No description available.

No description available.

Family clinicians and researchers speculate that stepparents’ ability to bond with stepchildren may be critical to couple, family, and stepparent-stepchild relationships. Using an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to analyze data from 238 married stepfamily couples we evaluated how repartnered parents’ and stepparents’ perceptions of stepparents’ affinity-seeking behaviors were associated with their own and their spouse’s marital satisfaction, perceptions of stepparent-stepchild conflict, and stepfamily cohesion. Preliminary results show significant actor effects for parents across all outcomes and two significant partner effects. For stepparents, there were no significant partner effects, but some actor effects. Implications will be discussed.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes for patients with Bipolar Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder based on severity of diagnosis. This study also compared psychotherapy providers and therapy modalities on total cost, number of sessions, and dropout. Our data set (N=136,439) came from Cigna, a national health care company. Results showed significant differences by severity of diagnosis. The comparison of providers showed that psychologists had higher costs and session numbers, while the other providers were not significantly different. However, all providers successfully provided low cost treatment on both MDD and BD. There is no support for the idea that one profession is more successful at providing low cost treatment for MDD and BD. Family therapy did significantly better on all outcomes except dropout rate when compared to individual or mixed (individual and family sessions) therapy. It is a low-cost option when treating MDD and BD, regardless of severity.

Extensive interdisciplinary common factor research has identified the therapeutic relationship as a consistent factor influencing therapeutic outcomes. We use Polyvagal and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) theories to guide an examination of the physiological mechanisms at work in the therapeutic relationship. Both Polyvagal and IPNB theories provide understandings about how humans are neurophysiologically wired for social connection. Each points to a sense of safety as being essential for meaningful connection to occur and clarifies that physiological attunement is an observable indicator of interpersonal connection. In this study, we use these theories to guide an examination of therapist physiological influence on clients in couple therapy, using continuous in-session data collection of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) for 22 heterosexual married couples and their therapist. Data were modeled in a multi-level path analytic framework to account for within-individual and within-couple effects. Results indicated that therapist RSA does not significantly predict lagged client RSA. A discussion of potential limitations, suggestions for therapists and recommendations for future study is included.

This study used growth curve analysis to investigate associations between interparental conflict, attachment to parents, and adolescent self-regulation outcomes. Using data from 681 families in the Flourishing Families survey obtained in two western U.S. cities, associations between interparental conflict, mother and father attachment, and initial and growth levels of adolescent self-regulation were analyzed across five time points. Adolescent self-regulation showed steady growth across a five-year period during adolescence, suggesting that self-regulation may continue to develop generally throughout adolescence, a finding not revealed in prior research. Adolescent self-regulation increased significantly more in the first city over the five years of the study than in the second. Interparental conflict predicted lower adolescent self-regulation scores initially, confirming prior research, but interparental conflict did not depress the rate at which adolescent self-regulation developed. As interparental conflict increased, attachment to parents decreased, with attachment to father experiencing a greater negative effect than attachment to mother. No moderation effects were found for the interaction of interparental conflict and attachment to parents regarding adolescent self-regulation.

The purpose of this content analysis was to analyze the past 25 years of research in two major social work journals, Social Work and Research on Social Work Practice, to provide a status update on the amount of ethnic-focused research being published within the discipline. This analysis examined trends in ethnic-focused publications, the change across time in percent of focused articles, the top topics studied, per ethnic group, the top funded topics, most and least involved funding agencies, geographical groupings of focused samples, the setting of the samples, measures used, and the percentage of samples based in a clinical versus non-clinical setting. Results showed there has been continued growth and improvement in quality and quantity of minority-focused research in both journals, although there is still room for growth within the discipline towards increased multicultural competence. While the majority of focused research studied African American and Latinos, little attention was given to Asian and Native American populations. Furthermore, while almost twice as many focused articles were funded, compared to non-focused articles, the types of topics being funded are still not as representative of the needs of ethnic minority populations as they could be. While the increase in ethnic focused research over the past 25 years is promising, additional focus within the field is warranted. Suggestions are given to improve the quality and quantity of ethnic-focused research over time.

Measurement invariance across time and reporter is rarely reported in the literature for measures of youth disclosure, even though it is often necessary to establish at least strong invariance before proceeding to further analyses such as comparing means across time or reporter. Measurement invariance was examined across time (ages 11, 14, and 17) and across reporter (youth report of disclosure to mother, youth report of disclosure to father, mother report of youth disclosure, father report of youth disclosure) with a sample of 348 youth and their parents. Youth report of disclosure to mothers demonstrated strong invariance across ages 11-14 and 14-17, but strong equivalence was not found for mother report over time across any age. Youth report of disclosure to mothers and fathers demonstrated strong equivalence at ages 11, 14, 17, and across ages 11-14-17. Mother and father reports also demonstrated strong equivalence at ages 11, 14, and 17. The item "I talk with my parent about how I am doing with school work" had lower factor loadings and higher intercepts at age 11 than at other ages for fathers and mothers and compared to youth report. Implications for youth disclosure theory and construct development are discussed.