients with generalized social phobia respond differently than others to negative comments about themselves, according to a report in Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Generalized social phobia is characterized by fear/avoidance of social situations and fear of being judged negatively by others,” the authors wrote. “It is the most common anxiety disorder in the general population, with the lifetime prevalence estimated at 13.3 percent, and it is associated with a high risk for depression, alcohol and drug abuse and suicide.”

Karina Blair, PhD, and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, compared functional MRI (fMRI) scans of 17 unmedicated individuals with generalized social phobia to those of 17 controls who were the same age, sex, and IQ but did not have the disorder. During the fMRI scans, individuals read positive, negative, and neutral comments that could be either about the self or about somebody else.

The patients with generalized social phobia showed increased blood flow in their medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala—areas of the brain linked to concepts of self as well as fear, emotion and stress response—when reading negative statements about themselves. However, there were no differences between the two groups in response to negative comments referring to others or neutral or positive comments referring to either self or others.

“Given that medial prefrontal cortex regions are involved in representations of the self, it might be suggested that these regions, together with the amygdala, play a primary role in the development and maintenance of generalized social phobia and that the pathology in the disorder at least partly reflects a negative attitude toward the self, particularly in response to social stimuli,” the authors conclude.

— Source: American Medical Association

Living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can strain any relationship—sometimes to the point of violence against a loved one. University of Arkansas psychologist Matthew T. Feldner, PhD, is part of two national research projects aimed at preventing relationship aggression in couples coping with PTSD and treating this type of aggression when it has already developed.

“The main aims of these projects are to reduce the number of new cases of interpersonal violence and reduce the number of cases already existing,” Feldner says. “We teach couples skills for better relationship behaviors, such as how to communicate better and how to manage anger.”

All people receiving these interventions will be closely monitored and referred for more intensive individual therapy should the need arise. Rather than going back to focus on the roots of the PTSD, Feldner says the couples in these interventions “will focus on the here and now of how the PTSD is affecting their relationship.” While teaching couples about the features of PTSD and improving their relationships, the group treatment can also serve as a gateway to further treatment for PTSD and other services.

If these interventions succeed in preventing or treating relationship aggression, Feldner says that these would be groundbreaking, landmark projects. “Ultimately, we are hoping we can conduct these interventions in such a way that they could be useful for the VA and could be extended to community populations as well, for situations that are not specifically military,” Feldner says.

— Source: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Opponents of affirmative action point to stigma as a reason for dismantling the policy, but a new University of Iowa (UI) study counters that argument. Challengers of the policy argue that minorities who benefit from it could doubt their own credentials or feel the burden of being treated as if they're employed or enrolled only because of race—not because they earned it.

But researchers surveyed 610 students at seven public law schools, and results indicate that minorities at affirmative action schools feel just as good about their qualifications and about how others treat them as minorities at nonaffirmative-action schools do.

Evidence that calls the powerful stigma argument into question is important at a time when California, Michigan, and Washington recently passed legislation to end affirmative action in public institutions, and similar measures are on the ballot this November in Colorado and Nebraska, says UI law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig, JD. She conducted the study with UI sociologist Mary Campbell, PhD, and Emily Ming-Sue Houh, JD, a University of Cincinnati law professor.

On average, minority students at both types of schools disagreed or strongly disagreed with statements such as "I do not deserve to be a student at my school," "Classmates/teachers act as if I was admitted based only on affirmative action," and "I feel stigmatized by affirmative action."

"Generally, when good things happen to people, they think they deserve it. It's human nature," Campbell says. "So we had good reason to be skeptical of the idea that affirmative action makes whole groups of people say, 'I don't belong here, and therefore I'm not going to perform as well.'"

— Source: University of Iowa Health Sciences

A new study shows that 5-month-old babies can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, from a lineup of gloomier compositions. By the age of 9 months, babies can do the opposite and pick out the sorrowful sound of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from a pack of happy pieces.

The musical experiments offer another example of how babies make sense of the world long before they can talk, says Brigham Young University psychology professor and study author Ross Flom, PhD. “One of the first things babies understand communicatively is emotion, so for them the melody is the message,” he says. “Our study showed that by nine months, babies are categorizing songs as happy or sad the same way that preschoolers and adults do.”

The results of the musical study are published in Infant Behavior and Development.

First they displayed an emotionally neutral face for the baby while music played. When the baby looked away from the face, the music stopped and the researchers queued up a new song from a playlist of five happy and five sad songs. For each song, observers recorded how long the baby paid attention to the face. The babies that noticed a switch from happy to sad, or vice versa, stared at the face three to four seconds longer than usual because of their heightened interest.

Flom says this period of learning about emotion in sounds is a natural step before learning to talk. “Infants master so many things in such a short time frame,” he adds. “I can’t think of a better line of inquiry than how infants learn so much so quickly.”

