The cultural understanding of illness among caregivers of first-episode psychotic persons is a crucial issue. Not only does it influence caregivers’ care-seeking behavior and length of time until receiving medical treatment (known as the ‘duration of untreated psychosis’ or DUP), but it also predicts the outcome of the illness. This article aims to explore cultural understanding and care-seeking behavior among caregivers of psychotic patients in Java, Indonesia. Data for this article have been taken from two studies conducted by our research group in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Methods of data collection include surveys, case studies, ethnographic fieldwork, and in-depth interviews. Results of analyses, within and across studies, indicate that caregivers have employed diverse cultural explanatory models in order to understand psychotic illness. Local cultural beliefs, including possession and forms of black magic, were among the most common initial concepts held by family members in relation to psychosis. This echoes broader cultural beliefs in Java. However, it was not uncommon for caregivers to also understand illness in psychological terms (such as frustration, disappointment, and stress) and attached medical explanations. Caregivers’ understanding of illness also changed over time following the changing course of the illness. Both models of illness and the rapidity of care-seeking are also related to the acuteness of onset. This article concludes that it is important for mental health providers, as well as those designing systems of care, to understand the diversity and changing nature of caregivers’ cultural understanding of psychotic illness.

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Subjective well-being is one indicator of individual's and society's quality of life. Adolescent subjective well-being should therefore be studied to understand the factors that may promote life satisfaction and positive affect of adolescents. These factors mitigate the negative effects of stressful life events against the development of psychological and behavioral problems.This study aims to determine the role of self-esteem, forgiveness, and perception of family harmony in subjective well-being of adolescents. Subjects of this study were 226 adolescents (aged 12-21 years old). The result of multiple regression analysis indicated that self-esteem, forgiveness, and perception of family harmony simultaneously served as predictors of subjective well-being in adolescents (F=48.271; p<.01). However, from beta coefficients of each predictor, it was evident that only self-esteem served as a predictor of adolescents' subjective well-being (p<.01), whereas forgiveness and perception of family harmony did not serve as predictors of subjective well-being in adolescents (p>.05). The results also showed that the coefficient of multiple determination for subjective well-being was 0.387 (seen from Adjusted R Square), meaning that 38.7% variance of subjective well-being in adolescents of this study was influenced by self-esteem, forgiveness, and the perception of family harmony, while 61.3% was influenced by other variables.

Parental divorce can be a very stressful experience for adolescents. Adolescents will lose their parent figure and feel different atmosphere in the family. This study aimed to identify the psychological dynamics of adolescents that have experienced parental divorce developing into juvenile delinquency. This was a case study research. The subject of this study was a 13-year-old boy with divorced parent and lived in an orphanage. Data were collected through observations, interviews, and psychological tests. The result revealed that juvenile delinquency happens because of the need of gaining attention from others. The wrong mindset "I will get attention if I commit juvenile delinquency and disturb others" became the basis of the subject’s socially inappropriate behaviors. It was the way to compensate his inferior feelings to the environment.