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Communication disorders in multicultural populations
Sm. Sci. Med. Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 299-304, 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 0277-9536/94 $7.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
BOOK REVIEWS
Self Control and the Addictive Behaviours, edited by N. HEATHER, W. R. MILLER and J. GREELEY. Maxwell Macmillan Publishing, Botany New South Wales, Australia, 1991. XV + 382 pp. $64.00
and psychoneuroimmunological aspects of stress. Part three, chapters 6,7 and 8, explores the link between health-related behaviours and prevention. Chapter six forms the introduction in this interconnected tripartite discussion on how issues involved in health develop and are maintained, how they affect people’s health, and measures that could be taken in preventing or reducing this undesirable health-related behaviour. Chapters 7 and 8 for instance, explore health costs of substance abuse as well as how nutrition, weight control, exercise and safety help in preventing or reducing illness rates. Part four, chaps 9 and 10, focuses more on the kinds of services available and speculates reasons why individuals either use or delay using or refuse to use health services. Chapter 9, for instance, concentrates on the relationship between the therapist/patient and the issues of compliance to medical regimens. Chapter 10 attempts to explore the reactions to hospitalization by patients and their coping styles with adversal medical procedures. Part five, chaps 11 and 12, covers the biophysical and biopsychological aspects of pain, methods of assessing patient discomfort and assessment and management strategies of pain control. Part six, chaps 14 and 15, explores the effect of severe health conditions on patients and their families. Chapter 14 draws heavily on severe health problems such as diabetes and arthritis, which have low mortality rates but lead to other severe ‘disabling’ problems. The final chapter shows, in contrast, the effects of cancer, stroke, CHD and AIDS (all high mortality illnesses) on individual experiences and reactions to fatal illness and loss. The author’s charisma and expertise in using this method came across forcibly and is obviously successful in his hands. Occasionally, he sets out a line of argument and then seems to lose his way, but, on the whole, it is a book with its heart in the right place. In this context, it is not surprising that this book is something of a collage less representative of the new contributions in the addictive behaviour research field (Boyle, 1988). All in all, the book will serve as a springboard for further investigations in the area of self-control and addictive behaviour as it provides a valuable resource for addictive behaviour researchers. It offers a wide range of topics and theoretical approaches. My only gripes have been discussed above. The writing is well-edited, rarely turgid or ponderous and occasionally witty and self-expressive. The index is adequate. Each chapter ends with its own references. I would consider it a valuable reference book for anyone with serious interest in addictive behaviour.
Self-regulation or self-control is the key capacity to plan, guide and monitor one’s behaviour flexibly in accordance to changing events. This definition is quite consonant with that employed by Kanfer (1985), one of the few eminent psychologists who has attempted to operationalise the construct. He defines self-control as “The exercise of a controlling response or strategy that reduces the probability of executing a behaviour that is either very firmly established as a long time habit or momentarily attractive because it fulfils biologically acquired needs and desires . . .” (pp. 29-30). This volume is the product of a conference on treatment of addictive behaviours held in Sydney, Australia in February 1990. Although it suffers the discontinuities that are inevitable in any collage of papers by different authors, it is more cohesive than most and its contributors were well chosen to indicate a global scope. The book is structured in four broad sections. The first part, conceptual foundation, provides a conceptual overview. It has one chapter which discusses self-control as an organising construct in the addictive behaviours. The second part, theoretical perspectives, has two chapters concerning self-control in the addictive behaviour from developmental, neuro-psychological and association learning perspective. Part three, special issues, has five chapters, dealing with various special concerns of self-control to the addictive behaviours and its central problems. For instance chap. 6 concentrates on loss of control over alcohol consumption from the viewpoint of ‘priming dose’ experiments. Part four, has 6 chapters attempting to focus on the impact of self-control for treatment and prevention. The last three chapters of the book dealt with primary and secondary prevention. These include self-regulation strategies to the prevention of HIV infection among intravenous drug users and discussion on applying locus of control for the combat of alcohol problems. The book is elaborated in 14 chapters. The first part explores the link between health and the individual’s experience of stress. This section is comprised of two chapters. The first chapter includes some general discussions of history, focus, major concept and research methods of the discipline. The second chapter examines the author’s reason for introducing the physiological principles. Part two of the book, chaps 3,4 and 5 attempts to translate the link between stress and illness into a set of methods for coping and reduction. In this section the chapters are interconnected with the central theme of body systems and biological, physiological
University of the Western Cape Bellville Republic of South Africa
Communication Disorders in Multicultural Populations, by DEL~RES E. BATTLE. Andover Medical Publishers, Boston, 1993. 320 pp., __ $39.50.
