Corticotropin-Releasing Factor and the Psychobiology of Early-Life Stress

ABSTRACT— Trauma and neglect during childhood are increasingly appreciated as factors in the etiology of adult mood and anxiety disorders. Much has been learned about the role of stress biology in the persisting effects of early adverse experience on adult psychopathology. Here we present an overview of developmental trauma in the psychobiology of depression and anxiety. We emphasize the role of corticotropin-releasing factor in the pathophysiology of these disorders, focusing on the transduction of early life trauma into adult psychopathology.     

Imaginary companions in childhood and adult creativity.

Case material is presented to illustrate the thesis that the ability to create an imaginary companion during childhood is an early expression of the special ego aptitudes found in creative individuals in adult life. Such "companions" allow these children to attempt to master creatively a variety of narcissistic mortifications suffered in reality and to displace unacceptable affects. In creative adults who had imaginary companions in childhood, the early fantasies serve as an organizing schema in memory for the childhood traumata. Stimuli in adult life which evoke the earlier traumata may revive the original imaginary companion fantasies. These then serve as nodal bases for the creation of specific adult works of art.     

Psychosocial Family Treatment for a 10-Year-Old with Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders are rare in childhood and little is known about their psychosocial treatment. Relevant findings from the adult and child literature are reviewed. The case of 10-year-old “Michael” is presented, who participated in a randomized clinical trial of a psychoeducational family treatment for mood disorders. Following treatment, quantitative and qualitative data show that Michael's mood and social functioning improved, utilization of mental health services improved, the overall family emotional climate became more positive, and his parents felt supported. He no longer met criteria for a mood episode but continued to display psychosis. This family's response suggests that group psychoeducation may be an effective treatment for families of children with emerging schizophrenia spectrum disorders.     

Born and raised to be a fraudster

Although a great deal of research has focussed on and continues to focus on fraud prevention and detection, there is still no reliable way to predict who will become a white‐collar criminal/fraudster. Significant benefits would result if and when this can be done. This paper recognizes that there are many common characteristics that exist among fraudsters and investigates whether fraud can be predicted based on the psychological, sociological, and environmental state of children throughout their upbringing. Research shows that children with a negative childhood develop negative habits, emotions, and mentalities, including disorders that can linger well into their adult lives. These negative characteristics can ruin relationships and possibly even influence an individual to commit fraud. This paper provides initial evidence regarding the potential significance of some childhood characteristics that may contribute to the likelihood that someone will become a white‐collar criminal. Given that no other similar research exists, this paper may help guide future researchers who are also attempting to solve this complex problem.     

Family-based Psychoeducation for Children and Adolescents with Mood Disorders

Psychoeducation is often used for family members of adult patients with mood disorders. An increase in family’s knowledge of the patient’s illness course and outcome is thought to improve treatment compliance and may reduce relapse rates through identification of early symptoms and risks. While studies on family-based psychoeducation of adult patients with mood disorders have been reviewed, a similar review has not been conducted in patients who are children and adolescents. We conducted a systematic review of studies published between 1980 and 2006 on independently standing psychoeducation programs for families with children suffering from mood disorders. Results revealed eight treatment and preventive psychoeducation studies for families of affectively ill children or children at risk for depression. Findings indicate that psychoeducation models typically adopt a workshop approach incorporating didactic teachings and interactive discussion sessions, with or without specific skills training. Given the paucity of randomized controlled trials and lack of comparability between psychoeducation models, conclusions about the true efficacy of each program as a treatment or an adjunct to the treatment of mood disorders in children and adolescents cannot be made. Further research into psychoeducation for families of children with mood disorders is warranted.     

Adult ADHD and/or Sleep Apnea? Differential Diagnostic Considerations with Six Case Studies

An increased interest in the persistence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) into adulthood brings concern that adult ADHD may become overdiagnosed. As with ADHD in childhood, various other adult psychological and medical disorders may be associated with ADHD in adulthood, and these related disorders may be mislabeled and mistreated as simple ADHD. One such medical condition is sleep apnea. This paper reviews similarities and differences between ADHD and sleep apnea and presents case histories of six adult patients diagnosed with ADHD who were subsequently found to have at least comorbid obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Clinicians who diagnose and treat patients with ADHD are advised to become familiar with sleep apnea as a life-threatening condition that presents with overlapping symptoms.     

