Reciprocity,agreement, and family style in family systems with a disturbed and nondisturbed adolescent

Doane's recent review of interaction studies of families with disturbed and nondisturbed adolescents enumerated a number of conclusions concerning relationships and family functioning in families with a disturbed adolescent. The present study used a questionnaire approach to test hypotheses based on these conclusions, hypotheses which were largely supported in the analyses. When a disturbed adolescent was involved, families evidenced less reciprocity of needs, had greater disagreement about parents' needs, greater disagreement about family-related issues, more marital dysfunction, more rigidity and less clarity about expectations, and less satisfaction and more anxiety on the part of the adolescents. That families with a disturbed adolescent were discriminably different from families without a disturbed adolescent is supportive of a family systems perspective to family functioning. Speculations of a causal nature are offered, with suggestions that future research be designed to take advantage of causal analysis procedures.NIMH Predoctoral Research Fellowship 7F01 MH 3253502 provided partial support for this research.Received her Ph.D. in social personality psychology from the University of Colorado. Current research interests include the transition to adulthood, friendship and sex-role development in adolescence.     

International terrorism and mental health: recent research and future directions

International terrorism has become a major global concern. Several studies conducted in North America and Europe in the aftermath of terrorist attacks reveal that international terrorism represents a significant short-term and long-term threat to mental health. In the present article, the authors clarify the concept and categories of terrorism and then present central findings from studies conducted in the United States and Europe, which mainly focus on negative impacts on mental health, such as emotional stress and PTSD. Furthermore, the authors outline experiments that focus on social interaction processes thought to be triggered by international terrorism and which are assumed to be related indirectly to mental health processes. Next, they highlight the potential positive outcomes on the resilience side, in line with the current theory on posttraumatic growth in adversity. Finally, theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.