Trauma adapted family connections: reducing developmental and complex trauma symptomatology to prevent child abuse and neglect

Families living in urban poverty, enduring chronic and complex traumatic stress, and having difficulty meeting their children's basic needs have significant child maltreatment risk factors. There is a paucity of family focused, trauma-informed evidence-based interventions aimed to alleviate trauma symptomatology, strengthen family functioning, and prevent child abuse and neglect. Trauma Adapted Family Connections (TA-FC) is a manualized trauma-focused practice rooted in the principles of Family Connections (FC), an evidence supported preventive intervention developed to address the glaring gap in services for this specific, growing, and underserved population. This paper describes the science based development of TA-FC, its phases and essential components, which are based on theories of attachment, neglect, trauma, and family interaction within a comprehensive community-based family focused intervention framework.     

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge the partial support of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences through Training Grant #T32 ESO 7018 and Research Grant #ROI ESO 2286, also the partial support of Special Projects funded by COllncil for Tobacco Research - U.S.A., Inc.     

Single-parenting and intimacy

This article presents the findings from in-depth interviews with 38 single parents of both sexes with respect to the adult, nonparenting component of their lifestyles. Autonomy, sexual constraints, intrarole conflicts, intimacy, and institutional supports are discussed from an interactionist perspective. Emphasis is given to how traditional gender roles restrict or facilitate intimacy for single parents. An emerging theme is that while gender roles are more restrictive of female parents with respect to meeting sexual needs, they are perhaps more oppressive of fathers when the broader notion of intimacy as an affective support system is examined.     

The evaluation of a mind/body intervention to reduce psychological distress and perceived stress in college students

The authors examined the effect of a 6-week mind/body intervention on college students' psychological distress, anxiety, and perception of stress. One hundred twenty-eight students were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 63) or a waitlist control group (n = 65). The experimental group received 6 90-minute group-training sessions in the relaxation response and cognitive behavioral skills. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Perceived Stress Scale were used to assess the students' psychological state before and after the intervention. Ninety students (70% of the initial sample) completed the postassessment measure. Significantly greater reductions in psychological distress, state anxiety, and perceived stress were found in the experimental group. This brief mind/body training may be useful as a preventive intervention for college students, according to the authors, who called for further research to determine whether the observed treatment effect can be sustained over a longer period of time.