Families and Mental Illness: Contested Perspectives and Implications for Practice and Policy

Abstract

Mental health research, policy, and service provision over the last 50 years have constructed families and their connections with mental illness in various and contradictory ways. Three distinct but intersecting perspectives derive from the clinical mental illness literature, the family advocacy movement, and mental health policy. Within the clinical literature, the perspective of families is largely one of blame and pathology. By contrast, the family advocacy movement has generated the perspective of the burdened family, whereas mental health policy has created the perspective of the obligated caregiver. The result is an ambiguous understanding of the role of the family in both contributing and responding to mental illness. Implications for policy and practice include the need for a commitment to the principles of partnership with families, a recognition of diversity within families, recognising the difference between carer and family positions, and a need for policy to reflect the position of family as both intimately concerned, but not necessarily responsible, for patient care.     

Validation of the Beliefs about Children’s Adjustment in Same-Sex Families Scale in Italian University Students

ABSTRACT

Assessing attitudes toward same-sex parenting has important implications for both intervention and prevention programs designed to foster the tolerance and normality of sexual and family diversity. Few empirically validated measures of rejection of same-sex parenting have been developed. The current study examined the psychometric properties of an Italian translation of the Beliefs about Children’s Adjustment in Same-Sex Families Scale, a 14-item scale distributed in two subscales that measure direct and subtle rejection toward same-sex parenting, for its use in assessing heterosexual people’s attitudes toward same-sex parents in Italy. The sample consisted of 344 Italian heterosexual university students (113 men) with a mean age of 20.48 years (SD = 1.60). The results showed that the scale has a good factor structure (via confirmatory factor analysis) and satisfactory reliability and acceptable criterion-related validity. Therefore, the BCASSFS can be used to measure opposition toward gay and lesbian parenting in the Italian context.     

An Approach to Asset Pricing Under Incomplete and Diverse Perceptions

We model a dynamic, competitive market, where in every period, risk‐neutral traders trade a one‐period bond against an infinitely lived asset, with limited short‐selling of the long‐term asset. Traders lack structural knowledge and use different “incomplete theories,” all of which give statistically correct beliefs about next period's market price of the long‐term asset. The more theories there are in the market, the higher is the equilibrium price of the long‐term asset. Investors with more complete theories do not necessarily earn higher returns than those with less complete ones, who can earn above the risk‐free rate. We provide two necessary conditions for a trader to earn above the risk‐free rate.     

Criminal Victimization and Crime Risk Perception: A Multilevel Longitudinal Study

In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct victimization and indirect victimization), at the between-individuals level (being a woman, being an older person, being a poorly educated person and size of area of residence) and at the ecological level (county’s crime rate, unemployment rate and immigration rate). Direct and indirect victimization, being a woman, being an older person, living in a large town and in a context characterized by high crime and unemployment rates positively influenced the change in crime risk perception, while the other individual and ecological predictors we used in our predictive model did not. Strengths, limitations, implications and future developments of this research are discussed.     

Multiculturalism in Social Work Ethics

The authors analyze the treatment of multiculturalism in the 1999 National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, arguing that it presents multiculturalism as a knowledge base and area in which social workers should demonstrate competence rather than as a guiding principle of virtuous practice. They criticize the ramifications of this application, and propose three arguments for repositioning multiculturalism in the Code as a principle of ethical practice rather than a specific knowledge area.     

Homelessness Among Out-of-Treatment Drug Users in Long Beach,CA*

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to determine the reliability of measures of homelessness (Study 1), and to use these measures to predict homelessness from data collected over a 1O-year period (Study 2). For Study 1, to determine test-retest reliability, the Risk Behavior Assessment (REA; National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1991) was administered twice within a 48-hour period. Cohen’s kappa was calculated at .86 for the two REA measures of homelessness. For Study 2, to predict homelessness from data collected over a 10-year period, a logistic regression model was built. Earlier homelessness and illegal income were identified as risk factors; number of times tested for HIV and Black ethnicity were identified as protective against homelessness. Predictive accuracy was assessed with a reduced bias method approximating jackknifing techniques. These findings point to the need to provide enhanced services-including HIV testing opportunities andjob training- to the homeless.     

Strategies Used by Gay and Bisexual Young Men to Cope With Heterosexism

ABSTRACT

Although the pervasiveness of heterosexism in the lives of gay and bisexual youth is well established, little is known about the strategies these youth use to cope with stigma and discrimination based on their sexual minority status. In this qualitative study, the authors present findings and implications for clinical practice based on interviews with 43 gay and bisexual young men. Respondents’ coping strategies are discussed in relation to current theory and research on coping with stigma, as well as the emerging field of emotion regulation. The narratives from the current study suggest that the emotion regulation paradigm is well suited to understanding the functions of strategies for coping with heterosexism and similar types of stigma.     

Truth and consequences: using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality

Men report more permissive sexual attitudes and behavior than do women. This experiment tested whether these differences might result from false accommodation to gender norms (distorted reporting consistent with gender stereotypes). Participants completed questionnaires under three conditions. Sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior were negligible in a bogus pipeline condition in which participants believed lying could be detected, moderate in an anonymous condition, and greatest in an exposure threat condition in which the experimenter could potentially view participants responses. This pattern was clearest for behaviors considered less acceptable for women than men (e.g., masturbation, exposure to hardcore & softcore erotica). Results suggest that some sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior reflect responses influenced by normative expectations for men and women.