Kenneth I. Maton - Böcker

Current statistics indicate that a young African-American man is more likely to be incarcerated or killed than to graduate from college. Yet, despite many obstacles, some are beating the odds against them and achieving at society's highest standard of success. How do they avoid such pitfalls, and what can African-American parents do to help their sons succeed? Based on extensive research and interviews with successful young African-American males and their parents, Beating the Odds emphasizes the unique combinations of supportive and challenging parenting practices that parents have adopted to help their sons cope and achieve in both the African-American community and mainstream white society.

When Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males appeared in 1998, it was hailed as "a crucial book" (Baltimore Sun) and "undoubtedly one of the most important tools the African American parent can possess" (Kweisi Mfume, President NAACP).Now, in response to enormous demand, the authors turn their attention to African American young women. Statistics indicate that African American females, as a group, fare poorly in the United States. Many live in single-parent households-either as the single-parent mother or as the daughter. Many face severe economic hurdles. Yet despite these obstacles, some are performing at exceptional levels academically. Based on interviews with many of these successful young women and their families, Overcoming the Odds provides a wealth of information about how and why they have succeeded-what motivates them, how their backgrounds and family relationships have shaped them, even how it feels to be a high academic achiever. They also discuss the challenges of moving into African American womanhood, from maintaining self-esteem to making the right choices about their professional and personal lives. Most important, the book offers specific and inspiring examples of the practices, attitudes, and parenting strategies that have enabled these women to persevere and triumph. For parents, educators, policy makers, and indeed all those concerned about the education of young African American women, Overcoming the Odds is an invaluable guidebook on creating the conditions that lead to academic-and lifelong-success.

Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change combines a focus on understanding social settings as loci for empowering intervention with a focus on understanding and giving voice to citizens. The volume illuminates advances in theory and method relevant to changing a broad spectrum of social settings (including programs, organizations, institutions, communities and social policy) from a strengths-based perspective. Three cross-cutting concepts -- a strengths-based approach to research and social action, empowerment, and narrative research methods -- serve as integrating and foundational themes. Part I takes up issues of setting processes and outcomes of influence, research methods, and implications for setting and community change efforts and social policy. Questions addressed in Part I include: What is the nature of current and future conceptualizations of social settings? What are the actionable features in social settings? How can settings that place a premium on empowerment and promotion be created or restructured? What are the organizational characteristics of empowering community settings? What mechanisms mediate the impact of these characteristics on individual well-being? Part II examines how action scientists have sought to understand and amplify the voices of those individuals and communities who serve as the focus of their research and social change actions. Part II authors explore the role of institutional beliefs, community narratives, and personal stories in recovery from serious mental illness; trace the cultural contours of "mental health" among the Gros Ventres of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation; examine youth voice in the juvenile justice system, illuminating the loss of focus on individualized justice and accountability to youth; and, outline ways in which community narrative can enrich culturally anchored work in prevention and public policy. Finally, chapters in Part III seek to situate the rest of the volume's chapters in the context of decades of work on empowering settings, giving voice and social change.

Influencing Social Policy synthesizes current knowledge about how psychologists influence social policy to serve the public interest. The volume builds upon interviews with 79 applied psychologists about their experiences in the policy domain, with special focus on the work of applied developmental psychologists, applied social psychologists, and community psychologists. Additional foundations of the volume include a review of social science scholarship across a wide range of disciplines, and author Kenneth Maton's 30 years of teaching on the topic, including frequent interactions with Washington, DC, policy experts.Together, these sources provide in-depth information about how applied psychologists influence social policy, the factors that contribute to their success, the challenges they face, and the approaches used to address those challenges. The policy influences described span all three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. The policy content areas are diverse, including the death penalty prohibition for adolescents, early childhood education, gay marriage, gender discrimination in the workplace, health and mental health care reform, homelessness, home visiting programs, sexually abused child witness treatment, status offender diversion from the juvenile justice system, substance abuse prevention, and many others.Influencing Social Policy is a must-have resource for graduate students and professionals in a wide variety of disciplines with interests in influencing social policy, including psychology, education, public health, social work, policy studies, anthropology, and sociology.

Here is the first book which highlights the unique resource of religion in the field of prevention. Until now, religious systems have been a largely undertapped resource of talent, energy, care, and physical and financial assets. Religion and Prevention in Mental Health is a significant new volume that lays a general foundation for preventive work in the religious area. It presents a number of reasons for examining religion as a source for aiding prevention and well-being. The authors dispute the popular notion of religion as damaging to mental health, as well as the idea that religious affiliation is entirely predictive of better mental health. Instead they focus on the framework for living that religions provide which assists believers in anticipating, avoiding, or modifying problems before they develop. For the human service professional willing to build a collaborative relationship with religious systems, this vital book depicts the richness and diversity of religion and shows the interface of religion, well-being, and prevention. Important issues such as the impact of religion on American society and the ethos of mental health and prevention, the historical and contemporary role of the African-American church as an empowering agent and mediating structure for black citizens, the critical roles of theology in determining the attitude of religious systems toward prevention and well-being, the importance of community and personal narratives, and the limitations of religious settings due to their survival concerns and methods to increase their potential to heal are all discussed thoroughly. Through a better understanding of religious settings, programs, and processes, human service professionals can more effectively utilize religion and reach a neglected portion of the population in need of help. In addition, religious leaders, mental health professionals including counselors, social workers, program developers, evaluators, and administrators, and psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists will benefit from the comprehensive material provided in this timely book.