How do they see themselves? Self-perception and functioning for people with chronic schizophrenia

In a supervised living situation, 15 individuals whose physical health was considered stable and who had diagnoses of chronic schizophrenia expressed varying perceptions of their mental health. Most perceived themselves as mentally well. This is in opposition to findings reported by Estroff (1981) and Dzurec (1986) that suggested that clients with schizophrenia tended to have negative self-perceptions. The author posits that this positive self-perception might be a function of respondents' expressed satisfaction with their housing situation. This is an area in which ongoing research is being conducted (Bininger, 1989; Dzurec, 1989). Housing satisfaction is thought by some researchers to precede successful community adaptation for the severely mentally disabled (Blanch, 1988). Respondents' perceptions of their mental health, as expressed in response to the interview protocol, appeared to be couched within primarily mundane, day to day issues. This finding is consistent with Estroff's conclusion that clients "seemed to have less control of their time, space, resources, and information than did outside and inside normals" (Estroff, 1981). The respondents gave themselves higher than average scores (ie, 3 or above on a five-point scale) overall on the PES, an instrument that measured aspects of their daily functioning. Their caretakers gave them somewhat lower overall scores on the PES. There was a moderate association between individual pairs of respondent-caretaker scores on the PES. Personal mental health perception did not appear to influence daily functioning.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Youth leaving care: how do they fare?

This chapter summarizes recent Canadian and international research on the outcomes for youth after they age out of the child welfare system. It paints a disturbing picture for this small and vulnerable population. Youth leaving care face many challenges in making the transition from state care to independence and adulthood. They bear the emotional scars of childhood neglect or abuse. They do not have a family support network, have limited or no financial resources, are often lacking in life skills, and usually have not completed school. Despite these setbacks, we expect them to function independently once they reach age eighteen. Research shows that once youth leave care, they do not fare as well as their peers. They are at much greater risk of relying on social assistance, becoming homeless, engaging in substance abuse, becoming single parents, experiencing mental health problems, or coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Some youth aging out, however, have more successful transitions. These typically have completed high school, have role models, have access to postsecondary opportunities, refrain from alcohol or drug use, and obtain life skills and independent living training. Having stable placements while in care is also critical in ensuring more positive outcomes. Canada does not have the capacity to track the outcomes of youth as they leave the child welfare system, nor can it identify the types of interventions showing the most promise in helping them achieve better outcomes. Canadian governments need to improve their transitional planning for youth in care who are approaching the age of majority. Some recommendations include extending the age for services and financial assistance to age twenty-four, developing standards to prepare youth for leaving care, and exploring ways to enable youth to pursue higher education or training. Finally, Canada should develop a national longitudinal survey to monitor the outcomes of youth after they leave care.     

Immigrants working with co‐ethnics: Who are they and how do they fare?

Participation in ethnic economies has been regarded as an alternative avenue of economic adaptation for immigrants and minorities in major immigrant‐receiving countries. This study examines one important dimension of ethnic economies: co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace. Using a large national representative sample from Statistics Canada’s 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey, this study addresses four questions: (1) what is the level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace for Canada’s minority groups? (2) How do workers who share the same ethnicity with most of their co‐workers differ from other workers in socio‐demographic characteristics? (3) Is higher level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with lower earnings? (4) Is higher level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with higher levels of life satisfaction? The results show that only a small proportion of immigrants and the Canadian‐born work in ethnically homogeneous settings. In Canada’s eight largest metropolitan areas about 10 per cent of non‐British/French immigrants share a same ethnic origin with the majority of their co‐workers. The level is as high as 20 per cent among Chinese immigrants and 18 per cent among Portuguese immigrants. Among Canadian‐born minority groups, the level of co‐ethnic workplace concentration is about half the level for immigrants. Immigrant workers in ethnically concentrated settings have much lower educational levels and proficiency in English/French. Immigrant men who work mostly with co‐ethnics on average earn about 33 per cent less than workers with few or none co‐ethnic coworkers. About two thirds of this gap is attributable to differences in demographic and job characteristics. Meanwhile, immigrant workers in ethnically homogenous settings are less likely to report low levels of life satisfaction than other immigrant workers. Among the Canadian‐born, co‐ethnic concentration is not consistently associated with earnings and life satisfaction.     

