How Much Distress Is Too Much on Deployed Operations? Validation of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) for Application in Military Operational Settings

The aim of this study was threefold: (a) to assess the factor structure of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) to determine whether interpreting the scale as a single dimensional measure of psychological distress is justified in military operational setting; (b) to validate the K10 for mental health surveillance in operational settings against self-reported occupational impairment; (c) to evaluate whether the K10 has better discriminatory power than de facto standards for mental health surveillance on deployment, namely the Patient Health Questionnaire and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist, Civilian version. A convenience sample of Canadian Armed Forces personnel serving in Afghanistan (N = 1,264) completed self-report measures of psychological distress and occupational impairment. On examination of 6 competing models, the authors determined that interpreting the K10 as a measure of unspecified psychological distress is justified. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, they identified new cutoff values for dichotomous and polychotomous scoring methods. After comparing the area beneath the ROC curves for each of the 3 mental health surveillance questionnaires, the authors determined that all measures perform well as predictors of self-rated occupational impairment, with values ranging from .86 to .90. These results highlight the importance of cross-setting validation and demonstrate that validating psychological screening questionnaires against self-report measures of occupational impairment can be a useful strategy for understanding the manifestation of psychological distress on deployed military operations.     

Attention in Children: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

This commentary discusses conceptual and methodological issues in the assessment of attention in children. The five articles in this special issue are important advances in the study of attention in children with brain-related disorders. They provide important guidelines for future studies in this area: specification of the underlying model of attention, selection of tasks according to the model, and the use of multiple tasks in well-defined clinical populations.     

Self-Stigma in Substance Abuse: Development of a New Measure

Little attention has been paid to the examination and measurement of self-stigma in substance misuse. This paper aims to fill this gap by reporting on the development of a new scale to measure self-stigma experienced by people who are misusing substances, the Substance Abuse Self-Stigma Scale. Content validity and item refinement occurred through an iterative process involving a literature search, focus groups, and expert judges. Psychometric properties were examined in a cross-sectional study of individuals (n?=?352) receiving treatment for substance misuse. Factor analyses resulted in a 40-item measure with self devaluation, fear of enacted stigma, stigma avoidance, and values disengagement subscales. The measure showed a strong factor structure and good reliability and validity overall, though the values disengagement subscale showed a mixed pattern. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for studies of stigma impact and intervention.     

Interrelationships between Reading Disability and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Evidence from a number of investigations suggests a considerable overlap between reading disability (RD) and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We investigate the relationship between RD and ADHD in a cohort of 186 children 7.5–9.5 years of age, recruited explicitly to address classification and definitional issues in these disorders. Using multivariate methods, we examine the hypothesis that RD and ADHD represent separate diagnostic entities that frequently co-occur in the same individual. The results suggest that RD is characterized by deficits within the language system, in particular a subcomponent within that system, phonological processing; in contrast, such linguistic deficits are not characteristic of ADHD unless ADHD is associated with RD. When children with both RD and ADHD are examined, both the linguistic deficits associated with RD and the behavioral characteristics associated with ADHD are apparent, but these deficits are not synergistic. We conclude that RD and ADHD represent separate disorders that frequently co-occur.     

Probabilism Today: Permissibility and Multi-Account Ethics

In ethics, ‘probabilism’ refers to a position defended by a number of Catholic theologians, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They held that, when one is uncertain which of a range of actions is the right one to perform, it is permissible to perform any which has a good chance of being the right one—even if there is another which has a better chance. This paper considers the value of this position from the viewpoint of modern ethical philosophy. The unusual nature of probabilism as a theory focusing upon permissibility, rather than right-making properties, is explored and related to some modern attempts to set out ‘satisficing’ and ‘hybrid’ ethical theories. Such theories try to distinguish between what is best and what is permissible, and probabilism can be understood as an alternative way of supplementing a theory of right-making properties by adding to it a theory of permissibility. But a more radical version is also possible, where one abandons any attempt to identify right actions or right-making properties, and instead considers permissibility alone. Accordingly, a ‘multi-account theory’ of permissibility is proposed and defended as a model of how many people actually make moral decisions.     

