Developing a Brief Suicide Prevention Intervention and Mobile Phone Application: A Qualitative Report

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth and has become a serious public health problem. There has been limited research on strategies to decrease the likelihood of reattempt in adolescents. As phase one of a treatment development study, clinicians, parents, and adolescents participated in qualitative interviews in order to gain new perspectives on developing a targeted intervention and a safety plan phone application for suicide prevention. Participants indicated that transition of care, specific treatment targets, and safety planning were important parts of treatment. In addition, all participants endorsed the use of a smartphone application for these purposes.     

Conceptualizing Household Distribution of Labor from Feminist Theory: Why Power Matters in Psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

This article reviews existing literature on unequal distributions of household labor among heterosexual dual-earner marriages in the United States. Specifically, this article summarizes the literature linking women’s continued performance of the majority of household labor to decreased well-being and overall functioning and situates this problem in the context of psychotherapy. Feminist theory is used to conceptualize this topic by exploring the role of equality in women’s relationships with their spouses. This article suggests that although women and men are likely to agree with the basic tenets of equality, few individuals attain this ideal in psychotherapy due to gender-based assumptions that continue to influence the perceptions and behaviors of all people (e.g., clients and psychotherapists alike). Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.     

Mandated reporting thresholds for community professionals

This study examines how community-based mandated reporters understand and interpret reasonable suspicion, the standard threshold for mandated reporting of suspected child abuse. Respondents were asked to identify the probability necessary for "suspicion of child abuse" to constitute reasonable suspicion. Data were analyzed for internal consistency, evidence of a group standard, and associations with professional and educational demographics. There was a 90.4% response rate (1,233/1,364). On both ordinal probability and estimated probability scales, respondents demonstrated wide variability in the thresholds they identified for what constitutes reasonable suspicion. Comparing individual responses for the two scales, 83% were inconsistent. Responses on the estimated probability scale were correlated with frequency of reporting child abuse, professional background, and prior education on child abuse. Lack of consensus in how community professionals interpret reasonable suspicion raises the question of whether more specific training is needed for this threshold to be understood, interpreted, and applied in a consistent manner.     

“I was <Emphasis Type="Italic">that</Emphasis> close”: Investigating Players’ Reactions to Losses,Wins, and Near-Misses on Scratch Cards

While scratch cards are a popular, accessible, and inexpensive form of gambling, very little is known about how they affect and influence the player. This study sought to understand the physiological and subjective experience of scratch card play, with special emphasis on the effect of near-miss outcomes (i.e. uncovering two out of three “grand prize” symbols needed to win said prize), which are remarkably prevalent in scratch card games. Thirty-eight undergraduate students from the University of Waterloo each played two custom scratch card games and experienced three types of outcomes (losses, wins and near-misses) while their skin conductance levels (SCLs) and post-reinforcement pauses were recorded. Each participant also rated each outcome in terms of its subjective level of arousal, valence, and frustration. Our results indicate that players interpreted near-misses as negatively valenced, highly arousing, frustrating losses, and were faster to move onto the next game following this type of outcome than following winning outcomes. Additionally, near-miss outcomes were associated with the largest amount of change in SCLs as the outcome was revealed. This work has implications for the problem gambling literature as it provides evidence of the frustration hypothesis of near-misses in scratch cards, and is the first study to examine the physiological and psychological experiences of scratch card players.     

Characterization of psychiatrically hospitalized college students

Abstract

Objective: To characterize contemporary college students requiring psychiatric hospitalization. Participants and methods: Sociodemographic and diagnostic information was gathered retrospectively and analyzed from the electronic medical records (EMRs) of the consecutive inpatient hospitalizations of 905 college students admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit. Results: Significantly more females compared to males experienced the following: more hospitalizations, more family and financial stressors, more depression, and less psychotic and bipolar disorder. The most frequent diagnosis was a depressive disorder, followed by bipolar disorder, psychotic disorder, and personality disorder, most frequently borderline personality disorder. Half of participants had comorbid diagnoses with substance abuse most common. More than two-thirds of students endorsed social or intimate relationship, academic, and family challenges as psychosocial stressors. In all, 15% of participants had repeat admissions. Conclusions: The present study provides demographic data from a sample of psychiatrically hospitalized college students. Findings can help improve screening and identification of decompensation in college students.     

Reactive Temperament and Sensitivity to Context in Childcare

Consistent with Biological Sensitivity to Context and Differential Susceptibility hypotheses, this study found that children who, as infants, were more temperamentally reactive were more sensitive to the quality of childcare they experienced as toddlers, but not to the amount of childcare with peers they had experienced since birth. Children with both highly positively and negatively reactive temperaments were more socially integrated when care quality was higher and less integrated when care quality was lower compared with moderately reactive children. Reactive temperament was not found to moderate relations between care quality or care duration and internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. These findings support the need to consider individual differences among children in evaluating the impacts of childcare.     

Sexual and nonsexual dating violence perpetration: testing an integrated perpetrator typology

The present study tested the validity of an integrated sexual and nonsexual violence perpetrator typology outlined by Monson and Langhinrichsen-Rohling (1998) in a sample of 670 dating individuals. Two-hundred-and-sixty-five of the participants (87 men, 178 women) reported some act of sexual and/or physical dating violence perpetration in their lifetime. The data supported at least three perpetrator types, namely, the Relationship-only, Generally Violent/Antisocial, and Histrionic/Preoccupied types. Overall, these findings indicate that different factors may cause or maintain the intimate violence perpetrated within this heterogeneous population. There were important gender differences in perpetrator type membership, highlighting the differences in men's and women's use of violence. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to the development of typologies, their application to men and women perpetrators, as well as their utility for the assessment and treatment of perpetrators.