Positive Social Support,Negative Social Exchanges,and Suicidal Behavior in College Students

Abstract

Objective: Risk for suicide is often higher among college students, compared to same-age noncollegiate peers, and may be exacerbated by quality of social support and interactions. The authors examined the independent contributions of positive social support and negative social exchanges to suicide ideation and attempts in college students. Participants: Participants were 439 volunteer undergraduate students, who were primarily female (71%). Methods: Cross-sectional, survey design. Participants completed measures assessing positive social support, including emotional, informational, and tangible support; negative social exchanges; and suicidal behavior, including ideation and attempts. Results: Positive social support, particularly tangible support, and negative social exchanges were significantly predictive of greater suicidal behavior. Conclusions: Practical manifestations of support may buffer against suicide risk for college students, whereas conflict-based interactions may contribute to increased risk. At the institutional, parental, and peer levels, promotion of supportive relationships may be an important suicide prevention strategy.     

Access to Childcare in Europe: Parents' Logistical Challenges in Cross‐national Perspective

A burgeoning comparative literature has identified the centrality of childcare policy and provision in promoting parental, and specifically maternal, participation in paid employment across countries. This literature has focused on the importance of macro‐level institutional arrangements, with a special emphasis on variation in availability of, and access to, formal early childhood education and care services. However, there has been limited comparative exploration of what this means in practice at the micro‐level: the everyday challenges parents face when attempting to navigate the childcare system and the labour market simultaneously. Taking inspiration from human geography literature on the concept of ‘space–time fixity’, we present cross‐national findings on the logistical challenges of arranging childcare. Evidence is drawn from interviews with parent‐ and childcare‐related organizations in six European countries: Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK. Our research provides a richer understanding of childcare availability than would a sole focus on formal childcare services, by elucidating the difficulties parents face in organizing access to these services, which can be a challenge to some extent even in contexts where childcare services are comprehensive and affordable.     

Children's Social Representations in Dolls' House Play and Theory of Mind Tasks, and their Relation to Family Adversity and Child Disturbance

Five-year-old children of depressed and well mothers were assessed on theory of mind tasks, and enacted scenes from their family lives in dolls' house play. Performance on theory of mind tasks was only weakly related to family circumstances and child distur-bance, but was significantly associated with measures of the child's general and verbal intelligence. In contrast, children's social representations elicited during dolls' house play showed systematic relationships with family adversity (maternal depression and parental conflict) in interaction with the child's gender: girls exposed to difficulties depicted particularly harmonious mother-child relationships, and their accounts showed a high degree of narrative structure; while boys so exposed depicted poor parenting, and their accounts were relatively incoherent. The children's dolls' house play was also associated with several aspects of their wider experience, including objective assessments of mother-child interactions, and behavioural and emotional adjustment in school. This technique may usefully elucidate the basis of child behavioural problems and psychopathology in the context of disturbed family relationships, and provide a route for therapeutic intervention.