Diagnosing children's writing disabilities: different tests give different results

Writing problems are common in children with clinical disorders. However, there are significant intra-individual differences between the ability to spell words, construct sentences, and compose text. Therefore, achievement tests measuring different writing skills may not be consistent in identifying children who have these various writing disabilities. Our study compared scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Written Language subtests (which measure the ability to produce single words and single sentences) with scores on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test Written Expression subtest (which assesses compositional writing skills) in 54 children referred by their teachers to a school psychologist for writing problems. The Woodcock-Johnson only identified 35% of children as having significant writing problems, whereas the Wechsler test identified 78%. Our study suggests that the latter is more likely than the Woodcock-Johnson to identify students who have problems in compositional writing.     

Psychiatric correlates of childhood shyness in a nationally representative sample

Relations between adult anxiety and mood disorders and retrospective reports of excessive childhood shyness were investigated in the US National Comorbidity, Survey (n=5877). Results indicated that 26% of women and 19% of men described themselves as 'very shy' when they were growing up. Of these shy individuals, 53% of women and 40% of men met criteria for a lifetime diagnosis of one or more anxiety or mood disorders. Relations between excessive shyness and each of the anxiety and mood disorders were examined after adjusting for elevated neuroticism, self-criticism, and low maternal care. The largest odds ratios were found for social phobia in both men and women, particularly for the complex subtype of this disorder. Significant associations also emerged for posttraumatic stress disorder in women and for major depressive disorder in men. Childhood shyness remained significantly associated with a lifetime history of social phobia when individuals with current (past year) social phobia were excluded from the analysis. The results of this study suggest that childhood shyness is strongly related to the complex subtype of social phobia in the general population. Excessive shyness does not appear to be strongly associated with other anxiety and mood disorders when related psychosocial and developmental dimensions are statistically controlled. Finally, many individuals who report excessive childhood shyness do not meet criteria for any anxiety or mood disorder. In a similar fashion, approximately 50% of individuals with a lifetime history of complex social phobia did not view themselves as very shy when growing up.     

Mood Swings and Creativity

ABSTRACT:

This article evaluates recent evidence for an association between creativity and bipolar mood disorders. Eminent creativity and everyday creativity are distinguished, with high rates of major mood disorders‐particularly bipolar disorders— appearing among eminent creators in the arts. However, among everyday persons, including the 4–5% of the population that may develop a bipolar “spectrum”; disorder and their relatives, it is those with relatively milder mood disorders and normalcy who may show the greatest creative advantage. These seemingly conflicting results are reconciled through comparison of research designs and the creativity and diagnostic variables studied. Evidence regarding mood states that enhance creativity is also considered, both for eminent and everyday creators, and some preliminary results from a study of patients are presented. Here, milder mood elevations were tied most closely to the experience of creativity, although other patterns can exist. Three patterns are examined in terms of 23 mood, cognitive, and behavioral features that Jamison (1989) studied in eminent creators.     

Improving argumentative writing skills: Effect of two types of aids

Young children have difficulties writing argumentative texts which contain well-linked arguments and counterarguments even though they are capable of arguing by oral. Two main explanations have been provided to account for those difficulties: a) The writer has to manage alone two different points of view, whereas each of the two (or more) speakers can take charge of one of the points of view. b) The inability of young children to attribute an argumentative valence to statements.In order to improve the ability of 8-year-old writers (skilled or less skilled) to manage the dialogical dimension of the argumentative text, two types of aids were tested. 1) A collaborative writing in which the children worked in twos to recompose an experimental argumentation. 2) A classification task was presented before the text recomposition task. The results show that 8-year-old children are capable of processing the argumentative valence of statements. However, only skilled writers take advantage of the two types of aids to compose a text comparable to the standard argumentative schema.     

3~4岁幼儿创造性人格与气质的交叉滞后分析

以幼儿创造性人格倾向教师评定问卷、儿童气质教师评定问卷作为研究工具,对287名3岁和4岁组幼儿进行为期一年的追踪研究,考察幼儿气质与创造性人格的发展变化情况,以及幼儿气质与其创造性人格之间的关系。结果发现：随着时间的发展,幼儿气质对其创造性人格有显著影响。幼儿的情绪性、活动性、反应性及专注性均能够显著正向预测其创造性人格,而幼儿的社会抑制性则能够显著负向预测其创造性人格。     

Transgender and Gender Diverse Patients in Intensive Mood Disorder Treatment: A Comparative Examination of Clinical Presentation and Treatment Outcomes

