A model for outpatient treatment of young adolescents with anorexia nervosa

The recent literature is reviewed and interpreted as supporting the view that anorexia nervosa is a disorder with discrete subgroups. Two cases are presented which suggest that one particular subgroup of anorexics shares a common dynamic of failure to resolve the issues inherent in the rapprochement crisis of the separation-individuation sequence. The reworking of residuals from the rapprochement crisis, particularly the union of good and bad self, modulation of omnipotence, and integration of hostility, are essential aspects of therapy with these anorexics. The treatment of choice for anorexics in this subgroup is described as an outpatient team approach which separates medical from psychotherapeutic interventions, adolescent therapy from that of parents, and avoids hospitalization if at all possible.Maxine L. Penn is in Private Practice in Potomac, Maryland.     

Detection and prevalence of abuse of older males: perspectives from family practice

Family doctors' frequent contact with seniors put them in reasonable positions to detect elder abuse and initiate referral to adult protective services. Since doctor reporting is low, however, this paper explores whether the gender of patient and/or doctor impacts on identification of elder mistreatment, or creates differential detection of one gender over the other. Use of the validated Elder Abuse Suspicion Index (EASI), and a structured social work evaluation, is described to provide some gender-based data from Canadian family practice. Specifically, while the prevalence of elder abuse is estimated to range from 12.0% to 13.3%, the specific prevalence was found for females to be 13.6% to 15.2% and for males 9.1% to 9.7%.     

Putting spiritual development of young people on the map: an English perspective

Youth work in the United Kingdom is a profession requiring three years of training, and its beginnings are strongly rooted in a spiritual (often specifically Christian) context. Until the past few decades, spirituality was also integrated within the educational system. The author argues that intentionally bringing spirituality to the center of youth work is a return to the historical and philosophical roots of youth work, with its value on the whole person, including beliefs and values. Yet there are obstacles. For example, rising concerns to protect children from abuse eclipse efforts to extend young people's development. Youth workers also report a reluctance to address spiritual questions with young people either because of their own lack of knowledge or because they fear offending someone. Two areas that would benefit from further research and reflection in the field are how spirituality can be measured, and how a youth worker's own spiritual journey shapes and is shaped by her or his work with youth. Green reminds readers that lighthearted and playful but deeply meaningful approaches are common in many traditions.     

What's the point? Infants' and adults' perception of different pointing gestures

Adults and infants as young as 4 months old orient to pointing gestures. Although adults are shown to orient faster to index-finger pointing than other hand shapes, it is unknown whether hand shapes influence infants' perception of pointing. In this study, we used a spatial cueing paradigm on an eye tracker to investigate whether and to what extent adults and 12-month-old infants orient their attention in the direction of pointing gestures with different hand shapes: index finger, whole hand, and pinky finger. Furthermore, we assessed infants' and their parents' pointing production. Results revealed that adults showed a reliable cueing effect: shorter saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to congruent than incongruent targets, for all hand shapes. However, they did not show a larger cueing effect triggered by the index or any other finger. This contradicts previous findings and is discussed with respect to the differences in methodology. Infants showed a cueing effect only for the whole hand but not for the index or pinky fingers. The current results suggest that infants' orienting to pointing may be more robust for the whole hand shape in the first year, and tuning in to the social-communicative relevance of the canonical index finger shape may develop later or require additional social-communicative cues.     

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict HPV vaccination intentions of college men

Objective: The purpose of this study was to test Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs in predicting human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination behavioral intentions of vaccine-eligible college men. Participants: Participants were unvaccinated college men aged 18–26 years attending a large public university in the southeastern United States during Spring 2015. Methods: A nonexperimental, cross-sectional study design was employed. Instrumentation comprised a qualitative elicitation study, expert panel review, pilot test, test-retest, and internal consistency, construct validity, and predictive validity assessments using data collected from an online self-report questionnaire. Results: The sample consisted of 256 college men, and the final structural model exhibited acceptable fit of the data. Attitude toward the behavior (β = .169) and subjective norm (β = 0.667) were significant predictors of behavioral intention, accounting for 58% of its variance. Conclusions: Practitioners may utilize this instrument for the development and evaluation of TPB-based interventions to increase HPV vaccination intentions of undergraduate college men.     

