, assistant professor of at Notre Dame, offers the first systemic look at the influence of marriage on the LGBQ community in a published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Ocobock examined the relationship between marriage and community life for the newest marital population: same-sex couples. According to Ocobock, the dominant framework on marriage in family sociology is that it’s a “greedy institution.” “The idea is that marriage demands a lot of time, energy and commitment, and leaves little room for others or for active community engagement,” she said. “As such, many predicted that same-sex marriage would weaken the vibrancy of LGBQ community life.”

However, her findings show that it wasn’t marriage itself that contributed to a sense of a weakened LGBQ community, but rather simply having the legal right to marry. Ocobock interviewed and surveyed 116 married and unmarried LGBQ individuals in Massachusetts for this study. Nearly all of them, she said, spoke about how marital access had reduced the “need” for organized LGBQ community.

“Though marital status — getting and being married — makes little difference, I find that marital access — being granted access to legal marriage — plays a central role in changes to LGBQ community life,” said Ocobock. “Whether or not one got married, gaining the right to legally marry was widely associated with feelings of broader social inclusion and acceptance.

“This decreased LGBQ people’s need for organized LGBQ community because the safer and more welcome they felt in other settings, the less they felt the need to participate in LGBQ communities — and the less demand there was for organized LGBQ community activities the less, over time, there was to participate in.”

Ocobock also found that same-sex marriages are less “greedy” than heterosexual marriages.

“On average, same-sex couples have been together for longer prior to getting married, meaning that they are already committed and have established relationship routines. As such, being married is not experienced as a qualitatively different kind of relationship requiring more time, energy or commitment. Married same-sex couples are also significantly less likely to have children, which also makes their marriages less demanding,” she said.

Examining a group that has only recently gained access to marriage is a good opportunity to examine marriage’s effects on community life, but these effects don’t necessarily translate to heterosexual marriages, Ocobock said.

“My findings point to some important differences between same-sex and different-sex marriages that are important for understanding why marriage does not impact LGBQ community life in same way as it does for heterosexuals. In large part because legal marriage only became available to many later in life, same-sex couples have different relationship and life course trajectories,” she said.

“This insight is relevant, if not transferable, because it should remind family scholars to keep in mind that our existing understandings of marriage are based on a heteronormative life course trajectory that assumes people marry fairly young and have children. That said, now that legal marriage is available, the next generation of same-sex couples to marry may look more similar to different-sex ones.”

Contact: Abigail Ocobock, Abigail.R.Ocobock.2@nd.edu

Huerta is founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which works to create networks of healthy, organized communities pursuing social justice through systemic and structural transformation. She was an honorary co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington 2017 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. Huerta received the inaugural Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President Bill Clinton in 1998 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2012.

Huerta spent decades fighting for the rights of farm workers, women’s rights and the working poor, starting in 1955 when she helped found a chapter of the Community Service Organization, which fought for occupational safety and economic justice for farmworkers. In 1965, on behalf of the United Farm Workers, she led the first national boycott against California grape growers that resulted in a victory for the farm workers. This action signaled the beginning of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, by merging farm worker rights with student and community activism. Huerta also played a critical role in the enactment of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. She frequently participated in nonviolent protests — and in 1988, a San Francisco police officer beat her so badly at a demonstration that she was left with several broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

The Transformative Latino Leadership Lecture Series features prominent figures in law, entertainment, business, the Catholic Church and other fields who impart their personal experiences and a vision of effective leadership. Past guests include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary Julián Castro and Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles.

ILS Director , the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership, Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of and acting chair of the Department of Political Science, will moderate a conversation with Huerta in a fireside-chat format in McKenna Auditorium.

In anticipation of her visit, the Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ is co-sponsoring the screening of the 2017 documentary “,” directed by Peter Bratt and produced by musician Carlos Santana, with the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. The film will be shown at 3 p.m. Feb. 3 and 4 (Saturday and Sunday) in the Browning Cinema.

The institute is also presenting a photo exhibit, titled “César Chávez and Dolores Huerta: Legacy of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement,” featuring images from Los Angeles Times photographer Jose Galvez in McKenna Hall through March 9. For more information visit .

The Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ advances understanding of the fastest-growing and youngest population in the United States and the U.S. Catholic Church. ILS strengthens Notre Dame’s mission to prepare transformative leaders in all sectors of society.

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

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Researchers from Notre Dame’s (LEO) and the University of Maryland partnered with Catholic Charities Fort Worth to evaluate , a program that pairs undergraduates with trained social workers who can help them navigate important non-academic hurdles — including child care and transportation — that often lead students to drop out. Students in the program also have access to limited emergency financial assistance that can be used for unexpected expenses that might prevent them from persisting in school.

Between 2013 and 2016, the researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial evaluation of Stay the Course at Tarrant County College, which is a Fort Worth, Texas, community college with approximately 50,000 students. Eligible students were randomly assigned to three groups. The first had full access to comprehensive case management and emergency financial assistance, the second was offered only emergency financial assistance, and the third was a control group.

The researchers tracked the students’ academic records for three years after enrollment in the program. In a new working paper circulated by the , they show that the students who participated in the full Stay the Course program were significantly more likely to stay enrolled and to graduate within six semesters. The researchers noted no difference between the control group and the group receiving only emergency financial assistance. A simple cost-benefit analysis shows that the earnings boost that results from obtaining an associate’s degree is more than sufficient to cover the cost of the Stay the Course program.

Co-author , Rev. Thomas J. McDonagh, C.S.C., Associate Professor of and co-founder of LEO, was surprised to see that the program was especially effective for females — the results show that for women who participated in the program, Stay the Course increased persistence in college by 36 percentage points, and degree completion by 32 percentage points.

“It is interesting that giving financial support alone is not enough,” Sullivan said. “Our study indicates that the involvement of a coach and mentor who understands the individual needs of each student is critical to improving outcomes for this vulnerable population.”

LEO is partnering with Catholic Charities Fort Worth to study the impact of Stay the Course as it gets replicated in other U.S. cities.

