Childhood parental loss and adult depression

Previous research demonstrates convincingly that childhood parental deaths and parental divorces have implications for adult well-being as defined by levels of depression, educational attainment, early age at marriage, and risk of divorce. What this research has failed to examine are the interconnections among these outcomes. Specifically, are the socioeconomic and marital outcomes of parental loss implicated in the observed higher levels of depression? This analysis takes a first step in answering this question. Using data from a sample of 1,755 married men and women, I estimated regression models which examine the extent to which adult socioeconomic status and current marital quality mediate and/or modify the loss-depression relationship. Parental divorce was strongly related to socioeconomic and marital outcomes. Furthermore, current marital quality contributed importantly to understanding the higher levels of depressed mood observed among persons from divorced homes. Parental death was much more weakly related to socioeconomic and marital outcomes, and these outcomes played little role in explaining its relationship to depression. Finally, all of these relationships were stronger among women than men. These findings support the utility of life-course approaches to understanding adult mental health.     

Clinical work with adolescents and their parents during family transitions: Transference and countertransference issues

This paper describes specific transference and counter-transference issues that commonly emerge in therapeutic work with adolescents and parents who are in the midst of family transitions such as divorce and remarriage. Psychoanalytic understanding and definitions of transference and countertransference are applied to short-term family-centered cases in which the parent-adolescent relationship is at particular risk. Case vignettes are presented in order to illustrate how transference and countertransference may guide or interfere with clinical interventions that are especially indicated with adolescents whose family structure has changed. Such interventions as well as the use of consultation are briefly described.At the time this paper was prepared, Ms. Springer was Associate Director and a senior clinician at the Center for the Family in Transition in Corte Madera, California. Funds for the research and clinical work that provided the basis for this paper were supplied by grants from the San Francisco Foudation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Orthopsychiatry Association, New York City, March 31–April 4, 1989.     

Domains of convergence for the EM algorithm: a cautionary tale in a location estimation problem

The EM algorithm is a popular method for maximizing a likelihood in the presence of incomplete data. When the likelihood has multiple local maxima, the parameter space can be partitioned into domains of convergence, one for each local maximum. In this paper we investigate these domains for the location family generated by the t-distribution. We show that, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, these domains need not be connected sets. As an extreme case we give an example of a domain which consists of an infinite union of disjoint open intervals. Thus the convergence behaviour of the EM algorithm can be quite sensitive to the starting point.     

Progress and cumulation in the human sciences after the fall

What do we mean by progress and cumulation in the social and human sciences? Recent thinking in the philosophy and history of science has led to an abandonment of some versions of logical positivism and of verificationism that had a strong deductive and theory testing orientation. What is to replace them is less clear. This paper argues that progress and cumulation can be seen as a process of evaluation and retention within an epistemic community. Scholarly disciplines differ in their social structure and in their epistemic and normative commitments. Since sociology is a fragmented discipline, progress and cumulation differ within its multiple subdisciplines, which to varying extents represent epistemic communities. Brief sketches of progress (advance) and cumulation in several subdisciplines are offered.     

The psychodynamically oriented clinical social worker as sports consultant: A preliminary report

This paper explores an unusual and innovative application of psychodynamically oriented clinical social work method to the sports area. The coach of a national Olympics team requested a clinical consultation because he suspected that there might be psychosocial reasons why a certain number of world class atheletes he was coaching were not performing up to their full potential.     

Correlates of female crime

This article discusses the complexity of developing correlates of female crime in the comparative context of Western and Indian literature. It selectively reviews the findings of American and Indian studies of female crime and concludes with the author’s own findings from a study of 120 women prisoners conducted in a federal women’s prison in India. The author’s main contention is that whereas broad contours of offender profiles can be drawn, it is difficult to draw statistically significant relationships and infer from them predictable variables of criminality.     

Significance of the Dermal Route of Exposure to Risk Assessment

The skin is a route of exposure that needs to be considered when conducting a risk assessment. It is necessary to identify the potential for dermal penetration by a chemical as well as to determine the overall importance of the dermal route of exposure as compared with inhalation or oral routes of exposure. The physical state of the chemical, vapor or liquid, the concentration, neat or dilute, and the vehicle, lipid or aqueous, is also important. Dermal risk is related to the product of the amounts of penetration and toxicity. Toxicity involves local effects on the skin itself and the potential for systemic effects. Dermal penetration is described in large part by the permeability constant. When permeability constants are not known, partition coefficients can be used to estimate a chemical's potential to permeate the skin. With these concepts in mind, a tiered approach is proposed for dermal risk assessment. A key first step is the determination of a skin-to-air or skin-to-medium partition coefficient to estimate a potential for dermal absorption. Building a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model is another step in the tiered approach and is useful prior to classical in vivo toxicity tests. A PBPK model can be used to determine a permeability constant for a chemical as well as to show the distribution of the chemical systemically. A detailed understanding of species differences in the structure and function of the skin and how they relate to differences in penetration rates is necessary in order to extrapolate animal data from PBPK models to the human. A study is in progress to examine anatomical differences for four species.     

Cognitive and behavioral therapies for pathological gambling

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of behavioral and cognitive treatment approaches in the management of pathological gambling disorders. Disappointingly, the literature to date contains only one controlled outcome study in which two differing behavioral techniques were compared. Although research in general has focussed on identifying the nature of cognitive distortions in gambling, findings from these studies have not been systematically translated into treatment programs. It is concluded that methodological limitations including small sample size, absence of control groups, multiple concurrent interventions and poorly defined outcome criteria preclude conclusive statements to be drawn regarding the active ingredient of either behavioral or cognitive strategies. The program offered within the Impulse Disorders Research Centre is outlined.The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance and contribution of Zachary Steel, Research Assistant, in the preparation of this paper.     

Parent‐Adolescent Involvement: The Relative Influence of Parent Gender and Residence

The 1995 wave of the Add Health study is used to investigate the relative influence of parent gender and residence on patterns of parental involvement with adolescents. Adolescent reports (N =17,330) of shared activities, shared communication, and relationship quality with both biological parents are utilized. A multidimensional scaling analysis reveals that parent gender explains most of the variance in parent‐adolescent involvement, with residential status playing a secondary yet a fundamental role in accounting for these patterns. Resident mothers who do not live with adolescents’ biological fathers engage in the broadest range of activities with their children. Unpartnered resident fathers display patterns of parenting that are as similar to mothers as they are to other fathers.