Attitudes and beliefs about mental health among African American older adults suffering from depression

Depression among older adults is a major public health concern leading to increased disability and mortality. Less than 3% of older adults utilize professional mental health services for the treatment of depression, less than any other adult age group. And despite similar rates of depression, African Americans are significantly less likely to seek, engage and be retained in professional mental health services than their white counterparts. Cultural differences in the way depression symptoms are manifested, defined, interpreted and labeled may in part explain some of these racial differences in help-seeking behaviors. Focus group methodology was utilized to identify and explore attitudes and beliefs about depression and mental health treatment utilization among 42 older African Americans who had recently suffered a major depressive episode. Thematic analysis of identified six overarching themes: (a) perceptions of depression, (b) the African American experience, (c) seeking treatment as a last resort, (d) myths about treatment, (e) stigma associated with seeking treatment and (f) culturally appropriate coping strategies. We discuss implications for practice, education and research.     

Infant Perception of Surface Texture and Relative Height as Distance Information: A Preferential‐Reaching Study

Two preferential‐reaching experiments explored 5‐ and 7‐month‐olds’ sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. In the first experiment, infants viewed a display in which texture gradients, linear perspective of the surface contours, and relative height in the visual field provided information that two objects were at different distances. Five‐ and 7‐month‐old infants reached preferentially for the apparently nearer object under monocular but not binocular viewing conditions, indicating that infants in both age groups respond to pictorial depth cues. In the second experiment, texture gradients and linear perspective of the surface contours were eliminated from the experimental display, making relative height the sole pictorial depth cue. Seven‐month‐olds again reached more often for the apparently nearer object under monocular, but not binocular viewing conditions. By contrast, the 5‐month‐olds’ reaching behavior did not differ between viewing conditions. These results indicate that 7‐month‐olds respond to the depth cue of relative height but provide no evidence of responsiveness to relative height in 5‐month‐olds. Both age groups responded more consistently to pictorial depth in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2.     

Growth in family income inequality, 1970–1990: Industrial restructuring and demographic change

Industrial restructuring and changing population composition frequently have been treated as competing explanations of growing U.S. income inequality. Using the Gini coefficient, we employ a model of conditional change to explore the relative effects of each on changes of family income distribution between 1970 and 1990, across 784 metropolitan areas and public use microdata areas (PUMAs). Changes in both industrial structure and population characteristics are found to have significant and opposite effects on family income distribution, although there are sharp differences by decade in the dynamics that underlie increasing inequality. Our central conclusion is that it is too soon to eliminate deindustrialization as a significant cause of increased earnings inequality.     

Racism and Sexism as Functional Substitutes in the Labor Market

The returns from the 1970 U.S. census are used to examine whether racial and sexual discrimination tend to vary together or whether they are functional substitutes for one another in the labor market, i.e., whether they operate in the same manner to produce the same results. The impact of racial discrimination is measured by both the percentage of the population of a state that is of third world origin and the ratio of black to white male annual earnings. Sexual discrimination is measured by the ratio of white female to white male earnings and urban female to urban male earnings. The values of each of these indicators is compared for the 50 U.S. states. The effect of the percentage of the population that is urban, the percentage of the economically active population in manufacturing, the level of personal income, region, and percentage of the population that is third world is controlled for. The results show that sexual discrimination can be seen as a functional substitute for racial discrimination in the labor market. Where racial discrimination is the most significant, sexual discrimination is the least. This supports the argument that the capitalist economic system needs a specially oppressed group of menial laborers to perform its most menial and low-paying tasks. Either white women or third world people (men and women) can fill these jobs. When third world people are available, white working women do not have to be pressed into them to the same extent. However, when third world people are not present, or are not especially discriminated against, then white working women tend more to perform the "dirty work" jobs and are consequently less likely to be found in the "better" jobs.     

A questionnaire measure of individual differences in stimulus screening and associated differences in arousability

This paper presents the rationale for a questionnaire measure of individual differences in stimulus screening—namely, individual differences in automatic (i.e., not conceptual or intentional) screening of irrelevant stimuli and rapid habituation to distracting, irrelevant stimuli. The information rate-arousal hypothesis implies that screeners who impose a hierarchy of importance or pattern on the various components of a complex situation thereby reduce its information rate and should be less arousable than nonscreeners. In confirmation of these theoretical notions, the primary component of the questionnaire, low arousability, was directly correlated with the second component, speed of habituation to intense stimuli, and with all other components representing screening in various sense modalities. That is, all components of the questionnaire were intercorrelated and represented a unitary dimension of individual differences in information processing. Also, as predicted, screeners were underrepresented among characteristically aroused persons and among females relative to males. The final 40-item questionnaire, which consists of nine intercorrelated components, is balanced to control for acquiescence and is free of social desirability bias. Applications of the measure in studies of environmental psychology are discussed.The author is grateful to Leo Collins for his assistance in writing items for Study 1 and keypunching the data obtained in that study. He also wishes to express his thanks to William Fishman and Paula Sapon, who assisted in writing more items for Study 2, helped run that study, and keypunched the data.