Developing Standard Recommendations (Guidelines) for Genetic Counseling Practice: A Process of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) supports the development of practice recommendations (guidelines) in the field of genetic counseling. This paper reviews the basic components of NSGC genetic counseling practice recommendations as well as the process for formal adoption of such documents, as approved by the Board of Directors of the NSGC.     

Presurgical Coping, Depression, and Quality of Life in Persons with Parkinson's Disease

This study describes utilization of coping strategies and evaluates the interaction between coping strategies, depression, and quality of life (QOL) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) who are being considered for neurosurgical intervention. Eighty patients (mean age 61.7 years) with PD being evaluated for possible deep brain stimulation completed self-report instruments of coping strategies (Coping Responses Inventory), depression (Beck Depression Inventory), and disease-specific QOL (Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39). Analyses showed that patients with PD cope with the acute stressor of approaching neurosurgery through a variety of strategies, but particularly avoidant and behavioral strategies. When the correlated but apparently opposing effects of cognitive and behavioral strategies were teased apart, greater use of cognitive strategies was associated with more severe depressive symptomatology (and poorer QOL), while greater use of behavioral strategies appeared to be associated with less depression. Depressive symptomatology, in turn, was associated with poorer QOL. However, coping had minimal direct association with QOL. From this it was concluded that patients with advanced PD generate a variety of coping responses to an acute stressor such as surgery, and the use of behavioral strategies, in particular seeking of alternative enjoyable activities, may be associated with better mood if salutary effects are not overwhelmed by less helpful cognitive coping techniques. The minimization of depressive symptomatology, in turn, is associated with better QOL.     

Memories from the cradle

How far back can we, as adults, remember details of our life experiences? Current popular and scientific beliefs are contradictory, with the latter stipulating that personal memories do not begin until the late preschool years (age 4–5 years) and the former claiming that we not only remember being born, but can also remember in utero experiences. In this review, these beliefs are examined in a scientific context and evaluated in terms of empirical data about the development of early memory. The theory proposed here is that memories for personal experiences are not possible until the advent of the cognitive self, around the age of 18 to 24 months. This age is much earlier than that proposed as the age of the earliest memories in other scientific accounts and much later than that proposed in popular beliefs about early memory. New data from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of early memory development and the emergence of the self clearly show the origins of personal memory coincide with the emergence of the early self.     

Factors Associated with Delays of Days to Decades to Criminal Prosecutions of Child Sexual Abuse

Until the latter part of the 20th century, legal doctrines made it almost impossible to successfully prosecute in criminal court a case involving child sexual abuse (CSA), whether the complaint was timely or delayed. Many English-speaking countries have abrogated most formal legal barriers to prosecuting CSA cases, and courts are faced with the singular challenge of adjudicating sexual offenses against children that are reported to have happened years or decades earlier. We conducted analyses of 4,237 criminal complaints of CSA heard in Canadian criminal courts. There were several differences between timely and delayed prosecutions that led us to conclude that delayed prosecutions of CSA are common and due, in part, to the nature of the offense. Offense duration was associated with longer delays to prosecution. When the accused had access to the child through his position in the community, length of delay to prosecution was very long, particularly for male complainants. More research is needed on delayed CSA prosecutions, particularly given an apparent trend for jurisdictions to abolish barriers to criminal prosecutions of CSA that occurred years or decades earlier. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Client experiences of counselling and treatment interventions: A qualitative study of family views of family therapy

The case is made that personal experience and social life are inherently meaningful. The presence of meaning in human affairs requires all participants to develop interpretive skills if they are to understand what is happening. Researching social life is greatly helped by methods which acknowledge the hermeneutical quality of interpersonal experience. The use of qualitative research methods to investigate all aspects of counselling is therefore highly appropriate. To illustrate the use of qualitative research designs and methods of analysis, a study of family members' views of family therapy is briefly described.     

Control of responding by location of auditory stimuli: rapid acquisition in monkey and rat

Monkeys require a considerably larger number of trials to bring responding under the control of the location of an auditory stimulus than cats, rats, and bats with the same experimental procedures. The present experiment sought to determine the conditions necessary for rapid acquisition of control of responding by location of noise and tone bursts in the monkey. Monkeys were run in an enclosure that contained four loudspeakers and four manipulanda. Two conditions were used in training. In the adjacent condition, a stimulus (noise or tone burst) was presented through one or other of two speakers and a response on the manipulandum adjacent to the speaker was reinforced with food. In the nonadjacent condition, a stimulus was presented through one of two speakers and a response on a manipulandum remote from the speaker was reinforced with food. Acquisition of control was measured by change in the percentage of reinforced responses during training. In the adjacent condition, responding came under control of location within zero to three sessions. In nonadjacent conditions, the animals required 14 to 20 sessions to come under control of location. These latter numbers are comparable to those reported in the literature for localization discrimination in monkeys.