“We are currently facing a completion crisis in the U.S. There is a real need for cost-effective interventions,” Sullivan said. “Stay the Course is an example that has been shown to move the needle.”

Co-authors on the NBER paper include Sullivan; , Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of LEO; Brendan C. Perry, senior research associate at LEO; and Melissa S. Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Maryland. The paper is available online at .

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

The lecture, part of a class titled “Church, State, and American Constitutionalism,” was delivered in September by , Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion and Public Life in the and concurrent associate professor of at the University of Notre Dame. In this lecture, Muñoz provides an overview of the American founders’ understanding of natural rights and how the founders attempted to protect these rights through a constitutional system of government.

“The goal of the class is to help students think more clearly and deeply about some of the most fundamental political and constitutional issues of our time,” Muñoz said. These issues include religious freedom, the proper relationship between church and state, First Amendment protections and whether religion is helpful or harmful to democracy.

“The lecture, I hope, will reacquaint viewers with some of the basic concepts at the core of our constitutional republic, including the meaning of equality, liberty, inalienable natural rights and government by consent,” Muñoz said. “The argument that animates the lecture, and the class as a whole, is that if we are going to interpret the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections in light of first principles, we have to have a deeper knowledge of those principles, including the founders’ natural rights constitutionalism.”

The 75-minute lecture is available for viewing and as a .

Muñoz is the founding director of Notre Dame’s undergraduate minor in constitutional studies and directs the University’s . He is the author of “God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson” (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and “Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, bcollin8@nd.edu

In a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, , Ford Family Assistant Professor of ; , assistant professor of anthropology; Susan Sheridan, associate professor of anthropology; and , the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Endowed Chair in Anthropology, along with co-authors Marc Kissel of Appalachian State University and Nam C. Kim of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, present data showing that the size of a society’s population is what drives the size of its “war group,” or number of people of fighting age who defend it. They also show that the size of the war group is what determines the number of casualties in a conflict.

Specifically, the researchers show that the larger the population of a society, the smaller its war group size, proportionally — which means fewer casualties in a conflict.

Instead, the researchers found that societies today are not necessarily more or less violent than past societies. The proportions are driven by a deep scaling law guiding social organization, Oka said.“Small-scale societies have a high proportion of their people involved in war,” Oka said. “Fatalities might actually be 40 to 50 percent of the group, and definitely a higher proportion of those fighting get killed. But as we go from small-scale societies to big states and conflicts between empires or nations, fatalities rarely go above 1 percent of the group populations. So if you have 100 people fighting, you might actually get 50 people dying, combatant and non-combatant. That’s 50 percent. But if you have 3 million people fighting you might get 100,000 dying, which is actually much less, proportionally, than the small-scale society. This is seen by many to suggest that contemporary large societies are less violent than past small scale societies, promoting the idea that before the state, life was nasty, brutish and short.”

Oka and his co-authors gathered data on population and war group size from 295 societies and on war group size and conflict-related casualties from 430 historical conflicts going back to 2500 B.C. They plotted the available data on population size, war group size and conflict casualties.

“We first derived the scaling laws that would explain these trends. Then we gathered the data,” Oka said. “And to our very, very pleasant surprise, for both the population and army size, and army size and conflict casualties, we found the scaling laws beautifully explained the distribution.”

The researchers looked at scaling, not percentages or proportions, as a reflection of the realities of warfare. As population size goes up and societies form into states, Oka said, the military becomes proportionally smaller, more nimble and more specialized. A small-scale society can have 40 percent of its population committed to fighting, for example, but “it’s just economically impossible for a state-level society with, let’s say, 10 million people to have an army that is 4 million strong,” Oka said. “It’s logistically inconceivable.”

The idea of using war group size and conflict casualties as proportions of the overall group population to determine if some societies are more violent than others isn’t a new one to anthropologists, Oka said.

However, this study is the first of its kind to offer an expanded data set looking at societies in different places and time periods, during both peacetime and conflict, and examining the scaling relationship between population and number of people in the army or war group, and between the number of people in conflicts and deaths occurring during conflicts.

“These scaling laws provide a means of comparing conflicts across all population scales and social and economic organizations,” said Golitko. “Notably, it appears that the relative level of investment and size of conflicts have not changed much once increases in population over time are accounted for. In other words, we may be no more or less violent now than in the past.” ��

“These are deep scaling laws that are describing the size of war groups and in turn the number of people killed in conflicts,” Oka said. “Neither variable is affected by type of society or institutions. Both scale, directly and indirectly, with population. These are deeper organizational processes that have to be addressed as we continue trying to reduce conflict investment and build peace.”

The paper, “Population is the main driver of war group size and conflict casualties,” is available online here: .

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Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

Even so, clinicians and researchers, together with patients and their families, have made significant strides identifying and treating mental illnesses. Two major diagnostic manuals — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used primarily in the U.S., and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), used internationally — provide clinicians, researchers and patients a structured approach to diagnosing mental health. Further, the federal National Institute of Mental Health also uses a new framework for researching mental illness, called the Research Domain Criteria, or R-DoC.

Although these manuals are helpful and even necessary for identifying and treating mental illnesses, , William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor of at the University of Notre Dame, along with a small team of other experts, wants researchers and clinicians to revisit how these illnesses are approached. In a new paper published in the invitation-only journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Clark and her team present the challenges in using these manuals from a scientific perspective and offer some recommendations for re-conceptualizing the mental disorders they describe.

“The phenomenon of mental illness or psychopathology is much more complex, much more multi-determined, much less categorical than any of us ever thought going into it and than the public realizes,” Clark said.

Clark and her co-authors identified four challenges to understanding and classifying mental disorders: what varied combinations of factors cause them, how to diagnose them given that they are not actually distinct categories, thresholds for diagnosis and other purposes such as treatment, and co-morbidity — the fact that most people with mental illness meet the diagnosis for multiple mental disorders.

“For many years people had the idea that mental disorders had single, simple causes like streptococcus causes strep throat, that sort of thing,” Clark said. “But as we learn more and more about mental disorders, that’s just absolutely not the truth. They’re caused by multiple factors. They have genetic and other biological causes, plus environmental influences, both personal and cultural. It’s very complex.”