— Source: Brigham Young University

Desperate to protect her children from skull fractures, black eyes, and repeated beatings, Holly Ann Collins fled to the Netherlands. There, the Dutch Court granted her human rights asylum, ruling it would be too dangerous for them to return to their father. Now, 14 years later, Collins and her children are finally coming home. In a Hennepin County, MN, courthouse, Collins pled guilty to contempt of court and accepted 40 hours of community service. The more serious charges of kidnapping and custody interference that could have resulted in a long prison sentence were dismissed.

Eli H. Newberger, MD, a member of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence’s Board and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard University, evaluated Jennifer and Zachary before they were placed in the custody of their father. “Despite the children’s clear disclosures of abuse, their documented history of serious injuries, and our team’s strong conclusion that the children needed to be protected, the court still chose to place them with the person they feared most in the world,” states Newberger. The court acknowledged abuse had taken place but was swayed by the bogus legal argument that the children’s fears were a result of parental alienation syndrome, which claimed their mother brainwashed the children into false abuse disclosures. Collins was allowed only limited, supervised visitations. When they were 9 and 11, Jennifer and Zachary passed her secret notes during supervised visits begging to be rescued from their father’s home.

Joyanna Silberg, PhD, executive vice president of the Leadership Council, spoke about the case, stating that the problems in family court have gotten worse in the last 14 years. The Leadership Council estimates that over 58,000 children a year in the United States are abuse victims that are ordered by family court to have unsupervised contact with abusers when their parents divorce.
The Leadership Council, a coalition of professionals committed to education about child abuse, does not condone breaking the law, but hopes the story of Collins and her children sparks needed reforms that protect children from abusive parents involved in custody disputes.

— Source: Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence

Scientists with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are developing an interactive, multimedia program that will assist astronauts in recognizing and effectively managing depression and other psychosocial problems, which can pose a substantial threat to crew safety and mission operations during long-duration spaceflights.

Even though the depression treatment is under development for NASA, project leader James Cartreine, PhD, says it could be spun off for use on Earth.

“This project has great potential as a self-guided treatment for many people,” says Cartreine, a member of NSBRI’s Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors Team and a Harvard Medical School research psychologist based in the Division of Clinical Informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The depression treatment is part of the Virtual Space Station, a multimedia program that addresses multiple types of potential psychosocial problems and can be used for training before, and for assistance during, missions. Other problems being addressed via the Virtual Space Station include interpersonal conflict and stress and anxiety.

Cartreine says the Virtual Space Station will make effective therapeutic depression treatment more easily accessible to astronauts aboard the International Space Station and proposed missions to the moon and Mars. Currently, astronauts have audio and video access to psychologists only when communication links are available.

Eventually, the researchers want to adapt the system for use in many different settings, giving people access to treatment they may not have now. For instance, people with depression often seek treatment by going to their primary care physician, so the researchers hope to adapt it for use at the doctor’s office or in a person’s home.

The system could also be beneficial in rural areas where clinical help is in short supply or nonexistent. Other possible locations for use include schools, social service offices, places of worship, military bases, prisons, commercial ships, oil rigs, and underwater research stations.

— Source: National Space Biomedical Research Institute

New research suggests a solution coping with negative emotions, and to the related psychological paradox: Processing emotions is supposed to facilitate coping, but attempts to understand painful feelings often backfire and perpetuate or strengthen negative moods and emotions. The solution is not denial or distraction. According to Ethan Kross, a faculty associate at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and an assistant professor of psychology, the best way to move ahead emotionally is to analyze one's feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective.

The researchers conducted a series of studies that provide evidence of the benefits of analyzing depressive feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective. This approach is widely associated with eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, but according to Kross, anyone can do it with a little practice.

In the study, appearing in an issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the researchers randomly assigned 141 participants to one of three groups that required them to focus (or not focus) on their feelings using different strategies in a guided imagery exercise that led them to recall an experience that made them feel overwhelmed by sadness and depression. After the experience, participants completed a questionnaire asking how they felt at the moment, and wrote a stream-of-thought essay about their thoughts during the memory recall phase of the experiment.

Immediately after the session those who used the distanced-analysis approach reported lower levels of depression than those who used immersed-analysis, but not distraction. Thus distraction and distanced-analysis were found to be equally effective in the short-term. Participants then returned to the lab either one day or one week later. At that time, they were asked to think about the same sad or depressing experience, and their mood was reassessed.

Those who had used the distanced-analysis approach continued to show lower levels of depression than those who had used self-immersed analysis and distraction, providing evidence to support the hypothesis that distanced-analysis not only helps people cope with intense feelings adaptively in the short-term, but critically also helps people work-through negative experiences over time.

— Source: University of Michigan