To disclose or not to disclose: Political conflicts in the countertransference

Self‐disclosure is a frequent topic in the relational psychotherapy literature. However, there are few psychoanalytic writings or empirical studies that concern self‐disclosure in the context of cross‐cultural treatment; specifically treatment between Israeli therapists and Palestinian clients. This particular subject broadens the investigation of cross‐cultural treatment beyond race and color into the domain of religious and political differences between client and clinician. An Israeli‐American therapist's counter‐transference reflections around self‐disclosure and its impact on her Palestinian client will be the subject of investigation in the following paper.

Self‐disclosure has been increasingly examined in the relational literature over the past ten years in the context of the therapist's subjectivity within the therapeutic encounter (Aron, 1991; Renik, 1995). Few psychoanalytic writings, however, have focused on self‐disclosure as embedded within race and culture, and fewer still address the impact of religious and political differences between client and therapist, differences that, in the case of a Palestinian client and an Israeli therapist, reflect larger social and political conflicts. The transference‐countertransference dynamics around self‐disclosure and the way these shape the therapeutic encounter between a Palestinian client and an Israeli therapist will be the subject of investigation in this paper.     

When the Floods of Compassion Are not Enough: A Nation's and a City's Response to the Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina exposed serious deficiencies in the social support safety net at the federal, state, and local level. This article explores the impacts of the disrupted safety net through participant observation and interviews with service providers and evacuees resettled in one southern city. Their stories illustrate how vulnerable low‐income groups struggle to cope with disaster within the context of inadequate larger support systems and the legacy of racism. The data also illustrate the limits of the local resources and response, given the years of retrenchment and underfunding and increasing dependence on nongovernmental sources of support. The authors explore some of the implications of this trend for evacuees' long‐term recovery and social work intervention.     

Informed Consent in the Twenty‐First Century: What It Is,What It Isn't,and Future Challenges in Informed Consent and Shared Decision Making

Consent evolved from judge‐made law in Great Britain in 1767. The term informed consent entered the judicial lexicon in 1957. The first court case to articulate a reasonable person standard adopted by the high courts in Canada and Australia was heard in the U.S. in 1972. Today, informed consent continues to develop in four areas: (i) the court‐based doctrines of consent and informed consent in clinical care in judge‐made law; (ii) federal regulations related to research on human study participants; (iii) shared decision making adopted by care organizations and medical societies in the US, Canada, and Europe; and (iv) areas including decision analysis, discourse analysis, ethics, linguistic analysis, patient–physician communication, risk and evidence communication, and social theory. In this paper, we will focus on consent and informed consent in the first part of the twenty‐first century. We will examine a range of information and decision making frameworks from the oldest court‐established frameworks of consent and informed consent to recent conceptions of information and decision making in evidence‐based decision making and shared decision making in the patient–physician relationship. This paper is divided into three parts: I. What informed consent is, II. What informed consent isn't, and III. Future challenges in informed consent and shared decision making.     

中国人口转变道路的探索和选择

从1949年到1978年,中国在进行社会主义道路探索的同时也在进行着对中国人口转变道路的探索。建国初期,通过开展群众卫生运动,死亡率迅速下降,开启了中国人口转变的进程。20世纪50年代,初次面对人口快速增长问题,中国提出了"实现有计划的生育"的理论和构想,人口转变的中国道路开始孕育。经历了"大跃进"时期的思想动摇、工作停滞和此后的人口继续快速增长等种种波折之后,人们在人口与社会经济矛盾激增的过程中明确了中国人口转变道路的方向。最后,在"文革"期间,脆弱的国民经济和日益增长的人口压力迫使中国选择了一条主动控制人口过快增长、实行计划生育的人口转变道路。这条道路是由时代发展特征和中国的特殊国情共同决定的。     

人口与消费对二氧化碳排放的动态影响——基于变参数模型的实证分析

近年来,随着全球气候的不断变暖,二氧化碳减排问题已经引起了世界性的关注。中国作为世界上最大的碳排放国,必须逐步降低经济发展过程中的碳排放。基于此,利用1978～2009年的相关数据和变参数模型,分析了人口数量和居民消费对我国二氧化碳排放的动态影响。结果表明,人口、消费与二氧化碳排放之间存在长期稳定的关系,二者对碳排放均有比较显著的影响。从总体来看,人口对碳排放的影响弹性要高于消费对碳排放的弹性,但是近年来两者之间的差距越来越小,说明消费对二氧化碳排放的影响力日益增大;随着时间波动,人口与消费对碳排放的影响弹性会呈现规律性的变化,并且可以将其划分为三个明显的阶段。依据上述结论,文章提出了相关政策建议,以减少由人口和消费带来的二氧化碳排放。     

Finding a routine that works: A mixed methods study of foster parents

Although it is well established that daily routines are important for family well‐being, very little research has been done on how foster parents establish and integrate new foster children into family routines. We used a mixed‐methods, cross‐sectional design, focused on qualitative results to explore how foster parents utilize routines. Twenty‐three foster parents were recruited from a private child welfare agency in a large city in the United States. Surveys were administered to obtain demographic information, overall home atmosphere, and the importance and prevalence of different routines, including mealtimes and sleep schedules. Nine foster parents received a semistructured interview with open‐ended questions. Foster parents reported that routines such as bedtimes, mealtimes, chores, and homework were essential to family well‐being. Because both parents and children had to adjust to living together in an intimate family environment, it was important to establish routines quickly. Foster parents modified routines depending on their child's needs. Along with typical family routines, foster parents reported additional tasks, such as visits with biological parents, meetings with caseworkers, and trainings that affected their family schedule. Results imply that training foster care workers and foster parents about routines can engender stability and emotional belonging for children.     

Incorporating self‐determination into substance abuse prevention programming for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood

Youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood are at higher risk for alcohol and substance abuse disorders than general population youth. At the same time, these youths are often recipients of strong clinical intervention, often at levels considered unnecessary, for other mental health or behavioural challenges. Because of this, there is sometimes resistance from providers to offer services such as substance abuse prevention programming as it may be seen as contributing to youths' overclinicalization, stigmatization, or retraumatization. Using thematic content analysis, this qualitative study analysed focus groups with community stakeholders providing recommendations on support services for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood to derive strategies for delivering substance abuse prevention programming in a way that enhances youth self‐determination. Findings were organized by self‐determination theory's 3 key psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. All three needs were represented in stakeholder recommendations, which were translated into strategies for bolstering youths' achievement of each need. Strategies include a mix of those already present in motivational interviewing‐based brief substance abuse prevention interventions as well as more unique strategies that are much less frequently employed but that may better meet the needs of youth with foster care experience.     

Chronic stressors and daily hassles: unique and interactive relationships with psychological distress

Using daily telephone interviews of a U.S. national sample of adults, aged 25-74 (N = 1,031), the present analyses draw from theories of the stress process and recent research to examine how chronic role-related stressors and daily hassles affect psychological distress. Four separate hypotheses are examined. The first explores the association between chronic stressors and daily hassles. The second tests whether daily hassles function as an intervening variable between chronic stressors and psychological distress. The third tests whether a chronic stressor moderates the relationship between daily hassles and psychological distress. The fourth hypothesis tests for cross-domain effects of chronic stressors and daily hassles. Findings indicate that chronic stressors and daily hassles are distinct types of stressors with unique contributions to psychological distress. The study provides support for chronic home stressors functioning as a moderating factor on the relationship between daily hassles and psychological distress both within and across domains.