Family functioning, parental psychological distress and child behaviours : evidence from the Victorian child health and wellbeing study

We examined, using data from the 2006 Victorian Child Health and Wellbeing Study (VCHWS), whether family functioning is associated with parental psychological distress and children&rsquo;s behavioural difficulties. The VCHWS was a statewide cross-sectional telephone survey to 5,000 randomly selected primary caregivers of 0- to 12-year-old children between October 2005 and March 2006. Only parents or guardians of children aged 4&ndash;12 years (n = 3,370) were included in this study. After adjusting for sociodemographic variables and ethnicity, parents or guardians scoring higher on the family functioning scale (i.e., from poorly functioning households) were at greater risk of psychological distress and had children with lower levels of prosocial behaviour and higher levels of behavioural difficulties relative to those from healthily functioning households. Mental health prevention programmes addressing child mental and conduct problems should consider the family environment and target those families functioning poorly.<br /

Perceived Racist Discrimination, Coping, Stress, and Life Satisfaction

In this study, avoidance coping and problem-solving coping (inversely) predicted stress, and stress and avoidance coping inversely predicted life satisfaction among 114 African American students. Coping did not moderate racial discrimination stress or stress-life satisfaction relationships. Fostering problem solving and reducing avoidance may help to alleviate racism-related stress and foster well-being

The role of power in wellness, oppression, and liberation: The promise of psychopolitical validity

The power to promote wellness, resist oppression, and foster liberation is grounded in psychological and political dynamics. Hitherto, these two sources of power have been treated in isolation, both for descriptive and prescriptive purposes. As a result, we lack an integrative theory that explains the role of power in promoting human welfare and preventing suffering, and we lack a framework for combining psychological and political power for the purpose of social change. In this article, the author puts forth a psychopolitical conceptualization of power, wellness, oppression, and liberation. Furthermore, he introduces the concept of psychopolitical validity, which is designed to help community psychologists to put power issues at the forefront of research and action. Two types of psychopolitical validity are introduced: type I - epistemic, and type II - transformative. Whereas the former demands that psychological and political power be incorporated into community psychology studies; the latter requires that interventions move beyond ameliorative efforts and towards structural change. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Religious Values and the Development of Trait Hope and Self-Esteem in Adolescents

Many studies have noted significant relationships between religious sentiment and psychological adjustment, but few have been able to comment on the direction of influence. We assessed the relationships between religious values, self-esteem, and trait hope when participants were in grades 11 and 12. The variables showed moderate levels of rank-order stability. Structural equation modeling revealed that religious values in grade 11 did not predict improvements in self-esteem in grade 12, but they did predict improvements in hope. In contrast, hope did not lead to increase in religious values. These results held after controlling for personality (Big Five factors and Eysenck's psychoticism factor). Results are discussed with reference to the beneficial effects of religious values in adolescence