Judith L. Rubenstein’s research while affiliated with Boston University and other places

Investigated parental marital status with respect to (1) the degree of its direct association with adolescent suicidal behavior, and (2) as a family context that mediates the influence of previously identified stress and protective factors. 272 10th- and 11th-grade students completed a comprehensive battery of self-report instruments, including the Beck Depression Inventory and The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales. Recent suicidal behavior was reported by 14% of the Ss. Two-thirds of the suicidal teenagers neither received help nor disclosed their self-harm to anyone. Depression and stress,especially family suicidality, feeling of violation, and sexuality,increased the risk, as did parental separation, divorce, and most dramatically, remarriage. Family cohesiveness helped alleviate the risk in the nonintact families. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Self-reported depressive affect was examined in high school students in relation to stress and the quality of relationships with family and friends. Higher levels of depressive affect were connected with stress around sexuality and achievement, lower levels of family cohesion, and more problematic peer relationships. The effects of high stress were buffered for boys by positive peer relationships, and for girls by cohesive family relationships.

Risk and protective factors were examined in suicidal and nonsuicidal public high school students. With life stress and depression as independent risk factors, family cohesion was found to offset the effect of stress, and friendships to have a more indirect effect. Differential effects of ten sources of stress were analyzed from a developmental perspective, and the probability of suicidal behavior associated with clusters of factors was estimated for the general population.

This study investigates the relationship between depressive affect and restraint and family and friendship variables in 103 unselected sixth graders (56 girls). Family measures included family structure (intact vs. two-parent families) and four family processes; communication with father, communication with mother, family cohesion and family adaptability. In addition, friendship support was assessed. Family structure was related to depression, but not after family processes were partialled out. Stepwise multiple regression models indicated that family cohesion and friendship support accounted for more than 50 percent of the variance in depressive affect. A high risk group for depressive affect was identified: Adolescents from single parent families with low friendship support had scores in the clinically depressed range. Restraint was best predicted by gender and mother-adolescent communication in the regression models, whereas family structure and friendship support did not account for further variance. Both depression and restraint were related to the number of stressors. The implications for the etiology of depressive affect and behavior problems were discussed.

Children's art was studied as a function of (1) gender of child, (2) picture condition (drawings of same-sex versus mixed-sex dyads), and (3) child-rearing setting (U.S. town [N = 89] versus Israeli town [N = 132] versus Israeli kibbutz [N = 88]). Pictures were scored for theme or focus of activity (mastery versus social interaction) and for the nature of the interaction (cooperation, competition, aggression, power/ dominance). Boys drew more themes of aggression, competition, and dominance than did girls. U.S. boys portrayed more aggression than did Israeli town boys, and kibbutz children portrayed less competition and dominance than did Israeli town children. Of greatest interest, however, are cultural differences in the way mixed-sex dyads were portrayed relative to same-sex dyads. Whereas Israeli boys drew different themes in pictures of two boys than in pictures of a boy and a girl, they nonetheless depicted egalitarian relationships equally often in both pictures. In contrast, U.S. boys drew the same themes in pictures of two boys as in pictures of a boy and a girl, but they portrayed different power relations: Two boys playing together were depicted as equal in power, but boys were drawn as more powerful than girls in pictures of mixed-sex dyads. Similar, although less strong, results were found in the drawings of girls. The results are interpreted in terms of cultural practices and ideology with respect to sex typing.