Religious distress and coping with stressful life events: a longitudinal study.

HYPOTHESIS: Religious strain would mediate the relationship between stress symptoms at baseline and stress symptoms 1 year later. METHOD: Seventy-nine people with a history of stressful life events (55 women, 23 men, one unknown gender, average age 58 years) from community churches reported stressful life events, spiritual adjustment, and posttraumatic stress symptoms at initial assessment and 1-year follow-up. RESULTS: Religious strain mediated the relationship between baseline and follow-up posttraumatic stress symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Because religious distress contributed to prediction of stress symptoms over time, it appears that religious distress is related to adjustment to stressful life events.

The effectiveness of a trauma focused spiritually integrated intervention for veterans exposed to trauma.

Building Spiritual Strength (BSS) is an 8-session, spiritually integrated group intervention designed to address religious strain and enhance religious meaning making for military trauma survivors. It is based upon empirical research on the relationship between spirituality and adjustment to trauma. To assess the intervention's effectiveness, veterans with histories of trauma who volunteered for the study were randomly assigned to a BSS group (n = 26) or a wait-list control group (n = 28). BSS participants showed statistically significant reductions in PTSD symptoms based on self-report measures as compared with those in a wait-list control condition. Further research on spiritually integrated interventions for trauma survivors is warranted.

Specialty courts: Who's in and are they working?

The effectiveness of specialty courts has been well established in the literature; however, previous studies have not taken into account referral biases that may exist based on offenders' race, socioeconomic status (SES), attorney status, and so forth. The current study hypothesized that (a) Participants who are racially diverse, of lower SES, and represented by privately retained attorneys would be referred less frequently to specialty courts, and (b) Participants in specialty courts would evidence reductions in missed court appointments and failed urinary analyses (UAs) compared with peers not enrolled in specialty courts. Participants (N = 274) were probationers who were involved in 1 of 3 specialty court programs (i.e., drug, driving while intoxicated [DWI], or reentry courts) or a matched sample of probationers not in specialty court services. Results indicated that, in general and with few exceptions, specialty courts did not have differential referral rates based on offender demographics including race, ethnicity, SES, or attorney status (court appointed vs. privately retained). Results examining the effectiveness of the specialty courts were mixed. Participants in the in-prison treatment program reentry court missed a greater proportion of scheduled court meetings than did their matched sample counterparts; however, the other specialty court programs did not significantly differ from their matched-sample counterparts. Participants in the DWI court had a significantly smaller proportion of UA failures to total UAs than did their matched sample peers; however, the drug court and reentry court programs did not significantly differ from their matched sample counterparts. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record