Psychological Distress of Cuban Americans Affected by Restrictive U.S. Travel Policies

We describe the mental health consequences of United States travel policies affecting Cuban Americans (CAs) with relatives in Cuba and discuss these policies in the context of U.S. domestic politics and the Bush administration's desire for regime change in Cuba. Policies put into effect in 2004 restrict CAs from visiting relatives in Cuba more than once every 3 years, narrowly define family whom CAs can legally visit, and limit the assistance they can provide their Cuban relatives. We share case reports based on qualitative interviews with 53 Cuban Americans that illustrate travel-related psychological distress (TRPD) experienced by CAs in response to the restrictions. We note the difficulties CAs experience in coping with TRPD and the need for political and mental health interventions to address this condition. TRPD is directly related to the government's violation of the human and constitutional rights of CAs to travel freely. It is the responsibility of the state to restore those rights. Human services professionals should oppose TRPD as antithetical to family well-being.     

Response to the Dialogue Between Adrienne Harris and David Lichtenstein

In this discussion, the author clarifies the different positions held by Adrienne Harris and David Liechtenstein in a frank and open dialogue about the Lacanian and relational viewpoints in the field of psychoanalysis. The author proposes in the end a new integration of the process of projective identification to narrow the divergence between the two schools of thought.     

Neighborhood structural inequality, collective efficacy, and sexual risk behavior among urban youth

We draw on collective efficacy theory to extend a contextual model of early adolescent sexual behavior. Specifically, we hypothesize that neighborhood structural disadvantage--as measured by levels of concentrated poverty, residential instability, and aspects of immigrant concentration--and diminished collective efficacy have consequences for the prevalence of early adolescent multiple sexual partnering. Findings from random effects multinomial logistic regression models of the number of sexual partners among a sample of youth, age 11 to 16, from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (N = 768) reveal evidence of neighborhood effects on adolescent higher-risk sexual activity. Collective efficacy is negatively associated with having two or more sexual partners versus one (but not zero versus one) sexual partner. The effect of collective efficacy is dependent upon age: The regulatory effect of collective efficacy increases for older adolescents.     

"Couples as Partners and Parents over Children's Early Years"

We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how couple relationship quality and parental engagement are linked over children's early years-when they are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Our sample included 1,630 couples that were coresident over years 1 to 3 and 1,376 couples that were coresident over years 3 to 5 (1,196 over both periods). Overall, we found that better relationship quality predicted greater parental engagement for both mothers and fathers-especially in the infant to toddler years; in contrast, we found little evidence that parental engagement predicted future relationship quality. Married and cohabiting couples were generally similar in how relationship quality and parenting were linked.     

Integrated Substance Abuse and Child Welfare Services for Women: A Progress Review

A review of empirical literature reveals improvements in service utilization and outcomes for women when substance abuse and child welfare services are integrated. The increased use of substances by women involved in the child welfare system has resulted in a call for integrated, coordinated, evidence-based practices. Since the late 1990s, specific system- and service-level strategies have been developed to coordinate and integrate the provision of substance abuse and child welfare services such that women are remaining in treatment longer and are more likely to reduce substance use and be reunited with their children. The strategies reviewed provide useful guidelines for developing components of effective, evidence-based programs for substance-involved women in the child welfare system.     

Meeting the mental health needs of the aging veteran population

The growth in the veterans population parallels the graying of America, accompanied by an increasing need for health care and mental health services from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system. With the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rising in veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the already strained mental health resources in use by veterans with persistent PTSD from previous wars, the VA mental health system is and will continue to be in overload. In addition, recent research has noted an increased incidence of dementia in veterans with PTSD. The VA's long-term care facilities cannot meet their current demands, nevermind provide support for veterans with cognitive deficits who can no longer be cared for at home. It is imperative that immediate measures be taken to strengthen resources for research, manpower, and training to accommodate the future mental health needs of our aging veterans.     

Adolescent Transitions to Young Adulthood: Antecedents,Correlates, and Consequences of Adolescent Employment

The antecedents, correlates, and consequences of adolescent employment were investigated in a sample of 251 low‐income, African American youth that were followed since birth. The youth (age: M at preschool = 4.89, SD= .70; M at adolescence = 16.44, SD= .66; M at transition to adulthood = 19.36, SD= .76; and M at early adulthood = 27.67, SD= .75) were the firstborn children of African American teenage mothers who gave birth in Baltimore in the 1960s. Analyses examined the antecedents and correlates of age of entry into employment and stability of employment during adolescence. The associations of adolescent work experiences with subsequent adult education and employment outcomes also were considered. Findings indicate that among this sample of low‐income, African American youth, those who repeated a grade in school during middle childhood were more likely to enter the workforce at later ages than their peers who did not repeat a grade. The small subset of adolescents who never worked (n= 12) appear to be markedly more disadvantaged than their peers who worked. At the transition to adulthood, adolescents who entered the workforce earlier were more likely to complete high school than their peers. In addition, stable employment during the adolescent years had more beneficial effects on young men's chances of attending college than young women's postsecondary education. This pattern of findings is consistent with ethnographic accounts of adolescent employment among poor, minority, urban youth.     

Welfare and Work: Complementary Strategies forLow‐Income Women?

We examine the effects of mothers' strategies of combining employment and welfare receipt during the first 3 years of their child's life on the child's cognitive development, behavior problems, and home learning environment at ages 5 to 6. We compare the child outcomes of those mothers who were continuously employed and received no welfare with (a) those who worked some or all of the 3 years and also received public assistance and (b) those who were totally dependent on public assistance. We studied children in single‐parent families (N= 1271 ) living below 200% of the poverty threshold using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth—Child Supplement. No negative association was found on most child outcomes with a mother's employment whether or not it was combined with public assistance. However, mothers' not working at all and receiving financial support solely from AFDC was associated with negative child outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the possible effects of the new welfare laws on families and young children.     

A simple estimator for a shared frailty regression model

Summary. We propose a simple estimation procedure for a proportional hazards frailty regression model for clustered survival data in which the dependence is generated by a positive stable distribution. Inferences for the frailty parameter can be obtained by using output from Cox regression analyses. The computational burden is substantially less than that of the other approaches to estimation. The large sample behaviour of the estimator is studied and simulations show that the approximations are appropriate for use with realistic sample sizes. The methods are motivated by studies of familial associations in the natural history of diseases. Their practical utility is illustrated with sib pair data from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.