People typically can be diagnosed with more than one mental illness, Clark said — for example, an individual diagnosed with major depression usually also meets the criteria for an anxiety disorder. But disorder combinations do not happen by chance.

“There are patterns to the combinations. It’s not random, as though if you have this disorder you could have any one of the other 300 to 400 or so disorders. And the fact that there are patterns suggests there are some underlying features that create these patterns,” Clark said.

Researchers are trying to understand those patterns. “Major depression and generalized anxiety disorder, which sound different, co-occur far more often than they appear singularly,” Clark said. “Genetic studies have shown in fact that that commonality is almost entirely due to a particular set of genes. We don’t know what genes, but we have the technology to be able to say that the covariation, the fact that they co-occur, is genetically based. We can’t be specific about it yet. So if the same set of genes are one of the factors causing them, then in no real way are they completely separate disorders, right?”

Psychologists are continuing to work on the DSM and ICD: The fifth revision of the DSM was released in 2013, and the 11th version of the ICD is due next year.

In America, the DSM “is sort of the Bible” for making mental disorder diagnoses, Clark said. It’s relied on by health care providers, insurance companies, researchers and others. The ICD, developed by the World Health Organization originally to track health statistics, is the primary diagnostic system used outside the U.S.

“Getting a diagnosis of a mental disorder has all sorts of social ramifications,” Clark said. “Both negative, with some stigma attached to it, and also positive — certain individuals who get a diagnosis are then eligible for various services. If you can’t get that diagnosis you can’t get those services.”

Clark would like to see a deeper discussion among researchers, clinicians and even the government into what it means to diagnose mental illnesses and how that affects people.

“For example, educational institutions have an obligation not to perpetuate the myth that mental disorders are these simple, singular diseases, like we’d like to think they are,” she said. “Probably the vast majority of people with mental disorders will never see a professional mental health care worker. It’s an issue that’s much more widespread than educating a small cadre of mental health care professionals. It’s really a broad social problem that we need to address.”

Clark’s co-authors include Bruce Cuthbert, National Institute of Mental Health; Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, Columbia University; William E. Narrow, University of New Mexico 91��Ƶ of Medicine and former research director for DSM-5; and Geoffrey M. Reed, World Health Organization and Columbia University Medical Center. The paper is available online at .

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

Communism, a political movement born from resistance to the spread of global capitalism, the rise of colonialism and the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution, swept the globe in the 20th century. At its height in 1985, communism held power over nearly 38 percent of the world’s population. Despite the movement’s reign over 24 countries, the communist party in one country was often quite different from the party in another.

In “Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party” (Princeton University Press, 2017), author , the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs and director of the at the University of Notre Dame, seeks to understand how such a significant institution could be so different from country to country and still flourish.

To find the answer, McAdams traveled to every location with a history of communism to research this book, including China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and the former Soviet Union. Each country has its own story about how communism came to power, usually driven by larger-than-life characters such as Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro.

McAdams examined how the party in each country grew and was shaped by its leader and found some similarities.

“These parties’ identities were decisively shaped by the people who led them. The fact that power was extremely centralized meant that specific individuals, like Stalin, Mao and Castro, were ideally placed to shape the parties in their own image and according to their own ideas,” McAdams said. “Indeed, figures like Stalin, Mao and Castro were a lot like gods. They wrote their own biblical books of Genesis to justify their rule.”

“The height of Communist Party rule was an extremely dynamic period, full of both excitement and tragedy,” McAdams said. “Communist rule affected countries and peoples in profoundly different ways, many of them violently, from Europe to Asia. In ‘Vanguard of the Revolution’ I do my best to capture both the intensity and the horrors of the entire communist era.”

The power of the party began to falter in the late 20th century. The “victory of an oppressed majority over an oppressive minority” was a salient idea, McAdams writes, that held sway over populations for a long time. But eventually the massive injustices performed in the name of the party, and the years living under despotic rulers, led to the party’s decline.

“In the few countries where there are nominal Communist parties, like China, Vietnam and Cuba, these institutions have lost their dynamism because their members have lost their faith that history is on the side of communism. Thus, they are no longer inclined to make genuine sacrifices for the idea of party rule. Instead, they primarily look to the party as a source of material benefits and perks that are unavailable to ordinary citizens.”

Although social and political unrest exists in America today, McAdams says the party is unlikely to take hold here.

“At the moment, we do not have significant extremist, anti-democratic parties like those that rose in Europe in the past century,” McAdams said. “This is not to say that there are no extremist politicians. Rather, the conditions that once led to the rise of these types of parties — such as widespread social upheaval, economic collapse, military defeat — do not exist in the U.S., at least not at the moment.”

Although McAdams said America is safe right now from falling into anything like a communist reign, he did warn to heed the lessons learned from history.

“We should not take the vitality and effectiveness of our political institutions for granted,” he said. “Extremist parties on the right and left arose in Europe in the first half of the 20th century when moderate politicians and ordinary citizens lost sight of the importance of political compromise, independent courts, the tolerance of religious and ethnic diversity and a vibrant free press.”

For more information about “Vanguard of the Revolution,” visit .

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

, assistant professor of at the University of Notre Dame, worked with colleagues from the Field Museum in Chicago and institutes in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea to study the Aitape skull and the area it was found in. In a new PLOS One paper published Wednesday (Oct. 25), the researchers lay out evidence showing that the skull was victim to a violent tsunami that struck the coast about 6,000 years ago.

Golitko and his research team went back to the place the skull was found, near a place Hossfeld called Paniri Creek, to analyze the soil and strata for clues about what killed this person.

“Hossfeld hadn’t really sampled anything; he just did a field description and took the skull out and that was it,” Golitko said. “What we were doing was actually going in and sampling the sediments to bring back for lab analysis that would tell us a lot more about the age and depositional history there.

“We don’t know exactly where Hossfeld found the skull, but I think we were within 100 meters of the original location based on his description. We were able to use modern scientific techniques to understand a little more about how this place formed and what we were actually looking at,” he said.

