Carbamazepine treatment of psychosis. Implications for patient welfare and nursing practice

1. The antiseizure medication carbamazepine, when used to treat psychosis, does not produce the same side effects that appear as problematic in neuroleptic treatment, most notably tardive dyskinesia. 2. Carbamazepine has useful sedating, antianxiety, and antidepressant properties that make it an effective treatment for manic psychosis. 3. Nursing actions include assisting psychiatry in establishing and maintaining effective carbamazepine treatment, ensuring safe treatment, enhancing the patient's self-care agency, and facilitating research regarding the effects of carbamazepine treatment.     

NCWWI Tribal Traineeship Programs: Promoting Diversity in the Child Welfare Workforce

Twelve universities and one American Indian (AI) tribal college were selected for the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute’s 5-year stipend traineeship program. These tribal traineeships were designed to provide social work child welfare education for tribal and nontribal students. Twenty-two AI students and 58 nontribal students completed a bachelor or master’s of social work degree. The students’ field placements were in tribal agencies or public agencies that served a segment of the AI population. These programs were enhanced through the use of valuable relationships (i.e., partnerships, mentorships, allies), and cultural competence was a key aspect of the students’ education. The students’ education was enriched with a specific child welfare curriculum, cultural teachings, tribal traineeship collaborations, and tribal community events.     

Wealth Mobility of Families Raising Children in the Twenty-First Century

Wealth inequality between the top and bottom deciles has grown over the last 20 years (Piketty and Zucman in Wealth and inheritance in the long run, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, 2014), as has the racial wealth gap (Shapiro et al. in The roots of the widening racial wealth gap: explaining the black–white economic divide. Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, Waltham, 2013. http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/Author/shapiro-thomas-m/racialwealthgapbrief.pdf). Within these broad trends of inequality, some families are able to get ahead and grow their wealth, while others are not. Yet we do not understand well the critical variables that increase the likelihood of wealth mobility across the life course—within the same generation. This paper addresses this gap and investigates the following questions: What accounts for intra-generational relative and absolute wealth mobility for families with children in the first decade of the twenty-first century? And how does it differ by race? The paper draws on two longitudinal data sets—the Panel Study of Income Dynamics household survey data matched with neighborhood-level US Census data (1999–2011), and the IASP Leveraging Mobility (LM) study (1998–2011). Applying an integrated mixed methods design, analyses are conducted in three stages: (1) A grounded theory analytic approach of the LM data determines key variables of wealth mobility: homeownership, income, employment characteristics, extended family wealth, negative life events, and neighborhood factors; (2) regression analyses test these indicators for absolute and relative wealth mobility; and (3) recontextualization through further analyses of LM data deepen the regression results by illustrating the pathways of significant wealth mobility predictors. Results reveal that increasing family income, larger family transfers, consistent long-term homeownership, and in some cases white-collar occupations increase the likelihood of upward relative wealth mobility. Negative life events, higher rates of neighborhood poverty, and black race are negatively correlated with the amount of wealth growth. These key drivers of wealth mobility highlight the need for targeted policies that reinforce and expand opportunities for all families to build wealth over the life course.     

Parenting,emotion regulation,and externalizing symptomatology as adolescent antecedents to young adult health risk behaviors

This study used longitudinal data to elucidate how trajectories of negative parenting across adolescence are associated with young adult health risk behaviors (HRBs) by testing difficulties with emotion regulation and externalizing symptomatology as sequential underlying mediators. The sample included 167 adolescents (53% males, M_age = 14 at Time 1 and M_age = 18 at Time 5) who were assessed five times. Adolescents self-reported on negative parenting, emotion regulation, externalizing symptomatology, and engagement in HRBs. Results suggest that increasingly negative parenting across adolescence has adverse consequences for emotion regulation development and in turn, externalizing symptomatology, which confers risk for young adult HRBs. Results offer insights towards mechanisms for prevention and intervention and public health policy aimed at reducing the prevalence and consequences of engagement in HRBs.