The Association Between Patterns of Trauma Exposure, Family Dysfunction, and Psychopathology Among Adolescent Females With Depressive Symptoms From Low-Income Contexts

Distinguishing profiles of trauma exposure among low-income adolescent females with depressive symptoms is important for understanding comorbidity, family relationships, and treatment. Specifically, child maltreatment is essential to examine in comparison to other traumas. Participants included 170 adolescent females (65.3% Black; 21.2% White; 13.5% other race; 14.1% Latina/x) with depressive symptoms and their primary caregiver from low-income families. Latent class analysis (LCA) identified three trauma classes. Probabilities of endorsing different subtypes of maltreatment (physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse), number of subtypes of maltreatment, and non-maltreatment traumas (accident, experiencing or witnessing physical assault, death or injury of loved one, medical trauma) varied among groups. Higher levels of family dysfunction and traumatic stress symptoms were reported in both classes with maltreatment exposure as compared to the class with only non-maltreatment trauma exposure. Findings have implications for family-focused interventions for maltreated adolescent females with depressive symptoms from low-income contexts.

Relationship between family functionality and the quality of life of the elderly

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the correlation between family functionality and the quality of life of the elderly. Method: Sectional and correlational study conducted with 692 Brazilian elderly between July and October 2020. The elderly filled three instruments: biosociodemographic, family APGAR and WHOQOL-Old. The tests Kruskal-Wallis, Pearson correlation, and linear regression analyzed the data. The study considered a 95% confidence interval (p < 0.05) for all analyses. Results: The elderly with mild and severe family dysfunction presented worse quality of life when compared to the elderly with a functional family. All facets of quality of life correlated positively with family functionality. Conclusion: Family functionality is positively correlated with the quality of life of the elderly, therefore requiring the inclusion of the family in health care plans to identify potential family stressors early and plan interventions to solve the problems raised.

Wifehood (Im)politeness in Negotiating Responsibility, Position, and Solidarity in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again

This study examines how wifehood is discursively practiced in Yorùbá traditional polygamous marriage system as portrayed in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. Purposively, excerpts involving the three wives of the major character, Lejoka Brown were basically sampled from the text. Through the instrumentality of politeness and impoliteness theories the study has unpacked the negotiation of responsibilities among wives in discharging their wifehood, where language is discursively used politely and impolitely based on the display of native competence and incompetence of the personalities involved. The study unveils hatred, unverified assumption, ignorance, anger and misconception as emergent factors that usually birth rivalry in wifehood negotiation of position that characterized impoliteness and family dysfunction in the rich verbal sociocultural setting. The study underscores the peaceful coexistence of wifehood within family discourse as a contribution to solving unhealthy marital issues characterized by linguistic politeness and impoliteness that pervade the contemporary society.

Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Older Adult Poverty: Mediating Role of Depression

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) refer to traumatic events experienced by children in early life, including abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction, which are common worldwide. ACEs are harmful to mental health, and psychological problems can influence personal economic poverty in adulthood. We focused on family dysfunction and discussed the effect of different types of ACEs on poverty and the corresponding mediating effect of depression.Materials and Methods: A total of 9,910 individuals who were 60 years or older from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study in 2014 and 2015 were analysed. The chi-square test was used to compare poverty incidence among subgroups of independent or control variables. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to test the effect of different types of ACEs on depression, and four logistic regression models were established to observe the association between ACEs on older adult poverty and the mediating effect of depression. The path diagram of the direct effect and indirect effect was drawn to test the mediating effect of depression.Results: Early death of father, the male guardian getting upset and witnessing violence of father to mother are the risk factors for older adult poverty, whereas female guardian getting upset, relationship with female guardians and parental quarrel are protective factors for older adult poverty. Furthermore, depression has a partial mediating effect on some factors including early death of father, male guardian getting upset, relationship with female guardian, parental quarrel, and witnessing violence of father to mother.Conclusions: Paternal ACE factors can directly make children more likely to fall into poverty as older adults and can indirectly influence older adult poverty through the partial mediating effect of depression. Assisting poor families, providing psychological counselling, formulating family visit plans, nurturing orphan children under state supervision, and other policies that focus on groups that have experienced paternal ACE events are essential to eliminating the risk factors that influence older adult poverty.

