Challenges and Successes in Health Communication Messaging With Asian Americans.

Asians are the fastest growing racial and ethnic group in the United States, and in Michigan, Asians represent 3.4% of the state's population. Asians have long been aggregated as a homogeneous group and stereotyped as a "model minority.

Assessing and improving students' collaborative skills using a mental health simulation: A pilot study.

People with severe mental illnesses have complex needs that require coordinated care. However, students in different health professions are usually educated in silos without an emphasis on collaborative skills. Students would benefit from exposure to other disciplines that would increase appreciation of collaboration.

The City Doesn't Sleep: Community Perceptions of Sleep Deficits and Disparities.

While sleep research has focused primarily on aspects of the immediate physical environment and behavioral factors, a growing body of evidence suggests that broader social determinants may play an important role in sleep insufficiency. Yet public health education efforts for sleep largely address "sleep hygiene", with an emphasis on information for getting a good night's rest. The Flint Sleep Project employed community-based-participatory research methods to try to understand more about the sleep experiences of residents of an urban community reporting sleep insufficiency.

Do special occasions trigger psychological distress among older bereaved spouses? An empirical assessment of clinical wisdom.

Objectives: Mental health professionals have suggested that widowed persons experience heightened psychological distress on dates that had special meaning for them and their late spouse, such as a wedding anniversary or the late spouse's birthday. This study examined the effects of such occasions on grief, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in a community sample of older widowed persons.

Methods: OLS regression models were estimated using data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study, a large prospective probability study of late-life widowhood.

Research on discrimination and health: an exploratory study of unresolved conceptual and measurement issues.

Objectives: Our goal in this study was to better understand racial and socioeconomic status (SES) variations in experiences of racial and nonracial discrimination.

Methods: We used 1999 and 2000 data from the YES Health Study, which involved a community sample of 50 Black and 50 White respondents drawn from 4 neighborhoods categorized according to racial group (majority Black or majority White) and SES (≤ 150% or > 250% of the poverty line). Qualitative and quantitative analyses examined experiences of discrimination across these neighborhoods.

Perceived discrimination and psychological well-being in the U.S.A. and South Africa.

Objective: To explore levels of perceived racial and non-racial discrimination and their associations with self-esteem and mastery in the U.S.A.

The impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on psychological distress and forgiveness in South Africa.

Background: Legislation to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was passed soon after election of South Africa's first democratic government. Discourse around the TRC focused on the importance of bearing witness to the past, and on the healing powers of forgiveness. However, there was also a concern that individuals with TRC relevant experience would simply be re-traumatized by participation in the process.

Early antecedents of adult work stress: social-emotional competence and anger in adolescence.

We hypothesized that youth with elevated coronary heart disease (CHD) risk who exhibit diminished social-emotional competence and frequent anger in adolescence experience increased occupational stress after becoming adults. Perceived job control and support from coworkers in 57 young Black and White men and women were regressed on measures of social problem-solving skill (SPS) and anger arousal (AR) obtained 5 years earlier when participants were in high school. In models controlling for grade point average (GPA), SPS and GPA independently predicted coworker support in adulthood; anger in high school predicted diminished job control.

The South Africa Stress and Health Study: rationale and design.

The South Africa Stress and Health Study (SASH) is a large psychiatric epidemiological survey that is currently underway in South Africa. It is a part of the World Health Organization's World Mental Health (WMH) 2000 initiative and seeks to complete interviews with a nationally representative sample of 5000 adults. The WMH initiative is obtaining population-based data on the prevalence and severity of specific psychiatric disorders, demographic and psychosocial correlates of these diagnoses, and the levels and adequacy of mental health service utilization.

Beyond the "self" in self-efficacy: Spouse confidence predicts patient survival following heart failure.

Ratings of patient efficacy to manage illness, made by 191 congestive heart failure patients and their spouses, were examined as predictors of patients' survival over the next 4 years. When considered alone, both the patient's self-efficacy and the spouse's confidence ratings predicted survival, but only spouse confidence remained significant when both partners" efficacy ratings were included in the same Cox regression model. The overlapping prognostic significance of spouse confidence and a global, multicomponent measure of marital quality positioned the former as a proxy for the latter, reflecting a fundamentally social protective factor in patient survival.

Resilience to loss and chronic grief: a prospective study from preloss to 18-months postloss.

The vast majority of bereavement research is conducted after a loss has occurred. Thus, knowledge of the divergent trajectories of grieving or their antecedent predictors is lacking. This study gathered prospective data on 205 individuals several years prior to the death of their spouse and at 6- and 18-months postloss.

Couples coping with congestive heart failure: role and gender differences in psychological distress.

Psychological distress and marital quality were assessed with male (n = 128) and female (n = 49) congestive-heart-failure (CHF) patients and their spouses. Hopkins Symptom Check List--25 scores were in the distressed range for 57% of patients and 40% of spouses. This role difference was greater for men than for women, and a gender difference (more distress in women than men) was greater for spouses than for patients.