Faculty Bibliography

Reviews the book, The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry by Paul McHugh (see record 2006-01579-000). Paul McHugh does not want to cuddle up with warm and calming notions about psychiatry, as if the field were a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. Psychiatry has great potential as a science and it has limitations in its practice: McHugh argues that we should be transparent and forthright about both its potential and its practice, and he believes that this can be partly achieved by reconceptualizing how the field is organized. If the author targets "three common medical mistakes--oversimplification, misplaced emphasis, or pure invention" in psychiatry with relentless accuracy and steely calm, he quite willingly indulges in all three when it comes to his polemics. Another example of misplaced emphasis is McHugh's use of "common sense." It may be common, but "common sense" is frequently not good sense; indeed, as an empiricist, McHugh ought to recognize that one of the great triumphs of the empirical approach is its demand that "common sense" be scrutinized and tested.

This review examines empirically based studies of school-based mental health interventions. The review identified 64 out of more than 2,000 articles published between 1990 and 2006 that met methodologically rigorous criteria for inclusion. Of these 64 articles, only 24 examined both mental health and educational outcomes. The majority of school-based mental health intervention studies failed to include even rudimentary measures of school-related outcomes. Analysis of the 24 studies yielded several key findings; The types of mental health outcomes most frequently assessed included self-, peer-, teacher-, or parent-reported measures of social competence, aggression, or problem behaviors. Academic scores and school attendance were the types of educational outcomes most frequently assessed. The majority of interventions focused on elementary students, had a preventive focus, and targeted prosocial, aggressive, and antisocial behaviors. Only 15 of the 24 studies demonstrated a positive impact on both educational and mental health outcomes, 11 of which included intensive interventions targeting both parents and teachers. The studies that had an impact only on mental health outcomes tended to be less intensive with more limited family involvement. This review discusses the implications of these findings for schoolbased mental health services and identifies directions for future research.

Issues of cultural diversity, race, and ethnicity have been profusely addressed in contemporary social work literature. However, the dimension of language experience in the recent immigrant has received minimal attention, and social service workers often overlook the importance of the client's native language in practice. Challenges facing the treatment of immigrants include language barrier and the immigrant's worldview, factors that need to be identified to discover the person within the client. Using the author's own experience and accounts from other immigrants, this article explores the non-English-speaking new immigrant's language subjective experience and its unique implications for self-evaluations. Honest curiosity on the part of the worker is emphasized.

This article presents the results of a study examining correlates of urban African American youth HIV knowledge. The influence of family level factors (e.g., family communication, parental AIDS knowledge and myths regarding HIV transmission, along with family composition and family income) are examined. In addition, the current study explores the influence of racial socialization processes, specifically the influence of religious/spiritual coping, extended family caring, cultural pride reinforcement and racial awareness teaching (Stevenson, 1994; 1995; 1997) on youth HIV knowledge. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant association between youth HIV knowledge and being reared in a single parent home. Further, in every model, controlling for all types of racial socialization processes, family communication was significantly associated with youth HIV knowledge. Implications are drawn regarding the development of culturally and contextually specific HIV prevention programming for African American youth and their families

This paper addresses issues in the literature regarding the co-occurrence of partner and child physical maltreatment in the United States and in Europe. Design issues including operationalizations, representativeness of samples, data collection methods, and reference periods are discussed in the context of prevalence studies. Next, possible explanations for the pervasiveness of co-occurring maltreatment are explored with an emphasis on theoretical models and mechanisms of co-occurrence. Finally, we offer assessment implications for clinicians and agencies dealing with partner and child maltreatment