Predicting Children’s Depressive Symptoms from Community and Individual Risk Factors

Community, demographic, familial, and personal risk factors of childhood depressive symptoms were examined from an ecological theoretical approach using hierarchical linear modeling. Individual-level data were collected from an ethnically diverse (73% African-American) community sample of 197 children and their parents; community-level data were obtained from the U.S. Census regarding rates of community poverty and unemployment in participants’ neighborhoods. Results indicated that high rates of community poverty and unemployment, children’s depressive attributional style, and low levels of self-perceived competence predict children’s depressive symptoms, even after accounting for demographic and familial risk factors, such as parental education and negative parenting behaviors. The effect of negative parenting behaviors on depressive symptoms was partially mediated by personal variables like children’s self-perceived competence. Recommendations for future research, intervention and prevention programs are discussed.

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

One feature associated with democratic governance is frequent leadership turnover. While the ease of replacing leaders improves accountability, it may impede the ability of democracies to make credible long-term international commitments. Using newly collected data that identify cases in which leaders who derive their support from different domestic interests come to power, we evaluate the effects of changes in domestic political leadership on one important aspect of foreign policy—decisions to maintain military alliances. An analysis covering bilateral alliances between 1919 and 2001 reveals that changes in societal supporting coalitions in nondemocratic states are associated with decisions to abrogate alliances prior to their scheduled end dates, but changes in societal supporting coalitions in democracies have no effect on the probability of premature alliance termination. We conclude that international cooperation is sensitive to changes in core supporting coalitions, but that this effect is moderated by democratic political institutions.     

Youth Adversities Amplify the Association between Adult Stressors and Chronic Inflammation in a Domain Specific Manner: Nuancing the Early Life Sensitivity Model

There is strong evidence that chronic, systemic inflammation hastens onset of the diseases of old age that ultimately lead to death. Importantly, several studies suggest that childhood adversity predicts chronic inflammation. Unfortunately, this research has been plagued by retrospective reports of childhood adversity, an absence of controls for adult stressors, and a failure to investigate various competing models of the link between childhood adversity and chronic inflammation. The present study was designed to address these limitations. Using 18 years of data collected from 413 African Americans (58% female) included in the Family and Community Health Study, hierarchical regression analyses provided support for a nuanced early life sensitivity explanation for the link between early adversity and adult chronic inflammation. Controlling for health risk behaviors and adult SES, late childhood (ages 10–12) adversity amplified the association between adult adversity (age 29) and chronic inflammation. This interaction operated in a domain-specific fashion. Harsh parenting amplified the relation between intimate partner hostility and inflammation, whereas early discrimination amplified the relation between adult discrimination and inflammation. These findings suggest that individuals may be primed to respond physiologically to adverse adult circumstances that resemble those experienced earlier in life.

     

Mainstreaming disability in the United Nations treaty bodies

As of the beginning of this century, the United Nations (UN) human rights system had comprehensively elided persons with disabilities from its purview. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) responded to this lacuna in 2006. The CRPD obligates states parties to mainstream disability by protecting and promoting the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programs and intersects disability with other discriminated-against populations. This article investigates the success of the UN in mainstreaming disability throughout its human rights treaty bodies over the period 2000–2014 by comparing the seven years before and the eight years after the CRPD's adoption for six core UN treaty bodies. In doing so, the article provides initial and unique insight into how well the UN implements human rights norms into treaty bodies and provides a template for future research on the inclusion of vulnerable group-based rights in the UN and beyond. Despite some significant variations between treaty bodies, we find an overall dramatic increase in the quantitative incidence of disability rights being referenced. Nevertheless, a closer look into the practices of two treaty bodies shows that the human rights of persons with disabilities, while noted by those bodies, are included fully only on occasion. For the UN to truly mainstream disability (or other) human rights, those rights must go beyond mere formal references and also be substantively integrated.