Dating, marital, and hypothetical extradyadic involvements: how do they compare?

Patterns of extradyadic involvement (EDI) were assessed for three samples: an undergraduate dating sample and a community marital sample reporting on an actual experience of EDI, and an undergraduate sample which denied recent EDI and was asked to imagine a hypothetical experience of EDI. Good consistency of responses within and between measures was found for the hypothetical EDI sample. Persons reporting on a hypothetical EDI were generally less approving of EDI and imagined that they would experience higher levels of primary relationship satisfaction, overall remorse, and specific types of distress, particularly in comparison to the dating EDI group. Relative to the dating EDI group, the marital EDI group recalled greater dissonance with the EDI behavior, more concern about disapproval from others, and higher levels of intimacy, self-esteem, and love reasons for the EDI. No differences were found among the groups on the level of emotional closeness with the extradyadic partner.     

Reciprocity and uncertainty: When do people forgive?

A sizable proportion of individuals act reciprocally. They punish and reward depending on the (un)kindness of those with whom they interact. In this paper, I explore whether individuals still reciprocate intentions when others lack full control over the consequences of their actions. By means of a dictator game with punishment opportunities, I show that unkind intentions are enough to trigger punishments, irrespectively of the outcome. By contrast, accidents are forgiven. To isolate how uncertainty over the result of an action affects the assessment of intentions, I control for other possible departures from self-profit maximization, such as distributional concerns or efficiency maximization. I find that the former also plays a role in respondents’ behavior.     

Self–care practices among social workers: do they predict job satisfaction and turnover intention?

ABSTRACT

The current health and mental health care delivery system in the United States strives to provide efficient quality care at a lower cost. This cost-effective approach and recent budget cuts have created new challenges for social workers. This study explores the relationships between self-care strategies, role stress, job autonomy, and job satisfaction and turnover intention. Four-hundred sixty-nine social workers were surveyed to assess multiple measures of self-care including professional support, professional development, coping strategies, and professional resilience, and their effects on job satisfaction and turnover intention. Role stress and job autonomy were also examined in relation to job satisfaction and turnover intention. The results supported the main hypotheses that claimed that self-care strategies are associated with both job satisfaction and turnover intention. The author discusses the important implications of these findings in education and training of both students and practitioners.     

Gender and multiple forms of peer victimization: how do they influence adolescent psychosocial adjustment?

This study explores the relationship among multiple forms of peer victimization (e.g., direct physical/verbal, relational, and sexual harassment) and psychosocial adjustment among urban students and uses cluster analysis to identify subgroups of victims. Students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade completed self-report surveys about their psychosocial adjustment, peer victimization experiences, and the gender of the other person involved. Results reveal that both physical/verbal victimization and sexual harassment were related to internalizing behavior, and sexual harassment was related to externalizing behavior. Cluster analysis revealed preliminary subgroups of victims. In addition, being victimized by a boy was more strongly related to behavior problems for both boys and girls than the experience of being victimized by a girl. Results suggest that the gender of perpetrators and victims should be considered, and there is a need to include sexual harassment in the study of peer victimization when developmentally appropriate.     

Aboriginal card gamblers and non-card gamblers: do they differ?

Many Indigenous populations engage in traditional gambling games, but little is known about their contemporary usage or the characteristics of people who participate. This paper presents the first quantitative study of traditional Indigenous Australian card gambling. The aim of this research was to compare Indigenous Australian card gamblers with non-card gamblers in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, gambling behaviour and motivations, gambling cognitions, gambling consequences, substance use while gambling and problem gambling severity. A gambling survey was conducted at Indigenous festivals, in several communities and online. Within a sample of 1001 gamblers, 414 people had gambled on traditional card games in the previous 12 months. Many card gamblers commenced gambling while young, were highly involved in both cards and commercial gambling and gambled because most of their family and friends also gamble. An important difference revealed here is that card gamblers gamble on more forms of commercial gambling than non-card gamblers. Gambling appears as a deep-seated habit in some participants' lives and although the proportion classified as problem gamblers is high in this sample the card gamblers held more realistic cognitions about chances of winning than did the non-card gamblers.     

