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PubMed1995

"Taking another route": daily survival narratives from mothers who are homeless.

Homelessness among families has become a growing social problem for communities, yet little is known about the types of daily survival strategies such families employ. This paper presents results of a qualitative study of the coping narratives of 64 mothers living in temporary emergency shelters with their children. The women reported using a variety of coping responses to daily stressful events. These included the use of direct actions and more palliative strategies. Results suggest that stress and coping theory may be useful for understanding homelessness. Implications for program development and future research are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1994

Development of a coding system for marital problem solving efficacy.

Efficacy in marital problem solving has received little attention, and work on general problem solving efficacy does not address marital issues. This study examined the ability to discriminate between groups and criterion validity of an efficacy-focused marital problem solving measurement method, the Marital Efficacy Coding System, which combines marital problem scenarios with general social problem solving assessment procedures. This system was administered to nondistressed married subjects, participants in marital therapy, and divorced or separated individuals. Participants were asked to develop a set of discrete steps or 'means' as solutions to marital problem scenarios. The content was coded by a number of means, participants' ratings of problem frequency and typicality of response, and coders' ratings of efficacy and equality. Overall percentage agreement between coders was 73.4%. Marital Efficacy Coding System variables, including problem frequency, solution typicality, and solution efficacy, were shown to significantly differentiate between participants high and low in marital satisfaction and to possess significant predictive ability.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Childhood behavioral precursors of adult symptom dimensions in schizophrenia.

The present investigation tested the hypothesis that childhood behavioral problems are differentially associated with clinical symptoms in adult-onset schizophrenia. Parents of 29 schizophrenic patients completed questionnaires concerning (1) the childhood behaviors of all their offspring from birth through 15 years of age, and (2) the symptomatology of their schizophrenic offspring. The childhood behavior scale was a modified version of Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist (1991). Scores were derived for six childhood behavior problem factors: Withdrawal, Anxiety/Depression, Social Problems, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, and Aggression/Delinquency. Ratings of symptoms were based on parental versions of Andreasen's Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS; 1983) and Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS; 1981). Symptomatology scores were computed from the SANS and SAPS following Malla et al.'s (1993) and Liddle's (1987b) tri-dimensional concept of schizophrenia: Reality Distortion, Psychomotor Poverty and Cognitive Disorganization. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the relation between childhood behavior and adult symptomatology in the schizophrenic patients. The results indicated that the Psychomotor Poverty and Cognitive Disorganization dimensions in adult patients are positively associated with Withdrawn behavior and inversely associated with Anxious/Depressed characteristics in childhood. The results are discussed in light of the distinction between primary and secondary negative symptoms, and the three dimension concept of schizophrenia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Party drug use in techno nights: a field survey among French-speaking Swiss attendees.

This study was designed to investigate the lifestyle and substance use habits of dance music event attendees together with their attitudes toward prevention of substance misuse, harm reduction measures and health-care resources. A total of 302 attendees aged 16-46 years (mean=22.70, S.D.=4.65) were randomly recruited as they entered dance music events. Rates for lifetime and current use (last 30 days) were particularly high for alcohol (95.3% and 86.6%, respectively), cannabis (68.8% and 53.8%, respectively), ecstasy (40.4% and 22.7%, respectively) and cocaine (35.9% and 20.7%, respectively). Several patterns of substance use could be identified: 52% were alcohol and/or cannabis only users, 42% were occasional poly-drug users and 6% were daily poly-drug users. No significant difference was observed between substance use patterns according to gender. Pure techno and open-air events attracted heavier drug users. Psychological problems (such as depressed mood, sleeping problems and anxiety attacks), social problems, dental disorders, accidents and emergency treatment episodes were strongly related to party drug use. Party drug users appeared to be particularly receptive to harm reduction measures, such as on-site emergency staff, pill testing and the availability of cool water, and to prevention of drug use provided via counseling. The greater the involvement in party drug use, the greater the need for prevention personnel to be available for counseling. General practitioners appeared to be key professionals for accessing health-care resources.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Associations of poverty, substance use, and HIV transmission risk behaviors in three South African communities.

The majority of the world's HIV infections occur in communities ravished by poverty. Although HIV/AIDS and poverty are inextricably linked, there are few studies of how poverty-related stressors contribute to HIV risk behavior practices. In this study, surveys were conducted in three South African communities that varied by race and socio-economic conditions: people living in an impoverished African township (N = 499); an economically impoverished but well infrastructured racially integrating township (N = 995); and urban non-impoverished neighborhoods (N = 678). Results showed that HIV/AIDS risks were closely related to experiences of poor education, unemployment, discrimination, violence, and crime. Although poverty-related stressors were associated with a history of alcohol and drug use, substance use did not moderate the association between poverty-related stressors and HIV risk behaviors. The findings suggest that HIV prevention strategies should not treat AIDS as a singled out social problem independent of other social ills.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Strategies of control, aggression, and morality in preschoolers: an evolutionary perspective.

