“Involved in something (involucrado en algo)”: Denial and stigmatization in Mexico’s “war on drugs”

This article responds empirically to the question posed by Stan Cohen about “why, when faced by knowledge of others’ suffering and pain—particularly the suffering and pain resulting from what are called ‘human rights violations’—does ‘reaction’ so often take the form of denial, avoidance, passivity, indifference, rationalisation or collusion?”. Our context is Mexico's “war on drugs.” Since 2006 this “war” has claimed the lives of around 240,000 Mexican citizens and disappeared around 60,000 others. Perpetrators include organized criminal gangs and state security services. Violence is pervasive and widely reported. Most people are at risk. Our study is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 68 “ordinary Mexicans” living in five different Mexican cities which have varying levels of violence. It investigates participant proximity to the victims and the psychological defense mechanisms they deploy to cope with proximity to the violence. We found that 62 of our participants knew, directly or indirectly, one or more people who had been affected. We also found one dominant rationalization (defense mechanism) for the violence: that the victims were “involved in something” (drugs or organized crime) and therefore “deserved their fate.” This echoes prevailing state discourses about the violence. We argue that the discourse of “involved” is a discourse of denial that plays three prominent roles in a highly violent society in which almost no-one is immune: it masks state violence, stigmatizes the victims, and sanctions bystander passivity. As such, we show how official and individual denial converge, live, and reproduce, and play a powerful role in the perpetuation of violence.     

Effects of a sleep hygiene text message intervention on sleep in college students

Objective: To test the effectiveness of a text-message intervention to promote sleep hygiene to improve sleep in young adult college students. Participants: A convenience sample of undergraduate students from one Southwestern university (n = 96), 18–26 years old, recruited in August 2015. Methods: A 2-group pretest-posttest experimental design assigned participants to receive biweekly text messages about sleep hygiene or healthy behaviors for 6 weeks. Survey questions addressed sleep knowledge, sleep hygiene, self-efficacy for sleep hygiene, and sleep quality at baseline and posttest. Results: Though not significant, sleep quality, sleep hygiene, and sleep knowledge improved in both groups. Conclusions: Self-efficacy for sleep hygiene is a modifiable factor that may serve to improve sleep quality. Sleep quality improved in both groups. Text messaging is a feasible approach to delivering an intervention to promote healthy behaviors among young adults.     

Experiences of Grandparenting Disabled Children in the UK: A Qualitative Study of Intergenerational Relationships

Contemporary patterns of family, work, and welfare make the experience of grandparenting complex and diverse. This UK-based qualitative study aimed to explore grandparenting in the context of childhood disability. Nine grandparents (aged 59–79 years) with disabled and non-disabled grandchildren took part in semi-structured interviews. Grandparents provided extensive instrumental and emotional care and support and sought a balance between involvement versus interfering. Grandparents actively drew on life experiences to engage with services to maximize support. Contemplating the future, grandparents had concerns for adult children as well as grandchildren. Developing policies to support grandparents of disabled grandchildren are urgently required.     

Solutions to the Challenge of Meeting Rural Transportation Needs: Middle-Aged and Older Adults’ Perspectives

This study aimed to explore how the aging population in Appalachia manages its transportation and plans for the transition to non-driving and to seek possible solutions to the challenge of meeting rural transportation needs. Four focus groups (N = 38) were conducted, supplemented by a questionnaire, in Appalachian Kentucky. The results showed that few alternative transportation existed except a local paratransit service and informal transportation support. Compared to older adults, middle-aged adults reported a greater willingness to use mobile phones and the Internet to arrange transportation if they were available. Participants also recommended expanding the use of existing transportation in the community – such as church vans – to better meet the aging population’s needs. The findings suggest that partnership between government, non-profit, and private sectors is needed, not solely focusing on a tax-dependent solution. Additionally, information and communication technology-based transportation management system would help maximize the use of scare but existing resources in rural areas.     

A Note on the Dimensionality of Quality of Life Scales: An Illustration with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS)

A case is made that measures used in quality of life and happiness research will be essentially unidimensional: inherently tapping minor dimensions. This is illustrated using Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). It is shown that the SWLS does not meet the standard of strict unidimensionality, but that the interpretation of the total scale score is not compromised because the additional dimensions are relatively minor. In the context of the example, a multi-step strategy is described that allows researchers to test for essential unidimensionality. Throughout the article, essential unidimensionality is contrasted with the received view of strict unidimensionality and confirmatory factor analysis methods.

Contraceptive use patterns across teens’ sexual relationships: The role of relationships,partners, and sexual histories

By using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine how adolescent relationship characteristics, partner attributes, and sexual relationship histories are associated with contraceptive use and consistency, incorporating random effects to control for respondent-level unobserved heterogeneity. Analyses show that teens' contraceptive use patterns vary across relationships. Teens with more-homogamous partners, with more-intimate relationships, and who communicate about contraception before sex have greater odds of contraceptive use and/or consistency. Teens in romantic relationships, and who are older when engaging in sex for the first time, have greater odds of ever using contraceptives but reduced odds of always using contraceptives. Teens continue habits from previous relationships: teens with experience practicing contraceptive consistency and females who previously have used hormonal contraceptive methods are better able to maintain consistency in subsequent relationships. Also, relationship and partner characteristics are less important for females who previously used hormonal methods.     

The relation of social support, connectedness, and collective self-esteem to the psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth

The present study extended the research on the mental health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth by testing the relationship of social support, social connectedness, and collective self-esteem to psychological well-being in a sample of 218 LGB youth. Perceived social support significantly predicted psychological well-being subscales; social connectedness and collective self-esteem contributed significantly to the psychological well-being of the LGB participants when controlling for perceived social support. Age moderated the relations between several of the social and psychological well-being variables. Results of the study suggest that helping professionals working with LGB youth consider assessment of the youth's sense of connectedness to those around him/her and esteem related to LGB group membership in addition to assessing general social support.