Individuals who are transgender and gender diverse (TGD) are more likely to suffer from and to seek mental health services for mood disorders. Some literature suggests that TGD individuals, because of pervasive and systemic minority stress, may have more complex clinical presentations (i.e., psychiatric conditions and severity of symptoms) and may benefit from empirically based treatments to a lesser degree than their cisgender peers. However, research has yet to examine individuals who are TGD receiving treatment in specialized, intensive mood disorder treatment despite the propensity for them to be diagnosed with and treated for mood disorders. Using a sample of 1,326 adult patients in intensive mood disorder treatment (3.8% TGD), the clinical presentation and treatment outcomes were compared between patients who are TGD and cisgender. Contrary to previous research, TGD patients were largely similar if not healthier than their cisgender counterparts, including similar depression severity, quality of life, emotion dysregulation, and behavioral activation, and less severe rumination at admission. Despite similar to better reported mental health symptoms, TGD patients were diagnosed with more psychiatric conditions overall, including greater prevalence of social anxiety and neurodevelopmental diagnoses. Those who are TGD did not experience attenuated treatment response as predicted. Findings suggest that patients in intensive mood disorder treatment who are TGD may be more resilient than previously assumed, or supports may have increased to buffer effects of stigma on mental health, and emphasize the need to exercise discretion and sensitivity in diagnostic practices to prevent over-diagnosis and pathologizing of TGD individuals.     

Paternal Psychiatric Symptoms and Maladaptive Paternal Behavior in the Home During the Child Rearing Years

Data from the Children in the Community Study, a community-based longitudinal study were used to investigate associations between paternal psychiatric disorders and child-rearing behaviors. Paternal psychiatric symptoms and behavior in the home were assessed among 782 families during the childhood and adolescence of the offspring. Paternal anxiety, disruptive, mood, personality, and substance use disorders were independently associated with specific types of maladaptive paternal behavior in the home during the child-rearing years after paternal age, education, income, co-occurring paternal psychiatric symptoms, offspring age, sex, intelligence, temperament, and psychiatric symptoms were controlled statistically. Paternal psychiatric disorders that were present by mean offspring age 14 were associated with elevated risk for maladaptive paternal behavior in the home at mean age offspring 16, after prior maladaptive paternal behavior was controlled statistically. These findings suggest that paternal psychiatric disorder may be an important determinant of maladaptive paternal behavior in the home during the child-rearing years. Improved recognition and treatment of paternal psychiatric disorders may help to reduce the amount of maladaptive parenting behavior that many children and adolescents might otherwise be likely to experience.     

Explaining age and sex differences in children's handwriting: A neurobiological approach

The present study aimed to assess the effect of age and sex on children's writing performance, as well as to investigate possible age and sex differences between proficient, intermediate and poor writers. Two hundred and ten children aged 7 to 12 years were examined during spontaneous writing, copying and writing to dictation, using the writing scale of the Luria – Nebraska neuropsychological battery. Results showed a significant effect of age in writing performance. The trend towards writing proficiency in childhood was found to be sex related, while boys were overrepresented among the poor writers. The findings are interpreted on the basis of the neurobiological theories of brain development as well as on the different rates of cerebral maturation between the sexes.     

Creativity Research Overlooks the Study of Resilience among Young Children: A Bibliometric Network Review

Creativity researchers are increasingly interested in understanding when, how, and for whom creativity can be beneficial. Previous reviews have demonstrated that creativity research largely ignores the study of its impact on factors that promote health, and well-being among populations of adults. It is unclear, in fact, whether this gap in research also extends to creativity research among young children. This paper addresses this issue. Early childhood is a crucial stage for the cognitive development of young children who remain highly sensitive to stress, and adversity. It is therefore essential to identify and promote factors that are beneficial to early childhood resilience, thereby contributing to documenting more of the effects of creative activities on positive outcomes. This paper presents a review with a bibliometric analysis of 1000 randomly selected articles from the Web of Science, without bias towards any specific peer-reviewed journal. The analysis of 454 included articles shows that approximately 80% of the included studies focus on creativity as an outcome (replicating previous findings with a larger sample), with only 3.78% investigating creative activities as predictors among young children. In this small percentage, most of the studies addressed creative activities in young children related to resilience outcomes.     

才思泉涌“举步”间：体育运动对创造性思维的影响

创造性思维是运用独特且新颖的观点解决问题的思维形式,发散与聚合思维是两种常见的类型。体育运动对发散与聚合思维具有不同的影响,且受到运动强度、方式、时长以及个体差异等因素的调节。目前解释体育运动如何影响创造性思维的理论有情绪假说、执行功能假说与身心隐喻理论。未来的研究需要在进一步重视研究规范性的基础上,加强神经科学研究并拓宽群体覆盖面,关注体育运动与创造性成就的关系,为开具创造性思维运动处方提供有力的科学支持。