Over the past few years, the concept of coherence as it applies to people's storied accounts of their lives has become an increasingly popular topic. However, theories of coherence have been slow to appear, and a comprehensive definition of the construct has yet to be presented by researchers. Moreover, almost no work has been done relating the concept of coherence to the particular form of the life story. Thus, the aims of the present study were twofold: first, to investigate whether it is possible to construct a reliable coding scheme for life story coherence, and second, to examine the relationships between life story coherence and mental health. The results of the study indicate that the life story coherence coding system is a reliable measure, and that the coherence construct is therefore amenable to quantitative analysis. The most important finding of this study was that, as predicted, life story coherence demonstrated a statistically significant relationship to psychological well-being. This finding thus lends statistical credibility to the claims of narrative psychologists, who argue that mental well-being is related to, if not the result of, a well-integrated and coherent life story.

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This paper tests family development and life-course perspectives in explaining marital quality over the course of marriage for black and white adults. The sample of 1430 adults (1097 white, 333 black) in their first marriage was from a 1986 national survey. As expected, positive marital quality (satisfaction and interdependence) had significant curvilinear patterns across length of marriage but only satisfaction showed the characteristic U-shape with a dip in the middle years which is consistent with a family life-cycle explanation. Furthermore, family structure variables did not eliminate this pattern, although family financial factors reduced it to marginal significance. Negative marital quality (discord and spouse negative behavior) had significant negative linear patterns over the marital life course, which were unaffected by family life-cycle variables. All four patterns were similar for blacks and whites, except that blacks had a stronger negative linear association between negative marital quality and marriage length. Marital quality was significantly lower among blacks on all measures; kin relation and status inequality variables did not eliminate this difference. The results suggest that marital quality is better explained by a life-course perspective than by the family development model.

Suicide continues to account for a comparatively large proportion of all lawsuits filed against mental health professionals. However, despite the prominence of suicide in mental health malpractice litigation, clinicians must resist resorting to defensive clinical practices in an attempt to shield themselves from potential lawsuits. By using accepted tenets of suicide management as a starting point, the author aims in this article to inform and educate practitioners about clinical malpractice from a legal, as well as a clinical, point of view. Hence, this article aims to demystify relevant case law for practitioners by offering informative, real life examples of how therapeutic practice is interpreted in the courtroom, as well as examples of how juries and judges typically view the treatment decisions clinicians routinely make regarding their suicidal patients.Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States and the third leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 (Moscicki, 1997). Empirical research indicates that 20% of psychologists (i.e., those with a doctoral-level degree) and 50% of psychiatrists will lose a patient to suicide during their careers (Chemtob,

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