‘Coming Out Tales’: Adult Sons and Daughters' Feelings About Their Gay Father's Sexual Identity

Coming out to their children is a dilemma that concerns many gay, bisexual, and lesbian parents with children from previous heterosexual relationships. How children found out about having a father who identified himself as gay, and their feelings about their father's sexual identity, were explored through qualitative analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 36 sons and daughters (aged 19 to 36 years) whose gay fathers participated in the Gay & Bisexual Parenting Survey (Barrett and Tasker, 2001). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed that awareness of their father's sexual identity was often left unspoken for various reasons, and that acceptance came about through gradual understanding as well as direct discussion. Interview data indicated the complexity of the relationship between the young adult's personal acceptance of their father's gay identity and their consideration of social context when deciding how open to be to others about their father's sexual identity. This research has varied implications for therapeutic work with gay and bisexual fathers coming out to their children from previous heterosexual relationships.     

青年流动人口就医流向选择的影响因素与测度分析——基于北京、上海和深圳调查

通过探讨和研究青年流动人口就医流向,为认识和分析青年流动人口就医问题提供数据和依据,为提高我国青年流动人口的健康水平、优化卫生资源配置、促进卫生资源分配的公平合理、完善我国青年流动人口异地就医政策提供理论基础。故此,根据消费者选择效用最大化原理,应用就医地点对就医者的效用满足函数,构建基于效用最大化的青年流动人口就医行为选择及影响因素评估模型,从就医机构选择的预测概率、离散变化和Odds Ratios等角度对影响因素的重要程度及影响大小进行定量测度和分析,结论显示:青年流动人口的个体特质人口学因素、经济支持因素和生理因素对青年流动人口的就医流向影响具有统计显著性,但对不同就医方式选择的影响大小不尽相同,教育程度和在业状况对就医流向的影响最大,并根据影响因素程度的不同,提出了相应的对策和建议。     

What Are Strategies to Advance Policies Supporting Family Caregivers? Promising Approaches From a Statewide Task Force

Family caregivers are the cornerstone of the long-term supports and services infrastructure in the United States, yet they often contend with many challenges related to this role. Public policy has been slow to change, leaving many caregivers vulnerable to health and economic consequences. Using models of policy making, we identify barriers to advancing policies that support family caregivers and overcome policy drift. We draw on discussions from the California Task Force on Family Caregiving as it prepares state policy recommendations. Identified strategies include identification of caregivers in health care and workplace settings to promote political consciousness raising, collecting and reporting on data that frame caregiving as a policy problem, borrowing policies and language from overlapping fields to emulate their policy successes, and presenting supportive caregiver policies as solutions to other policy problems. By presenting specific strategic approaches to advance caregiving policies, we provide tools to address the growing gap between caregiver needs and policy responses.     

Assessment of older adults’ satisfaction with adult protective services investigation and assistance

This study examined elder self-neglect client satisfaction with services provided by an Adult Protective Services (APS) program. A total of 77 community-dwelling older adults with APS-substantiated self-neglect responded to the standardized and widely used 8-item Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Approximately 75% of the participants reported being satisfied with the overall services. They felt that the services provided were responsive to their need(s) and helped them deal with their problem(s). Greater than 80% responded that they would refer a friend, would utilize APS in the future if necessary, and were at least satisfied with the amount of help received. The extent to which their needs were met received the lowest satisfaction scores. Future studies are needed to examine elder self-neglect client satisfaction in relation to specific services.     

The National Elder Mistreatment Study: An 8-year longitudinal study of outcomes

Objectives: To conduct an 8-year follow-up of the National Elder Mistreatment Study (NEMS) and specify risk ratios for negative outcomes of elder abuse, including DSM-5 defined depression, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and poor self-reported health.

Methods: Attempts were made to re-contact, via Computer Assisted Telephone Interview, all 752 NEMS participants who reported mistreatment since age 60 at Wave I, as well as a randomly selected sample of non-mistreated NEMS participants

Results: 183 NEMS Wave I elder abuse victims and 591 non-victims provided data. In bivariate analyses, elder mistreatment 8 years earlier increased risk of negative outcomes by 200–700%. However, multivariate analyses revealed that Current (Wave II) social support was highly protective against most negative outcomes (excepting PTSD), and even appeared to nullify effects of mistreatment on GAD and poor self-reported health.

