This group of papers presents the conference reports and discussion topics of the American Orthopsychiatric Association annual meeting. The conference topic was "Dilemma of the Therapist; Practice and Values in a Changing Society." Reports and discussions focused on examining ethical concerns and the dilemmas they pose for therapeutic…

This paper summarizes the development of the Adolescent Treatment Outcome Module (ATOM) to monitor the outcomes of mental health treatment of adolescents with emotional or behavioral problems. The module is intended to: provide reliable and valid information about outcomes of mental health care; be applicable across severity levels, clinical…

Multiple regression and path analyses of 29 demographic, social, and psychological variables were carried out to determine those variables that influenced the use of community-based mental health services by the Hispanic elderly. The variables were classified using the Andersen and Newman framework which conceptualizes the individual's demand for…

This report includes the background papers developed for an invitational workshop on mental health program development for minority youth and their families, and a summary of the recommendations made and actions to be taken. Section I presents an overall framework and an overview of the issues that were explored in greater depth at the workshop.…

The loss of one's spouse is a disorganizing life event. This study explores the mental health of older women who have lost a spouse. The specific aims of this study were: (1) to identify the incidence of depression or other psychiatric morbidity among widows during the first two years of bereavement; and (2) to evaluate a model which incorporates:…

Although psychologists have played key roles in providing mental health services to rural populations for many years, only recently has the profession begun to devote more attention to the issues of psychologists who work in rural areas. Existing literature on rural mental health has focused primarily on unique problems of rural populations and…

The predictive power of the externalizing and internalizing factors of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for mental health treatment outcomes was studied. Data were collected over 3 years at a community mental health agency. From the population of intakes at the agency, 789 cases were selected as the unrestricted sample, and 374 of these were…

This paper presents a review of the literature on African-American men and the psychotherapeutic process as a coping style. It describes the demographics of African-American men in treatment, reasons for seeking treatment, and common issues being presented in the psychotherapeutic session. Research suggesting that African-American men underutilize…

Research has demonstrated that depressed people lack the optimistic bias evidenced by nondepressed persons and that the former may be more realistic in predicting the outcome of future events (depressive realism hypothesis). This study assesses the depressive realism hypothesis by comparing the accuracy of depressed and nondepressed people's…

Recent research has suggested that individual differences in the personality measure of hardiness are related to health status. This 3-year longitudinal study with full-time employees (N=229) investigated the association between stress, two separate measures of personality hardiness, and objective (absenteeism due to illness verified from…

As many of the physical problems of space travel are solved, scientists are beginning to address the psychological needs of the astronauts. While the last decade has produced technological advances making space travel and work a definite possibility, psychologists and the public are largely unaware of the psychological and socio-psychological…

A situation in which an individual harbors intense, unexpressed feelings is referred to as "unfinished business." Several schools of psychotherapy suggest that an individual must find closure for important unfinished events in one's past in order to experience life fully. Because observations of the behavior of individuals at the Vietnam…

Although the occurrence of medical illnesses in psychiatric patients is quite high, medical illnesses manifested by psychiatric symptoms are often overlooked. The higher mortality rates among psychiatric patients when compared to the general population may be a reflection of neglect or inadequate treatment of the psychiatric patients' medical…

Field research on the relationships among environmental stressors, psychological reactions, and health outcomes has either been correlational or of a program evaluation nature. Neither of these alternatives is satisfactory for testing hypotheses concerning the causal status of variables in process models of stress coping. A theory driven…

This paper is concerned with the problem that elderly persons do not seek or receive mental health services as frequently as their numbers or the incidence of mental health problems would indicate is appropriate. The report focuses on the identification of innovative mental health service delivery programs which have been designed to reach and to…