When Triggers Become Tigers: Taming the Autonomic Nervous System via Sensory Support System Modulation.

Personalized recovery technologies may enable individuals with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) to monitor and manage acute craving and drug use urges in ways that improve drug-seeking decisions in real-time. Direct and indirect regulation of the autonomic nervous system through sensory input monitoring and modulation may enhance control over behavioral decisions and prevent relapse. A personalized sensory support system that monitors neurophysiological reactivity and offers non-pharmacological point-in-time personalized digital interventions may increase awareness of and control over craving reactivity. It is critical to be able to detect these warning signs and intervene early and effectively. The use of wearable technologies that assess point-in-time neurophysiological escalation and shape behavioral response through personalized interventions could be transformative in allowing individuals to better manage their recovery as they transition out of institutions and move back into community settings.

Ashes2Art: Mitigation Strategies for Short-and Long-term Distress in Emergency Services Personnel During COVID-19.

Ashes2Art, a nonprofit organization working with fire fighters and first responders since 2017, promotes creativity to counter balance the exposure to extreme loss and trauma. Operating under the Northern Virginia Emergency Medical Services Council, Ashes2Art provides art supplies, art classes, and a creative community of support to mitigate the deleterious effects the stress of the job can take on fire fighters and first responders' health and mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ashes2Art has seen an increased demand for art supplies and the, now online, creative arts classes and self-care strategies. Currently, approximately 100 emergency services personnel and family members are actively participating in these initiatives during this crisis. Managing the cumulative emotional load these first responders and their families experience is paramount to COVID-19 recovery efforts and post-pandemic operations. Helping first responders and their families manage the short- and long-term emotional toll from the work they do in responding to the COVID-19 crisis is paramount to the United States' successful recovery back to a well-functioning post-pandemic society. This paper suggests that enhancing well-being through mindfulness-focused creative arts engagement might be one effective tool to be included as part of routine self-care protocols for first responders and their families.

Integrating social neuroscience and social work: innovations for advancing practice-based research.

Throughout the social work profession, there is ongoing interest in building a social science agenda that can address the complex practice-based questions faced by social work professionals today. Methodological innovations and unique funding opportunities have already significantly advanced research on social work practice. Still, there is enthusiastic discussion of how to ensure that such capacity development helps the profession move forward in ways that make use of the biological sciences and that facilitate social work-specific contributions to the larger interdisciplinary scientific community. This article describes how the social work profession can make use of biomedical knowledge and technological advances from social neuroscience to inform psychosocial treatment development, and it illustrates an application to social work practice by giving an example of a substance abuse treatment development process built on social neuroscientific research.

Parental aspirations for their children's educational attainment: relations to ethnicity, parental education, children's academic performance, and parental perceptions of school climate.

This study examined parental aspirations for their children's educational attainment in relation to ethnicity (African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic), parental education, children's academic performance, and parental perceptions of the quality and climate of their children's school with a sample of 13,577 middle and high school parents. All parents had relatively high educational aspirations for their children, and within each ethnic subgroup, parental education and children's academic performance were significantly and positively related to parental aspirations. However, moderating effects were found such that Caucasian parents with lower levels of education had significantly lower educational aspirations for their children than did parents of other ethnicities with similar low levels of education. Although the strength of the relationship between parental perceptions of school-related factors and parental aspirations for their children's educational attainment was not strong, it was most predictive of non-Caucasian parental aspirations for their children.

Estimating person--environment transactions on intention to change drug-using behaviors.

The community attachment model of addiction is an ecologically based social process model that suggests social context referents (peers, family, neighbors, etc.) will influence attachment to addiction or recovery communities, via cognitive, affective, and behavioral commitments. This study examined the influence of social context referents on intention to change drug using behavior, and examined moderating effects of three contextual indicators (labor market attachment, educational attainment, and family poverty status) on these relationships. The study sample consisted of 302 adults in inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment facilities, who completed a set of instruments that included the Ecological Assessment of Substance Abuse Experiences (EASE), a new instrument designed to measure the influence of social context referents on addiction and recovery attachment processes. Results showed that all three contextual indicators moderated relationships among social context referenced attitudes, drug use concern, and intention to change drug using behaviors. Findings suggest that practitioners should attend to both microlevel orientations to social context and macrolevel contextual dimensions (e.g., labor force attachment), as both may influence behavioral change opportunities.