Conclusions: Outcomes of elder mistreatment have not been studied prospectively in a national sample. The NEMS 8-year follow-up findings indicate a strong relationship between elder mistreatment at Wave I and negative emotional and physical health 8 years later. Fortunately, current (Wave II) social support appears to be both consistently and powerfully protective against most negative outcomes.     

Elder mistreatment predicts later physical and psychological health: Results from a national longitudinal study

Stress process theory predicts that elder mistreatment leads to declines in health, and that social support buffers its ill effects. We test this theory using nationally representative, longitudinal data from 2,261 older adults in the National Social Life Health and Aging Project. We regress psychological and physical health in 2010/2011 on verbal and financial mistreatment experience in 2005/2006 and find that the mistreated have more anxiety symptoms, greater feelings of loneliness, and worse physical and functional health 5 years later than those who did not report mistreatment. In particular, we show a novel association between financial mistreatment and functional health. Contrary to the stress buffering hypothesis, we find little evidence that social support moderates the relationship between mistreatment and health. Our findings point to the lasting impact of mistreatment on health but show little evidence of a buffering role of social support in this process.     

Prevalence estimates and correlates of elder abuse in the United States: The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey

This study examines the prevalence and correlates of psychological abuse and physical abuse against women and men aged 70 or older. Self-report data from 2,185 respondents in the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) were used to create weighted estimates for past-year experiences of abuse. Correlates were then examined using survey logistic regression models. More than 1 in 10 adults who are 70 years of age or older (14.0%) have experienced some form of abuse in the past year, with 12.1% experiencing psychological abuse and 1.7% experiencing physical abuse. One in five victims (20.8%) were abused by both intimate and nonintimate partners. Health care insecurity was the strongest correlate of past-year abuse. The odds of experiencing abuse were 4.53 times greater for those who experienced health care insecurity than for those who did not. This presents a significant challenge for identifying and helping victims of abuse.     

Coyote,fox, and bobcat response to anthropogenic and natural landscape features in a small urban area

Increasing urbanization across the southeastern United States presents unique challenges for wildlife; however certain species have learned to adapt and thrive in these environments. Coyotes (Canis latrans), bobcats (Lynx rufus), red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) are four common medium-sized carnivores that have become closely associated with urban areas. The goal for this study was to determine how urban landscape features influence density and occurrence of these species in a small urban area and to evaluate if any effects were similar to those observed in larger urban areas. We conducted two eight-week camera surveys in the city of Nacogdoches, Texas (pop. 32,699) and immediate surrounding areas in summer and fall 2013. We evaluated single-season spatially explicit capture-recapture and occupancy models to estimate density, and occurrence, respectively, based on anthropogenic and natural features around each camera site. Coyotes (fall: 1.38 coyotes/km²) and bobcats (fall: 0.64 coyotes/km²) were associated with areas of green space, but their response to large and small green spaces changed seasonally. Conversely, red foxes (fall: 2.53 red foxes/km²) were more likely to occur near developed areas and were less detectable in areas with greater probability of coyote presence in fall only. In summer, gray foxes (fall: 0.05 gray foxes/km²) were more likely to occur in areas with lower building density and closer to buildings. This study indicates coyotes, foxes and bobcats respond to small-scale urbanization in a similar manner as large-scale urbanization.     

Perceived social support in Chinese parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a Chinese context: Implications for social work practice

This article reports the results of a Hong Kong study (no. of parents = 121) which identified perceived social support (PSS), both overall and four types of support, of Chinese parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and examined the impact of PSS on the interrelationship between the ADHD symptoms and parenting stress. The parents perceived support of their primary social network as more satisfactory than professionals’. Parenting stress of the high PSS group was lower than the low PSS group’s. The PSS-overall, parenting role, and the ADHD symptoms explained a significant variance of parenting stress. The results pave the way to develop a complex social work model in helping.