Peer relationships and academic achievement as interacting predictors of depressive symptoms during middle childhood

This article reports a longitudinal investigation that examines academic and social difficulties as predictors of depressive symptoms during middle childhood. Participants were 199 elementary school children (M=9.1 years) who were followed for 2 consecutive school years. In both years of the project, children completed a questionnaire assessing depressive symptoms and a peer nomination inventory assessing friendships and social standing. Grade point averages (GPAs) were obtained from a review of school records. Low GPAs were predictive of depressive symptoms, but this effect did not hold for children who had numerous friends. Similarly, children who had relatively few friends tended to experience depressive symptoms. However, the effect was attenuated for children with high GPAs. Taken together, the findings suggest that competencies in 1 domain can moderate the risks associated with difficulties in the other domain.     

Violent Victimization in the Community and Children’s Subsequent Peer Rejection: The Mediating Role of Emotion Dysregulation

This paper describes a short-term longitudinal study of the relation between violent victimization in the community and peer rejection among 199 children (mean age = 9.02 years) attending two urban Los Angeles area elementary schools. We used a multi-informant approach to assess victimization by community violence, peer group victimization, peer rejection, and impairments in emotion regulation. These data were collected annually for two consecutive school years. Violent victimization in the community predicted later peer rejection after accounting for the effects of initial levels of peer rejection. Analyses indicated that this relation was mediated by deficient emotion regulation skills. In addition, we found evidence that victimization by community violence and peer rejection are reciprocally related over time. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed.     

Construct Validity of the Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale: Factor Structure,Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale (ACSS) assesses one of three main constructs in the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide but evidence of its validity is limited. In two studies (Ns = 287 and 738) validity of the full 20-item ACSS and its shorter versions (ACSS-5, ACSS-8, ACSS-FAD) were examined in terms of factor structure and relation to indices of self-reported suicidal behaviour and self-harm. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) failed to show good fit for one-, two-, or three-factor models of the ACSS in its various versions. Exploratory factor analysis of the 20-item scale in the first study pointed instead to a five-factor structure and this was supported using CFA in the second study. In both studies all scale versions showed moderate negative correlations to fear of death and dying, indicating scale validity for the purpose of assessing fearlessness about death. In the second study, a model in which the five factors were indicators of a latent variable of Capability was found to predict a latent variable of Suicidality as indicated by suicidal behaviours, but the prediction was substantially enhanced by the addition of Item 20 to the model. This single item was also found in the first study to better predict suicidal and self-harming behaviour than the full ACSS or any of its short versions.     

The PMS Illusion: Social Cognition Maintains Social Construction

This article reports the results of a preliminary study of ways that self-serving biases contribute to the maintenance of the cultural stereotype of the premenstrual woman. Self-serving biases such as illusory optimism and the false uniqueness effect lead individuals to believe that they are better than average and less likely to have negative experiences. Thus, even though individual women’s premenstrual symptoms are mild to moderate, they accept the stereotype because they believe that other women’s symptoms are worse than their own. Participants were 92 undergraduate women from two small colleges in southern New England. They completed measures of optimism, locus of control, and premenstrual symptoms and answered a series of questions about the incidence of PMS. Participants showed a significant tendency to believe that other women’s premenstrual symptoms are worse than their own. In addition, women who were high in optimism were significantly less likely to believe that they could be diagnosed with PMS, and they had significantly lower scores on the pain and behavior change subscales of the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire than did those low in optimism.     

Low heart rate variability is not caused by typical neuroleptics in schizophrenia patients

Both elevated cardiovascular mortality and low cardio-vagal (parasympathetic) heart rate variability (HRV)--a risk factor for postmyocardial infarction--are reported in schizophrenia (SZ). Since a number of medications have strong effects of cardiac conductivity, we thought it important to examine if typical neuroleptic medications might also affect HRV. We examined cardiac vagal activity during both neuroleptic treatment and a drug-free condition in seven SZ patients who were participating in a pilot double-blind, crossover study of placebo and haloperidol treatment. Twenty-four-hour Holter electrocardiograms were analyzed for high frequency HRV, quantitated as the percent of successive normal interbeat intervals greater than 50 milliseconds (PNN50), which is a good index of parasympathetic cardiac modulation. The patients showed unchanged PNN50 (8.4+/-9.5 versus 8.3+/-10.5; t=.22, df=6, P=.5) between the haloperidol treatment and drug-free conditions. Despite the elapsed time, change in medication, and altered clinical state, the PNN50s were highly correlated (Spearman r=.98, P=.000). SAPS positive symptom scores declined with treatment from 12.8+/-6.5 to 8.5+/-3.5; paired t=3.26: df=6; P=.01. PNN50s were significantly associated with positive (r=-.86, df=6, P=.012) and negative symptom scores (r=-.87, df=6, P=.01). We found low cardiovagal modulation in medication-free SZ patients that was associated with core SZ symptoms and was unchanged by haloperidol and benztropine treatment. The reduced HRV in SZ patients at baseline may render them at greater cardiovascular risk than healthy subjects when treated with medications having strong cardiovascular effects.     

Difficulties in interpersonal relationships associated with personality disorders and axis I disorders: a community-based longitudinal investigation

A longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the association between Axis I and Axis II psychiatric disorders, interpersonal relationships, and global functioning among men in the community. Structured clinical interviews assessing Axis I and Axis II psychiatric disorders, global assessments of functioning, and questionnaires assessing social support, social conflict, and loneliness were administered to a community sample of 95 HIV+ and 45 HIV- men. The questionnaires were readministered 1 year later. Results indicated that (a) Personality disorders (PDs) and unipolar depressive disorders were associated with loneliness, social conflict, and low levels of social support after HIV status was controlled statistically; (b) PDs were associated with interpersonal and global impairment after HIV status and co-occurring Axis I disorders were controlled statistically; (c) Axis I disorders were associated with global impairment, but were not associated with interpersonal difficulties after HIV status and PDs were controlled statistically; (d) PDs, but not Axis I disorders, predicted increases in social conflict and global impairment after HIV status was controlled statistically; (e) PDs continued to predict increases in global impairment after both Axis I disorders and HIV status were controlled statistically; and (f) HIV+ men reported more loneliness, less social support, and had a higher prevalence of substance use disorders than HIV- men. The present findings are of particular interest because they suggest that PDs are associated with loneliness, social conflict, and a lack of social support among men in the community, whether or not Axis I disorders are present.