Why do women continue to smoke in pregnancy?

Smoking during pregnancy not only impacts on the woman's health but that of her unborn child. Women most likely to continue smoking throughout pregnancy are generally of lower age, socio-economic status, level of education and occupational status. Women who continue to smoke during pregnancy often feel criticized by society. They feel guilt and personal conflict at not quitting. Lack of long-term positive outcomes from anti-smoking campaigns may result form ignorance surrounding socio-economically disadvantaged women's life circumstances. Current interventions often ignore the emotional and psychological stressors associated with pregnancy; they do not address the altered physiological processes that occur during pregnancy. A review of the literature pertaining to women who smoke throughout pregnancy is presented. Women want an individualised approach to smoking cessation advice, with health care workers having knowledge of the woman's social situation and viewpoints. This paper reveals that the woman's perspective has largely been ignored. Indeed health care professionals have attempted to manipulate women to stop smoking rather than engage in mutually respectful dialogue.     

Growth Mixture Modeling of Adolescent Body Mass Index Development: Longitudinal Patterns of Internalizing Symptoms and Physical Activity

Growth mixture modeling was used to identify different trajectories of body mass index (BMI) among adolescents ages 10–15 from a national sample. Three distinct classes were found for both boys and girls: “normative” (90.9% and 89.7%), “high increasing” (6.3% and 7.4%), and “decreasing” (2.8% and 2.9%). Multinomial logistic regression identified family income as predictive of class membership for boys and pubertal status and being rural as predictive for girls. Parent‐reported health was a common predictor across gender. Growth curves of internalizing symptoms and physical activity were modeled to explore trends across classes. Findings highlight complexities in the relations between BMI, internalizing symptoms, and physical activity in this developmental period.     

A semi-parametric approach to dual modeling when no replication exists

In many applications, it is of interest to simultaneously model the mean and variance of a response when no replication exists. Modeling the mean and variance simultaneously is commonly referred to as dual modeling. Parametric approaches to dual modeling are popular when the underlying mean and variance functions can be expressed explicitly. Quite often, however, nonparametric approaches are more appropriate due to the presence of unusual curvature in the underlying functions. In sparse data situations, nonparametric methods often fit the data too closely while parametric estimates exhibit problems with bias. We propose a semi-parametric dual modeling approach [Dual Model Robust Regression (DMRR)] for non-replicated data. DMRR combines parametric and nonparametric fits resulting in improved mean and variance estimation. The methodology is illustrated with a data set from the literature as well as via a simulation study.     

The demographic transformation and the sociological enterprise

The dramatic demographic changes of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States are creating a multiracial, multicultural society. This article examines the intellectual challenges for sociology posed by the emerging racial diversity brought about by these population trends. The problem is that conventional sociological frameworks no longer apply in this increasingly complex social world of rapid population changes, diversity, and polarization. Most significant, conventional American sociology, which has focused on white society rooted in western culture, is challenged by three large racial/ethnic categories. We argue that diversity must be incorporated into our sociologies. This requires two new approaches: (1) Sociology must be recentered, that is, it must move away from the notion that whites have the universal experience against which all others are measured; and (2) Sociologists must apply to diverse populations the same kind of sociological analysis that they apply to mainstream categories. This means that we demythologize by dispelling common myths about those outside the mainstream and that we uncover the mechanisms that construct social differences.     

For Women,Breadwinning Can Be Dangerous: Gendered Resource Theory and Wife Abuse

To explain wife abuse, we offer a refinement of relative resource theory, gendered resource theory, which argues that the effect of relative resources is contingent upon husbands’ gender ideologies. We use data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (N =4,296) to test three theories of wife abuse. Resource theory receives no support. Relative resource theory receives limited support. Gendered resource theory receives strong support. Wives’ share of relative incomes is positively related to likelihood of abuse only for traditional husbands. The findings suggest that both cultural and structural forces must be considered to understand marriage as a context for social interactions in which we create our gendered selves.