Patricia J. Mills

© 2013 American Psychological Association.Objective: Living in adverse neighborhood conditions has been linked with greater prevalence of cardiovascular disease. We aimed to learn whether perceived neighborhood problems are related to attenuated nocturnal blood pressure dipping, a risk factor for CVD morbidity. Method: A sample of 133 adults underwent 24-hr ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. The neighborhood problem scale was used to assess neighborhood environmental stressors. Results: Nocturnal dipping in systolic, diastolic and mean arterial blood pressure was reduced in individuals with higher NPS scores. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that neighborhood problems explained 4%-6% of the variance in SBP, DBP, and MAP dipping even after adjusting for several theoretical confounders such as social status, age, gender, race, body mass index, smoking, exercise, depression and discrimination. Conclusion: Neighborhood problems may contribute to attenuated BP dipping beyond the effect of known risk factors.

© 2013, International Society of Behavioral Medicine.Background: Depressive symptoms and fatigue frequently overlap in clinical samples and the general population. The link of depressive symptoms and fatigue with increased risk of cardiovascular disease has been partly explained by shared biological mechanisms including sympathetic overactivity. Prolonged sympathetic overactivity downregulates the responsiveness of the β-adrenergic receptor, a receptor that mediates several end-organ sympathetic responses.Purpose: The authors studied whether depression and fatigue are related to reduced β-AR responsiveness within the human body in an ethnically diverse sample of African and Caucasian Americans.Methods: The chronotropic25 dose was used to determine in vivo β-AR responsiveness in 93 healthy participants. Psychometric measures included the Center of Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale and the Multidimensional Fatigue Symptom Inventory.Results: Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that mental fatigue was significantly related to reduced β-AR responsiveness in the whole sample. Moderation analyses indicated significant ethnicity × depression/fatigue interactions. Depressive symptoms, total fatigue, emotional fatigue, mental fatigue, and physical fatigue were related to reduced β-AR responsiveness in Caucasian American but not in African Americans.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that symptoms of depression and fatigue are related to decreased in vivo β-AR responsiveness in Caucasian Americans. The lack of this association in African Americans highlights the importance for considering ethnicity as a potential moderator in research focusing on associations between psychological variables and cardiovascular function.

Objectives.This study aimed to further elucidate the biobehavioral mechanisms linking dementia caregiving with an increased cardiovascular disease risk. We hypothesized that both elevated depressive symptoms and a behavioral correlate of depression, low leisure satisfaction, are associated with systemic inflammation.Method.We studied 121 elderly Alzheimer's disease caregivers who underwent 4 annual assessments for depressive symptoms, leisure satisfaction, and circulating levels of inflammatory markers. We used mixed-regression analyses controlling for sociodemographic and health-relevant covariates to examine longitudinal relationships between constructs of interest.Results.There were inverse relationships between total leisure satisfaction and tumor necrosis factor-β, interleukin-8. Depressive symptoms did not mediate the relationship between leisure satisfaction and inflammation.Discussion.Lower satisfaction with leisure activities is related to higher low-grade systemic inflammation. This knowledge may provide a promising way of improving cardiovascular health in dementia caregivers through behavioral activation treatments targeting low leisure satisfaction. © The Author 2013.

For me, the above quotation from the Dialectic of Enlightenment speaks to the profound problem of the other in Hegel’s philosophy, particularly the problem of woman as other in his reading of Sophocles’ Antigone. It also speaks to Hegel’s underlying resistance to woman’s otherness. Many commentators attempt to erase the difficulties that beset Hegel’s philosophy regarding the problem of woman’s difference, her otherness, by conflating the conceptual presentation in the Phenomenology of Spirit of the dialectic of heterosexual difference with the dialectic of the master and the slave. Philip Kain’s “Hegel, Antigone, and Women,” another effort to merge these two dialectics, suffers from the same fatal flaw that characterizes all such attempts. That is, the only way to fuse the two dialectics is to misread them both. Why it seems so necessary to so many to collapse what are clearly two distinct dialectical moments is a question of no little import. I believe the answer to this question has everything to do with a desire to make the otherness of woman disappear, a desire motivated by an “inward and mute” fear of the other. Perhaps it is this same fear that leads Hegel to divide woman into four parts, parts that when combined do not add up to a “whole.” The mere existence of woman as other is certainly a provocation.

The first two-thirds of Stuart Swindle’s article, “Why Feminists Should Take the Phenomenology of Spirit Seriously,” amounts to little more than rhetorical misogyny: “Those poor feminists, trapped in ‘the little stories’ of the Hegelian system, unable to see for themselves that what is really important is Hegel’s ‘big story.’ Why those poor creatures, those feminists just cannot see the forest for the trees! How could they be so small-minded: trying to turn such monumental philosophy into “an activists’ handbook”! On top of that, they are so haphazard in their work. Really, their lack of seriousness is just too much to bear!”

Hegel’s interpretation of Sophocles’ play Antigone is central to an understanding of woman’s role in the Hegelian system. Hegel is fascinated by this play and uses it in both the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right to demonstrate that familial ethical life is woman’s unique responsibility. Antigone is revealed as the paradigmatic figure of womanhood and family life in both the pagan and modern worlds although there are fundamental differences between these two worlds for Hegel. In order to situate the interpretation of this play within its wider context I shall begin with a brief outline of the pagan world described in the Phenomenology. I will then consider the interpretation of this play within the analysis of the modern world in the Philosophy of Right. Throughout, the focus will be on woman’s role in Hegel’s philosophy.

A pivotal figure in critical theory and the modern/postmodern debates, G. W. F. Hegel is the subject of differing feminist critiques. Going beyond and behind Simone de Beauvoir's creative appropriation of Hegel in The Second Sex, the essays gathered together here think both with and against the grain of Hegel's dialectical theory through the lens of gender issues found in his philosophy. Some of the authors focus on prominent passages on woman and the feminine in Hegel's work, while others argue that it is interpretations of the margins of his text that are most telling. Hegel articulates one of the central questions with which political feminists are concerned: how to conceptualize identity and difference. A point of contention among the authors is whether or not Hegel's speculative system, with its &"reconciliation&" of identity and difference, &"answers&" this question. Contributors include the French philosopher Luce Irigaray, the Italian feminist Carla Lonzi, and the Canadian theoretician Mary O'Brien, along with Seyla Benhabib, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, David Farrell Krell, Frances Olsen, Naomi Schor, Eric O. Clarke, Carole Pateman, Heidi M. Ravven, Alison L. Brown, and Shari Neller Starrett. Read together, the articles stress the transgressive nature of feminist theory as it challenges disciplinary boundaries; they are the articulation of the many different strategies and positions of the &"vigorous debate&" that defines feminist theory today.