Childhood Maltreatment,Bullying Victimization,and Psychological Distress Among Gay and Bisexual Men

Sexual minority men report higher psychological distress than heterosexual men, including depression and anxiety. Research suggests that these health disparities may be due to the heightened stressors that gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals experience. Some of these stressors occur early on in life, such as childhood abuse and bullying, and may include stressors that are topically related to sexual minority status, such as anti-gay bullying and teasing for gender nonconformity to masculine gender norms. We tested a structural equation model on the association between negative childhood experiences and adult psychological distress among 304 gay and bisexual men. The model fit the data well, and demonstrated an indirect effect of negative childhood experiences on adult psychological distress via dysfunctional thoughts toward oneself. The results integrate the childhood abuse and anti-gay bullying victimization literatures by showing that both forms of adverse childhood experiences are associated with adult psychological distress. The findings suggest the benefit of treatments to reduce negative, dysfunctional thoughts among gay and bisexual men who have experienced adverse childhood events.     

Keeping hospitals operating during disasters through crisis communication preparedness

The public has high expectations that hospitals will provide compassion, care, and extensive support for both injured and uninjured disaster survivors. In the face of disasters like pandemics or terrorist attacks, hospital communicators must be prepared to effectively communicate internally, externally, and across organizations. Furthermore, in crisis situations, hospitals must apply guiding principles of public relations including relationship management and rumor management. There remains a shortage of literature examining strategic risk and crisis communication in healthcare settings, including best practices. We conducted 27 interviews with U.S. hospital personnel charged with disaster management and/or crisis communication. Key findings reveal communication challenges not identified in prior research, such as policing the media and managing up, as well as reinforcing existing generic best practices, such as accepting uncertainty.     

Research Review: Economic evidence for interventions in children's social care: revisiting the What Works for Children project

Evidence about the cost‐effectiveness of interventions in children's services can help decision‐makers make more efficient use of scarce resources. We returned to six somewhat disparate interventions on which we had collated research evidence identified by service planners and practitioners as relevant to the well‐being of children in the course of the Economic and Social Research Council‐funded What Works for Children project. These are home visiting, parenting, cognitive–bahavioural therapy, mentoring, traffic calming and breakfast club interventions. We aimed to explore the nature and extent of evidence on cost‐benefit and cost effectiveness for these measures. We conducted searches for studies that looked at the costs as well as the effectiveness of the six interventions and found 24 studies matching our inclusion criteria. The studies were diverse in terms of study design and economic methods (including economic modelling and willingness to pay). Studies relating to parenting programmes and traffic calming gave the most positive indication that the interventions may be cost‐effective for the outcomes in question. The remainder of the studies did not give a clear picture, in large part because of a lack of demonstration that the intervention was effective.     

DELETE-2 AND DELETE-3 JACKKNIFE PROCEDURES FOR UNMASKING IN REGRESSION

Single-case deletion regression diagnostics have been used widely to discover unusual data points, but such approaches can fail in the presence of multiple unusual data points and as a result of masking. We propose a new approach to the use of single-case deletion diagnostics that involves applying these diagnostics to delete-2 and delete-3 jackknife replicates of the data, and considering the percentage of times among these replicates that points are flagged as unusual as an indicator of their influence. By considering replicates that exclude certain collections of points, subtle masking effects can be uncovered.     

An exploratory study of alcohol dependence and problem gambling co-development trajectories in young adults

This study examines whether there are multiple trajectories of alcohol dependence and problem gambling symptom co-occurrence in a sample (n = 679) of emerging adults. Six joint trajectory classes were identified and several baseline risk factors were associated with increased probability of being in more problematic joint trajectory classes relative to the low-risk normative class. There was no joint trajectory class characterized by both higher problem gambling risk and persistent high alcohol dependence, suggesting that alcohol dependence and problem gambling are not directly related but perhaps share common underlying causes. Contrary to this, though, none of the examined risk factors were common to both more problematic gambling and drinking trajectories. Overall, the findings (which should be considered exploratory due to small class sizes) suggest the co-development of alcohol and gambling is not uniform across all young adults, and that the reciprocal nature of this relationship in adulthood may not solidify until later in young adulthood. Future research should re-examine these findings with a larger sample, spanning further into adulthood, with additional risk factors.