Dwelling with(out) Others: Family Dysfunction in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland

This essay draws on Emmanuel Levinas's concept of the dwelling to understand how neoconservative emphases on family values impede ethical conduct in neoliberal America. Levinas's architectural understanding of egoism maps onto discourses that elevate the nuclear family to unimpeachable heights, and his notion of ethical responsibility provides a road map for rethinking social life along interdependent lines. To that end, this essay turns to Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland to suggest that aesthetically mediated examples of family dysfunction can disclose ethical forms of sociality that move beyond the nuclear family.

Helping Adolescents Exposed to Dangers: A Support Experience in Cameroonian Schools

Adolescent problems constantly evolve due to societal and demographic factors and the changes taking place in adolescents. Supporting adolescents in schools is an enriching and fulfilling experience. This complex work allows us to see not only the wealth of skills, diverse perspectives, resilience and motivation adolescents display during their schooling process, but also the difficulties they encounter in the process. From 2008/2009 to 2017/2018 academic year (10 years), 2,916 students from form one to upper six in a college in Cameroon, with various requests was supported. Adolescents were supported by intruding into their psychic, school and family worlds, to understand the influence of the events that they experience on their learning. With the help of clinical interviews and educational talks, they were able to overcome several challenges facing them at home and in their social environment at school, a different social system in which they must navigate to find their feet. Adolescents can suffer from parental disaffection, anxiety, poor family interactions, adolescent crisis, and even socio-economic precariousness of parents, violence, loss, bereavement and sometimes mental imbalance. The main difficulties are due to family dysfunction. Psychoeducation, helping relationship, counselling and psychotherapy were the means by which the adolescents were helped to regain their self-confidence, and have a sense of security in school, to find their way despite the daily family dysfunctions.

Lay Beliefs About Romantic Relationships: A Mediator of the Effect of Family Dysfunction on Romantic Relationship Satisfaction

This paper tested why people differ with regard to whether they believe it is possible to find enduring love. Variations were assumed to be due to differences in people’s experiences. Those who experienced dysfunction in their family of origin and who did not have positive relationships role-modelled to them were expected to be less likely to have positive lay beliefs about romantic relationships. Positive lay beliefs, in turn, were hypothesised to impact on dysfunction in own romantic relationships later on in life, which were in turn expected to affect relationship satisfaction. In other words, positive lay beliefs were tested as one potential mechanism through which family dysfunction whilst growing up impacts on relationship dysfunction in later adult life. This paper presents a pilot study (N = 176) which introduces a measure for ‘positive lay beliefs about romantic relationships’, and finds this measure to be associated, as expected, with dysfunction in the family of origin. The main study (N = 435) then tested the full hypothesised model (family-of-origin dysfunction → positive lay beliefs → romantic relationship dysfunction → relationship satisfaction) with structural equation modelling, and found that the model fitted the data very well, confirming the hypotheses. It was concluded that lay beliefs about whether or not it is possible to find enduring love are an important mediator of the effects of family-of-origin dysfunction on later romantic relationship satisfaction.

Exploring the relationship between pain and self-harm thoughts and behaviours in young people using network analysis

Background Self-harm thoughts and behaviours (SHTBs) are a serious public health concern in young people. Emerging research suggests that pain may be an important correlate of SHTBs in young people. However, it remains unclear whether this association is driven by the shared association with other correlates of SHTBs. This study used network analysis to delineate the relationship between SHTBs, pain and other correlates of SHTBs in a population-based sample of young people. Methods We performed secondary analyses, using data from 7977 young people aged 5–16 years who participated in the British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Survey in 2004. We used χ2 tests and network analysis to examine the complex interplay between SHTBs, pain and other correlates of SHTBs, including psychiatric disorders, childhood trauma, stressful life events, parental distress, family dysfunction, peer problems and inhibitory control deficits. Results Pain was associated with a doubled risk of SHTBs, and likewise, SHTBs were associated with a doubled risk of pain. Furthermore, network analysis showed that although pain was significantly associated with all measured correlates of SHTBs, except family dysfunction, pain was most strongly associated with SHTBs, after accounting for these measured correlates. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to utilise network analysis to provide novel insights into the complex relationship between SHTBs, pain and other known correlates of SHTBs in young people. Results suggest that pain is an independent correlate of SHTBs. Future research should aim to identify underlying mechanisms.