Katie M. Lawson

A Comparison of Trauma Profiles among Individuals with Prescription Opioid, Nicotine, or Cocaine Dependence

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Exposure to traumatic events is common among individuals with substance use disorders. Little is known, however, about the trauma histories among individuals with various types of addiction. METHODS The present study compared the trauma histories (general, sexual, physical and emotional) of non-treatment seeking outpatients dependent on prescription opioids (n = 41), nicotine (n = 87) or cocaine (n = 73). The Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (LSC-R) was completed by participants to assess childhood and adult trauma. RESULTS The findings revealed that all three groups endorsed high levels of trauma exposure, with 96.5% of the entire sample experiencing at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. The prescription opiate group experienced a greater number of general and total traumas than the nicotine group. However, no group differences in the number of emotional, physical, or sexual traumas were revealed. The prescription opiate group reported a younger age of first traumatic event than the cocaine group, and was significantly more likely to report childhood traumatic events than both the cocaine and nicotine groups. CONCLUSIONS AND SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE The findings provide clinically relevant information that may help improve screening, interventions, and preventative efforts.

Parents' Daily Time With Their Children: A Workplace Intervention

OBJECTIVES: In the context of a group randomized field trial, we evaluated whether parents who participated in a workplace intervention, designed to increase supervisor support for personal and family life and schedule control, reported significantly more daily time with their children at the 12-month follow-up compared with parents assigned to the Usual Practice group. We also tested whether the intervention effect was moderated by parent gender, child gender, or child age. METHODS: The Support-Transform-Achieve-Results Intervention was delivered in an information technology division of a US Fortune 500 company. Participants included 93 parents (45% mothers) of a randomly selected focal child aged 9 to 17 years (49% daughters) who completed daily telephone diaries at baseline and 12 months after intervention. During evening telephone calls on 8 consecutive days, parents reported how much time they spent with their child that day. RESULTS: Parents in the intervention group exhibited a significant increase in parent-child shared time, 39 minutes per day on average, between baseline and the 12-month follow-up. By contrast, parents in the Usual Practice group averaged 24 fewer minutes with their child per day at the 12-month follow-up. Intervention effects were evident for mothers but not for fathers and for daughters but not sons. CONCLUSIONS: The hypothesis that the intervention would improve parents’ daily time with their children was supported. Future studies should examine how redesigning work can change the quality of parent-child interactions and activities known to be important for youth health and development.

Day-to-day Consistency in Positive Parent–Child Interactions and Youth Well-Being

The frequency of positive parent–child interactions is associated with youth adjustment. Yet, little is known about daily parent–child interactions and how day-to-day consistency in positive parent–child interactions may be linked to youth well-being. Using a daily diary approach, this study added to this literature to investigate whether and how day-to-day consistency in positive parent–child interactions was linked to youth depressive symptoms, risky behavior, and physical health. Participants were youth whose parents were employed in the IT division of a Fortune 500 company (N = 129, youth’s mean age = 13.39, 55 % female), who participated in an 8 day daily diary study. Analyses revealed that, controlling for cross-day mean levels of positive parent–child interactions, older (but not younger) adolescents who experienced more consistency in positive interactions with parents had fewer depressive and physical health symptoms (e.g., colds, flu). The discussion focuses on the utility of daily diary methods for assessing the correlates of consistency in parenting, possible processes underlying these associations, and intervention implications.

Leisure-Time Physical Activity Moderates the Longitudinal Associations between Work-Family Spillover and Physical Health

Abstract Previous research has documented associations between negative and positive work-family spillover and physical health. Using an effort-recovery model, the study tested the hypothesis that engagement in greater leisure-time physical activity would facilitate recovery processes that buffer the negative health effects of increasing work-family spillover. Employed adults (N = 1,354) completed two waves of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MI-DUS). Results indicated that an increase in negative work-family spillover across nine years was associated with decreased physical health and increased number of chronic conditions at Time 2. Moreover, more time spent on moderate leisure-time physical activity buffered many of the associations between increasing negative spillover and declining health. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Caring for the Elderly at Work and Home: Can a Randomized Organizational Intervention Improve Psychological Health?

Although job stress models suggest that changing the work social environment to increase job resources improves psychological health, many intervention studies have weak designs and overlook influences of family caregiving demands. We tested the effects of an organizational intervention designed to increase supervisor social support for work and nonwork roles, and job control in a results-oriented work environment on the stress and psychological distress of health care employees who care for the elderly, while simultaneously considering their own family caregiving responsibilities. Using a group-randomized organizational field trial with an intent-to-treat design, 420 caregivers in 15 intervention extended-care nursing facilities were compared with 511 caregivers in 15 control facilities at 4 measurement times: preintervention and 6, 12, and 18 months. There were no main intervention effects showing improvements in stress and psychological distress when comparing intervention with control sites. Moderation analyses indicate that the intervention was more effective in reducing stress and psychological distress for caregivers who were also caring for other family members off the job (those with elders and those “sandwiched” with both child and elder caregiving responsibilities) compared with employees without caregiving demands. These findings extend previous studies by showing that the effect of organizational interventions designed to increase job resources to improve psychological health varies according to differences in nonwork caregiving demands. This research suggests that caregivers, especially those with “double-duty” elder caregiving at home and work and “triple-duty” responsibilities, including child care, may benefit from interventions designed to increase work–nonwork social support and job control.

The effects of a workplace intervention on employees’ cortisol awakening response

ABSTRACT Work-related stressors are known to adversely affect employees’ stress physiology, including the cortisol awakening response (CAR) – or the spike in cortisol levels shortly after people wake up that aids in mobilizing energy. A flat or blunted CAR has been linked to chronic stress and burnout. This daily diary study tested the effects of a workplace intervention on employed parents’ CAR. Specifically, we tested whether the effects of the intervention on CAR were moderated by the type of days (workday versus non-work day). Data came from 94 employed parents from an information technology firm who participated in the baseline and 12-month diurnal cortisol components of the Work, Family, and Health Study, a group-randomized field experiment. The workplace intervention was designed to reduce work-family conflict (WFC) and implemented after the baseline data collection. Diurnal salivary cortisol was collected on 4 days at both baseline and 12 months. Multilevel modeling revealed that the intervention significantly increased employees’ CAR at 12 months on non-workdays, but this was not evident on workdays or for employees in the usual practice condition. The results provide evidence that the intervention was effective in enhancing employees’ biological stress physiology particularly during opportunities for recovery that are more likely to occur on non-work days.

Mechanisms underlying parent–child occupational consistency: a critical review

ABSTRACT Parents’ and children’s occupations are often similar on a variety of dimensions, including income, gender typicality, and Holland’s job types [Whiston, S. C., & Keller, B. K. (2004). The influences of the family of origin on career development: A review and analysis. The Counseling Psychologist, 32, 493–568]. The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are not well understood, limiting both research and application to real-world contexts such as career counseling settings. The present article has three main goals: (1) To critically examine individual mechanisms underlying parent–child occupational consistency; (2) To propose a multiple mechanisms model that accounts for the limitations and assumptions of individual mechanisms; and (3) To propose future research directions while critically examining implicit assumptions of past research and research methodology. By addressing these goals, this paper has the potential to inform future research on parent–child occupational consistency and vocational intervention efforts.