Behavioral and Emotional problems among adolescents of Jamaica and the United States: Parent, Teacher and self-reports for ages 12 to 18

Compares nonreferred adolescent samples for ages 12 to 18 from Jamaica and the United States via syndromes; syndrome groupings and total problem scores on the Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL), Teacher's report form and Youth Self-report. Reporting of more problems by adolescents in both societies than their parents or teachers.(AU)

Identification of emotions and emotional confusion in Jamaican men vs women: do they predict severity and types of psychopathology?

In Jamaica, women comprise two-thirds of the workforce, but the society rigidly defines gender roles and behaviour for men versus women. Jamaican women are reportedly independent and outwardly express wide varieties of feelings. Jamaican men have greater difficulty acknowledging, labelling and expressing their emotions, a process labelled alexithymia. Therefore, Jamaican men may report higher levels of alexithymia. Since identification and expression of feelings are positively associated with psychological health, Jamaicans (especially men) with higher alexithymia scores should report higher levels of psychological distress than those with low alexithymia scores. These hypotheses were tested using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale II (TAS-II), and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), to survey 400 Jamaican men and women

Power and gender: violence and affection experienced by children in Barbados, West Indies

Discourses on violence conceptualize the phenomenon as a property of (1) individuals, (2) social circumstances, and (3) social relationships. Rigorous comparative tests fail to support the first and second hypotheses. Survey data collected in 1990 from a national random sample of 407 men and women aged twenty to forty-five from the West Indian island of Barbados indicate that one of four experienced physical and emotional violence as children. Boys and girls were equally likely to be abused by both mothers (or other female caregivers) and fathers (or other male caregivers); stepparents were no more likely to treat children violently than were biological parents. However, the presence of a stepfather increased the likelihood that women battered their daughters and decreased the likelihood that women battered their sons. In general, powerful women protected their children from violence, treated them affectionately, and elicited affection for them from their men. The probability that a son experienced an affectionate relationship with a biological father rose with the length of time the two lived together, but only for sons with powerful mothers. By contrast, men battered powerless women and the children of powerless women. Powerless women battered their own children.(AU)

The Jamaican body's role in emotional experience and sense perception: feelings, heart, minds and nerves

When Jamaican speak of feelings, they literally mean feelings: physical sensations. Emotions, which emerge through social interaction, comprise an unmarked subset of feelings. They can affect the mind in ways that are actualized in behavior. Emotions affect other parts of the body as well, in ways that follow from an equilibrium model of health. Non-emotional feelings index bodily disequilibrium rather than causing it. An example of such is seen in nerves: a chronic feeling-complaint that comes about when the nerves, associated with perception and sensation, are weakened, and which entails visual dimness, jumpiness, and joint trouble. Although exacerbated by certain social situations and often used in social commentary and manipulations, nerves is experienced and treated as a physical rather than a socially-based disorder. By studying the bodily dimension of nerves and other feelings we may gain insight into the ways in which the body serves as a source of culture (e.g., nerves culture) as well as into how culture influences bodily experience. We may broaden our understanding of the complex interplay between the bodily and mental dimensions of people's lives.(AU)