This photo shows the skull bone fragment found outside Aitape, Papua New Guinea, in 1929. The bone has been dated to be about 6,000 years old and likely belongs to the world's first known tsunami victim.

The team did lab tests on the sediment to look at grain size and its geochemistry. They found diatoms, small single-cell organisms that live in water and are sensitive environmental indicators, and used those to learn more about the water conditions at the time.

“Diatoms make little silica shells around themselves, and when they die, those sink to the bottom,” Golitko said. “So we put the sediment under a microscope and counted these diatoms, and it more or less tells you about the temperature, salinity and how energetic the water was that they were living in.

“These sediments that the Aitape skull was in have pure marine diatoms in them, which is ocean water that’s inundating it. It’s really high-energy ocean water — high-energy enough for these little tiny specks of silica that the diatoms build to be broken as they’re washing in.”

The high-energy water, Golitko said, combined with chemical signatures and specific sediment grain sizes all indicate the presence of a tsunami at the time the skull was buried. It’s possible that the skull was buried before and it was washed out as the tsunami came across, Golitko said, but based on observations of modern tsunamis, Golitko and his team don’t think that’s likely.

Golitko hopes this study can help start a conversation about how people adapt and thrive in these coastlands that are subject to tropical storms, earthquakes and tsunamis — the Aitape region has endured several tsunamis; the most recent in 1998 killed more than 2,000 people. People likely started moving from the mountains to the coastlines in this area around 6,000 years ago, Golitko said.

“What’s interesting is despite the fact that they’re now moving to this super risky environment, we see that people seem to have been living there more or less continuously from then on,” he said, “so they obviously come up with strategies for dealing with these risks, which could be very pertinent for thinking about what’s going to be happening in the next couple hundred years. It’s the next challenge to look at how people were living in that area and how they’re responding to these risks as they start to move into these environments.”

Golitko co-authored the paper, “Reassessing the environmental context of the Aitape Skull — the oldest tsunami victim in the world?” with James Goff and Darren Curnoe, University of New South Wales; Ethan Cochrane, University of Auckland; Shaun Williams, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand; and John Terrell, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Their research was contributed to by the University of Papua New Guinea, the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery and l’Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.

The paper is available online here: .

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Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director, media relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

The lecture is hosted by the and is free and open to the public.

Hayden, a retired four-star general in the U.S. Air Force, is also the former director of the National Security Agency and was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence. He currently serves as co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Electric Grid Cybersecurity Initiative, a principal at the Chertoff Group and a national security analyst for CNN.

Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center. He has served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, at U.S. European Command, at the National Security Council and at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea.

“Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is just the sort of distinguished national security policy maker that we can bring to campus thanks to the generosity of Jack Kelly ’74 and Gail Weiss,” said , director of the Notre Dame International Security Center and professor of .

Lunch will be provided at the lecture. Co-sponsors include the , Notre Dame’s Office of Military and Veterans Affairs and the Charles Koch Foundation.

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

In the published recently by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, , associate professor of at the University of Notre Dame, and Elizabeth Munnich, assistant professor of economics at the University of Louisville, document four decades of an increasing number of men working as registered nurses throughout the United States. In 1960, men made up 2.2 percent of registered nurses, according to their data. By 2013, that number had risen to 13 percent.

“Men are over 10 times more likely to report a nursing occupation today than in 1960,” Wozniak said. “But our main goal was to try to understand the reasons for this change. It’s very unusual to see men move into occupations that are primarily done by women.”

Munnich and Wozniak viewed the rise of male RNs as a case study in a larger societal shift in education and gender role factors, among other areas. Using the U.S. Census and the annual American Community Survey, the researchers drew data about men ages 18 to 39, who were born between 1954 and 1995.

“We found that there are several factors contributing to men going into nursing, and into RN work in particular,” Wozniak said. “The biggest factors are educational preparation, in the form of high school completion, and community college access; rising local demand for health care workers; and the relaxing of traditional gender role attitudes.”

They found that both men and women are increasingly likely to enter nursing as they enter their 30s — a delayed career path that, the researchers say, is important for policymakers to recognize when considering access to education and training.

“I hope policymakers will consider nursing to be a useful case study of how workers, but particularly men, can take up a high-paying career that is nevertheless accessible to many workers on the basis of their education and work experience. I particularly hope this is used to inform some of the policies being suggested to raise nurse qualifications. Qualifications are certainly important for health care workers, but so is preserving the ability of workers to join and excel in those fields,” Wozniak said.

Wozniak and Munnich also identified two important factors that continue to keep men from becoming nurses: poor labor market conditions as they enter the workforce and immigrant inflows.

“We find that when business cycle conditions deteriorate for a cohort of men early in their careers, fewer of them take up RN work. This is surprising, since health care is a sector that is typically less cyclical, so we might have expected the opposite finding,” Wozniak said. “I was also surprised at the relatively large, negative effects of immigrant inflows on men working as RNs, since in many other studies we do not find generalized labor market impacts of immigrants on natives. But this appears to be one occupation that is an exception, and we have since learned that this is consistent with other research on the foreign-born in nursing.”

The paper, “What explains the rising share of U.S. men in registered nursing?” is available online here: .

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Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director, media relations, 574-631-6335, collins.189@nd.edu

This year’s report estimates poverty in the U.S. to be 12.7��percent for 2016, which is very close to the rate in 1980, suggesting little progress or change in the fight against poverty.

However, the official poverty measure is flawed, according to , Rev. Thomas J. McDonagh, C.S.C., Associate Professor of at the University of Notre Dame, and Bruce Meyer, McCormick Foundation Professor at the University of Chicago Harris 91��Ƶ of Public Policy. According to Sullivan, income statistics have become increasingly inaccurate over time and consumption more accurately reflects well-being.

Based on years of research, Meyer and Sullivan on Tuesday published alternative, consumption-based estimates in the inaugural . The report shows that between 1960 and 2016, consumption poverty fell by 27 percentage points. Changes in tax policy, the researchers said, contributed to the decline in poverty, along with changes in Social Security and other transfer programs.