Therapeutic outcomes in the Welsh Government's school‐based counselling strategy: An evaluation

Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of school‐based counselling, as delivered in the Welsh Government's School‐based Counselling Strategy, for reducing psychological distress in young people aged 11–18. Method: The study used a quantitative cohort design, comparing levels of distress on either the Young Person's CORE (YP‐CORE) or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) from baseline to endpoint. Data were available on 3613 episodes of counselling, across 42 datasets. Meta‐analytical procedures were used to identify the mean effect size and predictors of outcomes. Results: Within each dataset, counselling was associated with significant reductions in psychological distress, with a mean effect size (d) of 0.93(95% CI = 0.89–0.97) using a fixed effects model and 1.09 (95% CI = 0.97–1.22) using a random effects model. Datasets using the YP‐CORE had larger effect sizes than those using the SDQ, and datasets with more complete response rates had lower outcomes than those with poorer response rates. Conclusion: The results confirm that school‐based counselling, as delivered in the UK, is associated with significant reductions in psychological distress, comparable to adult counselling and psychotherapy services.     

Conditioned suppression/avoidance as a procedure for testing hearing in birds: The domestic pigeon (Columba livia)

Although the domestic pigeon is commonly used in learning experiments, it is a notoriously difficult subject in auditory psychophysical experiments, even those in which it need only respond when it detects a sound. This is because pigeons tend to respond in the absence of sound—that is, they have a high false-positive rate—which makes it difficult to determine a pigeon’s audiogram. However, false positives are easily controlled in the method of conditioned suppression/avoidance, in which a pigeon is trained to peck a key to obtain food and to stop pecking whenever it detects a sound that signals impending electric shock. Here, we describe how to determine psychophysical thresholds in pigeons using a method of conditioned suppression in which avoidable shock is delivered through a bead chain wrapped around the base of a pigeon’s wings. The resulting audiogram spans the range from 2 to 8000 Hz; it falls approximately in the middle of the distribution of previous pigeon audiograms and supports the finding of Kreithen and Quine (Journal of Comparative Physiology 129:1–4, 1979) that pigeons hear infrasound.     

Perfectionism and athlete burnout in junior elite athletes: the mediating role of coping tendencies

Abstract

Recent research indicates that some dimensions of perfectionism are positively related to athlete burnout, whereas others are negatively related to athlete burnout. The divergent relationship between these dimensions of perfectionism and athlete burnout may be explained by different coping tendencies. The present investigation examined whether different coping tendencies mediate the relationship between self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism and burnout. Two-hundred and six junior elite athletes (M age=15.15 years, SD=1.88 years, range=11–22 years) completed measures of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, coping tendencies, and athlete burnout. Structural equation modeling indicated that the relationship between dimensions of perfectionism and athlete burnout was mediated by different coping tendencies. Higher levels of socially prescribed perfectionism was related to higher levels of avoidant coping which, in turn, was related to higher levels of athlete burnout. In contrast, higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism was related to higher levels of problem-focused coping and lower levels of avoidant coping which, in turn, was related to lower levels of athlete burnout. The findings suggest that different coping tendencies may underpin the divergent relationship between self-oriented and socially prescribed dimensions of perfectionism and athlete burnout.     

The development of stranger fear in infancy and toddlerhood: normative development,individual differences,antecedents, and outcomes

Despite implications that stranger fear is an important aspect of developing behavioral inhibition, a known risk factor for anxiety, normative and atypical developmental trajectories of stranger fear across infancy and toddlerhood remain understudied. We used a large, longitudinal data set (N = 1285) including multi‐trait, multi‐method assessments of temperament to examine the normative course of development for stranger fear and to explore the possibility that individual differences exist in trajectories of stranger fear development between 6 and 36 months of age. A latent class growth analysis suggested four different trajectories of stranger fear during this period. Stable, high levels of stranger fear over time were associated with poorer RSA suppression at 6 months of age. Rates of concordance in trajectory‐based class membership for identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins, along with associations between atypical stranger fear development and greater anxiety‐related maternal characteristics, suggested that individual differences in developmental trajectories of stranger fear may be heritable. Importantly, trajectories of stranger fear during infancy and toddlerhood were linked to individual differences in behavioral inhibition, with chronically high levels of stranger fear and sharp increases in stranger fear over time related to greater levels of inhibition than other developmental trajectories.