A pilot study of a dual processing substance user treatment intervention with adults.

This study responds to the identified need for evidence-based substance abuse interventions by examining the effects of an innovative dual processing substance use intervention aimed at decreasing the risk for substance relapse by targeting emotional regulation capacity. The study was completed in partnership with a Latino-serving community-based substance user treatment agency in a rural Northeastern region of the United States in 2005-2006 and was supported with pilot monies from the University at Albany School of Social Welfare NIDA-funded research center. The sample (N = 29) was comprised of adults with a diagnosis of substance dependence seeking treatment in an outpatient program. Study findings indicated that individuals who participated in the dual-processing treatment group decreased their craving with a trend toward increased self-efficacy over time in treatment and did not show treatment response differences across Latino and non-Latino clients, suggesting that treatment application was similar across these groups. The study's limitations are noted.

Race and ethnic differences and human figure drawings: clinical utility of the DAP:SPED.

This study examined race and ethnic differences on the Draw A Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED; Naglieri, McNeish, & Bardos, 1991) for youths 6 though 17 years of age for 2 matched samples. Samples were drawn from the DAP:SPED nationally representative standardization sample and matched on gender, grade, and school classroom. No statistically significant differences were found for big figure, small figure, or shading item composites. A statistically significant difference was found between Black-White pairs on figure omissions but showed a small effect size (d value = .25). Further, no statistically significant differences were found between the DAP:SPED Total T scores for Black and White youth (M = 47.67, SD = 10.09; N =138) or Hispanic and White youth (M = 48.20, SD = 9.56; N = 59), showing very small effect sizes. In addition, equivalence testing showed similarities across race and ethnic pairs for all composites and DAP:SPED total score, lending preliminary support to the DAP:SPED's clinical utility as a measure that yields similar scores across these groups.

Ecological Assessment of Substance-abuse Experiences (EASE): findings from a new instrument development pilot study.

A newly developed instrument that assesses a client's orientation to addiction or recovery communities using social context referents was pilot tested with a sample of 103 adults seeking treatment for substance abuse at outpatient and residential treatment facilities on the East Coast. Preliminary findings show promising subscale reliabilities, and suggest that drug- and recovery-related social identities are related to drug-use severity and drug-use concern; and drug-related attitudinal congruence between the treatment-seeker and family and treatment-seeker and other significant persons are related to intention to make behavioral changes in reducing substance abuse.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the geriatric depression scale.

PURPOSE: The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) is widely used in clinical and research settings to screen older adults for depressive symptoms. Although several exploratory factor analytic structures have been proposed for the scale, no independent confirmation has been made available that would enable investigators to confidently identify scores for the subdimensions of depression represented in the scale. DESIGN AND METHODS: This article describes a confirmatory factor analysis of the 30-item GDS, with the factor structure based on an exploratory principal components analysis that was published earlier. The original study sample consisted of 327 community-dwelling adults aged 65-94 years. The confirmatory factor analysis was performed on data from an independent sample of 294 adults aged 60-98 years who resided in retirement facilities. RESULTS: The proposed final measurement model uses 26 of the items from the GDS in five factors and obtains a goodness-of-fit index of.90. The resulting distinct subdimensions are Dysphoric Mood, Withdrawal-Apathy-Vigor, Hopelessness, Cognitive, and Anxiety. IMPLICATIONS: Although results should be considered preliminary, the use of these five subdimensions as subscales for scoring purposes may improve the precision and utility of the GDS as an assessment tool for older adults in health, mental health, and research contexts.

Investigating the validity of the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance: a measurement validation study with high-risk youth.

This validity study examined the extent to which the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED; J. A. Naglieri, T. J. McNeish, & A. N. Bardos, 1991) was a significant predictor of behavioral functioning within a clinical sample of 68 latency-age children (6-12 years old) receiving counseling services at outpatient and residential treatment facilities. Study results showed that the total DAP:SPED (man, woman, and self scores summed) was a significant predictor in explaining variation in internalizing behavioral disturbance. Specifically, the DAP:SPED remained a moderate strength predictor of internalizing behavioral disturbance after controlling for the Child and Adolescent Adjustment Profile parent-report behavioral measure. Findings lend preliminary support to the DAP:SPED's validity in providing assessment information about child behavioral functioning. Continued validation investigation along these lines is recommended.