Transitioning from a hospital rehabilitation programme to home: exploring the experiences of people with complex regional pain syndrome

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is difficult to diagnose and is characterised by burning pain in one or more limbs. Treatment is palliative not curative and focuses on improving function. This requires patients to make long-term changes to their behaviour. As with all such regimens, adherence is often poor. This study explored the lived experience of 10 patients who had returned home after completing a two-week in-patient treatment programme. The interviews focused on how they coped with the transition from hospital to home, and on the things that they considered had facilitated or hindered this transition. Battling for control was an overarching theme that connected the four superordinate themes: 'gaining momentum' that facilitated the implementation of treatment advice, 'distance from the pool of expertise' that detailed the barriers to adherence experienced; 'It helped me realise it was not all in my head' that detailed a facilitative process, and the 'nag list' that was a technique patients' used to garner support. This article offers insights into the transition experience. A key outcome is the recognition of the need to better prepare patients for their transition back home.     

Does Risk Assessment Make a Difference? Results of Implementing the SAVRY in Juvenile Probation

An effective approach to reducing recidivism is, first, to identify a youth's risk of reoffending and then to match the intensity of interventions to that risk level. This pre-post quasi-experimental, prospective study compared 247 (pre) with 217 (post) adjudicated youths to examine the implementation of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and its effects on case management practices in Louisiana's Caddo parish probation office. The results indicated that placement rates dropped by 50%, use of maximum levels of supervision dropped by almost 30%, and use of community services decreased except for high-risk youths, but only after the SAVRY was properly implemented. This shift towards more appropriate allocation of resources that are matched to risk level occurred without a significant increase in reoffending. The implications for implementation and for use of risk/needs assessment in juvenile probation are discussed. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Factor Structure of the Teasing Questionnaire – Revised (TQ-R)

Recent literature has focused on the relation between childhood teasing and adulthood psychopathology, with the majority of this work dependent on a single measure, the Teasing Questionnaire-Revised (TQ-R; Storch et al. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 18:681–694, 2004). However, the factor structure and reliability of the TQ-R requires further examination. The present investigation reevaluated the factor structure of the TQ-R in two large samples. In Study 1, three previous factor models were investigated through confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) in a large clinical sample. Due to their poor fit, exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were used to investigate alternative factor models. In Study 2, the factor structure of the previous models and new models from Study 1 EFAs were investigated through CFAs and estimates of internal consistency in a large college sample. Together, these findings provided the most support for a new 21-item five factor model, identified in the Study 1 EFAs and supported by the Study 2 CFAs, with the content of the teasing subscales consistent with the constructs of anxiety, appearance, academics, weight, and height.     

The Relation between Parent Mental Health and Child Internalizing Symptoms in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The present study evaluated whether families receiving Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) experienced significant improvements in both parent and...     

Examining the basis for illusory recollection: The role of remember/know instructions

Curiously, studies using the remember/know paradigm to measure recollective experience show that people often vividly remember events that never occurred, a phenomenon referred to asillusory recollection. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that false remember responses in the converging associates, or Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, reflect accurate memory for the study episode, rather than false recollection of critical lures. To test this hypothesis, we used standard remember instructions that emphasized recollection of the study context by allowing participants to use memory of surrounding list items as evidence for recollection, or we used modified instructions that did not include memory for surrounding list items as a basis for recollection. Results showed that, as compared with the standard instruction condition, the modified instructions selectively reduced reports of false remember responses to critical lures, but did not affect remember responses to studied items. By contrast, remember responses to critical lures were unaffected by an instruction condition that excluded the use of voice information as evidence for remembering. These results suggest that remember responses to falsely recognized items are driven partly by retrieval of studied items, rather than illusory recollection of the critical lures themselves. They further point to the importance of instructions in influencing subjective reports.     

The Effect of Examining Actual Products or Product Descriptions on Consumer Preference

Many consumers purchase products in stores, where they can physically examine and touch the items. In addition, consumers shop for products online or through direct mail, where they cannot physically examine and touch the merchandise. Building on an analysis of perceptual mechanisms involved in the sense of touch, we find that products with primarily material properties, such as clothing or carpeting, are more likely to be preferred in shopping environments that allow physical inspection than in those environments that do not. We also find that there is no difference in preference across the two environments for products with primarily geometric properties, such as packaged goods, for which vision is highly diagnostic. Furthermore, when the touch properties of a material product are verbally described, this reduces the difference in preference between the two environments.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Role of Biopsychosocial Factors in Predicting Body Change Strategies Among Adolescent Boys

In this study we examined the role of biopsychosocial factors on adolescent boys' body modification strategies over an 8-month period. Participants were 434 adolescent boys aged between 11 and 16 years. The majority of respondents were from Anglo-Australian backgrounds (83%); the others were from Asian and European non-English-speaking backgrounds. The results indicated a consistent relationship between perceived encouragement to engage in body change strategies and increases in adolescents' body modification strategies, including muscle gain, weight gain, and weight loss. In addition, poor parent relations, being younger, and higher scores on the pubertal development scale predicted increased use of food supplements. However, the stability of the body modification strategies and the examined variables over the 8-month period were low. Further studies are needed to examine the stability of adolescent self-perceptions over both longer and shorter periods. Moreover, researchers need to include other factors that may be more relevant for adolescent boys (e.g., involvement in sports).