Review of Rehabilitation psychology: A comprehensive textbook.

Reviews the book, Rehabilitation psychology: A comprehensive textbook by David W. Krueger (1983). In this volume, David W. Krueger has developed a new blueprint for constructing an edited volume in rehabilitation. Unique in the present design is the attempt, within a single volume of reasonable size, to cover the rehabilitation field from both a type-of-disability approach and an issue-oriented approach. To achieve this objective, the editor has recruited well-known and highly respected authors to write short chapters in their areas of expertise. In all, there are 42 chapters, which range in length between 4 and 14 pages. Each chapter is written by a different author, with the exception of two chapters written by the editor. No uniformity of style or standard outline for presentation has been followed. Instead, each chapter stands on its own. As a result, the effect is more that of a carefully selected book of readings than that of an integrated textbook. This book stands as an impressive attempt to provide the reader with a broad overview of the field of rehabilitation. As such, it serves as a fine introduction to the field of rehabilitation by providing a good sampling of the diversity of issues that surround rehabilitation and having these issues discussed by recognized experts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protective and exacerbating factors in children and adolescents with fibromyalgia.

Objective: To investigate protective and exacerbating factors in the adjustment of youth with juvenile primary fibromyalgia syndrome (JPFS), we examined the relationship of stress, coping strategies, social support, and self-efficacy to quality of life, pain, and depression. Method: Participants were 57 youths (ages 10 to 18 years) and their parents from rheumatology clinics at 2 children's hospitals. The youths self-reported daily hassles, coping strategies, social support, self-efficacy, quality of life, pain, and depression. Parents reported on the youths' major life events and quality of life. Results: In regression analyses, daily hassles, catastrophizing (a coping strategies scale), and self-efficacy predicted child-rated quality of life; self-efficacy predicted pain; and daily hassles predicted depression. Self-efficacy and familial social support moderated the relationship between daily hassles and depression. Conclusions: Daily hassles may be associated with health outcomes for youth with JPFS more than major life events are, and catastrophic thinking and self-efficacy beliefs could be appropriate intervention targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Handbook of behavioral medicine.

Reviews the book, Handbook of behavioral medicine by W. Doyle Gentry (1984). This volume, which was years in the writing, is less a handbook than it is a compendium of well-written chapters by outstanding researchers discussing selected important areas in the field of behavioral medicine. These areas include psychosocial factors related to etiology of disease; cardiovascular, immunological, and gastrointestinal disease mechanisms; coping; patient decision-making; compliance; and behavioral and community interventions. This volume is not as inclusive as one would expect from a handbook, neither in thoroughness of literature reviews nor in topic areas covered. However, the chapter topics are well chosen and the book provides a detailed assessment of current work in these important areas. The reviewer found this volume to be impressive because of the high quality of writing and the careful discussion of issues and research in each of these important topic areas. Those wanting to keep informed about conceptual models and research findings in the health psychology and behavioral medicine areas will find this book to be invaluable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Childhood mental health disorders: Evidence base and contextual factors for psychosocial, psychopharmacological, and combined interventions.

Reviews the book, Childhood mental health disorders: Evidence base and contextual factors for psychosocial, psychopharmacological, and combined interventions by Ronald T. Brown, David O. Antonuccio, George J. Dupaul, Mary A. Fristad, Cheryl A. King, Laurel K. Leslie, Gabriele S. McCormick, William E. Pelham Jr., John C. Piacentini, and Benedetto Vitiello (see record 2007-15067-000). This volume stands as a significant contribution to the current state of affairs in child and adolescent mental health. Unassuming in size (a total of 207 pages including references and author and subject indexes), this compilation is not only of value to researchers and clinicians within the professions of psychology and psychiatry but holds significance across other professions (e.g., social work, occupational therapy, nursing) that serve and support the mental health care of children. This book consists of 13 chapters, of which 11 address common child and adolescent mental health disorders. The authors offer readers a concise summary of the status of support for psychosocial, pharmacological, and combined interventions balanced in the context of safety and potential harm. Recommendations are offered on the most appropriate first-line treatment for a particular disorder (which predominantly favours psychosocial interventions over psychoactive medications). This is a book that will be a significant resource for those seeking evidence-based guideposts to intervention with children, adolescents, and their families. It is a timely, accessible, well-organised text, giving fair consideration to pharmaceutical, psychosocial, and combined interventions. As the authors allude, this compilation represents a "snapshot in time" but sets forth a strong foundation for practise and an agenda to further clinical and research attention to children's mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational and cultural entry: A new type of orientation program for multiple boundary crossings.

