Long-term benefits of prompts to use safety belts among drivers exiting senior communities

Senior drivers are vulnerable to automobile crashes and subsequent injury and death. Safety belts reduce health risks associated with auto crashes. Therefore, it is important to encourage senior drivers to wear safety belts while driving. Using a repeated baseline design (AAB), we previously reported that motivating signs boosted safety belt usage by drivers exiting senior communities from baseline (72% and 68% usage), to postinstallation of signs (94%), to 6 months follow-up (80%). The current study was a 4-year follow-up in which six senior communities, with seat belt signs, were compared to six matched control senior communities with no signs. Safety belt usage was stable, across 4 years, at approximately 80% for both male and female drivers and front seat passengers for the six communities with signs, and was approximately 55% for control sites. These finding suggest that the simple and low-cost intervention of erecting signs to prompt safety belt use has persistent benefits that affect driver and passenger behavior alike.     

Employee assistance programmes and their place within universities

In recent years British universities have been subject to demands for increased efficiency, greater accountability and cost effectiveness, without a corresponding increase in the resources available to them. As more university employees find it difficult to cope with these new pressures, there is an increasing need for universities to provide enhanced support for employees in the workplace. The response in British universities to the 'troubled employee' is considered, and contrasted with the development of Employee Assistance Programmes in North American universities. Different types of EAP are discussed, and it is argued that British universities might benefit from introducing such programmes.     

A device for concurrent bilateral measurement of outer eyelid closures in the rabbit

This paper describes a transducer that allows for the concurrent recording of outer eyelid closure on both the left and the right eyes of a rabbit. The device makes use of voltage induced across a current-carrying conductor when the conductor is exposed to a magnetic field perpendicular to its axis (the Hall effect). The transducer is relatively compact, inexpensive, and allows the animal to be loosely restrained.     

Process and Content in a Therapy Group for Bipolar Outpatients

Although the literature suggests that homogeneous therapy groups are useful for bipolar outpatients, little is known about the process in such groups. Using the GCQ-S and a content analysis of discussion topics, we evaluated group process during the first 31 sessions of an outpatient bipolar group. Compared with normative samples, our group scored significantly higher in the Engaged dimension and significantly lower in the Avoiding and Conflict dimensions and in the anxiety/tension scale. Furthermore, 81% of the discussion topics were related to the three group goals, and an additional 18% dealt with general group issues such as orienting new members and attendance. The results from this pilot study suggest that bipolar patients can discuss relevant issues in a homogeneous group environment that is cohesive, open, and safe.     

The prevalence of depression in high school students

In response to the need expressed in the literature on adolescent depression, recent studies have examined the incidence of affective disorders. However, there continues to be a paucity of research on the prevalence of depressive symptomatology in nonpatient adolescents. The Canadian literature is especially lacking in this area. The present study examined the prevalence of depression in a sample of 366 Canadian high school students. Consistent with similar research in the United Kingdom and the United States, 31.4% of the sample were midly to clinically depressed as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory. Significant sex differences were found; these are discussed in the context of age and level of depression. The need for further research on adolescent depression is emphasized.     

Substance abuse and panic-related anxiety: a critical review

The relationship between substance abuse and panic-related anxiety can be divided into two broad areas: the incidence of anxiety disorders in substance abuse patients and the incidence of substance abuse in patients with panic-related anxiety disorders. Studies indicate that approx. 10-40% of alcoholics have a panic-related anxiety disorder, and about 10-20% of anxiety disorder patients abuse alcohol or other drugs. The majority of patients with both an anxiety and alcohol disorder report that anxiety problems preceded alcohol problems. In some cases substance abuse (e.g. cocaine) triggers the onset of panic attacks. Most patients believe that self-medication is efficacious despite the fact that they appear to have a more serious clinical condition (e.g. higher rates of depression). Directions for future research are outlined, including the proposal for a study to examine the effects of an anxiety intervention procedure for anxious alcoholics to reduce relapse rates.     

Ethnic populations: Community mental health services ten years later

In a replication of a series of studies conducted by Sue and colleagues in the mid-1970s, demographic and service data were retrieved for the Seattle-King County area from the Washington Mental Health Information System. Caucasian clients were compared against Asian, black, Hispanic, and Native American client groups, and, where possible, against the findings reported earlier by Sue. These clients were compared in terms of basic demographic characteristics, characteristics of staff providing the services, dropout rates, and average number of services received. The most notable findings are (a) that failure-to-return rates are dramatically lower for the current sample than for Sue's and not greatly different for minorities than for Caucasians, (b) that variability in failure-to-return rates is most strongly related to level of functioning and not related to minority status, and (c) that although Asian Americans still average fewer services than Caucasians (other minorities do not differ significantly), the mean number of services had increased substantially for all groups but more for minorities than for Caucasians.     

On the nature of the verbal memory deficit in Alzheimer''s disease

Verbal memory was investigated in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) with previously documented deficits in word production and comprehension. Procedures were employed to evaluate word recall and recognition within the context of both "multistore" and "levels of processing" models of memory. In addition, memory abilities were evaluated with respect to performance on measures of verbal fluency and language comprehension. As expected, the AD patients performed significantly worse than normal individuals on all tasks. However, in each experiment their pattern of recall across conditions was found to be qualitatively similar to that produced by normal subjects. It was argued that the memory impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease may be largely due to an inability to encode a sufficient number of stimulus features or attributes. Furthermore, this encoding deficit includes, but is not limited to, semantic attributes. Similarities between the performance of the AD patients and reported findings with Korsakoff patients and normal subjects with "weak" memory were discussed.