ADEBOWALEAKANDE
demographic realities of U.S. society. i.e. minoritv DODUlationi are increasing at a faster rate than whites. Byihk year 2010. one third of the U.S. oooulation will consist of min&ities. By the middle of the-next century, whites will be a minority. This book is also a response to the challenge put forward in 1991 by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association’s action plan: “Multicultural Action Agenda
This book is a guide for the health professional committed to providing health service responsive to all members of society. It was written, in part, in response to the 299
300
Book Reviews
2000”. One of the goals of this action plan is to “institutionalize a commitment to sociocultural diversity throughout the Association and professions, particularly in the area of clinical practice, professional education, and research.” This work draws much of its material from the experience of 18 U.S. speech-language pathologists and audiologists, all of whom are leading experts. Following her own excellent introduction, Delores Battle has masterfully put together an informative collection of I1 articles by 17 contributing authors. Together, these articles meet Dr Battle’s objective of providing “a framework for speech-language pathologists and audiologists to develop an understanding of the many issues related to service provision to persons of different cultures and racial backgrounds”. Substantial material about United States cultural diversity is included in this book. Health and education professionals, child development specialists, community organizers, program planners and policy makers from all countries would benefit from reading this important book. This is because in today’s increasingly smaller and better connected world, there is virtually no ethnically pure society, nor any society that is isolated from other societies. Also, as Priscilla Nellum-Davis states in her chapter on clinical practice issues, “cultural diversity is one of the greatest resources of the human species”. Therefore, this book will provide opportunities for readers from any culture to learn from U.S. experiences. The book, with its well-coordinated chapters, is divided into two parts. Part I provides surveys of the major characteristics of speech and language for the four main cultural groups of the United States: African-American, AsianAmerican, American Indian and Hispanic. Topics included historical perspectives about each culture, acculturation issues, language behaviors, child-rearing practices, and implications for assessment and intervention. Each chapter also emphasizes the potential for a wide range of individual variability within major cultural group with respect to degree of assimilation, socioeconomic status and educational experience.
Part II begins with the role of culture on specific communication disorders. Included here are descriptions of fluency, voice, adult neurogenic and hearing disorders. There are also discussions of multicultural aspects of deafness and some clinical practice issues. Overall, this book provides an interesting, well organized, clearly written and practical guide to cultural diversity for those who want to try to meet the needs of a population with an increasingly wider range of learning styles, family and linguistic backgrounds, definitions and impairments and world views. Most of the well-referenced chapters contain concrete suggestions and/or guidelines for prevention, assessment and intervention. They also contain many definitions to aid the reader in the understanding of the materials. The outstanding message emerging from the book is that there is much to be done in the field if appropriate and successful services are to be provided. For example, audiological evaluation speech measures standardized in Spanish are needed as is a better understanding of the behaviors and problems of non-English speaking and ethnic minority deaf. The major weakness of the book is its inability in Part I to provide any more than a very superficial overview of each of the four major cultural groups described. Additionally, in spite of noting that there is a greater prevalence of speech impediments among minorities than among whites, only brief mention was made of the possibility of training more minority people to get involved professionally in the field. Dr Battle has written an important and useful book. It should be read by anyone desiring to strengthen his or her ability to effectively deal with cultural diversity.
