Ethnic Identity and Mental Health in American Indian Youth: Examining Mediation Pathways Through Self-esteem,and Future Optimism

Mental health functioning in American Indian youth is an understudied topic. Given the increased rates of depression and anxiety in this population, further research is needed. Using multiple group structural equation modeling, the current study illuminates the effect of ethnic identity on anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and externalizing behavior in a group of Lumbee adolescents and a group of Caucasian, African American, and Latino/Hispanic adolescents. This study examined two possible pathways (i.e., future optimism and self-esteem) through which ethnic identity is associated with adolescent mental health. The sample (N = 4,714) is 28.53 % American Indian (Lumbee) and 51.38 % female. The study findings indicate that self-esteem significantly mediated the relationships between ethnic identity and anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and externalizing behavior for all racial/ethnic groups (i.e., the total sample). Future optimism significantly mediated the relationship between ethnic identity and externalizing behavior for all racial/ethnic groups and was a significant mediator between ethnic identity and depressive symptoms for American Indian youth only. Fostering ethnic identity in all youth serves to enhance mental health functioning, but is especially important for American Indian youth due to the collective nature of their culture.     

Workplace Violence: Examining Interpersonal and Impersonal Violence among Truck Drivers

Employees who work alone are at greater risk of workplace violence. One of the higher‐risk lone worker occupations in North America is truck driving. Drawing on interviews with 158 truck drivers across the United States and Canada, this article examines how truck drivers interpret and experience both interpersonal and impersonal forms of workplace violence. Rather than rely on police enforcement and safety regulations, the truck drivers in this study believed that they were primarily on their own with regard to workplace violence. As a result, truck drivers described how they continually engage in informal personal safety strategies in order to decrease their chances of being victimized. These findings reveal how neoliberal responsibilization approaches to health and safety serve to conceal structural patterns of power and risk by containing individual responsibility for safety at the frontline. Overall, this study points to the need for law and policy to better incorporate the frontline experiences of workers when attempting to decrease the risk of workplace violence.     

Context Matters: Reactive and Proactive Bystander Action to Prevent Sexual and Dating Violence in High Schools

ABSTRACT

Given high rates of relationship violence among adolescents, there is a need to understand variables that influence adolescents’ helping behaviors to reduce risk for dating and sexual violence (reactive) and promote prevention before violence happens or risk factors are evident (proactive). The current paper examined individual and school variables related to greater actionism in a large sample of high school students. Baseline, cross-sectional data used in the current analyses were gathered before intervention as part of a prevention program evaluation across 25 high schools in New England from students in grades 9–12 (N= 3,404). Students who self-reported a greater number of proactive actions taken were students who identified as sexual minorities, had a history of victimization, and were in schools with supportive peer norms. The current findings suggest a model for prevention that might include training individuals and attending to school level variables.     

Redefining development for national security: implications for civil society

The effects of counter-terrorism legislation on civil-society organisations (CSOs) based in the South have received little attention in the wider literature. This article reports on the findings of a series of international workshops to examine the effects of such legislation, held in Lebanon, the Kyrgyz Republic, India, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. The evidence presented at these workshops suggests that counter-terror legislation is undermining the work of civil society in complex and interrelated ways.     

Narrative,Law and Emotion: Husband Killers in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Scholars of emotion and the law have sought to demonstrate the significant role emotion plays in shaping the operation of courtrooms, the development of legal theory and practice, and the possibilities for justice. This paper contributes to the discussion by exploring what happens when emotion is ignored or underplayed in trial narratives, seeking to demonstrate that whose emotion is considered to be important can shed light on power dynamics, law and the cultures in which law operates. It does so through a case study of women on trial for murdering their husbands in early nineteenth-century Ireland. It argues that emotion is not simply another species of evidence that can be used in criminal processes, but itself a type of narrative – emotion is constructed and performed by actors in legal dramas and forms a competing story to others in the courtroom space.     

Assessing the Needs of Women Recently Released From Prison

The growing number of females incarcerated in the United States suggests that greater importance needs to be placed on preparing practitioners and communities for their eventual release from prison. Female offenders present a unique set of needs, including greater mental health, substance abuse, and medical health problems than their male counterparts. Furthermore, women may possess unique needs at various points of their involvement with the criminal justice system (i.e., before, during, and following a period of incarceration). The current study examines the needs of female offenders while they are reentering the community from the perspective of community service providers who work directly with recently incarcerated women. Survey results reveal that community service providers identify needs in 7 domains. Prevalence and urgency measures provide unique profiles of the needs of female offenders, and respondent reports of the effectiveness of the existing community-based service sector lead to numerous implications and suggestions for future research.