Search

Opportunities created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act along with the increased prevalence of pediatric behavioral and mental health concerns provide new challenges for pediatric health care providers. To address these matters, providers need to change the manner by which they provide health care to families. A novel approach is providing brief, rapid response, evidence-based parenting interventions within the pediatric primary care setting. Family-focused parenting programs support the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations of improving mental health via supports in pediatric primary care to maximize the social and psychological well-being of families. A considerable body of research indicates that parenting interventions reduce the severity and frequency of disruptive behavior disorders in children and provide support to parent by bolstering parental resilience and improving overall family functioning. Providing these services within the pediatric primary care setting addresses the need for fully integrated health services that are family-centered and easily accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outcome studies of mentoring programs have demonstrated that they hold considerable promise in promoting competence across multiple developmental domains. A theoretical model of mentoring identified modification of youths' perceptions of their interpersonal relationships as a contributor to positive outcomes. To date, however, there has not been a direct examination of the role of the mentor—youth bond in this process. The present study examines whether the quality of the mentoring relationship uniquely predicts other relationship-based outcomes at two time points. Regression analyses indicated that the quality of the mentor—youth bond significantly predicted youths' scores in most relationship-based outcomes (i.e., friendship with and self-disclosure to adults) at 8 and 16 months. Study implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates whether the gender identities of African American adolescents mediate sex differences found in their multidimensional self-concepts. The sample included 174 African American adolescents who completed the 21-item Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire and the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. Results indicated that two dimensions of gender identity, Independence and Leadership, mediated the relationship between sex and self-evaluations in the areas of Friendship/Acceptance and Romantic Appeal. The findings of this study fill significant gaps in the current literature by providing data on African American adolescents' self-evaluations in multiple self-concept domains and by offering an empirical explanation for how biological sex influences these self-evaluations. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the most strongly endorsed problems for a group of affluent suburban girls (n = 58) and boys (n = 148), between ages 13 to 18, who were referred for educational counselling in the United States. Considerable overlap existed for male and female adolescents with regard to their most frequently reported problems, with boys and girls reporting seven common endorsements. Of particular interest was the prominence of items related to depression, compulsivity and achievement. Girls tended to report more depressive symptoms, whereas boys tended to report more symptoms related to compulsivity and achievement. Additionally, a significant age by sex interaction emerged for items related to achievement issues. Implications of these results for working with youth in cross-national educational counselling settings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explored retention patterns, as well as factors that predicted these patterns, in the evaluation of a relationship-based substance abuse prevention intervention study that targeted inner-city African American youth. A total of 851 contacts were made to retain 82% (n = 104) of the baseline sample (N = 127) in the evaluation. Results from multinomial regression analyses indicated that participants who were retained in the evaluation were more likely to perceive alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use as less risky and were more likely to report higher levels o f family supervision than were evaluation attrits. Those who were easy to retain reported lower family conflict and fewer family relocations during the past year than those who were difficult to retain. Implications of these findings for developing retention strategies, as well as future research, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]