Bad or Mad? Personality disorders and legal responsibility-the German situation

Criminal offenders have a high rate of personality disorders (PDS), especially Antisocial Personality Disorders and psychopathy, but criminal acts are not necessarily the result of PD. Findings from psychiatric research suggest that the development of PD is influenced by genetic factors, that can result in deviant traits in temper, emotionality and cognitive style. There is general agreement that those peculiarities and vulnerabilities find their expression and structure only under a complex interplay of stimulating or impairing environmental influences. Do these genetic factors-or other factors-diminish a person's criminal responsibility? There is no difficulty in diagnosing PDs, but the challenging questions arise in forensic assessments of defendants for criminal responsibility who have a PD. This article discusses the German legal situation and special problems created by the term of "diminished" criminal responsibility. In contrast to the Anglo-American legal situation, the German criminal law obliges the court to order an indeterminate forensic - psychiatric confinement, in addition to punishment, if the offender had acted under diminished criminal responsibility and is now still considered to be dangerous. The convicted offender remains under the control of the criminal court during psychiatric hospitalization. The change from handling the personality disordered offender as a criminal to handling him as someone with a mental disorder creates a social option for extended state interventions, including indeterminate hospitalization.     

TPL—KATS-card sort: A tool for assessing structural knowledge

The study of how individuals organize knowledge has been a popular endeavor for several decades. As a result, techniques have been developed to assess how individuals represent and organize knowledge internally. Although several conceptual knowledge elicitation methods have been developed and used to assess the organization of knowledge, their use is often labor intensive and time consuming. Presented here is a software tool that was developed to reduce the problems associated with manually administering the conceptual knowledge elicitation technique, or card sorting. The TPL—KATS-card sort software not only simplifies the administration of the task, but also adds features to the card-sorting task such as media insertion, time stamping, and instructorless administration. In the present article, an introduction to the card-sorting technique is provided, the new software tool is described, and the advantages of the software are detailed.     

Cognitive and emotional dysfunction after central pontine myelinolysis

The case of a 67-year-old right-handed Chinese man with Central Pontine Myelinolysis [CPM] is described to illustrate the resulting cognitive and emotional disturbances. A comparison of the data in this report with that in published studies suggests that ethnicity does not seem to have much effect on the symptoms of CPM. Possible underlying neural-pathological mechanisms are discussed. This case further substantiates the speculation that the brainstem plays a role in higher cognitive processes and emotional regulation.     

Detection of repeated trigrams: evidence of all-or-none learning

Two experiments investigated trigram detection in a continuous recognition task. In Experiment 1 consonant trigrams were presented visually, one at a time, with occasional repetition of a trigram after an interval of 0, 2, 4, 8, or 16 other trigrams. Subjects were told to respond with a button press every time they saw a repeated trigram. If a subject responded to a repeated trigram, it was not repeated again. However, if a subject did not respond to a repeated trigram, it was repeated again at the same interval for up to 3 repetitions. For all intervals greater than 0, the probability of noticing a repeated trigram did not increase with the number of repetitions. In Experiment 2 meaningless shape trigrams were presented, and occasionally a trigram was repeated after an interval of 0, 1, or 2 trigrams. For both intervals greater than 0, the probability of noticing a repeated trigram did not increase with the number of repetitions. The results demonstrate that a repeated input does not necessarily leave a permanent trace in memory.     

Comorbidity Between Depression and Anxiety in Adolescents: Bridge Symptoms and Relevance of Risk and Protective Factors

Depression and anxiety are highly prevalent and comorbid in adolescents, and this co-occurrence leads to worse prognosis and additional difficulties. The relationship between depression and anxiety must be delineated to, in turn, reduce and prevent the comorbidity, however our knowledge is still limited. We used network analysis to investigate bridge symptoms; symptoms that connect individual depression and anxiety symptoms and thus can help explain the comorbidity. We also examined the role of relevant risk and protective factors in explaining these symptom-level associations between these disorders. We analyzed data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Children and Parents (n?=?3670). Depression and anxiety symptoms, peer victimization, bullying, peer relational problems, prosocial behavior, and parental monitoring were assessed at a single time point around age 13 years. Stressful life events (SLEs) were assessed at age 11 years. We identified the most prominent bridge symptoms among depression (“feeling unhappy”, “feeling lonely”) and anxiety symptoms (“worrying about past”, “worrying about future”). Peer relational difficulties and SLEs were strongly associated with several depression and anxiety symptoms, such that these two risk factors created a link between individual depression and anxiety symptoms. Prosocial behavior had several negative associations with symptoms of both disorders, suggesting it can be an important protective factor.

