Cross-national comparisons of the association between alcohol consumption and deliberate self-harm in adolescents

How differences in drinking patterns may affect the impact of alcohol consumption on deliberate self-harm among adolescents is explored in this international comparative study. Schools in Australia, Belgium, England, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway (N = 30,532) were surveyed. In all countries the risk of deliberate self-harm was significantly elevated among adolescents who reported some or numerous episodes of intoxication, controlling for confounding factors. The results support the assumption that intoxication is significantly related to the association between alcohol consumption and deliberate self-harm in adolescents.     

Inhibition of action, thought, and emotion: A selective neurobiological review

The neural bases of inhibitory function are reviewed, covering data from paradigms assessing inhibition of motor responses (antisaccade, go/nogo, stop-signal), cognitive sets (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sort Test), and emotion (fear extinction). The frontal cortex supports performance on these paradigms, but the specific neural circuitry varies: response inhibition depends upon fronto-basal ganglia networks, inhibition of cognitive sets is supported by orbitofrontal cortex, and retention of fear extinction reflects ventromedial prefrontal cortex–amygdala interactions. Inhibition is thus neurobiologically heterogeneous, although right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex may support a general inhibitory process. Dysfunctions in these circuits may contribute to psychopathological conditions marked by inhibitory deficits.     

Sleep disturbances in depressed pregnant women and their newborns

Pregnant women (N=253) were recruited during their second trimester of pregnancy (M=22.3 weeks gestation) and assigned to depressed (N=83) and non-depressed groups based on a SCID diagnosis of depression. They were then given self-report measures on sleep disturbance, depression, anxiety and anger, and their urine was assayed for norepinephrine and cortisol. These measures were repeated during their third trimester (M=32.4 weeks). Their newborns were then observed during sleep. During both the second and third trimesters, the depressed women had more sleep disturbances and higher depression, anxiety and anger scores. They also had higher norepinephrine and cortisol levels. The newborns of the depressed mothers also had more sleep disturbances including less time in deep sleep and more time in indeterminate (disorganized) sleep, and they were more active and cried/fussed more.     

Preterm infants show reduced stress behaviors and activity after 5 days of massage therapy

Preterm infants residing in an NICU were randomly assigned to a massage therapy or to a control group. The preterm infants in the massage therapy group received three 15-min massages each day for 5 consecutive days, with the massages consisting of moderate pressure stroking to the head, shoulders, back, arms and legs and kinesthetic exercises consisting of flexion and extension of the limbs. Infant stress behaviors and activity were recorded on the first and last day of the study. Preterm infants receiving massage therapy showed fewer stress behaviors and less activity from the first to the last day of the study. The findings suggest that massage has pacifying or stress reducing effects on preterm infants, which is noteworthy given that they experience numerous stressors during their hospitalization.     

Task feedback effects on conflict monitoring and executive control: relationship to subclinical measures of depression

Emerging evidence suggests that depression is associated with executive dysfunction, particularly after committing errors or receiving negative performance feedback. To test this hypothesis, 57 participants performed two executive tasks known to elicit errors (the Simon and Stroop Tasks) during positive or negative performance feedback. Participants with elevated depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory scores >or= 13) were characterized by impaired posterror and postconflict performance adjustments, especially during emotionally negative task-related feedback. Additionally, for both tasks, depressive symptoms were inversely related to postconflict reaction time adjustments following negative, but not positive, feedback. These findings suggest that subclinical depression is associated with impairments in behavioral adjustments after internal (perceived failure) and external feedback about deficient task performance.     

Enhancing challenged students' recognition of mathematical relations through differential outcomes training

Previous studies have reported that the differential outcomes procedure enhances learning and memory in special populations with cognitive deficits (see Goeters, Blakely, & Poling, 1992, for a review). In the present study we extend these findings to healthy adults who were asked to discriminate between the symbols " > " and " < " in mathematical statements. In Experiment 1, the performance of participants who showed difficulties in discriminating between these symbols was better (shorter response times) for the differential outcomes condition than for the nondifferential outcomes condition. In Experiment 2, the difficulty of the task was increased by using signed decimal numbers. Similar to Experiment 1, participants who initially had difficulties in discriminating between the symbols showed better performance (higher accuracy) for the differential outcomes condition than for the nondifferential outcomes condition, but only when both numbers were negative. These findings suggest that the differential outcomes procedure can be used to improve performance of challenged healthy adults on discrimination tasks with mathematical symbols and relations.     