Moral reasoning, moral affect, social problem solving skills, and social preferences were assessed in 163 ethnically mixed preschoolers (2.86-5.95 years). Participants were rated by their teachers on prosocial and coercive strategies of control, success at resource control, and aggression (overt and relational). Based on their employment of coercive and prosocial strategies of resource control, the children were categorized as bistrategic controllers, coercive controllers, prosocial controllers, noncontrollers, or typicals. Teacher-rated relational aggression was positively associated with moral maturity in girls. Bistrategic controllers, although aggressive, were morally mature and preferred play partners by their peers. The results are discussed in terms of hypotheses that arise from evolutionary theory which suggests that highly effective resource controllers would be simultaneously aggressive and yet well aware of moral norms. The findings are contrasted with alternative hypotheses that might arise variously from traditional and prevailing approaches.

Affect↗
PubMed2000

Philosophical problems with social research on health inequalities.

This paper offers a realist critique of social research on health inequalities. A conspectus of the field of health inequalities research identifies two main research approaches: the positivist quantitative survey and the interpretivist qualitative 'case study'. We argue that both approaches suffer from serious philosophical limitations. We suggest that a turn to realism offers a productive 'third way' both for the development of health inequality research in particular and for the social scientific understanding of the complexities of the social world in general.

Health Care Rationing↗
PubMed2000

[Consequences and complications of obesity].

Obesity increases the risk of metabolic complications such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, systemic hypertension and cardiovascular disease. These are mainly responsible for the increased mortality of obese people. Other metabolic consequences of obesity are: gallstones, steatosis of the liver and the polycystic ovary syndrome. Beside the body mass index the distribution of body fat is important. Centralized obesity, as measured by the waist-to-hip circumference ratio (WHR), is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinaemia seem to play a central role in the pathogenesis of this association. Obesity has not only metabolic complications. There is a relationship between obesity and impaired respiratory function. Furthermore is obesity a risk factor for osteoarthrosis of the knee, the hip and even the hand and for pulmonary embolism and venous thrombosis. Obesity can also lead to psycho-social problems such as depression, social discrimination and isolation.

Body Constitution↗
PubMed1993

Comparative effectiveness of social problem-solving therapy and reminiscence therapy as treatments for depression in older adults.

Compared the effects of 2 psychotherapies based on divergent conceptualizations of depression in later life. Seventy-five older adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder were assigned randomly to problem-solving therapy (PST), reminiscence therapy (RT), or a waiting-list control (WLC) condition. Participants in PST and RT were provided with 12 weekly sessions of group treatment. Dependent measures, taken at baseline, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up, included self-report and observer-based assessments of depressive symptomatology. At posttreatment, both the PST and the RT conditions produced significant reductions in depressive symptoms, compared with the WLC group, and PST participants experienced significantly less depression than RT subjects. Moreover, a significantly greater proportion of participants in PST versus RT demonstrated sufficient positive change to warrant classification of their depression as improved or in remission at the posttreatment and follow-up evaluations.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Some problems with social cognition models: a pragmatic and conceptual analysis.

Empirical articles published between 1997 and 2001 from 4 health psychology journals that tested or applied 1 or more social cognition models (theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, health belief model, and protection motivation theory; N = 47) were scrutinized for their pragmatic and conceptual basis. In terms of their pragmatic basis, these 4 models were useful for guiding research. The analysis of their conceptual basis was less positive. First, these models do not enable the generation of hypotheses because their constructs are unspecific; they therefore cannot be tested. Second, they focus on analytic truths rather than synthetic ones, and the conclusions resulting from their application are often true by definition rather than by observation. Finally, they may create and change both cognitions and behavior rather than describe them.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed2005

Feeding people is easy: but we have to re-think the world from first principles.

OBJECTIVE: Agriculture designed to make best use of landscape and to be maximally sustainable would also provide food of the highest nutritional and gastronomic standards, and would inevitably employ a great many people. Thus it would solve the world's food problems, and its principal social problem, at a stroke. But agriculture in practice is designed for a quite different purpose--to generate wealth, in the cause of 'economic growth'. The pressing need is not for more science and technology, but to recognise the true cause of the problems and to re-think priorities. CONCLUSION: We could all be well fed. Indeed, everyone in the world who is ever likely to be born could be fed to the highest standards of gastronomy as well as of nutrition until humanity itself comes to an end. We already have most of the necessary technique--perhaps all that is needed. We could always do with more excellent science but we need not depend, as we are often told from on high, on the next technological fix. The methods that can provide excellent food would also create a beautiful environment, with plenty of scope for other creatures, and agreeable and stable agrarian economies with satisfying jobs for all. In reality, in absolute contrast, we have created a world in which almost a billion are chronically undernourished; another billion are horribly overnourished, so that obesity and diabetes are epidemic, and rising; a billion live on less than two dollars a day; and a billion live in urban slums--a figure set to increase and probably at least to double over the next half century; while other species are disappearing so fast that biologists speak of mass extinction.

Agriculture↗