How do people perceive urban trees? Assessing likes and dislikes in relation to the trees of a city

Cities are systems that include natural and human-created components. When a city grows without proper planning, it tends to have low environmental quality. If improving environmental quality is intended, people’s opinion should be taken into account for a better acceptance of urban management decisions. In this study, we assessed people’s perception of trees by conducting a survey with a controlled sample of citizens from the city of Morelia (west-central Mexico). Citizens liked both native and exotic tree species and rejected mainly exotic ones. Preference for trees were related to tree attributes; such as size. Trees that dropped leaves or tended to fall were not liked. The most-mentioned tree-related benefits were oxygen supply and shade; the most mentioned tree-related damages were accidents and infrastructure damage. The majority of respondents preferred trees near houses to increase tree density. Also, most respondents preferred trees in green areas as well as close to their houses, as they consider that trees provide oxygen. The majority of the respondents thought more trees were needed in the city. In general, our results show that although people perceive that trees in urban areas can cause damages, they often show more interest for the benefits related to trees and consider there should be more trees in cities. We strongly suggest the development of studies that broaden our knowledge of citizen preferences in relation to urban vegetation, and that further policy making takes their perception into account when considering creating new urban green areas, regardless of their type or size.     

Restaurant tipping in a field experiment: How do customers tip when they receive too much change?

Tipping behavior is analyzed in a field experiment where restaurant customers received excessive change, either 10 or 40 Shekels (about $3 versus $12). One third of the tables reported the extra change to the server and returned it. Tips were higher with the higher level of extra change. Returning the extra change was negatively correlated with tips. The interaction between the level of extra change and whether it was returned had no effect. Possible explanations that tips are higher when the excessive change is not returned due to a positive income effect or perceiving paying a tip out of excessive change as less costly because it is a forgone gain and not a loss, are not supported by the data. Subjects may have exhibited moral licensing and moral cleansing effects. These effects, however, were possibly mitigated by a self-selection effect going in the opposite direction: those who are more generous or altruistic by their nature are more likely to return the extra change and also more likely to tip generously. Receiving the larger amount of extra change may result in feelings of good mood, perceived luckiness, or individuation and unconscious fear of being observed, which increase tips. Interestingly, these feelings seem to remain even if the extra change was returned.     

Labeling partner violence: when do victims differentiate among acts?

Domestic violence professionals have debated whether all physical assaults by partners should be labeled abuse. This study examined the use of labels such as "abuse," "victim," and "battered woman" in a sample of women (n = 78) who had sustained at least one physical assault in their current or most recent relationship. Self-labeling followed a differentiating strategy, that is, women experiencing more frequent and more severe assaults were more likely to apply labels. Lower partner income, being Black, lower relationship commitment, and having ended the relationship also were associated with increased self-labeling. Labeling of hypothetical acts followed an inclusive strategy, that is, all assaults were considered abusive. These results suggest that contextual factors influence labeling. Prevention and intervention programs may be able to increase their effectiveness by including more situational context in their messages.     

Active parental consent in school-based research: how much is enough and how do we get it?

Active parental consent policies have been blamed for low participation rates and selection bias (i.e., loss of "high-risk" youths) in school-based studies. In this article, the authors describe active consent procedures that produced an overall active consent rate of 79% in a sample of more than 4,500 middle school students attending 29 schools in seven cities across the United States. Consent rates, however, varied considerably both within and between schools. To better understand factors associated with active parental consent rates, the authors examined district-level, school-level, and teacher-specific effects on consent rates.     

Housing experiences of former foster youth: How do they fare in comparison to other youth?

Research indicates that foster youth tend to fare poorly in a number of domains in the transition to adulthood, and the shift to independent living may be particularly challenging. However, it is unclear whether negative housing outcomes are attributable to foster care history or if they are due to other risk factors. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to compare housing outcomes for foster youth to a matched sample of youth who share similar risk factors and to an unmatched sample. Results indicate that foster youth struggle more in the transition to independent living in comparison to both groups, showing higher rates of homelessness, less housing stability, poorer neighborhood quality, and more reliance on public housing assistance. The paper explores how factors related to foster care and confounding risk factors that tend to have higher prevalence among foster youth may contribute to these outcomes.     