“Many factors that are critical components of well-being, such as home ownership, car ownership and the ability to borrow and save, are much better captured by consumption than income,” Sullivan said. “Our research has shown that consumption-based poverty is more highly associated with other measures of family deprivation.”

Sullivan and Meyer analyzed more than 50 years of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey for their report. Looking at poverty patterns in the U.S. from the early 1960s to 2015, the researchers found contradictory results to studies that have shown little improvement in poverty over time or that antipoverty measures have been ineffective.

“Relying on the official poverty rate, many have concluded that we have lost the War on Poverty, but improved measures of poverty show that we have actually made tremendous progress,” Sullivan said.

Meyer and Sullivan plan to release an updated Consumption-Based Poverty report on an annual basis to coincide with the Census Bureau’s report. They are in the process of setting up an online tool to make this information readily available.

Sullivan is director of the (LEO) at Notre Dame. LEO matches top researchers with social service providers to conduct impact evaluations that identify the innovative, effective and scalable programs and policies that support self-sufficiency. Meyer and Sullivan’s report is available on LEO’s website at .

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director, media relations, 574-631-6335, Collins.189@nd.edu

Early-term elective births, where mothers choose to schedule their deliveries via cesarean section or induction at 37 or 38 weeks despite no medical need to do so, rose in popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s. These scheduled births were viewed by many mothers and doctors as a convenient way to avoid weekend deliveries or plan around work or holiday schedules. By the mid-2000s, however, a growing body of evidence began to show that these early elective deliveries were associated with a higher risk of complications in labor. In response, groups such as March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and government agencies launched campaigns to promote the goal of waiting until 39 weeks gestation.

Kasey Buckles

A new paper from , Brian and Jeannelle Brady Associate Professor of at Notre Dame, published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, shows that these campaigns effectively reduced the number of early-term elective births in the U.S. — and, as a result, led to healthier deliveries for mothers and their babies.

Buckles and her co-author, Melanie Guldi, associate professor of economics at the University of Central Florida, collected data from birth certificates from the National Center for Health Statistics to identify trends in elective early-term inductions and C-sections around the U.S. By combining this data with information from different policy programs like March of Dimes’ “Healthy Babies Are Worth the Wait,” Buckles and Guldi were able to measure the effectiveness of these campaigns.

“Previous medical research had established links between early elective deliveries and poor health outcomes for mothers and infants,” Buckles said, “but most of this work has only been able to document correlations. We establish a causal link by showing that when policies are put in place that discourage this practice, not only do early inductions decrease, but we see higher birth weights and lower rates of precipitous labor, birth injuries and assisted ventilation.

“We hope that our study, which shows that these efforts have led to real improvements in health, will encourage these organizations to continue and expand their programs,” Buckles said.

The paper, “Worth the Wait? The Effect of Early Term Birth on Maternal and Infant Health,” is available online here: .

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Contact: Brittany Kaufman, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-6335, bcollin8@nd.edu

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The project is a collaboration out of the Shaw Center between , William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Professor of Psychology, and Joshua John Diehl, chief strategy officer for autism services at in South Bend.

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The new Supporting Parent-Adolescent Relationships and Communication (ND-SPARC) project is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program to support families that include an individual with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Families, including parents and typically developing adolescent siblings, will receive information about communication, conflict resolution and the role family conflict plays in child and adolescent development.

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The project will be conducted in South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and their surrounding areas. Researchers will recruit 150 married or cohabiting couples and their children to participate in the study. Families will work with project staff over the course of several months, and researchers will use information they provide to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.��

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“We are excited to work with so many wonderful families from two communities in Northern Indiana and look forward to learning a lot from them,” Cummings said. “We’ve had great feedback and very promising results from an earlier, related study and are very optimistic that we will be able to provide an easily accessible program that families will enjoy, and that will make a significant difference in supporting families with children with developmental disabilities in the opportunities and challenges they face daily.”

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“It is rare that you get a research study such as this one that will have an immediate, direct impact on the community. Moreover, it will create a sustainable program that will be available to families long after the research has been completed,” Diehl said. Families that include a child with intellectual or developmental disabilities face unique challenges and heightened stress, but they also have unique strengths that the project is designed to enhance, Diehl said.

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Cummings is also part of the Notre Dame Families and Babies Study (ND-FABS) at the Shaw Center, to which the NIH awarded a $3 million grant in February. The Shaw Center brings scholars together to conduct innovative interdisciplinary research in support of healthy development across the human lifespan.

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For more information and to apply for the ND-SPARC project, email NDSPARC@nd.edu or call 574-631-6009. For more information about the Shaw Center for Children and Families and research at Notre Dame, visit .

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Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, bcollin8@nd.edu

The orientation prepares the teaching assistants, most of whom have never been to the U.S., for the academic year ahead, when they will go to an American college or university to teach their native languages and cultures. during the orientation cover topics including course planning and grading, the U.S. banking system and technology in the classroom.

Their orientation experience will include a tour of the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend and a farewell banquet to which the FLTA program participants are invited to wear the traditional dress of their home countries.

The FLTA program brings approximately 400 foreign language teachers from more than 50 countries to the U.S. Notre Dame is one of only six orientation locations chosen by IIE in a highly selective process to host these teachers and help prepare them for the year ahead. After the orientation program, the majority of the teachers will leave to attend their host schools across the U.S. Eleven will stay at the University of Notre Dame: Raghdaa Abouserie (Arabic, Egypt); Gourab Ghosh (Bengali, India); Han-Wen Hsu (Chinese, Taiwan); Charlotte Lange (German, Germany); Seaghan Mac an tSionnaigh (Irish, Ireland); Mamiko Tokuda (Japanese, Japan); Rossana Luna (Portuguese, Brazil); Valentina Kurenshchikova (Russian, Russia); Silvia Junde (Swahili, Tanzania); Gunes Tunc (Turkish, Turkey); and Thao Nguyen (Vietnamese, Vietnam).

The teachers at this year’s Notre Dame orientation come from Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, Tanzania, Turkey, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The orientation is organized and funded by the Fulbright Commission, a program of the , which is sponsored by the State Department’s .

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, bcollin8@nd.edu

A spring lecture given by , associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, will be televised on C-SPAN 3 at 8 p.m. and midnight EDT Saturday (June 24).

