A spiritual framework in incest survivors treatment

Through an examination of recent incest treatment development, this article emphasizes the theoretical concept of integration within the treatment process for female adult incest survivors. Spirituality as a therapeutic foundation is discussed with examples of therapeutic techniques. A case study illustrates the psycho-spiritual process of treating a 29-year-old female incest survivor and describes how self-integration has helped this client heal from trauma and change her worldview. Significant outcomes of treatment include the client's gaining of self-awareness and freeing herself from emotional blindness. The recommended practice framework includes a three-step healing process of building alliance with the client in a safe environment, disputing faulty religious assumptions in a learning process, and affirming the needs for reconnection and continuous spiritual support.     

Suicidality among homeless people: Testing the mediating effects of self-efficacy and depression

ABSTRACT

This cross-sectional study examined the mediating effect of PTSD on suicide ideation and suicide attempt through two mediators, self-efficacy and depression, among homeless adults. We recruited a non-random, purposive sample of 156 homeless adults from seven homeless people shelters in Kansas. SEM results suggest that self-efficacy and depression were significant mediators between PTSD and suicide ideation, but not between PTSD and suicide attempt. This study’s findings can be used to identify risk factors associated with suicidal behaviors that can be used to design service programs aimed at preventing suicidal ideation and attempt among people who are homeless.     

Collective efficacy, family attachment, and urban adolescent suicide attempts

The suicide rate among American adolescents between the ages of 14-25 has dramatically increased during the last 50 years, and this fact has been the focus of extensive social-scientific investigation. To date, however, research focusing on the joint effects of mental health, family, and contextual-level predictors on adolescents' suicidal behaviors is scarce. Drawing on Durkheim's classic macro-level approach to suicide and collective efficacy theory, we use data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine the effect of informal social controls on adolescents' suicide attempts. Analyzing reports from 990 youth, we examine the hypothesis that neighborhood-level collective efficacy and family-level integration and social control independently affect suicide attempts. We also examine the extent to which they interact in their effects on suicidal behavior. Overall, results from multilevel logit models support the Durkheimian expectation that family attachment reduces the probability that adolescents will attempt suicide. The effect of collective efficacy is interactive in nature. Specifically, we find that collective efficacy significantly enhances the protective effect of family attachment and support on adolescent suicidal behaviors. We discuss findings within the context of social control theory.     

Personal and Professional Knowledge of and Experience With Suicide and Suicide Prevention Among Stakeholders in Clinical and Community Practice

Community-dwelling veterans at risk for suicide may be in contact with a variety of providers in agency-based settings that offer health and human services. The study aim is to describe the perspective of agency-based clinical and community providers who may come into contact with veterans in need of suicide prevention services and to examine the nature of their personal and professional relationships to individuals at risk for suicide among this sample.

This study reports on qualitative data from a sample of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) and community providers serving veterans and military families in one Midwestern state (N = 70). Providers completed a survey assessing exposure to suicide, including contact with and relationship to someone suicidal, and organizational characteristics of the providers’ employing agencies. Semi-structured interview questions probed for the nature of how they would react with suicidal individuals. Most providers (94%) had some prior contact with someone who was suicidal, and nearly three quarters (77%) knew someone who had died by suicide. Providers reported powerful emotional responses of sadness and remorse to suicidal experiences. While these providers interact with veterans and military families as part of their jobs, they may have their own history of being exposed to suicide, both professionally and personally.     

“We Have Closed Our Eyes and Sealed Our Lips”: Black Women’s Accounts of Discussing Suicide within the Black Community

Conversing about suicide with an at-risk individual can be enough to save a life. Given the rise of suicidal behavior among African American subgroups (i.e., youth and male), advocates are urging blacks to have candid conversations about the issue. The current study highlights black women’s experiences discussing suicide. Findings suggest that widespread beliefs that suicide is an insignificant issue among blacks make conversing about suicide especially challenging. These findings reveal problematic implications for African Americans contemplating suicide in their communities. Suicide may be a phenomenon for which communal support is less prevalent.     

African‐American Women and Suicide: A Review and Critique of the Literature

This paper reviews the literature on African‐American women’s suicide rates. This topic is often neglected due to African‐American women’s low rates of suicide occurrence. This review seeks to answer the call for increased scientific inquiry on matters related to African‐American women and suicide. The author begins by identifying complex dynamics surrounding African‐American women’s unique social position in order to establish a better understanding of how socio‐cultural influences are addressed in the literature in relation to the suicide paradox. Both theoretical and empirical studies are thoroughly assessed in order to identify the risk and protective factors exclusive to African‐American women. The literature concludes that a history of mental disorders, particularly depression, a history of physical and emotional abuse, and a history of alcohol and substance abuse have all proven significant in increasing the risk of suicidal behavior among African‐American women. Untreated depression continues to be the leading cause of suicide among African‐American women. Contrarily, the literature identifies religious/spiritual beliefs, strong social ties, low rates of suicide acceptability, and unique coping strategies developed as a result of longstanding oppressive conditions as primary reasons for African‐American women’s exceptionally low suicide rates.     

