An interdisciplinary approach: schizophrenia derails heteronormative expectations in psychological narratives

Required introductory psychology courses teach students a general and oversimplified version of the immense number of subfields within Psychology studies, much like introductory literature classes compress different genera throughout history into a miniscule number of “representative” texts. Nevertheless, these footholds generate an entryway into a whole new world of (specialized) exploration. Reading a text such as The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett provides a window for many students to crawl into one of Psychology’s darkest shadows, the field of abnormal psychology. Schiller’s non-fictional memoir, The Quiet Room, tells readers about the experiences of living with schizophrenia. Since psychology maintains a focus on the narrative of the mind, it has an innate interest in non-fictional literature. However, fictional literature offers both Psychology and Literary Studies a window into unique forms and styles of psychological narratives, such as found in the novel The Drowning Girl: A Memoir by Caitlin Kiernan. The Quiet Room has a laser focuses on schizophrenia and presents an accurate account of the inner world of a mind plagued with the diverse and intrusive symptoms of the illness. Schiller’s memoir is a non-fictional recollection of Shiller’s own personal experiences with schizophrenia and offers an insider’s view into the illness. Schiller recounts her ten-year fight with her mental illness from the first onset to several suicide attempts, including living life after diagnosis, moving in and out of mental hospitals, struggling to find the right balance of medications, and eventually finding hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. The book is used in introductory psychology courses to familiarize undergraduate students with abnormal psychology due to its highly descriptive explanations of symptoms, treatments, side effects of neurological drugs, and even the affective reality of the impossibility of living a “normal” life The narrative is a collection of different perspectives including Schiller’s personal memories, 5 family members’ and friends’ inner circle viewpoints, formal hospital records, and Mental Health Professionals’ personal and professional remarks on Schiller’s case. This real-world perspective provides an in-depth understanding of the illness. It exposes the secrets persons with schizophrenia may hide from outsiders and explains why a person might hide those symptoms. In addition, Schiller’s parents’ reflections help to explain how their heteronormative expectations are unraveled as their awareness of the mental illness transforms into acceptance

Culture-bound syndromes, idioms of distress, and cultural concepts of distress: New directions for an old concept in psychological anthropology.

This issue of Transcultural Psychiatry showcases some recent work on idioms of distress – the latest in a long line of anthropological research concerned with cross-cultural concepts and experiences of distress. Mark Nichter’s (1981) seminal paper introducing idioms of distress has become a cynosure for psychological anthropology and transcultural psychiatry. A growing body of work has since accumulated; however, the last time a collection of such research was brought together was the 2010 publication of a special issue in the journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry organized by Devon Hinton and Roberto Lewis-Fernández. In the decade since, new questions have arisen about the boundaries and applications of idioms of distress research. In this introduction, we provide a brief history of work on idioms of distress and related concepts. Then, we introduce several major themes explored by the papers in this special issue

Effect of Project Lead the Way Participation on Retention in Engineering Degree Programs

A key goal of pre-college engineering programs is to increase the number and retention of students pursuing engineering degrees. The researchers conducted a transcript analysis in order to compare the retention of entering engineering majors at a university based on whether or not they participated in Project Lead the Way (PLTW) in high school. PLTW Engineering is a high school pre-engineering curriculum that offers a series of courses to increase student awareness and scaffold an understanding of engineering design. The findings from this study offer little support regarding the impact of students’ PLTW participation on engineering degree completion. However, findings do suggest some support for the impact of PLTW participation on retention from freshmen to sophomore year, particularly among minority freshmen

Games in Telemental Health with Children and Adolescents

The authors of this study explore the use of games in telemental health services with both children and adolescents, focusing specifically on how live video, telemental health interactions contribute to the reduction of barriers in terms of access to mental health services. Game play, the use of games in counseling to foster engagement and connection, may be done through a variety of ways including but not limited to, board games, card games, art games, and physical games. Modifications can be made to these games that allow them to be played virtually such as through the use of an online medium (website game, virtual or whiteboard). Additionally, the provider can incorporate talking points throughout the games, certain colors mean sharing about a specific emotion, or specific actions (sinking a ship) means sharing something about yourself. Finally, it is important to bear in mind the providers’ technology abilities, HIPPA, privacy, and safety with using web-based platforms

The Predictability of Grit on Counselor Educators’ Competencies and Publications

Counselor educators are expected to engage in research and mentor doctoral students, highlighting the importance of competency in both areas. Grit predicts positive work outcomes, and we found no studies on grit in relation to counselor educator success measures. We wanted to understand the role of grit in counselor education productivity levels and necessary competencies. We recruited counselor educators at CACREP-accredited institutions with doctoral programs. We hypothesized that grit would predict both mentoring competencies and publication rates, mediated by research competencies. We tested a model with counselor educators (N = 110) and found that the relationship between grit, as measured by the Short Grit Scale, and mentoring competency, as measured by the Mentoring Competency Assessment, and the relationship between grit and number of total career publications were both partially mediated by research competencies, as measured by the Research Competencies Scale. Thus, grit is directly and indirectly related to publications and mentoring competency. Implications for counselor educators include maintaining grit and how to use self-assessment of research and mentoring competency to increase productivity

Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (GFR) Decay Heat Removal Concepts

Current research and development on the Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (GFR) has focused on the design of safety systems that will remove the decay heat during accident conditions, ion irradiations of candidate ceramic materials, joining studies of oxide dispersion strengthened alloys; and within the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) the fabrication of carbide fuels and ceramic fuel matrix materials, development of non-halide precursor low density and high density ceramic coatings, and neutron irradiation of candidate ceramic fuel matrix and metallic materials. The vast majority of this work has focused on the reference design for the GFR: a helium-cooled, direct power conversion system that will operate with an outlet temperature of 850ºC at 7 MPa. In addition to the work being performed in the United States, seven international partners under the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) have identified their interest in participating in research related to the development of the GFR. These are Euratom (European Commission), France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Of these, Euratom (including the United Kingdom), France, and Japan have active research activities with respect to the GFR. The research includes GFR design and safety, and fuels/in-core materials/fuel cycle projects. This report is a compilation of work performed on decay heat removal systems for a 2400 MWt GFR during this fiscal year (FY05)

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Is Not an Improvement Over the DSM

DeYoung and colleagues did not sufficiently address three fundamental flaws with HiTOP. First, HiTOP was created using a simple structure factor analytic approach, which does not adequately represent the dimensional space of the symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, HiTOP is not the empirical structure of psychopathology. Second, factor analysis and dimensional ratings do not fix the problems inherent to descriptive (folk) classification; self-reported symptoms are still the basis upon which clinical judgments about people are made. Finally, HiTOP is not ready to use in real-world clinical settings. There is currently no empirical evidence demonstrating that clinicians who use HiTOP have better clinical outcomes than those who use the DSM. In sum, HiTOP is a factor analytic variation of the DSM that does not get us closer to a more valid and useful taxonomy