An Attachment Primer for Couple Therapists: Research and Clinical Implications

According to attachment theory, humans are relational beings and even a child's earliest experiences with caregivers have a profound effect on emotional development and an overall approach to relationships. With increasing regularity, couple therapy has utilized attachment language as a conceptual tool, but more work is needed to understand the full clinical implications of attachment theory. These include understanding the intergenerational nature of attachment and adapting the delivery, timing, and pace of interventions to client attachment strategies. In this article, we summarize the origins of attachment theory, its measurement, the role of attachment in couple relationships, attachment stability and change, and ways that attachment informs therapy process and intervention. We hope that this article will provide an impetus for couple therapists to expand their conceptualization and use of attachment in their clinical work and for couple researchers to conduct more clinically relevant, attachment‐oriented process research.     

Educating for mental health practice: Results of a survey of mental health content in Bachelor of Social Work curricula in Australian schools of social work

Health problems are amongst the most pressing encountered by social workers in practice. Health policy, largely through deinstitutionalisation, has placed mental health problems in the mainstream of health practice. One in 25 Australians will require professional assistance with mental health problems. Moreover, other professions are increasingly claiming that mental health is their area of expertise. Social work needs to reclaim this area as their own and hence it is incumbent on social work education to prepare students to practise in this area. As the second of a two-part survey of health and mental health curricula in Australian schools of social work, the findings of the survey on mental health curricula conducted in 1997 are presented in this article. Based on responses from 95% of the schools, nine of the 20 respondent schools were found to offer a separate mental health unit. The remaining 11 schools' coverage ranged from no coverage at all through to considerable integration in other subjects. Overall it was concluded that the majority of students received a significant amount of input on mental health. A number of recommendations are made to improve mental health input including more skill development, greater local contextualisation, more attention to an anti-oppressive agenda, and more explicit links to field education.     

SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION,EMOTIONAL COPING,AND CRIMINAL DESISTANCE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF MEN UNDERGOING CHANGE

Retrospective narratives of change consistently emphasize the importance of religious devotion and spirituality in initiating sustained behavioral change, but little is known about the process by which religion and spirituality promote desistance from crime. The current project is designed to add to the knowledge of the relationship between religion/spirituality and behavioral change by systematically investigating the ways that men residing in a halfway house define the role of religion/spirituality as an emotion-coping mechanism in their desistance efforts. The qualitative data reveal that religion/spirituality is primarily used by these men currently undergoing behavioral change as a form of emotional comfort, a distraction from current stressors, and as factor demarcating the transition from deviance to a more conventional life. Suggestions for religious programming designed to stimulate behavioral changes are discussed.     

Bullying in secondary schools: through a discursive lens

Abstract

This paper analyses students’ constructions of bullying from a social constructionist perspective. Interviews were conducted with 24 students at a small semi-rural secondary school in New Zealand. These were taped, transcribed and a discourse analysis, informed by the work of Foucault, was carried out. It was found that students made sense of bullying by drawing on constructions that included bullying as a consequence of differences and as a form of discipline. These constructions had the effect of legitimizing the school's institutional power imbalance. This was supported by students and teachers who both played an active role in simultaneously enforcing, and being subjected to, the disciplinary technologies of normalization characterized by bullying. The goal of this research is to provide a critical focus to the political nature, power relations and ideological effects of these prevailing discourses that function to both create and support bullying behaviour in our schools.     

Money Buys Financial Security and Psychological Need Satisfaction: Testing Need Theory in Affluence

The most prominent theory to explain the curvilinear relationship between income and subjective well-being (SWB) is need theory, which proposes that increased income and wealth can lead to increased well-being in poverty because money is used to satisfy basic physiological needs. The present study tests the tenets of need theory by proposing that money can buy happiness beyond poverty if the money satisfies higher-order needs. Findings indicate that in older adults (n = 1,284), as economic standing rises, so do individual perceptions of financial security (a safety need), which in turn increases overall life satisfaction. Further, a path model tested the degree to which financial security and psychological need satisfaction mediated the path from economic standing to life satisfaction and demonstrated the complete mediation through higher-order needs—there was a 66% reduction in the direct link through financial security and a 34% reduction through psychological need satisfaction. Discussion focuses on how these mediation and path models extend need theory.     

‘Always up for the craic’: young Irish professional migrants narrating ambiguous positioning in contemporary Britain

This paper explores the experiences of recent Irish highly qualified migrants who, having left post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, arrive in post-‘Peace Agreement’ Britain. Our paper contributes to understanding the enduring salience of place and how expressions of identities are framed by specific place-based factors as well as by temporality. We explore how these migrants’ narratives, as ‘successful’ professionals, are framed by complex intersections of historical legacies and changing socio-economic and intra-EU migration patterns. We consider the extent to which residual anti-Irish stereotypes remain, or indeed have re-emerged since the economic recession, and how these negative perceptions may impact on expressions of Irishness. Focusing on accents and other markers of identity, we discuss how Irishness may be constructed through a spectrum of visibilities at different times and in different places. This spatial-temporal perspective may help to go beyond a simplistic, one dimensional ethnic lens by highlighting the contextualities of identities.     

The cost of uncertain life span

Much uncertainty surrounds the length of human life. The standard deviation in adult life span is about 15 years in the USA, and theory and evidence suggest that it is costly. I calibrate a utility-theoretic model that shows that 1 year in standard deviation is worth about half a life year. Differences in variance exacerbate health inequalities between and among rich and poor countries. Accounting for the cost of life-span variance appears to amplify recently discovered patterns of convergence in world average human well-being because the component of variance due to infant mortality has exhibited even more convergence than life expectancy.     

African American males in foster care and the risk of delinquency: the value of social bonds and permanence

Juvenile delinquency remains a significant problem for child welfare systems throughout the United States. Victims of child abuse and neglect are more likely relative to children in the general population to engage in delinquency (Ryan & Testa, 2005; Widom, 1989). Although the magnitude of this relationship is not fully understood (Zingraff, Leiter, Myers, & Johnsen, 1993), the risk of delinquency is particularly high for African American males, adolescents, and children in substitute care settings. Unfortunately little is known about the factors that connect the experiences of maltreatment and delinquency. This lack of knowledge makes it nearly impossible to decrease the risk of delinquency for children in foster care. To improve the understanding of juvenile delinquency in the child welfare system, the current study tests aspects of social control theory within the context of foster care. We focus specifically on the effects of foster parent-foster child attachment, commitment, and permanence. The results indicate that strong levels of attachment decrease the risk of delinquency for youth in foster care. Involvement with religious organizations also decreases the risk of delinquency. In contrast, perceptions of placement instability, placement with relatives, and school suspensions are associated with an increased risk of delinquency.     

Effects of subtle heterosexism on gays, lesbians, bisexuals

This study examined heterosexism that is not specifically targeted at LGB individuals, but may be experienced as antigay harassment, and may contribute to the stigma and stress they experience. LGB participants (N = 175, primarily Euro-American college students), read scenarios of heterosexuals saying or assuming things potentially offensive to gay men or lesbian women. For each scenario, they indicated extent to which they would be offended and less open about their sexuality, and their perceptions of the behaviors as evidence of antigay prejudice. Not only did respondents find the scenarios to be offensive and indicative of prejudice, but perceived offensiveness was associated with a decreased likelihood of coming out. In comparison to gay men, lesbian women and bisexuals found the scenarios more offensive and more indicative of prejudice. Limitations of the current study and directions for future research are outlined.