I/I-Thou/It: Muriel Dimen as Clinician

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon Muriel Dimen’s paper “Reflections on Cure, or ‘I/Thou/It’” (2010) as my primary point of reference and departure, I attempt to characterize her style of clinical thinking and of her clinical questionings of herself, analytic practices, and the consequences of theoretical predilections. Central to Dimen’s considerations in these clinical essays are reflections on termination, self-analysis, the limits of the two-person model, the therapist’s narcissistic vulnerability, sexuality, and the body.     

The Effects of Suicide on the Private Practitioner: A Professional and Personal Perspective

A patient's suicide has a profound effect on the therapist and psychotherapy with a chronically suicidal patient is particularly troubling. Guilt over one's failure to recognize the warning signs, fear of one's incompetence or irresponsibility, shame that one has failed, and fear of being blamed by the patient's loved ones and by colleagues are feelings that frequently surface and that can result in isolating a practitioner from the very sources of peer support that are necessary in order to resolve the trauma. This article explores the effects of suicide on the private practitioner. It discusses how burnout and vicarious traumatization impact upon the therapist who treats the chronically suicidal patient. Two clinical examples illustrate the impact of working with imminent suicide and the aftermath of a patient's death from a personal perspective. Recommendations are made to help private practitioners maintain equilibrium when working with these overwhelming case situations.     

Attachment‐Based Family Therapy With a 13‐Year‐Old Girl Presenting With High Risk for Suicide

This article describes the application of Attachment‐Based Family Therapy (ABFT) to the treatment of a 13‐year‐old female adolescent presenting with high risk of suicide, complicated by a history of depression and sexual trauma. The article begins with an overview of ABFT, including (a) how attachment theory guides treatment; (b) the structure of the clinical model; and (c) the data that provide empirical support. A case example is then presented that exemplifies the primary clinical procedures used to reach therapeutic goals in ABFT, including attachment repair and autonomy/competence promotion. Weekly changes in suicide ideation and depression scores are presented. The article concludes with a discussion about implications for family‐based treatment of suicidal youth.     

Testing a path model of relationships between gender,age, and bullying victimization and violent behavior,substance abuse,depression, suicidal ideation,and suicide attempts in adolescents

The goal of this study was to test a path model for the relationships between age, gender, traditional bullying and cyberbullying victimization, and violent behavior, substance abuse, depression, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in adolescents. A hypothesized path model was fit to data from the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) on a nationally representative sample of 15,425 high-school students from across the United States. Results suggested that the effects of traditional and cyberbullying victimization on suicidal thinking, suicide planning, and suicide attempts were mediated by violent behavior, substance abuse, and depression. Results also suggested reciprocal paths between substance abuse and violent behavior. There were statistically significant indirect paths from both traditional and cyberbullying victimization to suicide attempts without the involvement of depression, suicidal thinking, or suicide planning, findings suggesting a model for spontaneous, unplanned adolescent suicides. Results suggested that female adolescents who reported cyberbullying victimization also reported higher rates of depression and suicidal behaviors compared to their male counterparts, and that as adolescents got older, depression and substance abuse tended to increase, while violent behavior and suicidal thinking tended to decrease. The implications of these findings for social workers, school counselors, and others who work with adolescents are considered.     

The Bird that Came out of the Cage: A Foucauldian Feminist Approach to Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Using Foucauldian principles, this study describes a complex process; the birth of a feminist woman. Through an exploration of the uses of bird imagery, it traces the development of Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. It shows how she begins by gaining awareness of being caged by patriarchal restraints, goes through the various stages of self‐reinvention, and finally escapes from a society that sought to confine her. Using a range of theoretical reference points, including Foucault's analysis of the modernization of power, Marilyn Frye's theory of oppression and the work of Sandra Lee Bartky on its internalization, this article analyzes the final drastic feminist resolution taken by Edna, the strong wife who ultimately belongs only to herself. This innovative analysis also reinforces the connection that exists between a woman's awareness and control of her body in order to achieve liberation from patriarchal oppression.     

Betrayal of the Body: Group Approaches to Hypo-Sexuality for Adult Female Sufferers of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Hypo-sexuality, self-reported hypoactive sexual desire and/or sexual aversion, is a common symptom experienced by women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. This symptom may be distressing to the patient herself, and may place strain on her romantic relationships in adulthood. Unfortunately, this problem often remains undiscussed between patient and provider, in part due to the provider’s lack of comfort or knowledge regarding how best to address this issue. In this article, we explore several strategies that providers may employ in a group setting in order to help women realize their sexuality while minimizing untoward side effects such as feelings of guilt or shame, or flashbacks. We highlight the merits of each technique, and provide insights from clinical experience to guide practitioners to help their patients facing this difficult issue.     

