Parental Suicidal Ideation and Child Depressive Symptoms: The Roles of Optimism and Gratitude

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the influence of paternal and maternal suicidal ideation on child depressive symptoms and examine the moderating effects of children’s positive psychological traits: optimism and gratitude. A cross-sectional survey with 302 children and parents from five primary schools in Hong Kong were recruited. Results indicated that maternal suicidal ideation was significantly related to child depressive symptoms while paternal suicidal ideation was not. Moreover, the moderating effects of child optimism and gratitude were shown in the link between paternal suicidal ideation and children depressive symptoms. In contrast, the influencing power of maternal suicidal ideation of maternal suicidal ideation seems too strong to be attenuated by child optimism and gratitude. Findings of this study implicate the importance of prevention and intervention to suicidal parents and their offspring. Besides, positive psychology programs to enhance child optimism and gratitude might promote child resilience in the face of parental suicidal ideation. Future research is suggested to include other risk factors and protective factors that might be involved in the complex pathway from parental suicidal ideation to their children’s depression, and to collect data from multiple informants of a longitudinal representative sample.     

Firm-nonprofit collaboration: Explaining the rationale behind firms’ cross-sector partner choices

Cross-sector partnerships between firms and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are emerging at an unprecedented rate to address sustainability issues. Extant research on cross-sector partnerships explains the firms' motivations to engage in partnerships but little is known about what drives the firms' partner choice. We build on firm-firm alliance research, differentiating between network-reinforcing and network-broadening strategies for finding partners. Based on a qualitative study with 33 experts from 17 frontrunner companies and 14 partnering NPOs, as well as secondary data, we assess the trade-offs between these two strategies and explore firms’ partner search and selection decisions. We advance cross-sector partnership research by proposing three drivers to explain why firms in our sample preferred to reinforce (rather than to broaden) their networks when forming additional cross-sector partnerships for sustainability. Moreover, we propose two conditions to explain why frontrunner firms often rely on opportunity-driven (rather than search-driven) partnership formation. These insights shed light on the type of formation strategy used in the context of cross-sector partnerships for sustainability.     

Adult and child deprivation in Hong Kong

There is growing interest in the application of Townsend's deprivation approach to provide estimates of poverty that more directly reflect the living standards of those on low income. The consensual approach is applied here using data from the second wave (conducted in 2015–2016) of the Trends and Implications of Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong survey. The article draws on a related study that identifies separate lists of items deemed “necessary for all” by a majority of adults (aged 18 years or older) and children (aged 10–17 years). Those unable to obtain at least three of these items are identified as deprived, and the profile of household deprivation is examined in terms of the family types most affected, age groups, and numbers of children. Further analysis focuses on the disparity between children identified as living in households identified as deprived according to information provided by adults and children whose deprivation status reflects their own views. Finally, the overlaps between deprivation and four measures of poverty—two objective and income based and two subjective and perception based—are examined and discussed. The results indicate that deprivation and poverty are different but that, however it is measured, more needs to be done to address poverty in Hong Kong, including further improvements in the coverage and adequacy of health service provision and social security benefits.     

A longitudinal analysis of the relationships among daytime dysfunction,fatigue, and depression in college students

Objective: To examine the longitudinal trajectory of daytime dysfunction (DD) and its relationship with fatigue by depression status in university students.

Participants: 243 students completed online surveys from September- December 2016.

Methods: Surveys were conducted at three time points over a semester period: the beginning of the semester, the end of mid-term and the end of the semester.

Results: Results indicated that the DD significantly increased in all students over the semester. Students with depression showed a higher initial level of DD and faster rate of change compared to those without depression. A faster rate of change of DD predicted a higher level of end-semester fatigue.

Conclusions: Depression is related to a higher initial level of DD and its faster rate change which in turn, predicted end-semester fatigue, identifying one of the possible pathways through which depression impacts the functioning and health of affected students.     

Holding on to history and each other: The unexpected LGBTQ legacy of a Czech Holocaust survivor and a Torah scroll from her hometown

Abstract

A Czech Holocaust survivor rescued by a Kindertransport in 1939; a long-lost Torah scroll, rediscovered in 1964, from a Jewish community wiped out in World War II; a German American lesbian who converted to Judaism in 2001. Three disparate stories, unfolding decades apart, converge in one memorable encounter, a Kristallnacht commemoration in Los Angeles organized by Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), the world’s first LGBTQ synagogue, which leads to an enduring friendship and fresh insight into contemporary queer Jewish life. In this personal essay, longtime BCC member Sylvia Sukop interweaves history and autobiography to explore the beauty and power of ritual, the resonance of the “Choose life” passage in Deuteronomy that her congregation reads from its rescued Czech scroll every Yom Kippur, and the many forms that good deeds and survival can take. Progressive faith communities, the author suggests, and the traditions in which they are rooted make space to witness and affirm the fullness of one another’s humanity, bridging differences and fostering unexpected kinship in a brutally divisive world.     

Why is Housing Always Satisfactory? A Study into the Impact of Cognitive Restructuring and Future Perspectives on Housing Appreciation

The current study focuses on residents’ perceptions of residential quality. The influence of two psychological factors is examined: cognitive restructuring and future perspectives. For cognitive restructuring, it is hypothesized that residents who cannot change a suboptimal housing situation show higher appreciation scores in order to prevent unhappiness and psychosocial complaints. By contrast, the future perspectives hypothesis argues that residents who can change a suboptimal housing situation show higher appreciation scores because they have a better situation to look forward to. Respondents indicated their appreciation of 23 dwelling aspects on a scale ranging from 0 (extremely unattractive) to 100 (extremely attractive). A weak impact was found for cognitive restructuring: residents living in a suboptimal housing situation and who do not intend to move showed a higher mean appreciation for an owner-occupied house and for a traditional architectural design than similar residents who did intend to move. No effect was observed for future perspectives. Why is housing always satisfactory? A previous study and the current one show that residents who live in a suboptimal housing situation might show relatively high residential satisfaction because they lower their aspirations (“I don’t need much”), because they are satisfied with what they have (“what I have is fine”) and, to a lesser extent, because they make the best of a situation that they cannot change (cognitive restructuring).     

When having many children pays: a case study from Taiwan

The objective of this paper is to investigate the direct financial cost and benefit of raising children during a demographic transition in Taiwan, and to examine whether fertility decline is consistent with Caldwell??s wealth flow theory, which states that fertility decline is caused by reduced benefits of children. The paper describes a method of estimating the average economic returns of children over the entire parental lifecycle, using a 42-year span of Taiwanese household and individual economic pseudo-panel data. Results show that returns to children may turn positive and are not highly negative all the time, as found in the previous literature.     

Priority Topics in the Study of Environmental Risk in Developing Countries: Report on a Workshop Held at the East–West Center, August, 1988

The rapid industrialization occurring in developing regions of the world brings not only economic benefits, but changes in the types and severity of health and environmental problems that each region experiences. As the industrialized world moves toward the use of risk assessment methodologies to aid in problem evaluation and regulatory and policy decision analysis, it seems inevitable that these methodologies will be applied globally. The changes brought about by rapid industrialization, however, must be viewed within the context of societies that are still struggling with the more traditional and basic environmental problems associated with urban and rural poverty. The urgency of development and the lack of adequate resources for characterizing health and environmental changes, often present under these circumstances, offer special challenges to the application of risk assessment methodologies.