2010 APA Convention Blog

A glimpse at the APA Caregiver Briefcase

As so many of the presidential programming sessions at this year's APA Annual Convention have already emphasized, caregiving is a responsibility that will touch almost all of us at some point in our lives. And with an aging population and so many people caring for ill and disabled children and young adults, the need for help from psychologists on reducing the stresses on family caregivers across the lifespan will only continue to grow.

In response to this need, APA President Carol Goodheart, PhD, convened the APA Presidential Task Force on Caregivers in the spring of 2009. The culmination of their work on the issue of caregiving will be revealed in early 2011 with the launch of the web-based APA Family Caregiver Briefcase for Psychologists. At a session Saturday, Goodheart and the other task-force members provided a glimpse into several of the components of the briefcase, including:

• Facts and figures about family caregiving and common caregiving problems
• Tips on how to reach caregivers
• Assessment and intervention strategies and tools
• Information on conducting caregiver research
• Advice on addressing the needs of culturally diverse groups

Adolescents and healthy sexual attitudes

Young people today are bombarded with messages about sex from the media, advertising and their peers. Unfortunately, one message they're often not hearing is how to make their own healthy decisions about sex. Researchers at APA's Annual Convention shared some of the latest research on what affects those messages and how parents and teachers can do more to help adolescents make better decisions.

How to die with dignity not so easy to decide

My husband and I don't have living wills - those instructions specifying what actions should be taken for our health in the event that we are no longer able to make decisions due to illness or incapacity. We've talked about our wishes informally but have mostly left it at that. It turns out we're not alone, according to social psychologist Peter Ditto, PhD, of the Unviersity of California, Irvine, who says only about 25 percent of Americans have some kind of living will or advance directive in place. He presented several of his research findings today at a presentation titled "Is the Living Will Dead?" 

Why do kids kill themselves?

There's a wealth of data on adolescent suicide, and numerous programs and interventions designed to prevent it. But what about even younger children? In 2006, 56 children under the age of 12 committed suicide -- about one per week. And there's a staggering lack of research into suicide among kids this young. As a first step toward addressing that problem, a panel convened at APA's Annual Convention to share with audience members what's currently known, what still needs further research, and what can be done about it.

Are teachers safe?

Teachers in the United States aren't just underpaid, they're often abused on the job by students and their parents, according to research by APA's Task Force on Violence Against Teachers presented today at APA's Annual Convention in San Diego. Of the 4,735 urban, suburban and rural teachers the task force surveyed, 26.6 percent reported they had been verbally threatened by a student in the past year. Thirty-seven percent had received obscene or sexual remarks from a student, while 31 percent said a student had made an obscene gesture to them or groped them. Nineteen percent said they had been intimidated by a student; 12.7 percent by a student's parent.

"These numbers did not differ by school setting, by gender of the teacher or by years of teaching," said Dorothy L. Espelage, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who chairs the task force.

Five percent of the teachers they surveyed had been physically attacked severely enough to see a doctor, said Espelage. Twenty-two percent said a student had thrown something at them that year. "Thirteen percent of our teachers said that parents had thrown things at them," she said.

Espelage said the task force plans to release more data from the survey next year.

Love code: Social engagement and social bonding

Picture a mother holding her newborn infant. The mother calmly and contentedly rocks her baby, not clutching for fear of dropping the infant. At the heart of this moment is the uniquely mammalian hormone oxytocin, says Sue Carter, PhD, a neuroscientist in the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago who will co-present with Stephen Porges, PhD, also of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Oxytocin acts on autonomic systems, such as the brain stem, and allows us to manage the challenge of meeting a new partner, falling in love and caring for our offspring.

“Love — acting in part through oxytocin — helps us heal body, brain and behavior,” Carter says.

What makes us happy: Marriage, kids and money? Well, maybe...

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, PhD, had the room in stitches as he bounded around the opening session stage, expounding on the secrets of happiness. And they're not what you think they are.

In a wide-ranging talk entitled "Happiness: What Your Mother Didn't Tell You," Gilbert said his mother told him the secrets to happiness were to get married, make money and have kids. "Was my mom right about any of this, or all of it?" he asked.

Marriage seems to be associated with happiness he said, showing statistics from research indicating that married people report being happier than unmarried people. However, after about 10 years of marriage, people report their happiness declines. "It's not marriage that makes you happy," he said, "it's a happy marriage that makes you happy."