Publications by authors named "Neena Malik"

Marital conflict is associated with multiple negative outcomes for couples, including marital dissatisfaction and divorce. Little research, however, has examined conflict in Hispanic/Latino couples or its association with marital satisfaction, which creates an unfortunate knowledge gap for clinicians working with diverse client groups. The present study sought to examine both marital conflict and satisfaction using a sample of 231 European American (EA; n = 108) and Hispanic/Latino (H/L; n = 123) couples.

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Few studies have examined parental variables in relation to GLB youth outcomes. This study aimed to establish the reliability and validity of observational codes that examined parental acceptance, emotional support, and ambivalence, and to examine the impact of these parental variables on GLB youth internalizing and externalizing problems, substance use problem severity, and GLB negative identity. Participants included 36 GLB parent-youth dyads at baseline, and out of those, 27 completed the two year follow-up.

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Background: Common mechanisms against small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), including an intact ileocecal valve, gastric acid secretion, intestinal motility, and an intact immune system, are compromised in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and therefore, a relatively high incidence of SIBO has been reported in this population.

Aims: We aimed to determine whether an improvement in IBD clinical activity scores is seen after testing and treating SIBO.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study of 147 patients with inflammatory bowel disease who were referred for SIBO breath testing from 1/2012 to 5/2016 was performed.

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Upward of 70% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth experience some degree of parental rejection of their sexual identity, which is problematic in light of research documenting links between parental rejection and psychological difficulties in LGB youth. Additionally, emerging research suggests that ethnic minority LGB youth may be at greater risk to experience parental rejection than ethnic majority LGB youth. However, this research is inconclusive and has significant gaps.

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This study investigated religious stress, gay-related stress, sexual identity, and mental health outcomes in lesbian, gay and bisexual adolescents and emerging adults. The model examined negative LGB identity as a mediator of the relationships between a) religious stress and mental health, and b) gay-related stress and mental health. The data indicated that negative LGB identity fully accounted for both relationships.

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Structural and system theories propose that disruptions in family subsystem functioning increase risk for youth maladjustment. While there is growing evidence to support this proposition, studies that specifically focus on the larger family system remain relatively rare. Furthermore, the pathways that connect problems in family subsystem alliances to externalizing or internalizing problems in youth are as yet largely unexplored.

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Sexual identity development is a central task of adolescence and young adulthood and can be especially challenging for sexual minority youth. Recent research has moved from a stage model of identity development in lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth to examining identity in a non-linear, multidimensional manner. In addition, although families have been identified as important to youth's identity development, limited research has examined the influence of parental responses to youth's disclosure of their LGB sexual orientation on LGB identity.

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Intense and frequent marital conflict is associated with greater appraisals of threat and self-blame in children, but little else is known about contextual factors that might affect appraisals. Systemic family theories propose that to understand child adaptation, it is necessary to understand the interconnected nature of family subsystem relationships. In a sample of 257 families with 8- to 12-year-old children, this study examined whether a four-level typology of marital conflict management was related to children's perceptions of marital conflict and their appraisals of perceived threat and self-blame.

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Lesbian, gay, and bisexual ("LGB") youth may face significant stressors related to their sexual orientation. Few studies, however, have examined youth's experiences of support for coping with these stressors. The current study compared LGB youth's perceptions of support for sexuality stress to their support for other types of problems.

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There is increasing awareness that domestic violence (DV) and child maltreatment often overlap and that there are significant negative consequences to women and children who are victims in the same families. The present study contains data from a participatory evaluation of a multisite national demonstration project on family violence (the Greenbook Initiative), funded jointly by the U.S.

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This field study reports on a cross-site evaluation of dependency courts in communities receiving federal funding to implement the Greenbook initiative, a multisite demonstration for community improvement of coordinated responses to families victimized by domestic violence and child maltreatment. This article focuses on the dependency court, where child maltreatment cases are heard, specifically court participation in collaborative activities and court practice improvements. Findings indicate that perceptions of judicial leadership varied considerably by site.

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Limited data exist on the unique, additive, and interactive effects of exposure to domestic and community violence on children's functioning, particularly in community samples. This study examined relations between children's violence exposure, at home and in the community, and symptoms of externalizing and internalizing problems. Parents reported on domestic violence in the home, and children reported on community violence.

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One planned consequence of the national Infant Mental Health Forum held in the United States in 2000 was the funding of five research projects conducted in Early Head Start (EHS) programs. Each project strengthened existing programs by integrating infant/toddler mental health approaches and testing the outcomes on infant/toddler development, behavior, and parent-child interactions. In two of the projects, the effect of offering enrichment for EHS staff was tested.

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Current literature indicates that risk for maternal depression is substantial in low-income families. A large body of research also indicates that when mothers are depressed, children are at risk for a number of developmental difficulties. While mutual influence between child and parental difficulties has been noted, few studies examine risk factors for both depression and child aggression within ecological models.

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Parenting was examined as a mediator of associations between marital and child adjustment, and parent gender was examined as a moderator of associations among marital, parental, and child functioning in 226 families with a school-age child (146 boys). Parenting fully mediated associations between marital conflict and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Parent gender did not moderate associations when data from the full sample or families with girls only were evaluated.

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This study longitudinally examined the associations between mother-infant interactions at 15 months and behavioral and cognitive outcomes at 36 months of age in a sample of at-risk, young children. Participants for the current study were 58 infants/toddlers prenatally exposed to cocaine and their maternal caregivers. These infants were from a low socioeconomic status background and were part of an intervention setting.

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Power dynamics in the marital dyad and systemic elements of whole-family functioning (cohesion, subsystem boundary formations) were examined in relation to each other and also in relation to child adjustment in a multiethnic sample of families. Support was found for a mediational model, such that family functioning was found to mediate the relationship between marital power dynamics and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior. Some support also was found for ethnicity as a moderator of the association between systemic family processes and children's adjustment.

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