Health Care for the Poor in Latin America and the Caribbean, by CARMELOMESA-LAGO. Pan American Health Organisation, Inter American Foundation, PAHO Scientific Publication No. 539, Washington, DC, 1992. 234~~.
facilities in the region, sources of health care financing, size, distribution and growing trends of health care expenditures. The analysis was carried out considering separately, whenever possible, the public sector, the private one and the social insurance. Accomplished interventions are assessed in order to achieve results and even in order to compare available historical figures. From this the author deducts that the current model of health care in Latin America is, in general, extremely expensive, inefficient and unfair. In order to examine more closely this conclusion, which takes into consideration the different social, cultural, political and economic realities, the author presents in the second part of the study an analysis of countries: Uruguay, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Dominican Republic. Their inclusion followed four criteria: size and geographical location of the country; level of economic and social development; poverty evidence and size of the informal sector and, finally, the traditional rural sector and social insurance health coverage and existence or not of special programs for protection of the poor. The comparison between the situation in the 5 chosen countries was made taking into consideration mainly 16 variables. For example: territorial and population size, degree of economical development, poverty incidence, rate of informal/traditional rural sectors, social insurance coverage, running of special programs. A very impressive description about health care systems in these 5 countries results from this.
The author is a distinguished service professor of economics and Latin American studies at University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.). The study was commissioned and supported by the Inter-American Foundation and the results were presented jointly with the Pan American Health Organisation. It was carried out over a two year period, from August 1988 to October 1990. The study defines poverty as “the inability to attain a minimum standard of living or to purchase the minimum basket of goods and services required for the satisfaction of basic needs”. In 1989 it was estimated that there were 183 million poor in Latin America equal to 44% of its total population and about 70% have no access to health care. In each part of the book, attention is focused on two major groups of the poor: in urban areas those who live in the informal sector, particularly the self-employed, unpaid family workers and domestic servants; in rural areas particularly landless peasants, small farmers and temporary/casual/seasonal workers. In both rural and urban areas, the unemployed. The first part of the study takes into consideration recent data from Latin American and Caribbean countries regarding the description of health care systems, estimates of health care coverage of population, health standards and
Tuffs University GEORGIASGULDAN Medford, MA OZISS, U.S.A. and West China University of Medical Sciences Chengdu, Sichuan 610041, P.R.C.
Pergamon
BOOK REVIEWS
Self Control and the Addictive Behaviours, edited by N. HEATHER, W. R. MILLER and J. GREELEY. Maxwell Macmillan Publishing, Botany New South Wales, Australia, 1991. XV + 382 pp. $64.00
and psychoneuroimmunological aspects of stress. Part three, chapters 6,7 and 8, explores the link between health-related behaviours and prevention. Chapter six forms the introduction in this interconnected tripartite discussion on how issues involved in health develop and are maintained, how they affect people’s health, and measures that could be taken in preventing or reducing this undesirable health-related behaviour. Chapters 7 and 8 for instance, explore health costs of substance abuse as well as how nutrition, weight control, exercise and safety help in preventing or reducing illness rates. Part four, chaps 9 and 10, focuses more on the kinds of services available and speculates reasons why individuals either use or delay using or refuse to use health services. Chapter 9, for instance, concentrates on the relationship between the therapist/patient and the issues of compliance to medical regimens. Chapter 10 attempts to explore the reactions to hospitalization by patients and their coping styles with adversal medical procedures. Part five, chaps 11 and 12, covers the biophysical and biopsychological aspects of pain, methods of assessing patient discomfort and assessment and management strategies of pain control. Part six, chaps 14 and 15, explores the effect of severe health conditions on patients and their families. Chapter 14 draws heavily on severe health problems such as diabetes and arthritis, which have low mortality rates but lead to other severe ‘disabling’ problems. The final chapter shows, in contrast, the effects of cancer, stroke, CHD and AIDS (all high mortality illnesses) on individual experiences and reactions to fatal illness and loss. The author’s charisma and expertise in using this method came across forcibly and is obviously successful in his hands. Occasionally, he sets out a line of argument and then seems to lose his way, but, on the whole, it is a book with its heart in the right place. In this context, it is not surprising that this book is something of a collage less representative of the new contributions in the addictive behaviour research field (Boyle, 1988). All in all, the book will serve as a springboard for further investigations in the area of self-control and addictive behaviour as it provides a valuable resource for addictive behaviour researchers. It offers a wide range of topics and theoretical approaches. My only gripes have been discussed above. The writing is well-edited, rarely turgid or ponderous and occasionally witty and self-expressive. The index is adequate. Each chapter ends with its own references. I would consider it a valuable reference book for anyone with serious interest in addictive behaviour.