Clinical Mutual Attunement and the Development of Therapeutic Process: A Preliminary Study

Despite the identification of many factors that play a central role in the development of the psychotherapy process, there is still a lack of evidence about the basic relational mechanisms that pave the way to its working. In this pilot study, we focus on nonverbal microprocessual attunement as the basic mechanism grounding the displacing of discrete factors in shaping the clinical process. Two single sessions of two short-term psychodynamic treatments, selected respectively from a good- and a poor-outcome treatment, have been coded in terms of patient and therapist speech rate, coordination in ruptures, resolution of the therapeutic alliance, and patient's displayed thinking processes. Two dynamic structural equation models focusing on clinical attunement as a factor able to activate the interplay of the assessed clinical dimensions have been theoretically designed and tested in both cases. The driven theoretical structural equation models fit the data, suggesting a different role of nonverbal attunement as a moderating factor. The obtained results are consistent with the hypothesis claiming that a good-outcome psychotherapy session is characterized by a mechanism of clinical attunement that enforces the therapist–patient relationship and promotes the integration of formal thinking processes that affect emotional and cognitive domains.     

Academic performance,popularity, and depression predict adolescent substance use

Eighty-nine high school seniors completed a questionnaire on their feelings and activities, including their use of drugs. Adolescents with a low grade point average, high popularity, and high depression were more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana than were their peers. Cigarette and alcohol use predicted marijuana use, which in turn predicted cocaine use.     

Trends in Hanging and Firearm Suicide Rates in Australia: Substitution of Method?

This study examined the increase in the rate of suicide by hanging and an apparently simultaneous decrease in the rate of suicide by firearm as hypothetical evidence that Australian males have substituted one method of suicide for another. Trends in hanging and firearm suicide rates were examined from 1975 to 1998 for all Australian males and from 1971 to 1998 for a subset of Australian male youth, as well as a group of Australian males aged over 64 years at the time of their death. When the firearm suicide rate for Australian males declined the hanging rate increased simultaneously, with no statistical difference in the rate of change of the two methods. A similar pattern of simultaneous divergence in hanging and firearm suicide rates of a 15- to 24-year-old subgroup occurred at a not dissimilar rate over a longer time period. Rates of suicide by hanging were found to have begun increasing prior to the decline in firearm suicide. The declining rate of firearm suicide in the 15- to 24-year-old subgroup coincided with an increase in the overall suicide rate. Relationships between trends in hanging and firearm suicide differed between states and between urban and non-urban areas within Queensland, with the firearm suicide rate falling more rapidly in urban areas, especially following the introductions of restrictions to weapon purchases. Individual suicide method choice may be related to independent changes in the social acceptability of each method, as well as to an increasing prevalence of suicide in younger males, who are more likely to use the hanging method. The functioning and effect of social acceptability remains unclear, however. Intervention and prevention strategies should focus on challenging the social acceptability of hanging, especially among males aged 15 to 24 years.     

Risk factors and stress variables that differentiate depressed from nondepressed pregnant women

Eight hundred ten pregnant women (N=340 depressed and N=470 nondepressed) were recruited at prenatal clinics at around 20 weeks gestational age. The women were diagnosed as depressed based on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D) and the Structured Clinical Interview for Depression (SCID). They were interviewed on several demographic variables, risk factors and stress questionnaires. On average, the depressed pregnant women were younger, had lower education levels and socioeconomic status and were less often married. Fewer of the depressed women and their partners were happy when they were told they were pregnant, a greater number of the depressed women experienced a stressful situation during pregnancy, more of the depressed women were prescribed antibiotics during pregnancy, the depressed women had less optimal obstetric complications scores, and a greater percentage of them delivered prematurely. Finally, the scores of the depressed pregnant women on the stress questionnaires suggested greater depression (CES-D), anxiety (STAI), anger (STAXI), pregnancy anxieties (PAAS) and daily hassles.