Mental health and substance use disorders among foster youth transitioning to adulthood: Past research and future directions

At a time when there is increasing attention being given to systematically integrating the well-being of children with the goals of safety and permanence in child welfare, little is known about the psychosocial functioning of foster youth transitioning to adulthood from substitute care. This article systematically reviews 16 peer-reviewed articles and/or research reports to identify lifetime and past year prevalence rates of mental health disorders and service utilization. At ages 17 or 18, foster youth are 2 to 4 times more likely to suffer from lifetime and/or past year mental health disorders compared to transition aged youth in the general population. Findings show that mental health service use declines at ages when the prevalence rate of mental health disorders is peaking. The findings of this review suggest the need to focus future efforts in three main areas: 1) setting a common research agenda for the study of mental health and service use; 2) routine screening and empirically supported treatments; and 3) integration and planning between child and adult mental health service systems.     

Parenting experiences of three self‐identified gay fathers

There is an increasing number of self‐identified gay fathers or “out” gay men who have chosen to parent through such alternative means as adoption and surrogacy. In spite of their growing numbers, there has been little research on the experiences of gay fathers. Three self‐identified gay fathers volunteered to participate in the current study. The semi‐structured interviews focused on four areas: decision to parent, experience of fatherhood, relationships with children, and the coming‐out process. Participants were Caucasian, ranged in age from the mid‐30s to early 50s, and had either one or two children. Their children were either Caucasian or biracial and ranged in age from early infancy to seven years. Both single and partnered fathers were represented in the sample as was parenting through adoption and through surrogacy. The themes that emerged from the interviews are described below.     

Trauma and couples: mechanisms in dyadic functioning

Research traditionally has focused on the development of symptoms in those who experienced trauma directly but overlooked the impact of trauma on the families of victims. In recent years, researchers and clinicians have begun to examine how individual exposure to traumatic events affects the spouses/partners, children, and professional helpers of trauma survivors. The current study reports data from a larger mixed-methodology study that includes qualitative interview data from 17 individuals, coded to identify the mechanisms that may affect the couple's interpersonal functioning when there is a history of trauma exposure in one or both partners. The following primary themes were identified: role in the relationship, boundary issues, intimacy problems, triggers, and coping mechanisms. Areas for future research and clinical implications also are identified.     

The student-run public relations firm in an undergraduate program: Reaching learning and professional development goals through ‘real world’ experience

A student-run public relations firm can offer a variety of benefits for an undergraduate program in which there are limited resources for professional involvement by students. The article is a case study that profiles a student-run firm launched in conjunction with a capstone course in a journalism department. Specific learning and professional development goals were established for students, the department, and for clients served by the firm. The article presents a brief summary of successes, along with a discussion of opportunities and challenges. General recommendations are offered for establishing a student-run public relations firm.     

Effects of Conditioning Voices as Reinforcers for Listener Responses on Rate of Learning,Awareness, and Preferences for Listening to Stories in Preschoolers With Autism

We used a delayed non-concurrent pre- and post-intervention probe design to test the effects of a voice conditioning protocol (VCP) with 3 preschoolers with autism on (a) rate of acquisition of listener curricular objectives, (b) observing voices and the presence of adults across 3 settings, (c) selecting to listen to adults tell stories in free play setting, and (d) the occurrence of stereotypy in the story setting. The VCP conditioned voices as reinforcers for listening to recordings of voices via stimulus-stimulus pairing, which resulted in the children listening to audio recordings of voices in 90% of intervals in 5-min concurrent-operant preference tests. After voices became conditioned reinforcers, all 3 children's learning accelerated; 2 children's observing responses increased in the 3 settings; and 2 children selected to listen to stories and also showed decreased stereotypy in the story setting. The data suggest that conditioned reinforcement for observing responses may be a verbal behavior developmental cusp that acts to accelerate learning that involves listening, and that the cusp may be induced using the VCP.     

International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Role of the State

This note reviews recent theoretical and empirical work on the determinants and efficacy of state immigration policies to draw conclusions about the future direction of policy regimes throughout the globe and their likely effects. An age of increasingly restrictive immigration policies is emerging, but it is still unclear how effective these policies will be in controlling the volume and composition of international migration. States can be located along a continuum of efficacy with respect to the imposition of restrictive policies. Unfortunately virtually all research done to date has focused on the effectiveness of restrictive policies in major immigrant-receiving developed countries. More research needs to be done to determine just how effective restrictive immigration policies can be under varying degrees of state capacity.     

A macrosimulation approach to the investigation of natural fertility

This paper is part of a long-term investigation known as the Mormon Historical Demography Project. It examines the capability of a simulation model, originally proposed by John Bongaarts (1976), to fit the natural fertility pattern which characterized the mid-nineteenth century Mormon population. Application of this model permits estimates to be made of the historical timing and age-incidence of fertility limitation. A sensitivity analysis of the model’s parameters demonstrates that simple changes in the model’s proximate determinants of fertility, excluding contraceptive practices, would be insufficientto account for later transition effects. Thus the results successfully capture the dynamics underlying the Mormon natural fertility pattern as well as offer a framework for future modeling of the transition away from natural fertility.     

Guestworker programs: Evidence from Europe and the United States and some implications for U.S. policy

Mounting concern in the United States over increased illegal migration from Mexico during the past decade has generated a heated policy debate and led to a number of proposals as to how the U.S. government should deal with the problem. Among these has been a call for a temporary worker program similar to the U.S.-sponsored Bracero Program (1942–1964) in which over 4 million Mexican workers were recruited to perform temporary agricultural labor in the southwestern United States. This article considers the implications of such a program by examining the social and economic effects of previous guestworker programs in the United States and western Europe from the perspective of both sending and receiving societies. Particular attention is paid to the efficacy of these programs in promoting temporary as opposed to long-term immigration of foreign workers as well as their developmental impact on sending countries.Now at 2405 Rayburn House Office Building, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC 20515.