Applied & preventive psychology : journal of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology最新文献

Psychotherapy researchers are increasingly engaged in collaborations with clinical practitioners and mental health administrators. Each party brings its own perspectives, values, and agendas to bear in these encounters. Viable research—practice collaborations depend on understanding and negotiating some of the tensions in these relationships. In this article, we discuss the contexts that prevail for various participants in a psychotherapy dissemination study as well as the values, goals, costs, and benefits related to research participation. This article is a collaboration among the researchers, mental health administrators, therapists, and clients involved in an ongoing treatment dissemination study. Our recommendations for research—practice collaborations are based on our experiences and dialogues over the course of this study.

What role do affective states play in everyday social behavior? This article presents an overview of recent research on the influence of affective states on the way people think and act in social situations, with a special emphasis on the applied and preventive implications of this work. We review psychodynamic, conditioning, and cognitive explanations of affective influences, and present an integrative theory, the affect infusion model (AIM; Forgas, 1995a). We then review recent evidence for affective influences on social memory, self- and other judgments, attitudes, strategic interaction, stereotyping, future forecasting and a range of other everyday psychological phenomena. We also consider the relevance of these findings for practitioners and professionals in applied areas such as health, counseling, clinical, educational, and organizational psychology.

Psychopathology research is the scientific foundation for legitimate and credible forms of clinical practice and the ethical delivery of mental health services. Experimental psychopathology is a subfield of psychopathology research; its aims are to elucidate variables and processes that contribute, either in whole or in part, to the etiology, exacerbation, or maintenance of abnormal behavior. To date, experimental psychopathology has been poorly understood with regard to its identity, aims, history, and relevance for clinical practice. In this article, we critically review and address the role of experimental psychopathology in the contemporary field of clinical science and practice. Overall, we suggest that experimental psychopathology can maintain its important contributions to the field, and perhaps more important, adapt to the current health care context to have an even larger impact on directing conceptual and empirical analyses of core psychopathology processes.

This article proposes a new model for knowledge generation in applied and professional psychology—the pragmatic case study (PCS) method. Drawing from both psychology's traditional, quantitative and alternative, qualitative approaches, the PCS method involves the creation of systematic, peer-reviewed case studies (in all areas of applied psychology) that follow D. Peterson's “disciplined inquiry” epistemological model. The studies would be organized into “journal-databases” that combine (a) individual studies; (b) articles that address epistemological, theoretical, methodological, logistical, economic, political, and ethical issues in the PCS method; and (c) substantive cross-case analyses of groups of individual cases already published in the database. To lay out the proposal's arguments, the article begins by setting forth relevant historical and philosophical context, and then examines a possible set of initial methodological guidelines for ensuring rigorous quality in each case study. Next the PCS method's value in creating new and useful applied knowledge is demonstrated for two areas: psychotherapy efficacy research and forensic psychology. Finally, the implications of the present proposal are explored. Throughout, the emphasis is on creating an integrative, pragmatic alternative for gaining new useful knowledge in our discipline.

Current graduate curricula do not fully grapple with and take advantage of the dialectical interplay of science and practice that is at the core of the scientist—practitioner (Boulder) model. This article addresses factors that interfere with the realization of the Boulder model and offers suggestions for curriculum reform. It emphasizes the importance of both science and practice, as well as the merit of both nomothetic and idiographic approaches to clinical training. The article discusses how academic politics often interfere with the incorporation of empirically supported treatments or assessment methods into training programs. Even when evidence-based approaches are a part of the curriculum, the challenges continue. Because empirically supported treatments are almost always associated with treatment manuals that rely on categorically defined diagnostic categories, they may inadvertently discourage idiographic functional analyses and the appreciation of underlying change principles. In addition, in light of the fact that many, if not most, students eventually pursue applied careers and because science-based interventions and assessment methods are currently underused by clinicians in the field, it is argued that clinical training should receive more recognition in scientist—practitioner programs. Programs should be mindful of the need to prepare a certain subset of interested students for scientifically based careers in applied settings. This article also highlights the importance of educating and training students in communicating and disseminating science-based clinical psychology to nonacademic psychologists and health professionals from other disciplines.

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent of all psychological disorders and are potentially amenable to early intervention and prevention. In this article, we review the various costs associated with anxiety disorders that make early prevention a valuable endeavor. Also, we considered extant data regarding risk factors for anxiety disorders, as knowledge of risk factors permits the targeting of a select group of the population considered to be most likely to develop anxiety disorders. Existing efficacy research on prevention for anxiety disorders is promising, but an overarching model to guide further research and development is lacking. We propose such models to guide high-risk sample selection including the content and format of prevention efforts.

In this article we argue that humans are more resilient in the face of loss than has been previously believed. We begin by showing that historically the bereavement literature has tended to pathologize what are otherwise normal and natural reactions to loss. We then introduce a characterization of resilience during bereavement as the ability to maintain continuity in identity from pre- to postloss. We review various types of evidence consistent with this proposal, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between resilience and continuity in social identity. We then explore four possible mechanisms by which resilient individuals achieve identity continuity. We also attempt to extend the resilience-as-continuity link to the recent literature on continued bonds with the deceased and explore how this link manifests across different cultures. Finally, we review some implications of these formulations for psychotherapy with bereaved individuals.

In this article we present a temporal model for understanding the relations between perceived control and posttraumatic distress. Although perceived control generally is seen as adaptive, a review of the research using a temporal framework reveals that the relations between different types of control and distress vary greatly. Specifically, present and future control tend to be associated with better adjustment and fewer posttraumatic stress disoorder (PTSD) symptoms, whereas past control tends to be unrelated to distress or associated with more distress. Following this review, we outline an agenda for future research on past, future, and present control and posttraumatic distress using our temporal framework and discuss general methodological issues that need to be addressed in future research.