Potential mechanisms by which cash transfer programmes could improve the mental health and life chances of young people: A conceptual framework and lines of enquiry for research and policy.

Mental health is inextricably linked to both poverty and future life chances such as education, skills, labour market attachment and social function. Poverty can lead to poorer mental health, which reduces opportunities and increases the risk of lifetime poverty. Cash transfer programmes are one of the most common strategies to reduce poverty and now reach substantial proportions of populations living in low- and middle-income countries. Because of their rapid expansion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have recently gained even more importance. Recently, there have been suggestions that these cash transfers might improve youth mental health, disrupting the cycle of disadvantage at a critical period of life. Here, we present a conceptual framework describing potential mechanisms by which cash transfer programmes could improve the mental health and life chances of young people. Furthermore, we explore how theories from behavioural economics and cognitive psychology could be used to more specifically target these mechanisms and optimise the impact of cash transfers on youth mental health and life chances. Based on this, we identify several lines of enquiry and action for future research and policy.

Functional Behavioral Assessment-based interventions on adults' delusions, hallucinations and disorganized speech: A single case meta-analysis.

The Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) approach involves the use of single-case designs (SCD) to study the problem behavior-environment contingencies and conduct interventions that consider this functional relationship. Although this approach has been considered an evidence-based practice (EBP) for the treatment of several psychological problems, no meta-analytic studies of FBA-based interventions on delusions, hallucinations and disorganized speech -commonly operationalized as "atypical vocalizations"- have been carried out. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to review and synthesize the results of FBA-based interventions on adults' atypical vocalizations. We conducted a systematic review and a multi-level meta-analysis of these interventions, using a recently developed effect size estimator for SCD studies (i.e., log response ratio). All the studies that met our eligibility criteria provided evidence supporting the effectiveness of FBA-based interventions on atypical vocalizations, with an overall average effect size of a 72% reduction. Both the publication year and the methodological quality were found to be significant moderators. Despite some methodological limitations, we can conclude that FBA-based interventions are effective to reduce atypical vocalizations. The implications of these results could be of interest for the mental health community.

Relationship between the client's adaptive verbalizations and thetherapist's verbal behaviour in the clinic context / La relación entre las verbalizaciones adaptativas del cliente y el comportamiento verbal del terapeuta en el contexto clínico

Today’s clinical psychology advocates for empirically validated treatments. This supports the need for outcome-driven research, but may overlook the importance of process-driven research, which can respond to the question of why psychological treatments work. Functional analysis of behaviour has received a new boost with the emergence of the third wave of psychological therapies, which stress the importance of verbal behaviour in therapy as a way to access and modify client problems. The case presented in this work was analysed in order to make an approach to the strengthening processes that take place in therapy through verbal interaction. First, we developed and applied a categorization system of client’s adaptive verbalizations. We found that this type of verbalizations increase significantly after the first few sessions, remain high in the middle sessions, and gradually decrease towards the end of the therapy. We subsequently developed and used a system of categorization of therapist’s verbal behaviour. We found that agreeable verbalizations were concentrated in the middle sessions, being replaced by other verbalizations in the final sessions

La psicología clínica actual es partidaria de los tratamientos validados empíricamente, lo cual invoca la necesidad de una investigación guiada por los resultados, si bien puede soslayar la importancia de la investigación quiada por los procesos, que puede responder a la pregunta de por qué funcionan los tratamientos psicológicos. El análisis funcional de la conducta ha recibido un nuevo impulso con la emergencia de la tercera ola de terapias psicológicas, que destaca la importancia del comportamiento verbal en la terapia como una manera de acceder a los problemas del cliente y modificarlos. El caso que se presenta en este trabajo nos permitirá acercarnos a los procesos reforzadores que tienen lugar en la terapia debidos a la interacción verbal. En primer lugar hemos desarrollado y aplicado un sistema de caracterización de las verbalizaciones adaptativas del cliente. Observamos que este tipo de verbalizaciones aumenta significativamente transcurridas las primeras sesiones, se mantiene elevado en las sesiones intermedias y disminuye paulatinamente hacia el final de la terapia. Posteriormente elaboramos y utilizamos un sistema de categorización del comportamiento verbal del terapeuta, observando que las verbalizaciones se concentraban en las sesiones intermedias y eran sustituidas por otras verbalizaciones en las sesiones finales