Black Americans' and White Americans' views of the etiology and treatment of mental health problems.

Black Americans, in contrast to White Americans, use the mental health system in different ways. For example, Blacks tend to terminate treatment earlier than Whites. One explanation for the racial differences is that members of the two groups hold different views about mental health problems and their treatment. To test this explanation, subjects read and responded to questions about vignettes describing individuals encountering personal difficulties that ranged from adjustment challenges to severe psychiatric illness. Black American respondents rated spiritual factors as more important in the etiology and treatment of the difficulties than did Whites. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

The role of psychologists in the treatment, management, and prevention of chronic mental illness.

In addition to suffering from the severe psychiatric symptoms of chronic mental illness (CMI), people with this type of disorder suffer from a variety of secondary disabilities and face societal obstacles that interfere with their ability to maximize their personal, social, and vocational potentials. Following the deinstitutionalization of long-term psychiatric patients in recent decades, many different understandings of the etiology, treatment, and management of CMI have evolved, including those derived from the biological, vulnerability, cognitive, case management, rehabilitation, and psychoeducational models. Because psychologists are trained in a wide range of psychological theories and a broad repertoire of applications, they have unique contributions to make within each model, particularly, as discussed here, to prevent, treat, and manage CMI through research, assessment, and intervention.

Chronically ill children and their mothers: predictors of resilience and vulnerability to hospitalization and surgical stress.

Although the responses of normal children to hospitalization and surgery are well documented, an understanding of base rates of upset, the mediating factors involved, and the efficacy of interventions with chronically ill children has not yet been achieved. Using self-report and observational measures, we investigated the effects of hospitalization and surgery on 40 physically handicapped children and their mothers. The results suggest that, compared with normal children, chronically ill children as a group are not more likely to become disturbed. With regard to individuals, extremely high and low parenting stress, over-involved parent-child relationships, fewer previous surgeries, and younger age predicted greater disturbance. Mothers of developmentally delayed children reported feeling more anxious than mothers of children with normal mental ages, but no differences were found on child vulnerability.

Concerns of final semester baccalaureate nursing students.

At 10 taped group meetings data pertaining to concerns of 19 final semester baccalaureate nursing students were collected. When data were categorized according to task-, self-, or client-related concerns, an important finding was the low frequency of client-related concerns. Recommendations and suggestions for further research were made.

Patient's sources of information on coitus during pregnancy.

Obstetric patients were asked what sources they consulted for information about the advisability of coitus during pregnancy and what period of abstinence they inferred was proper from each. In general, the patients in the sample had incomplete information about these matters. A good indicator is that only 1 of the 17 patients in the sample had discussed them with her physician, and she did not know his recommendations.