A longitudinal field experiment was designed to test the efficacy of a new type of orientation program in facilitating sojourners' organizational and cultural entry. Focused on stress coping, this new approach to orientation has the following features: (a) a thorough needs assessment identified the major stressors from both organizational and cultural entry, (b) sojourners were provided with realistic information regarding their future tasks and environment, and (c) sojourners were taught various coping skills to handle the major stressors. Seventy-two new graduate students from Asia entering a large midwestern public university in the United States were randomly assigned to either a traditional orientation program or the new program. The participants were assessed immediately after the orientation, as well as at 1, 3, 6, and 9 months post-entry. Results show that participants in the new orientation program had lower pre-entry expectations, felt less stressed, and reported higher levels of academic and interaction adjustment at 6 and 9 months post-entry than participants in the traditional orientation program. Many of the beneficial effects from the new orientation experience were not immediately apparent; rather, they emerged over time. Sojourner stress was found to mediate some of the treatment effects, as predicted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Epilepsy: A handbook for the mental health professional.

Reviews the book, Epilepsy: A handbook for the mental health professional edited by Harry Sands (1982). The editor has gathered 10 contributors, each with a wealth of experience in the area of psychological issues in epilepsy. The book is designed to provide necessary information about epilepsy to "the core mental health discipline: psychology, psychiatry, social work, and psychiatric nursing, and to other collaborating disciplines such as rehabilitation and counseling." It certainly achieves this goal and has the potential of becoming a major reference source as well as textbook in the field. The book could be used as a handbook and reference book for specific problems with epileptics. However, its real strength is its potential use as a unified and comprehensive textbook on a broad range of rehabilitation psychology issues with the epileptic. As a text, it would be appropriate for a senior undergraduate-level or graduate-level course within the broad area of medical psychology. Many of the psychological principles and intervention strategies are applicable to other disabilities. Thus, if educators wish, they can use these chapters as a core model to be augmented by other references to other disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Families of handicapped persons: Research, programs, and policy issues.

Reviews the book, Families of handicapped persons: Research, programs, and policy issues by James J. Gallagher and Peter M. Vietze (1986). This edited volume consists of a collection of papers presented at the Conference on Families with Mentally Retarded Children sponsored by the Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in cooperation with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The purpose of the conference was to stimulate leaders in the field to both review current trends and project future research directions regarding issues relevant to families having members with mental retardation. The main text of the book is composed of sixteen chapters covering a variety of topics, such as the development of typologies for classifying families, adaptation to stress, the impact of the family life cycle on family adaptation, the role of the father in the family, sibling relationships, mentally retarded parents, behavioral parent training, and social policy issues. A major strength of the book is that a number of the authors advocated four perspectives that reflect a positive shift in philosophical approaches to the study of families having a child with mental retardation. The present reviewer found Wickler's chapter applying Hill's ABCX Stress Model to the study of family adaptation to be the most useful presentation among those advocating a systems/transactional approach to research on families having a disabled member. Unlike Wickler, other chapters focusing on family systems/stress issues tended to present vague connections between popular theoretical approaches (e.g., family systems theories, stress theories, Samaroff s transactional model) and the needs of families having a member with mental retardation (although Farren, Metzger, & Sparling is an exception here). In summary, this book presents some interesting ideas regarding areas that should be investigated by further research. Selected chapters within the book are very well conceptualized and clearly written. Although the remaining chapters present interesting ideas, they tend to be repetitive and somewhat vague with respect to specific research suggestions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Law and mental health: International perspectives. Volume 1.

Reviews the book, Law and mental health: International perspectives. Volume 1 by David N. Weisstub (1984). This is the first volume in a series designed to provide an international perspective on central issues in law and mental health. The editor, David N. Weisstub, is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall and was the founding editor of the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. He is well qualified to accomplish his stated goal of establishing an international network of scholars and increase communication between countries. The first volume, however, focuses primarily on American jurisprudence. Weisstub argues that this is appropriate because the United States "has been a forerunner and, indeed, has functioned as a testing ground in the field." Subsequent volumes will include research reviews and examinations of legislative and judicial trends in other countries, focusing on topics such as malpractice, deinstitutionalization, guardianship, and competency. The present volume is comprised of six chapters, each on a different topic with the exception of two chapters on criminal responsibility. Few readers will be interested in all the chapters, but anyone interested in mental health law will find something of interest. The chapters are of uniformly high quality and the book is an excellent reference work. Since there are only six chapters, it may be of use to potential readers to have a brief overview of each. This volume (and the ones to follow) should prove to be a valuable reference for psychologists interested in legal issues. It may also be put to good use in graduate seminars in law and psychology because of the breadth of issues covered in the volume. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Comprehensive handbook of psychotherapy integration.

