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Women may be disproportionately vulnerable to acute pain, potentially due to their social landscape. We examined whether positive and negative social processes (social support and social undermining) are associated with acute pain and if the processes are linked to pain via negative cognitive appraisal and emotion (pain catastrophizing, hyperarousal, anger). Psychosocial variables were assessed in inner-city women ( N  = 375) presenting to an Emergency Department with acute pain. The latent cognitive-emotion variable fully mediated social undermining and support effects on pain, with undermining showing greater impact. Pain may be alleviated by limiting negative social interactions, mitigating risks of alternative pharmacological interventions.

We hypothesized that loss of interpersonal, financial and work resources would mediate the relationship between physical and sexual abuse, cancer-related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms, noncancer-related PTSD symptoms and depressive mood among women with cancer. Participants were 64 women with heterogeneous cancers (64.1% breast cancer) seeking outpatient treatment. Structured interviews were conducted to assess for pre-cancer interpersonal trauma, recent loss of interpersonal, financial and work resources, cancer-related PTSD symptoms, noncancer-related PTSD symptoms and depressive mood. Only interpersonal loss mediated the relationship between earlier interpersonal trauma and current PTSD symptoms and depressive mood. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Halting the process of psychosocial and material resource loss has been theorized as being associated with the reduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study examines how the limiting of resource loss is related to alleviation of PTSD symptoms among 102 inner-city women, who originally met diagnostic criteria for PTSD after experiencing interpersonal traumatic events such as child abuse, rape, and sexual assault. Participants whose PTSD symptoms improve and become nondiagnostic for PTSD are compared with those who remain diagnostic. The two groups are not significantly different at pretest. However, at the 6-month time point, those who become nondiagnostic for PTSD report less resources loss in three of four domains. This pattern suggests that as PTSD symptoms decrease, women's material and psychosocial resource loss diminishes, which in turn, may aid their recovery process.

AIDS risk behavior and attitudes towards safer sex were studied in a sample of 666 African American and 626 European American women. Condom use, AIDS-related knowledge, risk perception, self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and perceived partner attitudes, and an assertive coping style were analyzed with regard to mean differences and predictive power in both ethnic groups. Compared to European American women, African American women had less knowledge and lower self-efficacy beliefs towards safer sex behavior, but they perceived themselves to be at more risk and reported greater condom use. Further, ethnicity was found to moderate the effects of the psychological predictors on safer sex behavior. This moderator effect was tested using a structural equation modeling design. In both groups, risk perception was the strongest predictor of condom use. Among African American women, social-cognitive barriers (e.g. low self-efficacy beliefs, negative attitude towards condom use) worked as a second predictor and mediator of the effects of risk perception on condom use. In contrast, among European American women, social-cognitive factors had no effect on condom use. In general, prediction of safer sex behavior was stronger among African American women.

We examined the ambiguity of monogamy as a safer-sex goal in a sample of young, inner- city women (N = 447), of whom 58 percent were African- American and 42 percent European-American. It was our premise that women may be misperceiving and underestimating their risk due to differences in their definition and beliefs about monogamy, and thus are not changing their behavior. When compared to long-term monogamous women (self-reporting one partner in the past year), serially monogamous women (reporting two or more partners in the past year) perceived themselves at greater risk but did not report more frequent use of condoms. It is possible that a suggestion of monogamy may be subject to multiple interpretations and thus could be providing women with a false sense of safety. Risk reduction should be defined in specific behavioral terms.

We examined the influence of stress, intimate support and marital status on postpartum depression among 189 African American and European American, inner-city women. We selected women in three common categories: (1) married, (2) cohabitating with partner, and (3) romantically involved, but not cohabitating. Women were interviewed on two occasions during pregnancy and seven to nine weeks following delivery. Women who were not married and did not live with their partner reported less intimacy with their partner and greater depression and increases in depression. Both marriage and cohabitation limited women's depression level. Married women also increased in intimacy during their pregnancy, but cohabitating women did not. Results were independent of ethnic status, age and income. The importance of the findings given the rise in single parenthood was discussed.

The social support literature, despite its focus on women's strengths in relationships, has not fully addressed the social realities of women of diverse ethnic backgrounds and socio economic conditions. Specifically, the emphasis on marital relationships as primary sources of support during pregnancy marginalizes those women for whom these partnerships are unhelpful or unavailable. In addition, women's greater use of social support as a coping strategy is often portrayed in the coping literature as an ineffective approach to stress. Data from two studies of pregnant women are presented to illustrate these points and to present a new model of coping that reframes women's coping as prosocial, active and effective. Our article is designed to challenge researchers to examine the relevance of work on social support and coping to women of varying ethnicities and economic circumstances.