Faculty Bibliography

Individuals who initiate substance use before high school are at higher risk of negative outcomes. Eighty-six young adults between the ages of 18 and 28 participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews focused on the circumstances surrounding participants' first use of substances and their pattern of use in the year following initiation in order to investigate similarities and differences between early versus later initiators. Initiation and use among early initiators were more likely to be encouraged by poor parental monitoring or active facilitation of use by parents. Early initiators were more likely to report risky patterns of use such as daily use and using alone. The data suggest that interventions targeting this population should focus on improving parental monitoring and decreasing positive parental attitudes toward adolescent substance use and efforts to increase identification and intervention by middle school staff to reach youth from high-risk families.

If African American boys are contemplating taking their lives at early ages, the hope for future generations is challenging at best. What is going on in African American communities that there is a lack of safe spaces for boys to express their emotions and to share their travails with supportive networks in lieu of ending their lives? The situation of African American boys (ages 5-11) committing suicide at higher levels-more than any other group-and the recent studies regarding the rising rates of suicide among African American adolescent boys (12 and older) call for greater reflection and more discourse around the mental health challenges faced by this group. We must identify the emotional and psychological reasons that underlie suicidal behaviors for African American boys and work to provide immediate intervention. Families, educators, and community workers play key roles in identifying signs of mental health challenges such as depression and connecting African American boys to mental health care services. In this article, the authors discuss specific ways to better support boys who exhibit early signs of depression and suicidal behavior. Topics discussed include (1) untreated depression among African American youth; (2) looking deeper at the reasons for untreated depression; (3) misunderstanding and denial of mental health challenges; (4) risk factors in schools; (5) harsh discipline practices; (6) low teacher expectations; and (7) disconnection from adults. (PsycINFO Database Record

OBJECTIVE:Conflicting reports exist about hospital arrival time after stroke onset in Hispanics compared with African Americans and Caucasians. Our current study investigates race-ethnic disparities in hospital arrival times after stroke onset. METHODS:We performed a retrospective analysis of hospital arrival times in Hispanic, African American, and Caucasian acute ischemic stroke patients (N=1790) presenting to a tertiary-care hospital in the Bronx, New York. A multivariable logistic regression model was used to identify the association between race-ethnicity and hospital arrival time adjusting for age, sex, socioeconomic status (SES), NIH stroke scale (NIHSS), history of stroke, preferred language and transportation mode to the hospital. RESULTS:There were 338 Caucasians, 662 Hispanics, and 790 African Americans in the cohort. Compared with Caucasians, African Americans and Hispanics were younger (P<.0001 respectively), had lower SES (P<.001 respectively) and were less likely to use EMS (P=.003 and P=.001, respectively). A greater proportion of Hispanic and African American women had delayed hospital arrival times (≥3 hours) after onset of stroke symptoms compared with Caucasian women (74% of Hispanic, 72% of African American, and 59% of Caucasian women), but this difference between race-ethnicities is no longer present after adjusting for socioeconomic status. Compared with Caucasian men, hospital arrival ≥3 hours after symptom onset was more likely for African American men (OR 1.72, 95% CI:1.05-2.79) but not Hispanic men (OR .80, 95% CI .49-1.30). CONCLUSIONS:African American men and socially disadvantaged women delay in presenting to the hospital after stroke onset. Future research should focus on identifying the factors contributing to pre-hospital delay among race-ethnic minorities.

Recent advances in neuroimaging have offered a rich array of structural and functional markers to probe the organization of regional and large-scale brain networks. The current chapter provides a brief introduction into these techniques and overviews their contribution to the understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition associated with atypical social cognition, language function, and repetitive behaviors/interests. While it is generally recognized that ASD relates to structural and functional network anomalies, the extent and overall pattern of reported findings have been rather heterogeneous. Indeed, while several attempts have been made to label the main neuroimaging phenotype of ASD (e.g., 'early brain overgrowth hypothesis', 'amygdala theory', 'disconnectivity hypothesis'), none of these frameworks has been without controversy. Methodological sources of inconsistent results may include differences in subject inclusion criteria, variability in image processing, and analysis methodology. However, inconsistencies may also relate to high heterogeneity across the autism spectrum itself. It, therefore, remains to be investigated whether a consistent imaging phenotype that adequately describes the entire autism spectrum can, in fact, be established. On the other hand, as previous findings clearly emphasize the value of neuroimaging in identifying atypical brain morphology, function, and connectivity, they ultimately support its high potential to identify biologically and clinically relevant endophenotypes.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054463.].