Reviews the book, Comprehensive handbook of psychotherapy integration by George Stricker and Jerold R. Gold (see record 1993-97695-000). In the Preface to this text, the editors express their expectation that "this volume will serve as an up-to-date and exhaustive overview of the status of ongoing scholarly and clinical work in the integration of the major schools of psychotherapy" (p. ix). Such introductory comments are commonly found in the "handbook" genre, yet such expectations are seldom met to the satisfaction of many reviewers. Nevertheless, with an open mind I plunged into this 560-page, doubled-columned, 37-chapter volume. I will admit that I was somewhat devilishly compelled to find some topic mat I could consider less than exhaustively reviewed. Well, did I find the volume exhaustive? The answer is yes! This is a marvelous volume. It should be mandatory reading for students in advanced counseling and psychotherapy courses. Initially, one would think its value is as a reference text, and indeed, all practicing psychotherapists should have a copy of this volume on their shelves. But, this volume provides such a useful series of pragmatic chapters, I believe that advanced students would prosper as well. True integration occurs on both the theoretical and practical levels. This is the first book that I have seen that provides the reader with exhaustive perspectives on both. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Experimental techniques in human neuropsychology.

Reviews the book, Experimental techniques in human neuropsychology by H. J. Hannay (1986). With the growth of the field of neuropsychology during the last few decades, research related to the varied aspects of human neuropsychology has progressed with insufficient attention to the quality of the methods employed. Certainly, the need for this type of book is unquestionable. This edited volume is designed to present a variety of procedures and current technologies at a level which can be beneficial to both the novice and the expert researcher in various areas of neuropsychology. It is, for the most part, successful in explaining techniques in sufficient detail for the new researcher while also presenting recent advances of interest to the more experienced researcher. The volume contains chapters approximately equally divided between behavioral and physiological measures, written by authors who have established reputations in the research areas which they discuss. Although this book addressed a broad range of experimental topics in neuropsychology, it should provide particular appeal to those interested in methods of investigating cerebral dominance and asymmetry. The research populations discussed represent a diverse mix of neurologically impaired adult groups, with a brief mention of child populations in two chapters. The strength of this book lies on the questions raised about the status of current neuropsychological research techniques. The chapters are well written and are structured in a clearly organized manner that provides ready assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. Researchers in almost every area of neuropsychology should find this book a valuable aid in designing studies by avoiding the pitfalls which have beset other projects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly.

Reviews the book, Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly by Herbert M. Lefcourt (see record 2000-14400-000). Lefcourt traces the changing concerns of psychology, and the reason why the psychological study of humour has often been trivialized as an unlikely candidate for research support in the past. The author charts his own personal odyssey in the field, one in which he is drawn to the study of human strengths rather than human frailties. An early chapter sets us up for the remaining chapters by reminding us how we experience humour in everyday life. Verbatim anecdotes from students in previous seminars offer vignettes which allow the reader to grasp the situation vicariously and to see how and why the humour of the situation could have arisen. It is here that Lefcourt confides that his is a functionalist psychological perspective, and that he views humour as a characteristic that has been useful to our species. Here one comes to the crux of the argument for most readers. Is humour, then, a coping strategy, ultimately devised in our evolutionary ramblings, as a protective cushion against the jagged impact of stressful experiences? The middle part of this book explores this hypothesis in a variety of experimental settings, all designed to assess the moderating role of humour in the face of stress. This is a useful, even uplifting, book about the human search for emotional well-being. Its academic value in outlining the history and current thrust of work in the field of humour is obvious, but this reviewer appreciated its bold attempt to provide a more personal view of human adaptation to life's stressful requirements. Very simply, this is a book that resonates with one's understanding of life beyond the research laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Children's peer relations: Issues in assessment and intervention.

Reviews the book, Children's peer relations: Issues in assessment and intervention edited by B. H. Schneider, K. H. Rubin, and J. E. Ledingham (1985). In 1984, a conference was held in Ottawa on the topic "Research Strategies in Children's Social Skills Training." It was international in scope and brought together many of the field's leading researchers. The papers presented at that conference form the nucleus for this volume of chapters, which has been carefully edited by three of the conference organizers. Substantial additions to the conference material are apparent, and the purpose of the book has been redirected somewhat to examine currently emerging research on children's social relations with regard to its implications for assessment and treatment of childhood social dysfunction. The resulting volume is one that is highly rewarding to the reader. The editors and authors have achieved the difficult task of integrating many discrete programmes of research around a few common themes. All of the chapters are well written, and together they present a representative selection of current research that is methodologically sound and of scholarly significance. As such, this volume is a timely and thought-provoking collection of chapters that will be of considerable interest to students and researchers in the fields of children's social relations and social skills training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Health psychology: The science and the field.

