Recent suicidal behavior was reported on a questionnaire by 14% of 272 high school students. Two-thirds of the suicidal teenagers neither received help nor disclosed their self-harm to anyone. Depression and stress--especially family suicidality, feelings 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.

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.

A model is presented in which assertion and aggression are seen as arising from two entirely different biopsychological systems in the human infant. Assertion derives from the universal tendency to be active, to seek stimuli, to generate plans, and to carry them out. It is a self-activating system and is generally associated with the positive affects of joy, interest, and excitement. Aggression derives from the equally universal self-protective system. This system, however, is reactive in the face of a perceived threat and is associated with the dysphoric affects of anger, fear, and distress. During the infant and toddler period, the child's assertions may be treated punitively by the parents as if they were aggressive acts. The child in turn feels threatened and becomes self-protective. The result is a contamination between assertion and aggression and the creation of a new self-sustaining system in which aggression appears to be spontaneous and self-activating. If assertions are frequently blocked, the contamination may be extensive, and it may appear as if an aggressive instinctual process is present. However, a systemic explanation provides a much better fit with the empirical observations than does an instinctual one. Four examples of different family styles are presented. The model permits one to understand the subtle qualitative differences in style reflecting different individual combinations of assertion and aggression and their associated affects.

The present study was an attempt to replicate demonstrations of directed reaching reported in-1970 by Bower, Broughton, and Moore. Nine alert infants between 7 and 15 days of age were presented with a small but visually effective stimulus in three different positions. The infants' arm and hand movements were videotaped and analyzed to determine whether the position of the ball affected the direction of the infants' extensions. The percentage of contacts and near contacts to total number of extensions was 36% or half that reported by Bower et al., suggesting that early extensions may not be directed. The fact that there were as many extensions in the absence as in the presence of the stimulus suggests further that contacts were fortuitous.

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