The lecture was part of a course titled “The History of Oil in American Life,” which offered a chronological, thematic and contemporary examination of oil in modern America.

“Besides tracing the long history of the oil industry and petroleum culture from mid-19th-century America to the present day, students also paused to consider how oil was and remains so central to our society’s politics and economics, values and culture, labor and land use practices, technological development and urban-suburban spatial designs, and daily life,” said Dochuk.

The 75-minute lecture airing June 24 focuses on “the tumultuous developments of the mid-20th century, when the epicenter of oil production shifted from North America to the Middle East,” said Dochuk. He explores the broader context for the shift in oil exploration to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and focuses particularly on how religion and politics shape the oil industry.

“For instance, the class looks at how a few Arabists — American Protestant diplomats with ties to missionary communities in the Middle East — saw oil exploration there, with the U.S. in the lead, as crucial to development/modernization of the region,” Dochuk said. “It also maps out some of the divisions within the American petroleum industry, politics and religious culture that the shift to Saudi Arabia, and the shift of the U.S. to an importing nation, created, all with lasting effects — many of which we are still dealing with today.”

The taping is part of C-SPAN’s Lectures in History series, and will be available for viewing and as a in the week after the lecture airs.

In December, Dochuk was awarded a , allowing him to write a book exploring the relationship between oil and religion. His research interests include the intersections of religion, politics and the American West and Southwest, as well as the Cold War and the politics and culture of energy and the environment. He is the author of “From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism” (Norton, 2011), which won awards from the Society of American Historians, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians.

Contact: Brittany Kaufman, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-6335, bcollin8@nd.edu

A record 38 current University of Notre Dame students and alumni have been awarded grants by the to study abroad in 2017-18, topping last year’s record of 30 finalists.

Six alternates and seven semifinalists were also named, for a total of 51 students and alumni recognized. The number of students and alumni recognized this year improves upon last year’s University record of 48.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, offering students grants to conduct research, study and teach abroad. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Notre Dame has appeared on this list for three consecutive years, coming in tied at No. 2 in the nation for the 2016-17 list.

“We believe that Notre Dame’s extraordinary success with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is due primarily to three factors,” said Jeffrey Thibert, associate director and acting director of the (CUSE). “First, the extensive advising that CUSE and the provide, especially over the summer months. Second, the outstanding international experiences that our applicants bring to their applications from the excellent education they receive at Notre Dame. And third, the crucial mentoring and advice provided by Notre Dame faculty and staff who serve on our Fulbright Campus Committee and those both on-campus and off-campus who serve as recommenders and language evaluators.”

“Fulbright fellowships offer an amazing opportunity for our graduate students to support their innovative research within an international context. We are proud that so many of our students will serve as ambassadors for Notre Dame and the United States during their fellowship years,” said , vice president and associate provost, and dean of the Graduate 91��Ƶ.

The 38 recipients are:

• Sara Abdel-Rahim, Valrico, Florida; political science, Class of 2017 — study and research grant to Greece.
• Kiley Adams, Edgewood, Washington; biological sciences, Class of 2017 — study and research grant to India.
• Haley Adams, Midland, Michigan; biological sciences and anthropology, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Poland.
• David Arney, Strongsville, Ohio; finance and applied and computational mathematics and statistics, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Poland.
• Daniel Barabasi, Newton, Massachusetts; physics, Class of 2017 — study and research grant to Hungary.
• Connor Bliss, Glenn Dale, Maryland; physics and history, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Spain.
• Madeline Cole, La Grange, Illinois; history, Class of 2016 — English teaching assistantship to Taiwan.
• Katherine Comeau, Ayer, Massachusetts; sociology graduate student — study and research grant to Jamaica.
• Salvatore Curasi, North Bellmore, New York; biological sciences graduate student — study and research grant to Russia.
• Jenna Davidson, St. Charles, Missouri; biological sciences graduate student — study and research grant to Indonesia.
• Luke Donahue, Brentwood, Tennessee; theology and German, Class of 2017 — study and research grant to Germany.
• Dana Drysdale, Florissant, Missouri; English, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to South Korea.
• Ashley Edewaard, Charleston, South Carolina; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Germany.
• John Gadient, Perrysburg, Ohio; international economics, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Germany.
• Austin Hagwood, Quincy, California; English, Class of 2015 — study and research grant to Papua New Guinea.
• Madeline Hahn, Highland Park, Illinois; sociology and Spanish, Class of 2016 — English teaching assistantship to Spain.
• Maya Jain, Dearborn, Michigan; theology, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Peru.
• Teresa Kennedy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts; anthropology and peace studies, Class of 2016 — English teaching assistantship to Colombia.
• Judy Kim, Montclair, California; early Christian studies graduate student — study and research grant to Greece.
• Stephen Long, Fort Worth, Texas; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Germany.
• Leslie MacColman, Canby, Oregon; peace studies and sociology graduate student — study and research grant to Argentina.
• Grace Maginn, South Bend, Indiana; history, Class of 2016 — English teaching assistantship to Argentina.
• Emily Maiden; Burlington, Kentucky; peace studies and political science graduate student — study and research grant to Malawi.
• Patrick Manion, South Bend, Indiana; Alliance for Catholic Education, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Czech Republic.
• Todd Marek, West Lafayette, Indiana; anthropology graduate student — study and research grant to China.
• Mark Mariani, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Germany.
• Lauren Morisseau, Verona, New Jersey; anthropology, Class of 2015 — English teaching assistantship to Rwanda.
• Sarah Neuberger, Edina, Minnesota; political science, Class of 2016 — English teaching assistantship to Argentina.
• Andrew O’Connor, Madison, Wisconsin; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Jordan.
• Matthew O’Neill, Greensboro, North Carolina; biochemistry, Class of 2017 — study and research grant to Germany.
• Joseph Rebagliati, Bellevue, Washington; international economics, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Spain.
• Joseph Riordan, New York, New York; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Israel.
• Peter Stankiewicz, Deptford, New Jersey; biochemistry and Russian, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Russia.
• Robert Sylvester, Upton, Massachusetts; Alliance for Catholic Education, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Taiwan.
• Mark Therrien, State College, Pennsylvania; theology graduate student — study and research grant to Ukraine.
• Dolores Vargas, Hayward, California; psychology and German, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to Germany.
• Hansel Weihs, Montebello, California; aerospace engineering and Japanese, Class of 2017 — English teaching assistantship to South Korea.
• Charles Yost, Urbandale, Iowa; Medieval Institute graduate student — study and research grant to Cyprus.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 360,000 participants — chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 different fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English and conduct research annually in over 140 countries throughout the world.

