PSYC 412 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Psychopathology, Child Abuse
14 May 2018
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PSYC 412: Developmental Psychopathology
April 15th 2018
Lecture 24: Prevention
• Prevention:
o Can we stop children’s mental health problems before they even start?
o Can we target risk factors or identify kids we know are at risk for developing
psychopathology and intervene early?
• Dissemination:
o Are evidence-based approaches being used in practice today? If not then why not?
• Risk factors for the development of psychopathology in childhood
o Poverty, child abuse, and parental psychopathology
o Poverty
▪ Low SES is a risk factor for a lot of psychological problems
▪ Particularly behavioral problems: e.g. the Casino study
▪ Recall from the Casino study that low SES actually has been shown to
cause behavioral problems
• If we could change conditions associated with poverty, could we
change behavior problems? Reduce them?
▪ Poverty is a big variable
• Messy proxy variable: it’s associated with so many things and so
many risk factors
• One risk factor is neighborhood
o Neighborhoods are characterized by problematic features to
children’s development
o Higher levels of violence
o Adolescents and children engaged in criminal, delinquent
behavior
o Fewer positive adult role models
o Schools aren’t as good
o School funding tied to property taxes in the USA, so in
affluent neighborhoods with expensive houses the public
schools are better
▪ Moving to Opportunity (MTO)
• What if we can move people out of high-poverty neighborhoods
and into affluent ones? Would that be associated with gains for
children?
• Operated from 1994-1998 in multiple cities
• Families eligible had children and were living in heavily
subsidized public housing
• Had to be living in a high poverty neighborhood to begin with:
more than 40% of residents in that neighborhood living below
federal poverty line
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find more resources at oneclass.com
• They randomly assigned participants to move
o Recruited 4608 eligible families
o One group given a low poverty voucher group (LPV) that
had to be used in a low poverty neighborhood only
o Section 8 group was given voucher that was unrestricted,
they could take it and move anywhere (S8)
o Control group weren’t given any help, got the existing
programs
• Does moving make a difference in general?
• Results:
o A lot of people who got the vouchers did not move
o In lower poverty group 47% of families moved
o Section 8 only 68% used the voucher to move
• Selected characteristics of sample
o This intervention targeted a disadvantaged group
o 22% of household heads employed
o 87% single moms
o Baltimore and Chicago samples were almost 100%
African-American, in LA and NY 50% African-American
and 50% Hispanic
o In Boston, 20% of sample is non-Hispanic white or Asian
• Outcomes:
o They found that for the adults, assignment to either of the
voucher mobility groups → adults reported feeling safer
and more satisfied in their new homes/neighborhoods
▪ This didn’t seem to translate into gains for the kids
in educational outcomes, however
▪ No significant improvements in children’s
educational outcomes as a result of moving: no
difference in scores on reading and math
achievement
▪ Didn’t differ across 3 groups
▪ Educational attainment didn’t differ across 3 groups
▪ One reason for these outcomes: kids would get into
better schools by virtue of moving to more affluent
neighborhoods, in all 3 groups kids attended schools
below 25th percentile on state achievement test
▪ They weren’t in high-achieving schools so maybe
the school wasn’t good enough to show change sin
educational outcomes
• Youth mental health outcomes:
o Big conclusion from this study: it helped girls, didn’t help
boys
o For girls
▪ In low poverty voucher group showed less
psychological stress and fewer behavioral problems
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find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Section 8 group showed less depression, less CD
than control
▪ Both moving groups showed less generalized
anxiety disorder than control
o Boys
▪ In low poverty voucher more likely to be arrested,
more likely to have smoked cigarettes/marijuana,
and showed increased rates of CD and major
depression
▪ Harmful?
• In general, one of the big findings from this study was that it
looked like there were benefits for girls but not for boys
o Why is that?
o Hypothesis:
o 1. Safety may mean different things to boys and girls
▪ Higher poverty neighborhoods more dangerous but
in different ways: for boys, more likely to be killed
compared to girls. Girls in those neighborhoods
more likely to be sexually assaulted
▪ Rates of sexual predation much lower in lower
poverty neighborhoods
▪ Girls maybe less likely to be sexually victimized in
these neighborhoods
o 2. Social skills that are necessary to capitalize on the
opportunities that might be available in their new
neighborhoods
▪ Some anthropologists have written about boys
growing up in high poverty neighborhoods is that
they need to look/act tough to cope in the
neighborhoods, show aggressive behavior
▪ To avoid victimization they have to do this
▪ These behaviors are problematic because they
attract the attention of adults more in low-poverty
neighborhoods
▪ More likely to be arrested because behaviors that
were not noticed or policed in really high poverty
neighborhoods, but when the same things happened
in low poverty, more affluent neighborhoods the
boys were much more likely to be arrested for them
▪ In the low poverty voucher group you only needed
to stay for a year in the neighborhood to keep your
benefit
• A lot of the families went back to their
original neighborhoods because they missed
their social networks/families
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
