Indirect Self-Destructive Behavior in Chronic Hemodialysis Patients

ABSTRACT: As one of a series of investigations of indirect self-destructive behavior, a pilot study was conducted with a group of 32 chronic hemodialysis patients for those characteristics of such behavior which had emerged as most salient in earlier studies: self-esteem, locus of control, rigidity, impulsivity, futurity, risk-taking and denial. Using an average of ratings of cooperativeness obtained from the head nurse, physician, dietician, technician, and staff nurse, the group was divided into two subgroups of more and less cooperative patients, and the demographic, medical, and psychological data from the two groups were compared. The findings suggest that the less cooperative hemodialysis patients have experienced the illness as a more severe blow to their self-concept and have failed to integrate their illness into an effective adaptive life pattern. The uncooperative patients feel less valued and less appreciated not only by their family but also by fellow patients and by hospital staff. They show significantly more anger and withdrawal than the more cooperative group and appear to have compensated for a significantly greater sense of powerlessness by the development of manipulative behaviors in relating to their medical caretakers.     

Childhood anxiety and attention to emotion faces in a modified stroop task

This study used an emotional face stroop task to investigate the effects of self‐report trait anxiety, social concern (SC), and chronological age (CA) on reaction time to match coloured outlines of angry, happy, and neutral faces (and control faces with scrambled features) with coloured buttons in a community sample of 74 children aged 6 –12 years. The results showed an interference of colour matching for angry (relative to neutral) faces in children with elevated SC. The same effect was not found for happy or control faces. In addition, the results suggest that selective attention to angry faces in children with social concern (SC) was not significantly moderated by age.