The Fulbright competition at Notre Dame is open to all current students and alumni. It is administered at the graduate level by the Graduate 91��Ƶ’s and at the undergraduate level by CUSE. Students and alumni create an application for the fellowship program in conjunction with their faculty advisers and under the direction of either the Graduate 91��Ƶ or CUSE. The recent improvement in Fulbright outcomes at Notre Dame corresponds to the increasing efforts by the Graduate 91��Ƶ and CUSE to provide both one-on-one consultations and group support for students throughout the application process, including conceptualization of projects, writing and revising proposals, and interview preparation and practice.

Contact: Jeffrey Thibert, jthibert@nd.edu; Samantha Lee, program director, Graduate 91��Ƶ Office of Grants and Fellowships, gradgrants@nd.edu

In addition to the 15 University of Notre Dame senior recipients of Fulbright fellowships, the National Science Foundation and other organizations have awarded 20 scholarships and fellowships to members of the University’s Class of 2017.

The following students received National Science Foundation , which provide funding for research-based study leading to a master’s or doctoral degree in science (including social sciences), technology, engineering and math: Bradley Bowles, biological sciences, Brownsburg, Indiana; Julia Butterfield, mechanical engineering, Carmichael, California; Paulina Eberts, chemical engineering, Columbus, Ohio; and Sreeraahul Kancherla, mathematics, economics, “Kellogg International Scholar”: http://kellogg.nd.edu/students/ischolars/index.shtml and , Waxhaw, North Carolina.

Two seniors received . Alexis Doyle, from Los Altos, California, is a biological sciences and peace studies major in the and . Grace Watkins, from Blacksburg, Virginia, is a philosophy major with a minor in philosophy, politics and economics, a Kellogg International Scholar and a Sorin Scholar.

Watkins and Caleb “C.J.” Pine, an Arabic and peace studies student in the Glynn Family Honors Program and a Hesburgh-Yusko scholar from Westminster, Colorado, both received a , which includes $30,000 in graduate study funds, priority admission and supplemental financial aid at select institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and internship opportunities within the federal government.

John Huber, an applied and computational mathematics and statistics major with a concentration in biological sciences, from Gainesville, Florida, received a for advanced study at the University of Cambridge.

Jinggang “Jenny” Ng, a political science major with minors in business economics and Portuguese and Brazilian studies and a Kellogg International Scholar from Hong Kong, received a fellowship from the . The fellowship funds a one-year master of China studies program in that prestigious college within Peking University.

Lauren Feist, a political science and international economics student and Kellogg International Scholar from Rapid City, South Dakota; Theresa Rinaldo, an Arabic and peace studies student from Orchard Park, New York; and Sienna Wdowik, an Arabic and political science major, Hesburgh-Yusko scholar, Kellogg International Scholar and member of the Glynn Family Honors Program from Fort Collins, Colorado, each received a federal to study abroad.

Three students received to study abroad. Moira Horn, a gender studies and pre-health studies student from Lakewood, Ohio, studied in Puebla, Mexico, in fall 2015. Areli Rodriguez, an IT management and history student from Hammond, Indiana, studied in China in summer 2015. Juan Velazquez, an aerospace engineering student from Streamwood, Illinois, studied in Singapore in fall 2015.

A marketing and journalism, ethics and democracy student from Madison, Wisconsin, Cassidy McDonald was awarded a , which supports a one-year professional placement and cultural immersion experience in Asia.

Three seniors received : Henry Dickman, accountancy and economics, Richmond, Indiana; Benjamin Fouch, finance and political science and Kellogg International Scholar, Brownsburg, Indiana; and Jacqueline Wilson, IT management, political science, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dickman, Fouch and Wilson are all Hesburgh-Yusko scholars.

The University’s (CUSE) provides students across the University with opportunities for research, scholarship and creative projects. The center assists them in finding faculty mentors, funding and venues for the publication or presentation of their work. It also promotes applications to national fellowship programs and prepares students in their application process. To learn more, visit .

The , the largest chamber music competition in the United States, will take place Friday through Sunday (May 12 through 14) in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame.

Sponsored by the and hosted annually by Notre Dame over the course of three days, the competition features talented young musicians from around the world. Musicians compete in three divisions: juniors, senior strings and senior winds. Ensembles may include string quartets or sextets, brass quintets, woodwind quintets, piano trios, saxophone quartets, percussion ensembles, wind trios and an eclectic mix of winds and strings.

The grand prize concert on Sunday (May 14) features two senior division gold medalists competing to become the 2017 Fischoff grand prize winner. The concert will also feature a performance by the junior division gold medal winner. The awards ceremony and concert recognize the achievements of nine ensembles that have successfully competed against 49 chamber music ensembles. More than $37,000 will be awarded in prize money, and the grand prize winner will perform a Midwest tour in the fall followed by performances at the 2017 Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy.

Established in South Bend in 1973, the Fischoff Competition is one of the most prestigious classical music prizes achievable today. This year, 49 ensembles were accepted to the quarterfinals round. Of all entries, musicians from 31 states plus Washington, D.C., and 29 countries were represented. By the competition’s end, there will be 104 performances over the course of five rounds.

The competition events will be streamed live from the Fischoff website. Last year more than 6,000 viewers from 69 countries watched the competition online. All events except for the awards and grand prize concert are free and open to the public. A schedule is available .

Tickets for the awards and grand prize concert can be purchased at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center or by calling 574-631-2800.

