The adolescent overdose drama

The drama of the adolescent overdose is a daily feature of many hospital casualty or accident and emergency departments. The roles of some of the actors and some of the ploys involved in this drama are discussed. Labelling the adolescent as “overdose” or “drug abuser” does little justice to the complex factors involved in this personal and interpersonal crisis presentation. This is a drama in the growth through adolescence to maturity and separation from the family of origin.     

Gender matters: constructing a model of adolescent sexual health

This article illustrates the construction of a new model of adolescent sexual health, one that addresses the complex relationships between gender and adolescent sexuality. A review of sexual health models highlights the absence of gender; in contrast, research illuminates the significance of gender. This article describes the process of building a model of sexual health explicitly for girls, guided by feminist research on adolescent girls' sexuality and a "web of theories". It also describes the unanticipated challenges of making a companion model for boys and the ensuing shift from a gender-specific approach to an integrated gendered model of adolescent sexual health. Gender complementarity is defined and forwarded as a way to incorporate gender into a model of adolescent sexual health.     

Mental Retardation: Impairment or Handicap?

A social psychological approach to mental retardation is outlined in which (1) mental retardation is seen as a social construct rather than a within-individual pathology and (2) the meaning of the construct is related to social interests and purposes. Hence, between group differences in beliefs about retardates are seen as the expression of different group norms, i.e. a social psychological phenomenon rather than an aggregate of individual differences. Empirical support for the approach is provided by contrasting lay people's and psychologists' beliefs about 'retardates', most strikingly in the form of a differential effect of personal contact, which as predicted, 'improves' lay evaluation, but leaves psychologists' beliefs unchanged.     

Communication of specific emotions: Gender differences in sending accuracy and communication measures

Men and women were videotaped while they silently viewed emotionally toned slides (view period) and then described their feelings (talk period). They then rated their feelings on scales of pleasantness, strength, and 10 specific emotions. Videotapes of the two sending periods separately were shown to receivers who tried to identify the type of slide that the sender was viewing or describing (categorization measure) and rated the senders' expressions on the same scales (emotion correlation measure). Results indicated that communication accuracy, and gender differences in sending, varied with sending period, type of slide, communication measure, and specific emotion. On the categorization measure, women were generally better senders. On the emotion correlation measures, women were better senders of pleasantness, disgust, distress, fear, and anger while men were slightly better senders of guilt. Accuracy was generally better in the view period than in the talk period, and the view period produced more pronounced gender differences. It is argued that categorization and correlation measures are sensitive to different aspects of emotion communication. Used in conjunction with modifications of the slide viewing paradigm, the two types of measure provide versatile means of investigating social aspects of emotional expression.The sending phase of this study was conducted while the first author was visiting the University of Connecticut, Storrs. The receiving phase was conducted by the third author at the University of Manchester, England. The authors wish to thank Rachel Calam for her help in the conduct of the sending phase.     

Predicting children's internalizing symptoms across development from early emotional reactivity

Current methods of assessing children's emotional reactivity fail to capture individual differences in emotion across contexts that may be meaningfully related to youth psychopathology. We therefore explored the utility of modeling variability in young children's positive and negative emotion across emotionally evocative laboratory tasks to predict later adjustment. At age 3, 409 children completed a battery of laboratory tasks eliciting either positive or negative affect. We used latent difference score (LDS) modeling to predict children's caregiver-reported internalizing symptoms across ages 3, 5, 8, and 11 from variability in their observer-rated positive and negative emotion across laboratory tasks. We found that sex moderated the association between both average and variability measures of children's negative emotion at age 3 and trajectories of their anxious-depressive symptoms across childhood. Measures of emotion variability predicted children's internalizing symptoms above and beyond measures of average emotion. Variability indices also provided unique information about the trajectories of children's symptoms. We discuss implications for the utility of LDS modeling in assessing children's emotional reactivity.     

Using agency-wide dashboards for data monitoring and data mining: the Solano County Health and Social Services Department

The Director needed accessible data on critical program areas in order to monitor changes presenting potential negative impacts. The Research, Evaluation and Planning division spearheaded the Dashboard featuring the seven program areas (Employment & Eligibility, Child Welfare Services, Mental Health, Public Health, Older Disabled Adult Services, Substance Abuse, and the Special Investigations Bureau), and three administrative units. Deputy Directors specified several key areas that their divisions were mandated to report or viewed as important for monitoring. The Dashboard enables Directors to communicate internally and externally about program results, strengths and growth areas, as well as track progress in relationship to strategic plan initiatives and intervene in areas needing improvement. Executive team members identify critical areas for improvement and the Assistant Director for Research and Evaluation implements corrective action through the Quality Assurance Committee. Agency lessons relate to the importance of automation, data interpretation, and team members' understanding of the indicators, related practice strategies, and contextual factors.     

Automobility reconfigured? Ironic seductions and mundane freedoms in 16–21 year olds’ accounts of car driving and ownership

In the light of the ‘peak-car’ thesis, this paper explores the driving-related desires and practices of adults aged 16–21 and their parents from the UK. Tropes of freedom and independence were commonly evoked; but were pragmatically framed by concerns of finance, utility and risk. Car ownership was prized only for instrumental reasons, and as one tool in a mixed, collective transport network: it had been decoupled from automobility. Environmental sustainability was notably absent from discussions. It may be too early to herald the end of automobility but, for these participants, its seductions have been rendered ironic, rather than aspirational.     

At the Age of Twelve: Migrant Children and the Disruption of Multicultural Belonging

This paper troubles seductive discourses of Canadian multiculturalism and the centrality of whiteness to national belonging, highlighting how migrant children understand and navigate assimilation. Evolving out of childhood migration stories shared by 12 interviewees in the documentary Twelve, the article addresses the ways ‘childist’ logics are used to separate childhood from the realities of race and racism. In working towards anti‐racist praxis, we address how storytelling challenges adult–child power hierarchies, exposing how childhood continues to be framed as a time of innocence, disconnected from the violence, danger and pain involved in migrating to Anglophone Canada.     

The intersection of extreme poverty and familial mental health in the United States

Approximately 22% of children in the United States live in poverty, with high rates of caregiver depression and child disruptive behavior disorders (DBD). The current study aims to explore the relationships between living in extreme poverty and both child and parent mental health. Data are comprised of findings from the first effectiveness study of the 4Rs and 2Ss intervention, in addition to preliminary data from an implementation study currently underway (n = 484). Families with an annual income of less than $9,999 reported significantly greater child DBD scores and prevalence of clinically significant levels of caregiver depressive symptoms compared to income levels over $10,000. Findings support the recommendation for parental mental health to be attended to within the context of child mental health services.