A multimedia program to educate the public about mental and addictive disorders

The Mental Health Studios is an interactive multimedia program designed to educate the public about the biological basis of mental and addictive disorders. Using sound, text, graphics, charts, and video, the software provides detailed scientific information about the brain and depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. An evaluation study of a permanent display at the St. Louis Science Center revealed that most visitors spent less than 5 min with the computer program but nevertheless demonstrated significant changes in attitude toward people with mental and addictive disorders. Senior high-school students who interacted with the program for 20 min experienced even greater attitude changes, and their knowledge about mental and addictive disorders also increased significantly.     

The application of mindfulness-based cognitive interventions in the treatment of co-occurring addictive and mood disorders

This article reviews the theory, clinical application, and empirical findings on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for mental health and addictive disorders. Expanding upon the research demonstrating the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for addiction, this article develops and explores the rationale for combining mindfulness-based interventions with evidence-based CBTs in treating addictive disorders, with an emphasis on substance use disorders with co-occurring mood disorders. This article proposes that deficits in affect--regulation related to the behavioral and emotional effects of neurobiological changes that occur with long-term substance abuse--pose a unique set of challenges in early recovery. Prolonged use of addictive substances impairs the brain pathways that mediate certain affect regulation functions. These functions involve attention and inhibitory control, the saliency of and response to addictive versus natural reward stimuli, and the ability to detach or maintain perspective in response to strong emotional states. In treating this affective dysregulation, which can contribute to the vulnerability to relapse in the early stages of recovery, the affect-regulation-specific focus of MBCT adds a valuable element to augment CBT for addiction. Summarizing magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography findings on the effects of MBCT and the neurobiology of drug addiction, this article outlines directions for further research on potential benefits of MBCT for the recovering individual. Finally, this article describes a structured protocol, developed at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, which combines CBT with mindfulness-based intervention, for the treatment of affect-regulation issues specific to co-occurring addictive and mood disorders.     

Differentiation between primary and neurotic sexual disorders

The object of this paper is to show that there are different forms of sexual anomalies which permit of basic and therapeutic differentiation. Atavisms of responding have been observed to play an essential role in real perversions.     

Risk factors for addictive disorders: a discriminant analysis on 374 addicted and 513 nonpsychiatric participants

Many common risk factors have been described in addictive disorders. Little is known about factors' respective contributions to discrimination of addicted and nonaddicted participants. Two large samples were compared including 513 nonpsychiatric participants and 374 addicted participants meeting the DSM-IV criteria for eating disorders, alcohol, or substance dependence. Twenty-six risk factors were assessed by interview or self-rating scales. A discriminant analysis determined the respective weight of each risk factor. One discriminant function emerged and characterized a depressive dimension. The results suggest that the different risk factors described in addiction could be related to a depressive dimension.     

正念禅修与成瘾行为

在矫正成瘾行为的研究中,正念禅修作为一种更为有益的尝试,受到研究者们日益广泛的关注。正念禅修指个体自觉地将注意力集中于体验其思想、情绪和身体感觉上,并以觉察、接纳和非批判的态度关注于当下体验的训练方式。目前,研究者主要就正念禅修在成瘾行为矫正中的积极作用、渴望与压力在其中所扮演的作用以及从神经机制三方面对其进行阐述,由于当前的研究大多是初步性的,未来可从研究方法学、解释机制和应用研究等方面展开进一步的探究。     

Childhood family and personological risk factors for sexual offending

Childhood family characteristics including poor parent–child bonding, parental neglect and deviance, discontinued parental care, physical and sexual abuse, and child personal characteristics including antisocial, hyperactive, and impulsive behavior, precocious sexual behavior, and social skill and empathy deficits are first reviewed as risk factors for sexual offending by men. The implications for sexual offender treatment with male sexual offenders are then discussed.     

Paranoid disorders: family sources of the delusional system

Several family transactional patterns seem to play a critical rôle in the creation of the patient's paranoid constructions. A philosophy of life characterized by inflexible rules, irrational beliefs, distrust, apprehensive-ness and hate is prominent in a great number of families with paranoid patients. The family members typically intrude on each others' actions and feelings with mutual reinforcement of the paranoid ideas. Schreber's family appears to be a characteristic demonstration of the important implications of interactional transactions within the family in the genesis of a paranoid system.     

formalizing sexual misconduct on Guam: family tyrannies and bureaucratic nightmares

We address the legal definition of the crimes surrounding behavior defined as sexual misconduct (i.e., rape, sexual misconduct, family offenses, etc.), offenses historically considered common in the islands. The number of reports and arrests in the Territory of Guam concerning these crimes during the years 1980-1992 presented in the Territorial version of the Uniform Crime Reports is examined, along with interview material. The findings illustrate a highly politicized application of these laws in the Territory over the period, suggesting the informality of the Territorial legal system in its control of deviant behavior. The conclusions address this issue, and suggest that the legal formalization and police discretion literatures, now generally addressed and evaluated separately, might profitably be combined to assess the ideological as well as real formality of any justice system.     

Recollections of conflict with parents and family support in the personality disorders

This study examined the relationships between personality disorders and retrospective reports of family support and conflict with parents. Participants were 798 United States Air Force recruits who were participating in a larger program of research on the peer assessment of personality disorders. Correlational analyses revealed consistent but modest associations between personality disorder features and both measures of family adversity. Borderline, antisocial, and paranoid features maintained small, unique associations after controlling for the general component of personality disorder. Further analyses, however, showed that differences among the correlations between personality disorder traits and family adversity measures account for little explained variance. In general, it does not appear that individual personality disorders have unique relations with retrospective reports of family adversity. Instead, the relation between personality disorders and family adversity seems to depend on a component common to all personality disorders.     

The effects of family structure on the sexual behavior of adolescents.

The effects of two family structures, single- and two-parent homes, on adolescent sexual behavior were studied. The variables of race, age, and gender were controlled. The analysis compared the age at first intercourse, frequency of intercourse in the last four weeks, and virgin/nonvirgin status of adolescents from black single-parent families, white single-parent families, black two-parent families, and white two-parent families. For males, the two-parent family was related to less sexual activity and older age at first intercourse. For females, the two-parent family was not as important as race in influencing sexual behavior. The white females from two-parent families were more likely to be virgins, but once having had sexual intercourse, tended to have a higher level of sexual activity than did black females from two-parent homes.     

Unrepressed unconscious and unsaid in addictive symptomatology

The aim of this work is to understand, from a developmental-relational perspective, the emotional nature of addictive symptoms. Many studies have shown that addictions are linked to traumatic emotions that, once activated, could cause a feeling of emotional confusion that in the most severe cases could be connected to the fear that the Self might disintegrate. Before understanding the relationship between dissociation and addictions, it is essential to distinguish disintegration (désagrégation, in the language of Pierre Janet) and dissociation. Indeed, if the disintegration is a structural and pathological condition of the personality caused by early and chronic emotional traumatic memories, the dissociation is a defensive reaction to a stress: this reaction can be normal (flexible and adequate) or pathological (rigid and inadequate). Thus, addictive behaviours could be associated to a dissociative reaction in individuals with a structural dissociation of the personality (désagrégation). This disintegration would be linked to traumatic emotions: unconscious and unsymbolised emotions. On the unconscious nature of these emotions, the author of this paper underlines the role of the unrepressed unconscious, which in addicts would seem to be impaired.