Food insufficiency and physical and mental health in a longitudinal survey of welfare recipients

Food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and poor African American women with children are at especially high risk. An inadequate household food supply can potentially affect the well-being of household members, but it is difficult to distinguish the effects of food insufficiency from risk factors for poor health that are also common among the food insufficient, such as poverty. We examined food insufficiency and physical and mental health among African American and white women (n = 676) who were welfare recipients in 1997. Controlling for common risk factors, women who reported food insufficiency in both 1997 and 1998 were more likely to report fair or poor health at the later date. Food insufficiency in 1998 was significantly associated with meeting the diagnostic screening criteria for recent major depression. Food insufficiency at both times and in 1998 only was related to women's sense of mastery. These findings add to growing evidence that household food insufficiency is associated with poor physical and mental health.     

Severely Traumatized Siblings: A Treatment Strategy

Siblings who have suffered severe trauma and disrupted attachment relate to one another in ways that interfere with individual development, the chance to benefit from connections with adults, the establishment of healthy sibling relationships, and the working through of traumatic experiences. The authors use case examples to illustrate four distinct sibling patterns: absent, adult lockout, half and half, and trauma shield. The authors highlight the importance of recognizing these types and then varying the therapist's treatment stance to pursue five goals. These include suspending problematic sibling relationships to create room for bonding with caring adults, transferring attachment behaviors and impulses to a receptive adult, resuming healthy individual development, forming more adaptive sibling connections, and expressing shared traumatic content.     

Interhousehold Transfers of Goods and Services and Reported Well-Being Among Polish Households

Analyses of data from 600 households in the province of Lubin, Poland, five years after the economic transformation indicated the transfers of goods and services between households to be quite prevalent, with households with high levels of resources giving goods and services and those with low levels of resources receiving goods and services. The receipt of such transfers does not improve the living conditions of the receiving households relative to those who do not receive help; in fact, those receiving help report lower levels of satisfaction than those not receiving assistance.     

The case for mandatory outpatient treatment

Research on the effectiveness of mandatory outpatient treatment, which is court-ordered mental health follow up, supports its use with individuals who have serious mental illness. Many states already have some kind of mandatory outpatient treatment in place, but it is often underused. Much of the criticism of mandatory outpatient treatment is based on the fact that research demonstrating its efficacy is limited and that its implementation infringes on individuals' rights. However, sufficient evidence can be found in the literature to support its use for some individuals with chronic mental illness living in the community. In addition, the ethical principles of beneficence, utilitarianism, and communitarianism support its use in some situations. Mandatory outpatient treatment is an ethical and effective method shown to be helpful with individuals who have mental illness and are nonadherent to treatment. Expanding its use in appropriate situations is in the best interest of those with serious mental illness and society in general.     

Parental health and children's economic well-being

The life course perspective emphasizes that past economic experiences and stage in the life course influence a family's ability to cope with negative life events such as poor health. However, traditional analytic approaches are not well-suited to examine how the impact of negative life events differs based on a family's past economic experiences, nor do they typically account for the potentially spurious association between negative life events and family economic well-being. We use finite mixture modeling to examine how changes in parental health affect children's exposure to poverty. We find that for some children the association between family head's health and children's exposure to poverty is spurious, while for other children family head's poor health is associated with increased risk of economic deprivation. The extent to which a family head's poor health alters children's economic well-being depends on a child's family's underlying economic trajectory and past history of exposure to disadvantage.     

Evaluation of a resilience intervention to enhance coping strategies and protective factors and decrease symptomatology

OBJECTIVE: In this pilot study, the authors examined the effectiveness of a 4-week resilience intervention to enhance resilience, coping strategies, and protective factors, as well as decrease symptomatology during a period of increased academic stress. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: College students were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 30) and wait-list control (n = 27) groups. The experimental group received a psychoeducational intervention in 4 two-hour weekly sessions. Measures of resilience, coping strategies, protective factors, and symptomatology were administered pre- and postintervention to both groups. RESULTS: Analyses indicated that the experimental group had significantly higher resilience scores, more effective coping strategies (i.e., higher problem solving, lower avoidant), higher scores on protective factors (i.e., positive affect, self-esteem, self-leadership), and lower scores on symptomatology (i.e., depressive symptoms, negative affect, perceived stress) postintervention than did the wait-list control group. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that this resilience program may be useful as a stress-management and stress-prevention intervention for college students.