Self-regulation or self-control is the key capacity to plan, guide and monitor one’s behaviour flexibly in accordance to changing events. This definition is quite consonant with that employed by Kanfer (1985), one of the few eminent psychologists who has attempted to operationalise the construct. He defines self-control as “The exercise of a controlling response or strategy that reduces the probability of executing a behaviour that is either very firmly established as a long time habit or momentarily attractive because it fulfils biologically acquired needs and desires . . .” (pp. 29-30). This volume is the product of a conference on treatment of addictive behaviours held in Sydney, Australia in February 1990. Although it suffers the discontinuities that are inevitable in any collage of papers by different authors, it is more cohesive than most and its contributors were well chosen to indicate a global scope. The book is structured in four broad sections. The first part, conceptual foundation, provides a conceptual overview. It has one chapter which discusses self-control as an organising construct in the addictive behaviours. The second part, theoretical perspectives, has two chapters concerning self-control in the addictive behaviour from developmental, neuro-psychological and association learning perspective. Part three, special issues, has five chapters, dealing with various special concerns of self-control to the addictive behaviours and its central problems. For instance chap. 6 concentrates on loss of control over alcohol consumption from the viewpoint of ‘priming dose’ experiments. Part four, has 6 chapters attempting to focus on the impact of self-control for treatment and prevention. The last three chapters of the book dealt with primary and secondary prevention. These include self-regulation strategies to the prevention of HIV infection among intravenous drug users and discussion on applying locus of control for the combat of alcohol problems. The book is elaborated in 14 chapters. The first part explores the link between health and the individual’s experience of stress. This section is comprised of two chapters. The first chapter includes some general discussions of history, focus, major concept and research methods of the discipline. The second chapter examines the author’s reason for introducing the physiological principles. Part two of the book, chaps 3,4 and 5 attempts to translate the link between stress and illness into a set of methods for coping and reduction. In this section the chapters are interconnected with the central theme of body systems and biological, physiological
University of the Western Cape Bellville Republic of South Africa
Communication Disorders in Multicultural Populations, by DEL~RES E. BATTLE. Andover Medical Publishers, Boston, 1993. 320 pp., __ $39.50.
ADEBOWALEAKANDE
demographic realities of U.S. society. i.e. minoritv DODUlationi are increasing at a faster rate than whites. Byihk year 2010. one third of the U.S. oooulation will consist of min&ities. By the middle of the-next century, whites will be a minority. This book is also a response to the challenge put forward in 1991 by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association’s action plan: “Multicultural Action Agenda
This book is a guide for the health professional committed to providing health service responsive to all members of society. It was written, in part, in response to the 299
300
Book Reviews
2000”. One of the goals of this action plan is to “institutionalize a commitment to sociocultural diversity throughout the Association and professions, particularly in the area of clinical practice, professional education, and research.” This work draws much of its material from the experience of 18 U.S. speech-language pathologists and audiologists, all of whom are leading experts. Following her own excellent introduction, Delores Battle has masterfully put together an informative collection of I1 articles by 17 contributing authors. Together, these articles meet Dr Battle’s objective of providing “a framework for speech-language pathologists and audiologists to develop an understanding of the many issues related to service provision to persons of different cultures and racial backgrounds”. Substantial material about United States cultural diversity is included in this book. Health and education professionals, child development specialists, community organizers, program planners and policy makers from all countries would benefit from reading this important book. This is because in today’s increasingly smaller and better connected world, there is virtually no ethnically pure society, nor any society that is isolated from other societies. Also, as Priscilla Nellum-Davis states in her chapter on clinical practice issues, “cultural diversity is one of the greatest resources of the human species”. Therefore, this book will provide opportunities for readers from any culture to learn from U.S. experiences. The book, with its well-coordinated chapters, is divided into two parts. Part I provides surveys of the major characteristics of speech and language for the four main cultural groups of the United States: African-American, AsianAmerican, American Indian and Hispanic. Topics included historical perspectives about each culture, acculturation issues, language behaviors, child-rearing practices, and implications for assessment and intervention. Each chapter also emphasizes the potential for a wide range of individual variability within major cultural group with respect to degree of assimilation, socioeconomic status and educational experience.
