Psychological impact of writing about abuse or positive experiences

Writing often helps people deal with trauma. To see if writing about childhood physical or sexual abuse, or positive experiences, helps, psychology undergraduates wrote for 20 minutes on 4 days about their abuse, a positive experience, or a trivial topic. Among 102 who began and 85 who completed pre-, post-, and 4-week follow-up measures of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideas, abuse writers were more likely to discontinue, and positive writers were more depressed and anxious. Compared to pretest, all completers were less depressed, anxious, and suicidal at follow-up, but nonsignificantly different in health visits. Completers who wrote about abuse rated the study as more valuable than did those who wrote about positive experiences. College students who wrote about childhood physical or sexual abuse benefited from any type of structured writing assignment (where they interacted with a researcher and got extra credit) in terms of reduced anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideas, but they found value in writing about their trauma more than writing about innocuous topics.     

The Role of Parentification and Family Climate in Adaptation Among Immigrant Adolescents in Israel

Parentification has been defined as the familial interactional pattern in which children and adolescents are assigned or assume roles and responsibilities normally the province of adults. Two studies were conducted to examine the role that parentification takes in the context of immigration with regard to its impact on adolescent adaptation. In study 1, a comparison between 70 adolescent immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel with 70 nonimmigrant Israeli adolescents showed higher levels of spousal role taking among the immigrant adolescents. In the case of the immigrants, spousal role taking was seen to involve positive relationships with both parents (as opposed to with only one for the nonimmigrants) and to be associated with better coping with stressful events. In study 2, the association between the incidence of parentification and family climates was explored among 123 adolescent immigrants from the FSU in Israel. Of the three climates found, the optimal cohesive independence‐oriented family climate showed a higher incidence of parentification (parental role taking, spousal role taking, parental role for siblings, and nonspecific adult role taking) as opposed to within the unstructured‐conflict‐oriented and control‐oriented family climates. These results seem to strengthen the position that optimal adolescent development following immigration involves a combination of enhanced familial relatedness and assumption of responsibility within a climate that allows age‐appropriate autonomy.     

Notes and Communications A NON-DUAL APPROACH TO SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS—THE RIGHT-HAND-SIDE CASE

Linear programming and sensitivity analysis in linear programming have long been integral parts of business school curricula, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Most business school students are required to take an introductory course in management science emphasizing linear programming and sensitivity analysis. This note is educational and presents a non-dual approach to restoring the optimal solution to a linear program when changes in the right-hand-side vector render the current solution infeasible and thus nonoptimal.     

Constructing border ethnic identities along the frontier of Central and Eastern Europe

The analysis is based on an empirical sociological study (interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union Project) aimed at exploring the various aspects of people’s diaspora affiliations and their ethnic and national identity on the Eastern borderland of Europe. We surveyed ethnic minority groups in eight countries along the frontier of Central Eastern Europe. With the ethnic minorities having a similar ethnic status along the border, we demonstrated how ethnic minorities ‘deal’ with their minority status in their ‘host’ country. The analysis reconstructs the image of the ethnic minority at the societal level. We model personal and collective ethnic identities as a stock of knowledge based on cognitive and affective components, and test them along the different ethnic dyads. The paper shows how successive generations are able to transfer the pattern of ethnic identity within the family, and also how language use practices and personal networks play a role in preserving personal ethnic identity.     

Ethical Challenges to the Integrity of Physicans: Financial Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Research

Financial conflicts of interest arise when physicians' judgment and decision making become compromised by financial gains or interests, and thus create risk of undo harm to research participants, to the integrity of research projects, and, ultimately, to society at large. Such conflicts also violate the moral maxims of medicine, and thus damage the integrity of physicians and the medical profession. I submit that key remedies for this problem are the integrity (self-respect) of physicians and the respectful engagement of research participants (whether patients or nonpatient volunteers) as partners in research projects. Accordingly, I consider physicians the primary moral agents, research participants the secondary moral agents, and society the tertiary moral agent with responsibilities for protection against whatever undue harm in clinical research. The latter needs to address the powerful cultural, commercial, political, and social factors that contribute to physicians' financial conflicts of interest.