How Can We Have a Body?: Desires and Corporeality

This paper proposes a revision of the ways in which the body and bodily symptoms are theorized in psychoanalysis. It argues that psychoanalysis' mentalist stance can fail to sufficiently address the subjective experience of the body as a body and in doing so can miss crucial dimensions of the patient's experience.

Drawing on the countertransferential bodily experience of the analyst during specific therapies enables a fuller understanding of a person's bodily development. The author further proposes that the body is an outcome of relational dynamics that bequeath specific cultural and familial understandings to the contemporary body. She suggests ways in which physical symptoms can be understood as a search on the part of the patient to create a body that is alive for her or him when there is an absence of a sense of body surety.     

The social investment approach as a field of job creation. From the ‘recalibration’ to a resurgent trade-off between employment growth and low wage (white) jobs. A comparison between Germany and Italy

The social investment approach emerged as a new welfare paradigm, aimed at reconciling the traditional functions of the welfare supply with a productive social agenda, designed at preparing people to confront the ‘new social risks’, whether they be related to the problem of balancing paid work and family responsibilities, upgrading the skills, preventing inequalities and promoting the availability of in-kind services. In order to achieve these objectives, especially those related to care needs and work-life balance, the adoption of social investment-based strategies necessarily implies an expansion of the jobs related to health and social care services. In more recent years, many studies have analysed the limitations of the social investment policies because of their different redistributive impacts on social groups. Several studies have found a higher use of these policies for high-income families. Another source of criticism on social investment is that spending on these policies would seem to crowd out more traditional passive social expenditures. In this article, we examine another question related to the widespread of this approach: what are the effects of the social investment policies in terms of direct job creation? In fact, one of the more controversial issues, related to social investment policies, is their direct contribution to the labour market in terms of both quantity and quality of work within welfare services. The article analyses these issues focusing on Germany and Italy, two countries that represent not only two different care regimes but also two distinct models regarding job creation strategies in the care sector. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to long-term care policies, as they represent one of the pivotal areas of the social investment approach, both in terms of social services, to address new social risks, and new jobs related to welfare services     

Neighbourhood social ties: how much do residential,physical and virtual mobility matter?

Following up on the prediction by classical sociological theorists that neighbours will become irrelevant as societies become more mobile, this research examines the strength of people's social ties with neighbours and the associations thereof with residential, physical and virtual mobility using longitudinal data for Germany. Unlike previous studies, the research considers the three forms of mobility simultaneously and contrasts its effects on social ties with neighbours to those with family. The results show that residential and physical mobility are negatively associated with social ties to neighbours and positively with ties to family. Virtual mobility does not weaken social ties with neighbours but ties with family. The positive association between mobility and social ties with family may not be strong enough to ascertain that people maintain as close social ties to others in the future as it does not outweigh the negative association with visiting neighbours.     

Job turnover, wage rates, and marital stability: How are they related?

This study examines the interplay between job stability, wage rates, and marital stability. We use a Dynamic Selection Control model in which young men make sequential choices about work and family and estimate the model using an approach that takes account of self-selection, simultaneity and unobserved heterogeneity. The results quantify how job stability affects wage rates, how both affect marital status, and how marital status affects earnings and job stability. The study reveals robust evidence that job changes lower wages and the likelihood of getting married and remaining married. At the same time, marriage raises wage rates and job stability. To project the sequential effects linking job change, marital status, and earnings, we simulate the impacts of shocks that raise preferences for marriage and that increase education. Feedback effects cause the simulated wage gains from marriage to cumulate over time, indicating that long-run marriage wage premiums exceed conventional short-run estimates.     

‘I do like the subtle touch’: interactions between people with learning difficulties and their personal assistants

Disabled people have often been denied choice and control in their lives. Although direct payments promise to deliver autonomy for disabled people, much depends on the way direct payments employers and personal assistants handle their interactions. These matters are particularly important for people with learning difficulties, who have routinely been restricted and controlled by their support staff. This paper presents an analysis, based on video material, of interactions between people with learning difficulties and personal assistants. The paper examines how difficult tasks, such as giving advice, can be accomplished in ways that people with learning difficulties find acceptable. Successful interactions are built on sensitivity to the wishes of the person, on a moment by moment basis. It is important that both parties coordinate their body language, humour and timing to demonstrate a close and friendly relationship, which is both professional and on the terms of the direct payments employer.