Contact: Fischoff National Chamber Music Association, 574-631-0984, fischoff@fischoff.org

After Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in June 2016 — the first woman in American history nominated for president by a major political party — she tweeted a picture of her dancing with a young girl. The caption read, “To every little girl who dreams big: Yes, you can be anything you want — even president. Tonight is for you.”

It’s widely assumed that female politicians serve as role models to other women and girls, inspiring them to become politically engaged. Research on the subject, however, has produced mixed results on the actual extent of this effect.

In a recently published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities, two University of Notre Dame political scientists take a closer look at the influence of female politicians as role models. They found that although the role model effect is real, it comes with nuance: Only new and viable female candidates had an effect, and the effect applied only to young women.

, associate professor of , and , Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and chair of the Department of Political Science, employed a panel design, a first in this area of study, to examine female politicians’ influence. The pair studied female candidates for major offices — U.S. House, U.S. Senate and governor — and their effects on female political engagement using data from the , taken at a time when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House and Clinton announced her first run for presidency.

Wolbrecht and Campbell focused on both viable candidates, who are more likely to garner more attention, and new candidates who were running for seats held by men.

“Most studies of the role model effect look at the impact of the presence of female role models on all women,” said Wolbrecht. “One of our central contributions was to focus on the importance of age.”

What they found, Wolbrecht said, was that these new, viable female candidates created more political discussion and engagement in young women specifically. No influence was observed on older women.

“When a district or state experiences a woman running for a major political office held by a man, they go from a situation in which they are seeing no or very few women in positions of significant power to an election featuring a competitive female candidate. This, we hypothesized, would help shift younger women toward greater engagement,” Wolbrecht said. “Our data showed that to be the case.

“We might expect older citizens are fairly set in their political attitudes and practices, but younger citizens are still learning about the political world and determining their own place in it. It is those younger women who we find respond to the presence of female politicians by becoming more politically engaged.”

In 2016, women composed just 20 percent of the membership of the U.S. House and Senate, nearly 25 percent of state legislators nationwide and only 12 percent of governors, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Women gained more seats in the 2016 election, bringing in fresh names like U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris and Tammy Duckworth. One result of the 2016 election, however, is that more and more women are planning to run for office — which, if they’re successful, could have the opposite effect.

“With increasing numbers of prominent political women — Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Carly Fiorina, Sarah Palin, to name just a few — we might wonder if the public is beginning to view female politicians as ‘normal’ and that as a result, women running for office will no longer have a unique effect on the engagement of women and girls in the future,” Wolbrecht said.

“Perhaps ironically, the more women run for, and win, elective office, the less likely we are to find a role model effect,” said Campbell. “That is, the more role models there are, the less likely that they will be viewed as new.”

The paper, “Role models revisited: youth, novelty, and the impact of female candidates,” is available online at .

Contact: Christina Wolbrecht, 574-631-3836, Wolbrecht.1@nd.edu; David Campbell, 574-631-5189, Dave_Campbell@nd.edu

A consortium of 50 psychologists and psychiatrists from around the world has outlined a new diagnostic model for mental illness, in what researchers hope will be a paradigm shift in how these illnesses are classified and diagnosed.

, William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor and Chair of , and , Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, who both are members of the consortium, say that the current model of diagnosis and classification — the DSM-5 — is fundamentally flawed.

“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) — which is overseen and published by the American Psychiatric Association — currently is the dominant diagnostic model in North America; it also is highly influential around the world,” Watson said. Although he and Clark were involved in the revisions for the DSM’s fifth edition, he said, “Quite frankly, we were not satisfied with the revisions that were made. We felt that DSM-5 was far too conservative and failed to recognize and incorporate important scientific evidence regarding the nature of psychopathology.”

The model the consortium proposes, called the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), addresses these concerns, which are shared by many psychologists and psychiatrists.

The HiTOP model differs from the DSM in two fundamental ways, Watson said. First, although the DSM’s categorical nature means that a specific diagnosis is given only if someone meets a specific number of criteria, the HiTOP model allows for not only a diagnosis but also an assessment of its severity.

“If you meet the DSM’s diagnostic criteria for major depression, you are diagnosed as being depressed. If you do not meet these criteria, however, then you simply are classified as not depressed,” Watson said. “In contrast, HiTOP conceives of psychopathology as being continuous, that is, dimensional in nature.”

David Watson

The advantages of such classification include more personalized and specific treatment, as well as allowing researchers and clinicians to recognize and acknowledge the existence of significant problems that don’t currently meet full DSM diagnostic thresholds.

A second major advantage of the HiTOP model is its use of empirical evidence to classify disorders, a change from the DSM’s tendency to group disorders based partly on clinical assumptions about which disorders seem to go together. “For example, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and specific phobia all are classified as ‘anxiety disorders’ in the DSM because they all involve symptoms related to fear and anxiety,” Watson said. “In contrast, most people who are diagnosed with general anxiety disorder also meet the criteria for major depression. Consequently, in HiTOP, generalized anxiety disorder is classified as being more similar to major depression than to specific phobia.

“One major advantage of this approach is that it helps to clarify underlying causes and mechanisms. For instance, many of the same vulnerabilities and risk factors have been linked to both major depression and generalized anxiety disorder. So, this model will help us identify the underlying causes of problems more quickly.”

Lesser known conditions, such as sleep and bipolar disorders, still need to be classified within the HiTOP model. “Certain aspects of the system are ready to be developed into clinical applications,” said Clark, who is a member of a workgroup within the consortium that developed HiTOP exploring its clinical use. “With sufficient background knowledge, it can be used clinically immediately, but it’s clear from our discussions that it will take some time to develop HiTOP to the point that it can be widely used clinically — that is, by clinicians in the community who do not have a research background.”

Clark and Watson played a significant role in developing this model. Researchers used several large epidemiological surveys in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands and other countries to gather data about how the most common forms of psychopathology — such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder — are related.

The consortium’s paper, “The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A Dimensional Alternative to Traditional Nosologies,” published March 23 in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, is available online at .

Contact: Lee Anna Clark, 574-631-7482, la.clark@nd.edu; David Watson, 574-631-1403, db.watson@nd.edu