Belorussian Culture in the Sixteenth Century

The autobiographical writings of the sometime Canadian resident Ilona Duczynska (1897–1978), born near Vienna of a Polish father and Hungarian mother (both of the lower nobility), were designed to show how experiences within the family during childhood and youth led to her becoming a revolutionary. Duczynska claimed to have experienced a species of class struggle—involving the families of her idealized father and her much criticized mother—that brought about the death of the former and marked her personally with the sign of inferiority. It followed, then, that education was powerless to amend what Duczynska decided she had already ‘learned’ within the family, including her malcontent father’s characteristic spirit of negation. Consequently, Duczynska describes the various stages of her distinctly privileged education in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Hungary—almost entirely in terms of how she availed herself of opportunities to take a ‘stand’ against existing institutions. Inevitably, in 1922 even the ‘party school’ of the Hungarian Communist Party forfeited her confidence. Further research, drawing on psychological insights, may show why Duczynska’s family experiences should have led to a mistrust of the family as an institution, fascination with ‘revolutionary violence’, and life-long hatred of liberal democratic (and capitalist) institutions.     

Bisexuality in the male

Research into factors pertinent to incest is hampered and confused as a result of lacking clear‐cut definitions. A distinction is made here between consanguine and affinal relationships, and it is suggested that biological consequences as well as psychological problems allegedly resulting from incest could be more clearly determined, and the effectiveness of the incest taboo, its origin and psychological internalization could be studied more effectively. Instances from literature are cited to exemplify these concepts.     

WHERE RELATIONAL THEORY AND ATTACHMENT THEORY INTERSECT: A REAL RELATIONSHIP AND A REAL ATTACHMENT

This paper demonstrates the importance of understanding the client’s early attachment patterns and of promoting a real attachment in the therapeutic dyad. A review of relational theory reinforces current acceptance of therapist self-disclosure as a tool for engaging difficult clients. Additionally, therapists can identify clients’ early attachment experiences and promote growth in fragile clients by allowing them judicious access to their inner world, thereby encouraging the formation of a real attachment. Case examples illustrate how to identify early attachment patterns and one therapist’s creative use of self in developing real, therapeutic attachments with her clients.     

Reconsidering Durkheim's Assessment of Tarde: Formalizing a Tardian Theory of Imitation,Contagion, and Suicide Suggestion

Emile Durkheim summarily rejected Gabriel Tarde's imitation thesis, arguing that sociology need only concern itself with social suicide rates. Over a century later, a burgeoning body of suicide research has challenged Durkheim's claim to a general theory of suicide as 4 decades worth of evidence has firmly established that (1) there is a positive association between the publicization of celebrity suicides and a spike in the aggregate suicide rate, (2) some social environments are conducive to epidemic‐like outbreaks of suicides, and (3) suicidal ideas or behavior spreads to some individuals exposed to a personal role model's suicidal behavior—for example, a friend or family member. Revisiting Tarde, the article examines why Tarde's theory deserves renewed attention, elucidates what he meant by imitation, and then formalizes his “laws” into testable theses, while suggesting future research questions that would advance the study of suicide, as well as other pathologies. Each “law” is elaborated by considering advances in contemporary social psychology as well as in light of its ability to supplement Durkheim's theory in explaining the “outlier” cases.     

Love and Alcohol: Performance in the Fiction and Life of Writer-Singer Nataliia Medvedeva

Abstract

The multifaceted Russian author, singer, and actress Nataliia Medvedeva’s (1958–2003) creative output was synonymous with performance. Her image became iconic in worldwide popular culture as the carefree, smiling young woman on the cover of the New Wave rock group “The Cars”’s eponymous 1978 album. Then Medvedeva was twenty years old and had been living in the United States for about three years; she returned to Russia in 1994 after nineteen years abroad, mainly in the US and France, and died at the age of forty-four, possibly of a fatal mixture of alcohol and tranquilizers. By the time of her death, Medvedeva—author, poet, journalist, singer, musician, model, and designer—was, and remains, an enigmatic yet colourful figure of the Russian émigré and post-Soviet literary, music, and cultural scenes.

From an early age in Leningrad, she showed an aptitude for constructing performance and (re)presenting herself. This article suggests that Medvedeva used her early autobiographical writing as a method of thinking through her ideas and beliefs about the nature of performance, especially as it related to perceptions of the sexual, sexuality, and shocking-ness, as well as to the relationship between the audience and herself, indeed, between society and the self. To support my thesis, I focus, in particular, on her autobiographical novel Liubov’ s alkogolem [Drunk Love, 1987?, 1995, 2001], as well as foundational ideas from the field of performance studies.     

Zora Neale Hurston’s visual and textual portrait of middle passage survivor Oluale Kossola/Cudjo Lewis

This article examines African American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston’s book-length biography and film of the last known Middle Passage survivor, Oluale Kossola/Cudjo Lewis, to explore her cinematic and literary engagement with slavery and to recover Lewis as a co-author of both documents. Hurston’s literary project, ‘Barracoon’, in which she situated herself merely as Kossola’s amanuensis and foregrounded the ‘inexpressible violence’ and ‘horror’ of his experience, represented an unusually frank twentieth-century record of enslavement and post-slavery life. Such work pre-dated and lacked the patronising tone of much of the WPA Slave Narrative Collection (1936–1938), whose investigators were mainly white and whose subjects’ accounts were often reconstructed loosely from field notes. Moreover, Hurston’s footage of Lewis circumvented literary mediation altogether to provide an Atlantic slavery survivor with an unprecedented visual outlet for self-expression.