Commentary: answers and questions in the sociology of mental health

This commentary speaks to several issues that arise from the papers in this special issue. Two articles--Kessler (2002) and Mirowsky and Ross (2002)--focus on a major measurement issue: dimensional versus diagnostic-type assessments. One topic requires greater attention: the correspondence of these measures with the underlying states they supposedly measure--constructs in the psychometric tradition and empirically defined illnesses in the medical or psychiatric tradition. Conclusions about the nature of these unobserved states remain tentative at this time. Three articles--Keyes (2002), Schwartz (2002), and Umberson, Williams, and Anderson (2002)--address the expansion of mental health outcomes. The existing reliance on emotional distress is problematic for sociological research because a single disorder is not a good proxy for estimates of the overall mental health consequences of social arrangements. Although these papers present diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives, collectively they demonstrate that no one approach to outcomes is best for all research questions.     

Overcoming hopelessness and social isolation: the ENGAGE model for working with neglecting families toward permanence

The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) mandates policies designed to increase the frequency and speed with which permanency is achieved for children in the child welfare system. ASFA's focus is on child safety, permanency, and well-being. The expectation that parents correct neglectful conditions within specified time frames places an increased ethical responsibility on child welfare staff. Carrying out this responsibility requires vigorous and innovative approaches to engaging and working with neglectful families. Drawing on a well-established conceptual framework for understanding the determinants of effective parenting, the authors derive the ENGAGE (Engagement, Needs assessment, Goal setting, Assessment of progress, Goal achievement, Ending work) model for achieving permanency within the policy structure. The model incorporates creative client engagement, assessment of family needs, mutual goal setting, the goal achievement process, termination, and aftercare.     

Widowhood and spirituality: coping responses to bereavement

Nearly half of women age 65 or older are widows and nearly 70% of these women live alone. Because older women are three times more likely than their male counterparts to be widowed, widowhood has been labeled a primarily female phenomenon. This review article has two aims: (a) to discuss the impact of widowhood on the lives of older women and (b) to discuss how religion and spirituality may be used as coping methods for conjugal loss. After reviewing the literature the authors conclude that older women use religious coping as well as religious and spiritual beliefs and behaviors to facilitate positive adjustment to the loss of a spouse.     

Sex and Gender in the 1970s

The late 1960s through the early 1970s was a time of profound social change both in American society and in sociology. Sociological attention shifted from social pathology to deviant subcultures and to labeling processes, shifting again by the 1990s to the study of social control. Many ethnographic studies of homosexuality were undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s in the tradition of labeling and stigma, including Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade (1970) and my Identity and Community in the Gay World (Warren 1974). Male ethnographers in particular were often stigmatized along with the deviants they studied, while the women (including me) were sometimes discouraged from doing graduate-level sociology at all. Thirty years later, the terrains of gender, sexuality and stigma have changed, yet pockets of pro-stigma resistance remain. Even in the 2000s, the stigma of homosexuality has not entirely disappeared. And, above all, the essentializing categories of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual remain firmly entrenched in public discourse, sociological analysis, homophobia and gay activism.     

Features of occupational rehabilitation systems in Australia: a map through the maze

This review contributes to the limited literature on systems of occupational rehabilitation in Australia. Occupational rehabilitation is defined and features of occupational rehabilitation systems within the workers' compensation framework are described. Common features include: (a) the trend to workplace management, (b) preferred rehabilitation program settings and (c) widespread acceptance of some identified principles of occupational rehabilitation. Other features such as roles of stakeholders and participants, relationship of rehabilitation providers and employers, and the services provided have a number of variations in the Australian systems. Similarities and differences between features of Australian and North American systems are noted. Implications for occupational rehabilitation providers are discussed, and recommendations for practice and future research are made.     

Use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Analysis with a Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic Model of Methylmercury to Estimate Exposures in U.S. Women of Childbearing Age

A Bayesian approach, implemented using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis, was applied with a physiologically‐based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model of methylmercury (MeHg) to evaluate the variability of MeHg exposure in women of childbearing age in the U.S. population. The analysis made use of the newly available National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) blood and hair mercury concentration data for women of age 16–49 years (sample size, 1,582). Bayesian analysis was performed to estimate the population variability in MeHg exposure (daily ingestion rate) implied by the variation in blood and hair concentrations of mercury in the NHANES database. The measured variability in the NHANES blood and hair data represents the result of a process that includes interindividual variation in exposure to MeHg and interindividual variation in the pharmacokinetics (distribution, clearance) of MeHg. The PBPK model includes a number of pharmacokinetic parameters (e.g., tissue volumes, partition coefficients, rate constants for metabolism and elimination) that can vary from individual to individual within the subpopulation of interest. Using MCMC analysis, it was possible to combine prior distributions of the PBPK model parameters with the NHANES blood and hair data, as well as with kinetic data from controlled human exposures to MeHg, to derive posterior distributions that refine the estimates of both the population exposure distribution and the pharmacokinetic parameters. In general, based on the populations surveyed by NHANES, the results of the MCMC analysis indicate that a small fraction, less than 1%, of the U.S. population of women of childbearing age may have mercury exposures greater than the EPA RfD for MeHg of 0.1 μg/kgg/day, and that there are few, if any, exposures greater than the ATSDR MRL of 0.3 μgg/kgg/day. The analysis also indicates that typical exposures may be greater than previously estimated from food consumption surveys, but that the variability in exposure within the population of U.S. women of childbearing age may be less than previously assumed.     

Collecting loss

ABSTRACT

‘Collecting Loss’ develops themes from Pleasures Taken (Mavor, Duke University Press, 1995) with an emphasis on the fetishization of photographs and old clothes (exemplified, on the one hand, in Elin O'Hara Slavick's own girlhood dresses that she has stitched with haunting memories of her childhood, and on the other hand in the lush photographs taken by Sally Mann and the Victorian photographer Clementina Hawarden). As Christian Boltanski has written: ‘What they [clothing and photographs] have in common is that they are simultaneously presence and absence. They are both an object and a souvenir of a subject, exactly as a cadaver is both an object and a souvenir of a subject.’ Reading an old photographic album made by her own grandmother against other maternal collections of plenitude (whether they be old clothes or photographs or domestic bric-a-brac), Mavor reveals how such accumulated goods are made to fill in for the pangs of loss: lost childhoods, lost family histories, lost memories, lost friends. Mixing corporeality and critical theory, Mavor engages with Emily Apter's notion of ‘maternal collectomania’ as a site of provocative meanings worthy of placement alongside more conventional discourses on visual representation and collecting.     

Sociocultural Contexts of Time to First Sex Among Hispanic Adolescents

This investigation examines the sociocultural influences on risk of first sex among a representative sample of Hispanic (primarily of Mexican origin) teens living in Los Angeles County. Teen acculturation (measured as language of interview) moderates the effects of gender on risk of sex, with less acculturated teens exhibiting the greatest gender difference. Teens living with both biological parents have significantly lower risk of sex and the effect of family acculturation (measured as generational status) operates through teens' language of interview. Neither measure of parent‐youth relationship (socioemotional support, parental control) is significant. Hispanic teens living in low‐density Hispanic neighborhoods have significantly higher risk of sex than do teens living in neighborhoods with higher levels of ambient hazards. The results highlight the importance of characterizing sociocultural influences at multiple levels of aggregation.