Eve M. Adams

An exploratory study of early childhood teachers’ attitudes toward gender roles

This study explored the relationship between early childhood teachers’ adult gender role beliefs and their attitudes about children’s gender role behavior. The teachers, most of whom were women, expressed nontraditional beliefs regarding gender roles for adults. This feminist orientation appeared to be related to perceptions about child rearing in that teachers who espoused nontraditional gender role beliefs for adults also did for children. In addition, it was found that teachers were more accepting of cross-gender role behaviors and aspirations from girls than boys, and that this difference was related to homophobia. There were strong relationships found between child rearing gender role beliefs and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians.

Effects of a Mindfulness Group on Latino Adolescent Students: Examining Levels of Perceived Stress, Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Psychological Symptoms.

This pilot study evaluated the impact of mindfulness groups on 20 Latino middle school students who participated in 8-session structured groups using the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens curriculum. The participants’ scores on the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; the Self-Compassion Scale; the Perceived Stress Scale; and the Depression, Anxiety, and Hostility subscales of the Symptom Check List–90–R were examined at 3 points in time. There were no significant changes during the baseline period. Following participation in the groups, the adolescents’ mindfulness and self-compassion scores significantly increased, and their perceived stress and depression significantly decreased.

Using a social justice approach to prevent the mental health consequences of heterosexism.

Albee’s social justice approach to prevention offers a framework for understanding the detrimental effect of heterosexism on lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people. Minority stress models likewise address the role of discrimination and other social injustices in contributing to psychological distress in minority populations. This article describes Albee’s framework in the context of minority stress theory as it applies to LGB people and suggests activities mental health professionals can engage in to help prevent the psychological consequences of heterosexism.

White Professors Teaching About Racism: Challenges and Rewards ψ:

One of the complexities of multicultural teaching is that course content inevitably relates to personal experiences of privilege and oppression among both students and professors. Even when professors have benefitted from their own multicultural training, teaching about race and racism presents particular challenges to different professors based upon their own social locations. In this article, we answer the following question: What personal and professional challenges can White professors expect when they work as social justice educators? The authors present relevant considerations and illustrate them with examples from their own teaching experiences.

Interprofessional immersion: Use of interprofessional education collaborative competencies in side-by-side training of family medicine, pharmacy, nursing, and counselling psychology trainees

ABSTRACT While supported by the Affordable Care Act, in the United States, interprofessional training often takes place after healthcare providers graduate and are practicing in the field. This article describes the implementation and evaluation of an interprofessional training for graduate-level healthcare trainees. A group of interprofessional healthcare faculty provided a weeklong interprofessional immersion for doctoral-level healthcare trainees (n = 24) in Pharmacy, Counselling Psychology, Nursing, and Family Medicine residents. Healthcare faculty and staff from each profession worked side-by-side to provide integrated training utilising the Interprofessional Education Collaborative core competency domains. Trainees were placed into small teams with representatives from each profession; each team observed, learned, and practiced working within teams to provide quality patient care. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to identify the effect of the training on trainees’ self-reported team skills, as well as the extent to which the trainees learned and utilised the competencies. The results suggest that after completing the training, trainees felt more confident in their ability to work within an interprofessional team and more likely to utilise a team-based approach in the future.

The couch and the blackboard: adding the 3 Rs of relationships, reactions (emotional), and reflection to the classroom

Two students of Freud offer the same conclusion: how teachers understand and express their emotions is vitally important to education. Yet very few schools in the US, public or private, elementary or adult, have a pedagogy that includes an examination of emotions in the curriculum. Nor does the curriculum make transparent the various important relationships between teacher and child, child and child, teacher and parent, or the teacher and her subject. The edited collection by Gail Boldt and Paula Salvio, Love’s Return: Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching and Learning, is an opportunity to acknowledge and investigate the emotions that do exist in our everyday practices, although unacknowledged and ignored, and often feared. The editors in Love’s Return persuasively argue that the current educational focus in the US on the mastery of knowledge is a limiting, and for some, a damaging construct for education. As stated so well in their introduction:

Minority Stress and Depressive Symptoms: Familism, Ethnic Identity, and Gender as Moderators

This study examined familism, ethnic identity (search and commitment), and gender as moderators in the associations between two minority stressors (perceived discrimination and acculturative stress) and depressive symptoms in college students of Mexican ancestry (N = 207) at a Hispanic-serving institution. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we examined main effects and interactions of minority stress variables with hypothesized moderators. Results indicated that familism buffered the positive association between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms. Ethnic identity search and commitment showed gender-specific moderation effects in that a strong ethnic identity search or commitment was protective for women but not for men, when considerable amounts of acculturative stress were experienced. Ethnic identity search also showed gender-specific moderation effects on the association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of examining cultural variables and gender to understand what may be helpful to students of Mexican ancestry as they manage minority stressors.

Life satisfaction and health related quality of life among low-income medical patients: The mediating influence of self-esteem

This study investigated the relationship between life satisfaction, self-esteem, and perceived health for an ethnically diverse, low SES sample of primary care patients. Results indicated that several specific domains of health-related quality of life (HRQL), including health perception, social functioning, mental health, and energy/fatigue, significantly predicted life satisfaction in this sample of 60 patients. Self-esteem mediated this relationship, partially with health perception and fully with the remaining three domains. The results of this study underscore the importance of healthcare interventions that consider the bidirectional relationship between physical and emotional well-being.

Experiences of Pharmacy Trainees from an Interprofessional Immersion Training

Interprofessional education is essential in that it helps healthcare disciplines better utilize each other and provide team-based collaboration that improves patient care. Many pharmacy training programs struggle to implement interprofessional education. This purpose of the study was to examine the effect of a 30-h interprofessional training that included pharmacy students to determine if the training helped these students build valuable knowledge and skills while working alongside other health care professions. The interprofessional training included graduate-level trainees from pharmacy, behavioral health, nursing, and family medicine programs where the trainees worked within teams to build interprofessional education competencies based on the Interprofessional Education Collaborative core competencies. Sixteen pharmacy trainees participated in the training and completed pre- and post-test measures. Data were collected over a two-year period with participants completing the Team Skills Scale and the Interprofessional Attitudes Scale. Paired sample t-tests indicated that, after this training, pharmacy trainees showed significant increases in feeling better able to work in healthcare teams and valuing interprofessional practice.

Positive Sexual Self-Schemas of Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of eight women survivors of childhood sexual abuse who view themselves as having a positive sexual self-schema, including their experiences of sexual satisfaction. Through thematic analysis, we developed the following themes: The Context for Sexual Development, Sexual Exploration, Coping Strategies, and Embracing the Sexual Self as Whole. The findings highlight the importance of relational, interpersonal, and community healing. Integral to women’s healing were experiences of sexual risk that allowed them to gain a sense of agency and empowerment. The themes that emerged provide additional support for Relational Cultural Theory as well as post-traumatic growth. We discuss the implications of these results in relation to counseling practice, training, and research.