Suicidal behavior in adolescents: stress and protection in different family contexts.

Recent suicidal behavior was reported on a questionnaire by 14% of 272 high school students. Two-thirds of the suicidal teenagers neither received help nor disclosed their self-harm to anyone. Depression and stress--especially family suicidality, feelings of violation, and sexuality--increased the risk, as did parental separation, divorce, and most dramatically, remarriage. Family cohesiveness helped alleviate the risk in the nonintact families.

Depressive affect in "normal" adolescents: relationship to life stress, family, and friends.

Self-reported depressive affect was examined in high school students in relation to stress and the quality of relationships with family and friends. Higher levels of depressive affect were connected with stress around sexuality and achievement, lower levels of family cohesion, and more problematic peer relationships. The effects of high stress were buffered for boys by positive peer relationships, and for girls by cohesive family relationships.

Suicidal behavior in "normal" adolescents: risk and protective factors.

Risk and protective factors were examined in suicidal and nonsuicidal public high school students. With life stress and depression as independent risk factors, family cohesion was found to offset the effect of stress, and friendships to have a more indirect effect. Differential effects of ten sources of stress were analyzed from a developmental perspective, and the probability of suicidal behavior associated with clusters of factors was estimated for the general population.

The emergence of assertion and aggression during infancy: a psychoanalytic systems approach.

A model is presented in which assertion and aggression are seen as arising from two entirely different biopsychological systems in the human infant. Assertion derives from the universal tendency to be active, to seek stimuli, to generate plans, and to carry them out. It is a self-activating system and is generally associated with the positive affects of joy, interest, and excitement. Aggression derives from the equally universal self-protective system. This system, however, is reactive in the face of a perceived threat and is associated with the dysphoric affects of anger, fear, and distress. During the infant and toddler period, the child's assertions may be treated punitively by the parents as if they were aggressive acts. The child in turn feels threatened and becomes self-protective. The result is a contamination between assertion and aggression and the creation of a new self-sustaining system in which aggression appears to be spontaneous and self-activating. If assertions are frequently blocked, the contamination may be extensive, and it may appear as if an aggressive instinctual process is present. However, a systemic explanation provides a much better fit with the empirical observations than does an instinctual one. Four examples of different family styles are presented. The model permits one to understand the subtle qualitative differences in style reflecting different individual combinations of assertion and aggression and their associated affects.

Attention in the newborn: Effect on motility and skin potential.

Newborn infants showed lower motility and greater reactivity of the skin potential while attending to a visual target than when equally alert but inattentive.