This study examined psychosocial risk factors for depressive symptomatology in a community sample of pregnant immigrant women in Montreal, Canada. One hundred and nineteen participants were recruited through hospitals and responded to questionnaires assessing depression, somatic symptoms, functional status, social support, stressful life events and marital adjustment. Forty-two percent of participants scored above the cut-off for depression. Depressive symptoms were associated with poorer functional status and more somatic symptoms. Depressed women reported a lack of social support, more stressful life events and poorer marital adjustment. Transitions associated with migration may place pregnant immigrant women at high risk for depression.

The State of Israel can be characterized as having two integration policies: an assimilationist one towards “valued” Jewish immigrants and a somewhat ethnist one towards its “devalued” national minority, namely Israeli Arabs. Using the Host Community Acculturation Scale (HCAS), this study explored Jewish undergraduate (N = 153) acculturation orientations towards “valued” Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background and towards “devalued” Israeli Arabs. Results showed that Jewish undergraduates mainly endorsed the integrationism and individualism acculturation orientations towards Jewish immigrants. However, they were more segregationist and exclusionist towards Israeli Arabs than towards Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background. Assimilation was weakly endorsed towards both Jewish immigrants and Israeli Arabs. Based on an extensive questionnaire, multiple regression analyses showed that each acculturation orientation had a distinct psychological profile. The integrationism and individualism orientations were endorsed by undergraduates who were tolerant towards ethnic diversity, felt secure personally, culturally, and militarily, and did not endorse the social dominance orientation (SDO). In addition to not feeling threatened by the presence of Israeli Arabs, integrationists and individualists were identified as secular Israelis and Labour Party sympathizers rather than as religious Jews. In contrast, the assimilationism, segregationism, and exclusionism orientations were endorsed by undergraduates who felt insecure personally, religiously, culturally, and militarily, who tended to be less tolerant towards ethnic diversity, and who were more prone to endorse the SDO. In addition to feeling threatened by Israeli Arabs, they avoided close relations with Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. Segregationists and exclusionists were identified mainly as Jewish nationals. Orthodox Jews, and as Likud Party sympathizers. Exclusionists were distinctive in also feeling threatened by the presence Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background. While taking into consideration the context of intergroup relations in Israel, results are discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model (Bourhis, Moïse, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997).

People who have an idiocentric value orientation tend to emphasize their own goals and needs over those of the groups to which they belong, and to be independent and self-reliant. Allocentric individuals tend to be cooperative, interdependent, and to have a stronger need to affiliate with others than idio-centrics. A goal of this study was to investigate how children's social relationships and self-esteem vary as a function of their allocentrism. Participants were 419 children between 9 and 18 years of age from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (French Canadian/Quebecois, Greek, Arabic, and Caribbean). As expected, allocentric children reported more social support from their peers than did idiocentric children. In addition, idiocentrics and allocentrics differed in their reported sources of intimacy and companionship, for example from best friends, mothers, and relatives. Also, the self-esteem of idiocentric children, but not of allocentric children, was predicted by social support from their best friend. Implications are that idiocentric and allocentric individuals seek out different members of their social networks to satisfy various needs, and to strengthen their self-esteem.

Categorization of normal or overweight status, using percent overweight and visual inspection, showed good agreement for 51 adolescent girls, but not 70 boys. Only 49% of boys with high relative weights were seen as overweight compared to 90% of girls.

The use of Facilitated Communication techniques recently introduced and now widely used with persons with autism poses a number of ethical dilemmas for psychologists. These dilemmas stem from the lack of empirical support for the validity of messages communicated with facilitation. Using the CPA Code of Ethics for Psychologists (1991) as a guide, this