Psychiatric Disorders in Clinical Genetics I: Addressing Family Histories of Psychiatric Illness

This is the first article of a two-part professional development series addressing genetic counseling for personal and family histories of psychiatric disorders. It is based on an Educational Breakout Session presented by the Psychiatric Special Interest Group of the National Society of Genetic Counselors at the 2006 Annual Education Conference. This article examines issues that arise in addressing family histories of psychiatric illness, while the second article in the series considers the generation and provision of individualized recurrence risks for psychiatric disorders. In this article we discuss the importance of managing uncertainty for affected individuals and their close family members who have been referred to genetics for a number of different indications. We then use four simulated cases to make recommendations about the scope and timing of discussions related to the psychiatric family history.     

Testing a self-determination theory intervention for motivating tobacco cessation: supporting autonomy and competence in a clinical trial.

A longitudinal randomized trial tested the self-determination theory (SDT) intervention and process model of health behavior change for tobacco cessation (N = 1006). Adult smokers were recruited for a study of smokers' health and were assigned to intensive treatment or community care. Participants were relatively poor and undereducated. Intervention patients perceived greater autonomy support and reported greater autonomous and competence motivations than did control patients. They also reported greater medication use and significantly greater abstinence. Structural equation modeling analyses confirmed the SDT process model in which perceived autonomy support led to increases in autonomous and competence motivations, which in turn led to greater cessation. The causal role of autonomy support in the internalization of autonomous motivation, perceived competence, and smoking cessation was supported.     

Effect of accent and dialect on employability

This study was designed to determine how ethnicity, the amount of perceived accent or dialect, and comprehensibility affect a speaker's employability. Sixty human resource specialists judged 3 female potential applicants. The applicants represented speakers of Spanish‐influenced English, Asian‐influenced English, and African American Vernacular English. When the speaker's perceived accent or dialect was minimal, perceived ethnicity did not affect employability. However, all speakers with maximally perceived accents or dialects were given a lower employability rating. Thus, speakers with a maximally perceived accent or dialect should consider accent or dialectal modification if their comprehensibility or prospective employability is compromised.     

The Tricultural Experience of Older,African American,Gay Men: Counseling Implications

The authors argue that unlike their younger counterparts, who experience their young adult development within a dual‐identity or bicultural framework, older, African American, gay men experience their development through 3 distinct cultural perspectives. Using a constructivist framework, the authors explore this tricultural development and make recommendations regarding counseling services for this population.     

Did Descartes make a Diagonal Argument?

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper explores the idea that Descartes’ cogito is a kind of diagonal argument. Using tools from modal logic, it reviews some historical antecedents of...     

Fixed versus dynamic orientations in environmental learning from ground-level and aerial perspectives

Ground-level and aerial perspectives in virtual space provide simplified conditions for investigating differences between exploratory navigation and map reading in large-scale environmental learning. General similarities and differences in ground-level and aerial encoding have been identified, but little is known about the specific characteristics that differentiate them. One such characteristic is the need to process orientation; ground-level encoding (and navigation) typically requires dynamic orientations, whereas aerial encoding (and map reading) is typically conducted in a fixed orientation. The present study investigated how this factor affected spatial processing by comparing ground-level and aerial encoding to a hybrid condition: aerial-with-turns. Experiment 1 demonstrated that scene recognition was sensitive to both perspective (ground-level or aerial) and orientation (dynamic or fixed). Experiment 2 investigated brain activation during encoding, revealing regions that were preferentially activated perspective as in previous studies (Shelton and Gabrieli in J Neurosci 22:2711-2717, 2002), but also identifying regions that were preferentially activated as a function of the presence or absence of turns. Together, these results differentiated the behavioral and brain consequences attributable to changes in orientation from those attributable to other characteristics of ground-level and aerial perspectives, providing leverage on how orientation information is processed in everyday spatial learning.     

Investigating the illusion of control in mildly depressed and nondepressed individuals during video-poker play

Cognitive fallacies, such as the illusion of control, and psychological disorders, such as depression, may perpetuate gambling and thus contribute to problem gambling (e.g., R. Ladouceur, C. Sylvan, C. Boutin, & C. Doucet, 2002). Gender differences may exist across these variables (e.g., N. M. Petry, 2005). The authors investigated these possibilities by recruiting mildly depressed and nondepressed individuals to play jacks or better, 5-card draw, video poker. Across three poker sessions, participants were given (a) no choice of which cards to play, (b) information on the best cards to play but control over which cards were played, or (c) no information and complete control over which cards were played. The total amount of money gambled increased as control over the game decreased, but this result correlated with an increase in the rate of play. Depressed and nondepressed participants did not differ in how they gambled, but men gambled significantly more and sometimes made more mistakes during play than did women. These results question the role of the illusion of control and depression in perpetuating gambling. They also suggest that providing players information about which cards to play may indirectly promote gambling and provide insight as to why men are more prone to suffer from gambling problems than are women.     

Promoting Overall Health and Wellness Among Clients: The Relevance and Role of Professional Counselors

Given the rise in health care costs and the premature morbidity and mortality rates in the United States, the authors discuss the relevant constructs of wellness and holistic health as they relate and apply to the profession of counseling. Implications and application of the Indivisible Self model of wellness (J. E. Myers & T. J. Sweeney 2004) in counseling are highlighted.