Reviews scientific and professional trends in the field of health psychology. I discuss recent research on health promotion, psychological factors in the development of illness, cognitive representations of health and illness, stress and coping, social support, interventions to promote coping, and trends that will affect progress in the field, such as the need for cost containment and the aging of the population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Normality and the life cycle: A critical integration.

Reviews the book, Normality and the life cycle: A critical integration by Daniel Offer and Melvin Sabshin (1984). In 1966 and 1974, Basic Books published the first and second editions of Offer and Sabshin's Normality: Theoretical and Clinical Concepts of Mental Health. These volumes generated the proposal that a new field, called normatology, be established. It would focus on normality, normal behavior, and normal development. This still more recent volume develops the proposal and is an attempt to fill the need to "examine concepts of normality and definitions of normal behavior through time and across cultures". Both of the editors (and most of the contributors) are medically trained, and their professional orientation is apparent throughout the book. Although claims are made that the approach to normatology should be interdisciplinary, and four different concepts of normality are offered, the main concern of most of the chapters seem to be that of differentiating the healthy from the unhealthy. The editors even note that the terms "normality" and "mental health" are used interchangeably. Several chapters have a developmental orientation, but these too are typically concerned with distinguishing normal from abnormal developmental processes. Individual papers are scholarly, but in some cases seem directionless. The most seminal ideas in the book are presented by Mandell and Salk, whose chapter proposes a theory of emergent patterns that could have implications in the future both for general developmental theory and for specific theories of learning that might influence rehabilitation psychology. A previous reviewer has judged that this chapter alone is worth the price of the book, and this judgment may well be correct. Those who purchase this book should do so primarily for its reviews of the literature, which are generally complete and competent. Purchasers will probably be disappointed if they expect to find much that is of direct value to rehabilitation or that contributes in a substantive to the founding of a new science of normality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In the Eyes of the Beholder: Cognitive Appraisals as Mediators of the Association Between Interparental Conflict and Youth Maladjustment.

Although the association between interparental conflict and youth maladjustment has been established, processes underlying this relationship are less understood. In this investigation, children's conflict appraisals were examined as mediating variables. In Study 1, 1,893 6th graders reported their perceptions of conflict and appraisals of threat and self-blame. Youth and teachers reported on externalizing and internalizing problems. In Study 2, 416 married parents from the larger sample reported their conflict and youth maladjustment. Children's appraisals of coping efficacy also were examined. Perceived threat, self-blame, and coping efficacy were salient mediators of overt conflict and triangulation, particularly for internalizing problems. Findings indicate that children's beliefs about interparental conflict play an important role in their adjustment to this family stressor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediation of a preventive intervention's 6-year effects on health risk behaviors.

Using data from a 6-year longitudinal follow-up sample of 240 youth who participated in a randomized experimental trial of a preventive intervention for divorced families with children ages 9 to 12, the current study tested mechanisms by which the intervention reduced substance use and risky sexual behavior in mid to late adolescence (15–19 years old). Mechanisms tested included parental monitoring, adaptive coping, and negative errors. Parental monitoring at 6-year follow-up mediated program effects to reduce alcohol and marijuana use, polydrug use, and other drug use for those with high pretest risk for maladjustment. In the condition that included a program for mothers only, increases in youth adaptive coping at 6-year follow-up mediated program effects on risky sexual behavior for those with high pretest risk for maladjustment. Contrary to expectation, program participation increased negative errors and decreased adaptive coping among low-risk youth in some of the analyses. Ways in which this study furthers our understanding of pathways through which evidence-based preventive interventions affect health risk behaviors are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Child health psychology": Erratum.

Reports an error in "Child health psychology" by Dennis Drotar, Suzanne Bennett Johnson, Ron Iannotti, Norman Krasnegor, Karen A. Matthews, Barbara G. Melamed, Sharon Millstein, Rolf A. Peterson, Debbie Popiel and Donald K. Routh (Health Psychology, 1989, Vol 8[6], 781-784). The name of the author, Sharon Millstein, should be Susan Millstein. It appears correctly in this record. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2008-09118-001.) The term child health psychology refers to the field of research on the behavioral aspects of children's health and illness. At this time we need to continue the work of the child health psychology special interest group and to draw into the Division of Health Psychology a much larger number of developmental psychologists, who need to be informed about the relevance of their scientific training to child health issues. We call the Division's attention and that of granting agencies such as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the following high-priority child health research issues: adherence to pediatric medical regimens; child health promotion; family influences on child and adolescent health and disease; and stress and coping in childhood illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)