Exploring causes and consequences of sex workers' psychological health: Implications for health care policy. A study conducted in Spain.

The aim of the researchers is to explore the causes and consequences of the psychological health of sex workers as well as provide an intervention model for the prevention of mental disorders in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) levels. The study sample consisted of 146 sex workers from Spain. Loneliness and maltreatment have a negative influence on psychological health, while self-esteem has a protector role over psychological health. Psychological health has a positive impact on perceived quality of life and other health domains. On the contrary, psychological health has a negative impact on drug use and symptoms of anxiety. Data are discussed.

Training referential communicative skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder: a pilot study.

The present study reports the effects of referential communication training in individuals formally diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants were 20 children with ASD (M age = 14.3 yr., SD = 4.2; 6 girls, 14 boys) in the role of speakers and 20 control children, who acted as listeners. They were all enrolled in mainstream compulsory education. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were defined according to the clinical diagnosis of ASD, the presence or absence of additional or associated disability, previous training in referential communication, and any drug treatment. Speakers were randomly assigned to one of two groups (trained vs untrained). Linguistic age, cognitive level and autistic symptoms were analyzed, respectively, with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale (WISC-R or WAIS-III), and the Autistic Behavior Checklist (ABC). Communicative abilities were analyzed through two indexes related to message complexity and self-regulation. The trained group was trained in referential communication tasks (task analysis, role taking, and task evaluation), while the untrained group took part in a communicative game but without any specific communicative training. The results showed that the complexity of emitted messages had improved statistically significantly in the trained group as an effect of training. Ecological referential communication is shown to be an appropriate paradigm for studying the communicative process and its products and could be used to develop and implement a training program focused on those skills in which individuals with ASD are most deficient.

"Surviving the Violence, Humiliation, and Loneliness Means Getting High": Violence, Loneliness, and Health of Female Sex Workers.

Sex workers are particularly vulnerable to violence, isolation, and stigmatization. This study uses the theory of loneliness to explore the relations among violence, self-esteem, loneliness, health, and drug use. Specifically, this study tested a model in which loneliness mediates the relationship between situational (violence) and characterological (self-esteem) loneliness factors and physical and psychological health and drug abuse. The study sample consisted of 146 sex workers from one region of Spain, recruited through the purposive sampling method. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling has been employed to test the hypothesis. The findings of this study suggest that two kinds of violence (physical and psychological) have a direct and positive influence on loneliness, so that higher levels of violence increase loneliness, while self-esteem has a protector role on loneliness. Loneliness has a direct and negative impact on psychological and physical health, and determines an increase in drug use, which, in turn, decreases both physical and psychological health. The results support, among other points, that policy makers and sex worker service programs need to be aware of how loneliness plays a role in the health and risk behavior of sex workers. Society has an important role to improve sex workers' health and minimize their risk behavior.