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Overview: Much of today's psychological research and practice is relevant to our national health agenda and can serve the public interest. President Obama's landmark health care reform success provides an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize society's definition of "quality care" and highlight rehabilitation's potential. Advocacy, vision, and a public policy presence with persistence are critical. Those involved often focus exclusively upon specific issues (e.g., reimbursement, research funding, or graduate student support)., Summary: By developing a "bigger picture" approach addressing society's real needs and embracing the changes technology will ultimately bring, psychology can have a more lasting impact. There are unlimited opportunities to advance the profession through personal involvement in the public policy arena. It is essential that psychology's next generation receives relevant mentoring.

BackgroundAnxiety and depression are common among university students, and university counseling centers are under pressure to develop effective, novel, and sustainable interventions that engage and retain students. Group interventions delivered via the internet could be a novel and effective way to promote student mental health. ObjectiveWe conducted a pragmatic open trial to investigate the uptake, retention, treatment response, and level of satisfaction with a remote group cognitive behavioral therapy intervention designed to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression delivered on the web to university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. MethodsPreintervention and postintervention self-reported data on anxiety and depression were collected using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Satisfaction was assessed postintervention using the Client Satisfaction with Treatment Questionnaire. ResultsA total of 175 students were enrolled, 158 (90.3%) of whom initiated treatment. Among those initiating treatment, 86.1% (135/158) identified as female, and the mean age was 22.4 (SD 4.9) years. The mean number of sessions attended was 6.4 (SD 2.8) out of 10. Among participants with clinically significant symptoms at baseline, mean symptom scores decreased significantly for anxiety (t56=11.6; P

Many people, including nearly half of American households, own a pet dog. Previous work has found that therapy dog interactions reduce distress, but little work to date has empirically established the mood-enhancing effects of interaction with one's own pet dog. In this study, dog owners (N = 73; 86.3% female, 13.7% male; age 25-77 years) underwent a stress-inducing task followed by random assignment to either (a) interacting with their dog (n = 24), (b) an expectancy control (n = 25; "stress-reducing" coloring books), or (c) a waiting control (n = 24). We compared the effects of each condition on affect and state anxiety. Participants assigned to the dog interaction showed greater increases in positive affect, as well as greater reductions in anxiety compared to both expectancy and waiting controls (ds > 0.72, ps < .018). No significant reductions in negative affect were detected. Second, we found that self-reported experiences with animals, attitudes toward animals, or bondedness with their dog did not differentially predict the condition's impact on the owner's mood. Finally, we coded participants' degree of engagement (e.g., time spent playing) with the dog and found that higher engagement predicted reduced negative affect. Overall, interacting with one's own pet dog reduced owners' distress. Such interactions, which occur commonly in daily life, may have the potential to alleviate distress at a large scale. Precisely how this works and for whom it is especially well suited remain intriguing open questions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

An international movement has focused on identifying evidence-based interventions that were developed to change psychological constructs and that are supported by controlled studies. However, inconsistent findings within individual intervention studies and among multiple studies raise critical problems in interpreting the evidence, and deciding when and whether an intervention is evidence-based. A theoretical and methodological framework (Range of Possible Changes [RPC] Model) is proposed to guide the study of change in intervention research. The authors recommend that future quantitative reviews of the research literature use the RPC Model to conceptualize, examine, and classify the available evidence for interventions. Future research should adopt the RPC Model to both develop theory-driven hypotheses and conduct examinations of the instances in which interventions may or may not change psychological constructs.

COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this article, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The authors' original article (Gershoff et al., 2018) summarized the extensive body of research demonstrating that parents' use of physical punishment is ineffective and linked with risk of detrimental outcomes for children. In this Reply, the authors agree with several points raised in two commentaries on the article (Larzelere, Gunnoe, Ferguson, & Roberts, 2019; Rohner & Melendez-Rhodes, 2019)-that statistical rigor is needed before making conclusions and that potential contextual moderators need to be considered. However, neither commentary negated the scientific inferences and conclusions of the Gershoff et al. article or presented any convincing evidence that physical punishment is beneficial to children. The preponderance of evidence clearly indicates physical punishment is harmful, a finding that is increasingly being recognized by professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The question of whether physical punishment is helpful or harmful to the development of children has been subject to hundreds of research studies over the past several decades. Yet whether causal conclusions can be drawn from this largely nonexperimental research and whether the conclusions generalize across contexts are issues that remain unresolved. In this article, the authors summarize the extent to which the empirical research on physical punishment meets accepted criteria for causal inference. They then review research demonstrating that physical punishment is linked with the same harms to children as is physical abuse and summarize the extant research that finds links between physical punishment and detrimental outcomes for children are consistent across cultural, family, and neighborhood contexts. The strength and consistency of the links between physical punishment and detrimental child outcomes lead the authors to recommend that parents should avoid physical punishment, psychologists should advise and advocate against it, and policymakers should develop means of educating the public about the harms of and alternatives to physical punishment. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individuals with overweight and obesity are subject to enormous bias and discrimination across domains. This bias constitutes a considerable public health problem beyond the effects of excess weight on health. Unfortunately, the few interventions that have been implemented to reduce this bias have not been successful. Evidence that the presence of an animal makes individuals and settings appear more attractive, desirable, approachable, and relaxed, as well as happier and safer, suggests that dog ownership may be a simple way to reduce weight bias. Accordingly, we tested whether the presence of a dog can reduce weight bias in a sample of 314 online participants. Each participant was presented with a stimulus image representing one of three conditions (person with dog, person with plant, or person alone), and was then asked to rate the human model using three measures. Two sets of stimuli (featuring different models) were used to ensure that findings were not restricted to a particular model. Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence that the presence of a dog affects endorsement of weight-related stereotypes, general evaluations, or desire for social distance. These findings contrast with a large body of literature showing that dogs enhance perceptions of a range of individuals and settings. The effect of dogs on perceptions may be restricted in the case of weight bias because of the pervasive, explicit, and severe nature of this bias. Dogs may have stronger effects on attitudes that are less openly endorsed. Promising avenues where dogs are very likely to influence attitudes include perceptions of individuals of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, and even political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the activities and plans of the president of the American Psychological Association (APA) for 2009 in the U.S. The APA presidency is considered as very important and challenging position because of its high demand. The broad goals and priorities of APA president for this year include mobilizing and engaging the members into their specialization, building the strength of the group, dealing the critical social issues through researches and making the people understand the field of psychology.

We examined whether mother-child discrepancies in perceived child behavior problems relate to dysfunctional interactions between mother and child and stress in the mother. Participants included 239 children (6–16 years old; 58 girls, 181 boys) referred for oppositional, aggressive, and antisocial behavior, and their mothers. Mother-child discrepancies in perceived child behavior problems were related to mother-child conflict. Moreover, maternal stress mediated this relationship. The findings suggest that discrepancies among mother and child evaluations of child functioning are not merely reflections of different perspectives or artifacts of the assessment process, but can form components of conceptual models that can be developed and tested to examine the interrelations among critical domains of child, parent, and family functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research designed to establish the empirical underpinnings of psychotherapy relies heavily on arbitrary metrics, and researchers often do not know if clients receiving an evidence-based treatment have improved in everyday life or changed in a way that makes a difference, apart from the changes the arbitrary metrics may have shown. In other words, it is possible that evidence-based treatments with effects demonstrated on arbitrary metrics do not actually help people, that is, reduce their symptoms and improve their functioning. Clarifying the nature of arbitrary metrics and assessing their implications are important initial steps. Needed next steps are detailing the range of strategies to better connect arbitrary measures to real-world referents and developing measures in which arbitrariness is eliminated or minimized from the start. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the psychological aspects involved in the therapy of a variety of treatments for children and adolescents. Reference to empirically supported treatments; Existence of diverse treatments in child and adolescent therapy; Raising of special challenges concerning the investigation and application of therapy with children and adolescents.

Psychological and social adjustment of visually handicapped youths has not been well studied across different raters and settings. Child, parent, and teacher forms of the Child Behavior Checklist were administered to evaluate problem behavior in the following groups: (a) visually handicapped adolescents in a residential school, (b) mainstreamed visually handicapped adolescents in public schools, and (c) sighted adolescents in public schools. Visually handicapped subjects in the residential placement evinced greater dysfunction than other subjects, as reflected in parent, teacher, and child evaluations. Although little correspondence was found between teachers' and children's scores, a number of significant correlations were obtained between teachers' and parents' ratings of children's behavior. Results are discussed in terms of the need to evaluate the adjustment and functioning of visually handicapped children and adolescents, the potential utility of psychological intervention with a subset of this population, and the importance of additional controlled research with visually handicapped persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on studies conducted by researchers O.I. Lovaas and J.J. McEachin on the behavioral treatment of autistic disorder. For approximately 3 decades, Lovaas has been conducting programmatic research to develop and understand treatment of children with autistic disorder. In this study, McEachin, Smith, and Lovaas provided a follow-up study of the original investigation designed to evaluate an intensive treatment for young children with autism. In the original study Lovaas evaluated a multifaceted treatment that included intensive treatment, several therapeutic agents, continued care after the intense treatment phase, and intervention across multiple settings. The major results, summarized in McEachin, indicated marked gains in several domains, including improvements in intellectual functioning and placement in regular classes. There are many issues that might be raised in relation to the study and in relation to the needed direction. One concern that has been voiced is that the youth are not "truly" autistic or perhaps not sufficiently impaired as are many youth who are referred for treatment.

A preface for the February 2007 issue of the "Annual Review of Psychology" is presented.