Childhood Abuse,Intrapersonal Strength,and Suicide Resilience in African American Females who Attempted Suicide

There is a significant association between childhood abuse and suicidal behavior in low-income African American women with a recent suicide attempt. Increasingly, empirical focus is shifting toward including suicide resilience, which mitigates against suicidal behavior. This cross-sectional study examines childhood abuse, intrapersonal strengths, and suicide resilience in 121 African American women, average age of 36.07 years (SD?=?11.03) with recent exposure to intimate partner violence and a suicide attempt. To address the hypothesis that childhood abuse will be negatively related to suicide resilience and that this effect will be mediated by intrapersonal strengths that serve as protective factors, structural equation modeling examined the relations among three latent variables: childhood abuse (measured via physical, sexual, and emotional abuse), intrapersonal strengths (assessed by self-efficacy and spiritual well-being), and suicide resilience (operationalized via the three components of suicide resilience—internal protective, external protective, and emotional stability). The initial measurement model and the structural model both indicated excellent fit. Results indicated that childhood abuse was negatively associated with intrapersonal strengths and suicide resilience, intrapersonal strengths were positively associated with suicide resilience, and intrapersonal strengths fully mediated the association between childhood abuse and suicide resilience. Thus, the results suggest a positive and protective influence of intrapersonal strengths on suicide resilience in the face of childhood abuse in suicidal African American women. The clinical implications and directions for future research that emerge from these findings are discussed.     

The developmental epidemiology of childhood victimization

This article examines developmental trends in the rates of different kinds of victimization across the span of childhood. The Developmental Victimization Survey was a national telephone survey of the victimization experiences of 2,030 children from ages 2 to 17. The overall mean number of victimizations during a single year increased with age, as did the percentage of children with polyvictimizations (4 or more different kinds of victimization). However, some specific types of victimization, physical bullying and sibling assaults, were highest prior to adolescence and then declined. Other types had different developmental patterns by gender. Peer assaults increased in adolescence for boys but not for girls. Child maltreatment and sexual victimization increased in adolescence for girls but not for boys. The complex and diverse patterns of developmental vulnerability to different kinds of victimization at different ages need more exploration and explanation in order to better target prevention and intervention policies.     

Interparental conflict and adolescent dating relationships: the role of perceived threat and self-blame appraisals

In line with the cognitive-contextual framework proposed by Grych and Fincham (1990), evidence suggests that children exposed to interparental conflict (IPC) are at risk for experiencing conflict within their own intimate relationships. The mediating role of adolescent appraisal in the relation between IPC and adolescent dating behavior was examined in the current study. Specifically, it was hypothesized that self-blame and threat appraisals would mediate the relation between IPC and adolescent maladaptive dating behaviors. To examine the potential mediating role of appraisal, 169 high school students completed the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict (Grych, Seid, & Fincham, 1992) and Child and Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory (Wolfe, Scott, Reitzel-Jaffe, Wekerle, Grasley, & Straatman, 2004). Findings suggest that self-blame appraisal partially mediated the relation between IPC and adolescent sexual aggression, and between IPC and adolescent threatening behavior. In addition, perceived threat appraisal partially mediated the relation between IPC and adolescent sexual aggression. Implications for the current findings are discussed.     

Taxation and citizen choice: The effect of a county charter on property taxes

As saliency of the tax burden increases, the preference for a lower burden increases, but most counties are restricted by the state from adopting new taxes or changing the existing rates. Some states allow counties to adopt a charter, freeing them from state control. Using a panel of Florida counties from 1980 to 2017, we explore whether citizens act to reduce their property tax once a charter is passed. Citizens act against their preferences not by lowering burden but rather by increasing it in the case of debt service, suggesting citizens are maximizing their optimal tax burden in exchange for services.     

Emotional Distress Among LGBT Youth: The Influence of Perceived Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation

The authors evaluated emotional distress among 9th–12th grade students, and examined whether the association between being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgendered (i.e., “LGBT”) and emotional distress was mediated by perceptions of having been treated badly or discriminated against because others thought they were gay or lesbian. Data come from a school-based survey in Boston, Massachusetts (n = 1,032); 10% were LGBT, 58% were female, and ages ranged from 13 to 19 years. About 45% were Black, 31% were Hispanic, and 14% were White. LGBT youth scored significantly higher on the scale of depressive symptomatology. They were also more likely than heterosexual, non-transgendered youth to report suicidal ideation (30% vs. 6%, p < 0.0001) and self-harm (21% vs. 6%, p < 0.0001). Mediation analyses showed that perceived discrimination accounted for increased depressive symptomatology among LGBT males and females, and accounted for an elevated risk of self-harm and suicidal ideation among LGBT males. Perceived discrimination is a likely contributor to emotional distress among LGBT youth.     

Zombie Law: Conjugality,Annulment, and the (Married) Living Dead

This article deploys and extends Ulrich Beck’s critique of ‘zombie categories’ (Beck in J Consum Cult 1 (2):261–277, 2001) to consider how conjugal relationships are brought into being before the law. The argument presented here is that sexual performatives relating to marriage—and especially, in this instance, consummation—continue to produce a kind of social-legal magic, even as the social flesh of their enactment is rotting. Rules concerning annulment relating to wedding ceremonies, consent, disclosure, and consummation demonstrate that certain frameworks of conjugality involve a kind of corporeal magic animating the privileged place of heterosexual marriage. Thus, rules and regulations pertaining to weddings continue to produce and protect heterogendered, sexually dimorphous bodies, even though this privileging is—or at least, is becoming—socially obsolete.