Part II begins with the role of culture on specific communication disorders. Included here are descriptions of fluency, voice, adult neurogenic and hearing disorders. There are also discussions of multicultural aspects of deafness and some clinical practice issues. Overall, this book provides an interesting, well organized, clearly written and practical guide to cultural diversity for those who want to try to meet the needs of a population with an increasingly wider range of learning styles, family and linguistic backgrounds, definitions and impairments and world views. Most of the well-referenced chapters contain concrete suggestions and/or guidelines for prevention, assessment and intervention. They also contain many definitions to aid the reader in the understanding of the materials. The outstanding message emerging from the book is that there is much to be done in the field if appropriate and successful services are to be provided. For example, audiological evaluation speech measures standardized in Spanish are needed as is a better understanding of the behaviors and problems of non-English speaking and ethnic minority deaf. The major weakness of the book is its inability in Part I to provide any more than a very superficial overview of each of the four major cultural groups described. Additionally, in spite of noting that there is a greater prevalence of speech impediments among minorities than among whites, only brief mention was made of the possibility of training more minority people to get involved professionally in the field. Dr Battle has written an important and useful book. It should be read by anyone desiring to strengthen his or her ability to effectively deal with cultural diversity.
Health Care for the Poor in Latin America and the Caribbean, by CARMELOMESA-LAGO. Pan American Health Organisation, Inter American Foundation, PAHO Scientific Publication No. 539, Washington, DC, 1992. 234~~.
facilities in the region, sources of health care financing, size, distribution and growing trends of health care expenditures. The analysis was carried out considering separately, whenever possible, the public sector, the private one and the social insurance. Accomplished interventions are assessed in order to achieve results and even in order to compare available historical figures. From this the author deducts that the current model of health care in Latin America is, in general, extremely expensive, inefficient and unfair. In order to examine more closely this conclusion, which takes into consideration the different social, cultural, political and economic realities, the author presents in the second part of the study an analysis of countries: Uruguay, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Dominican Republic. Their inclusion followed four criteria: size and geographical location of the country; level of economic and social development; poverty evidence and size of the informal sector and, finally, the traditional rural sector and social insurance health coverage and existence or not of special programs for protection of the poor. The comparison between the situation in the 5 chosen countries was made taking into consideration mainly 16 variables. For example: territorial and population size, degree of economical development, poverty incidence, rate of informal/traditional rural sectors, social insurance coverage, running of special programs. A very impressive description about health care systems in these 5 countries results from this.
The author is a distinguished service professor of economics and Latin American studies at University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.). The study was commissioned and supported by the Inter-American Foundation and the results were presented jointly with the Pan American Health Organisation. It was carried out over a two year period, from August 1988 to October 1990. The study defines poverty as “the inability to attain a minimum standard of living or to purchase the minimum basket of goods and services required for the satisfaction of basic needs”. In 1989 it was estimated that there were 183 million poor in Latin America equal to 44% of its total population and about 70% have no access to health care. In each part of the book, attention is focused on two major groups of the poor: in urban areas those who live in the informal sector, particularly the self-employed, unpaid family workers and domestic servants; in rural areas particularly landless peasants, small farmers and temporary/casual/seasonal workers. In both rural and urban areas, the unemployed. The first part of the study takes into consideration recent data from Latin American and Caribbean countries regarding the description of health care systems, estimates of health care coverage of population, health standards and
Tuffs University GEORGIASGULDAN Medford, MA OZISS, U.S.A. and West China University of Medical Sciences Chengdu, Sichuan 610041, P.R.C.