     

Psychometric properties of the Chinese Metaparenting Profile Questionnaire Short-form

Current Psychology - Research on deliberate and mindful parenting constructs, including metaparenting, has become increasingly popular. However, this topic has not been widely examined in China and...     

Investigating the effects of a virtual reality-based stress management programme on inpatients with mental disorders: A pilot randomised controlled trial

This study aimed to examine the effects and feasibility of a virtual screen-based stress management programme (V-DESSERTS) on inpatients with mental disorders. A single-blinded, pilot randomised controlled trial was conducted in a tertiary hospital in Singapore. Convenience sampling was used and participants were randomised into either the intervention group or the waitlisted control group (WL). The intervention group received individual-based, twice-daily sessions of the programme. Each session comprised education and virtual screen-based relaxation practice. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires and physiological measures. The intervention group showed a significant increase in perceived relaxation and knowledge in comparison with the WL group. However, inconclusive results were observed on subjective and objective stress. The findings in this study indicated that the V-DESSERTS programme is feasible to be implemented for patients with schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorders.     

Psychological distress and resilience as risk and protective factors of psychoactive substance use among Chinese nonengaged youth

Nonengaged youth (NEY) are those who have neither been working nor studying for a prolonged period of time. They are at risk of psychoactive substance use, but relevant studies are scarce. Based on a population‐based telephone survey and referrals, we anonymously interviewed 479 Hong Kong Chinese NEY aged 15–24 years. Of them, 14.8–23.7% reported moderate to severe depression, anxiety, and stress. Moreover, one fourth of the participants (24.8%; n = 119) had used psychoactive substances. Adjusted analyses showed that these three psychological distress variables were positively associated with, while resilience was negatively associated with, both ever‐use of psychoactive substances and intention to use such substances in the next 12 months. Loneliness was associated only with intention to use psychoactive substances. The mediating role of psychological distress was shown: Anxiety significantly mediated the association between resilience and ever‐use of psychoactive substances, whereas depression mediated that between resilience and behavioural intention. Resilience was not a significant moderator on the relationship between psychological distress and ever‐use of psychoactive substance use or behavioural intention to use those substances. The findings suggest that anti‐drug interventions should outreach NEY and should include mental health support as well as building up resilience, as NEY are prone to psychological distress that increases risk of substance use.     

Cognitive bias modification as a strategy to reduce children's fears and concerns about the secondary school transition

Background and objectives: Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I) has emerged as an anxiety-reducing tool for children and adolescents, targeting maladaptive interpretations of everyday situations. This literature falls short of addressing whether the effects of CBM-I extend to worries about a real-life stressor, such as a school transition. Design: The study comprised a between-groups design comparing the effects of CBM-I to an active control (AC) intervention in children. Method: We recruited 38 children within two months of their primary–secondary school transition and investigated the capacity for multi-session, parent-administered CBM-I, compared to an AC condition, to modify cognitive style and reduce anxiety symptoms and school concerns. Results: While benign interpretations increased significantly and negative interpretations tended to decrease following CBM-I, both interventions significantly reduced anxiety symptoms and school concerns. Conclusions: These findings indicate that anxiety-reducing effects of CBM-I in children extend to a real life stressful event, but that equivalent anxiety reduction may be achieved through exposure to potentially worrying situations and parent–child interaction in the absence of bias modification.     

Estimating the Mental Health Effects of Social Isolation

It is frequently hypothesized that feelings of social isolation are detrimental for an individual’s mental health, however standard statistical models cannot estimate this effect due to reverse causality between the independent and dependent variables. In this paper we present endogeneity-corrected estimates of the mental health consequences of isolation (based on self-assessed loneliness scores) using Australian panel data. The central identification strategy comes from a natural source of variation where some people within our sample are required by work or study commitments to move home. This relocation may break individuals’ social ties, resulting in significantly higher reported feelings of loneliness and consequently may lower mental health scores. The method gives results that are significant, robust and pass a battery of diagnostic tests. Estimates indicate that feelings of isolation have large negative consequences for psychological well-being, and that the effects are larger for women and older people. The results suggest that at current levels, a 10 % reduction applied to all individuals would reduce annual expenditure on mental illness in Australia by approximately $3B AUD, or around $150 AUD per person.