The relationship of acculturation and gender to attitudes toward counseling in Italian and Greek American college students.

This exploratory study examined attitudes toward professional psychological services and help provider characteristics among 232 self-identified Italian and Greek American college students in 3 Northeast colleges. Regarding general attitudes toward psychological services in the Italian American sample, women had a greater recognition of personal need for help and higher confidence in the ability of mental health professionals to meet these needs than did men. With regard to preferred counselor demographic characteristics, regardless of gender, lower acculturated Italian American students had a stronger preference for seeing an ethnically similar counselor. With the Greek American sample, there was an interaction effect between acculturation level and gender on attitudes toward services. Among the higher acculturated Greek students, women were more open regarding their personal concerns than men; however, within the lower acculturated cohort, no gender differences were found. With regard to counselor characteristic variables, and similar to Italian Americans, regardless of gender, lower acculturated Greek Americans had a stronger preference for seeing an ethnically similar counselor to discuss a personal problem. Limitations and implications for further research are noted.

Adolescent motherhood among low-income urban Hispanics: familial considerations of mother-daughter dyads.

A family systems perspective was used to investigate adolescent motherhood among low-income Hispanic families living in high-crime areas. The study focused primarily on the mother-daughter relationship. A semistructured interview was administered separately to mother and daughter in 11 mother-daughter dyads. Using open and axial coding of the data, a grounded theory of adolescent motherhood emerged. The study identified adolescent motherhood as an attempt to restore a sense of stability and balance not only to the life of the teenager but also to that of her mother. The finding that participants became more dependent on and were more supervised by their mothers after their pregnancies raised some paradoxical questions concerning the issue of separation and individuation.

The cultural context of psychology: questions for accurate research and appropriate practice.

This article summarizes the contents of the recent conference, "The Cultural Context of Psychology," held in New York City in August 1995. Using an innovative format of small-group discussions, 22 facilitators posed a total of over 100 key unanswered questions in multicultural psychology. There questions, organized along three categories-awareness, knowledge, and skills-form the foundation of this article. This article serves as a cognitive map for needed research and discussion on multicultural issues in mental health. The references were carefully selected to provide the interested reader with resources for follow-up work on the topics presented.

Screening for depression: use of patient questionnaires.

Despite the prevalence of depression, it is consistently underdiagnosed. As a result, many depressed patients fail to receive adequate treatment and may experience serious consequences, including suicide. Various screening instruments have been developed to identify depression in patients whose symptoms might go unrecognized. Despite the risks associated with screening, many benefits may result. These include increased recognition of depression, alteration of treatment plans and improved clinical outcome.