Childhood Abuse,Head Injuries,and Use of Medical Emergency Services in People with Severe Mental Illness

People with severe mental illness (SMI) report high rates of traumatic experiences. This study analyzes data collected from 183 people diagnosed with SMI on reports of childhood trauma, head injuries, and emergency room (ER) services. More than half the cohort (56.7%) reported 3 to 7 cooccurring categories of childhood abuse (CAB). People who reported 6 and 7 categories of CAB had a 5-fold risk of experiencing a head injury. If they have used the ER for reasons other than psychiatric illness they endorse more traumatic experiences in their childhood when compared to those who did not. People with SMI and cooccurring CAB experiences might be predisposed to a higher risk of head injuries and more frequent use of the ER.     

What members of Alcoholics Anonymous really believe

Many mental health professionals work with people who are members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or may benefit from AA attendance. This article provides practical information about AA that professionals can use to understand and work with people in AA. It is a summary of a survey of 187 members of AA as well as synthesising the literature on AA. Specifically, it describes what AA is, the twelve steps and principles that underlie them, common AA expressions and how they can be used in therapy, common concerns about AA, and how to get more information about AA. Implications of how AA's steps and language can be incorporated into therapy, how therapy can facilitate working the steps of AA, and how to address consumers’ (or professionals’) concerns about AA are addressed.     

Schizophrene Patienten der forensischen Psychiatrie im Vergleich zu schizophrenen Patienten der Allgemeinpsychiatrie

Background

The number of schizophrenic patients admitted to forensic hospitals according to section 63 of the German Criminal Code has increased continuously over the past years. Some researchers assume that these forensic patients form a group of patients with very complex mental disorders, a number of risk factors and insufficient pretreatment in general psychiatry. This study aimed to identify differences regarding the history of treatment of forensic and general psychiatric patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Method

The matched samples included 72 male patients from forensic wards and 72 male patients from general psychiatric institutions diagnosed with schizophrenia. The history of psychiatric treatment was reconstructed by interviewing the patients as well as outpatient psychiatrists and patients’ legal custodians and by analyzing patient medical records.

Results

In contrast to the general psychiatric patients, prior to admission forensic patients were less integrated into psychiatric care and showed a lower rate of treatment compliance. They also showed a higher rate of previous compulsory treatment because of aggressive behavior towards other persons as well as higher rates of treatment difficulties and violent behavior during previous inpatient treatment. Furthermore, forensic patients had a higher number of previous criminal convictions and had been convicted more often for violent offences. With regard to other relevant risk factors (e.g. comorbid substance abuse disorder, age, education, conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, previous exposure to violent and abusive behavior) the two patient groups were, however, comparable.

Conclusions

Regarding schizophrenic patients with comorbid substance abuse disorders, previous violent delinquency and violent behavior during previous inpatient treatment, an intensive outpatient aftercare should be arranged before they are discharged from general psychiatric institutions.     

A comparison of visual and auditory representational momentum in spatial tasks

Similarities have been observed in the localization of the final position of moving visual and moving auditory stimuli: Perceived endpoints that are judged to be farther in the direction of motion in both modalities likely reflect extrapolation of the trajectory, mediated by predictive mechanisms at higher cognitive levels. However, actual comparisons of the magnitudes of displacement between visual tasks and auditory tasks using the same experimental setup are rare. As such, the purpose of the present free-field study was to investigate the influences of the spatial location of motion offset, stimulus velocity, and motion direction on the localization of the final positions of moving auditory stimuli (Experiment 1 and 2) and moving visual stimuli (Experiment 3). To assess whether auditory performance is affected by dynamically changing binaural cues that are used for the localization of moving auditory stimuli (interaural time differences for low-frequency sounds and interaural intensity differences for high-frequency sounds), two distinct noise bands were employed in Experiments 1 and 2. In all three experiments, less precise encoding of spatial coordinates in paralateral space resulted in larger forward displacements, but this effect was drowned out by the underestimation of target eccentricity in the extreme periphery. Furthermore, our results revealed clear differences between visual and auditory tasks. Displacements in the visual task were dependent on velocity and the spatial location of the final position, but an additional influence of motion direction was observed in the auditory tasks. Together, these findings indicate that the modality-specific processing of motion parameters affects the extrapolation of the trajectory.     

Examining Family Communication Patterns and Seeking Social Support Direct and Indirect Effects Through Ability and Motivation

Seeking social support remains a relatively understudied aspect of supportive communication. By integrating the literatures on family communication patterns (FCPs) and supportive communication, this study examines dispositional factors that influence support seeking in particular situations. Specifically, communicative ability and motivation to seek support were theorized to mediate the relationship between FCPs and recalled strategies of support seeking. Results from a sample (N = 352) of undergraduate students not only demonstrate that people's FCPs impart different levels of communicative ability and motivation to seek support, but also indirectly influence people's strategies of support seeking. Ability and motivation also directly influence support seeking, and several of these effects are moderated by participants' sex.     

Evaluation of multiple schedules with naturally occurring and therapist‐arranged discriminative stimuli following functional communication training

Many studies have shown that (a) functional communication training (FCT) is effective for reducing problem behavior, and (b) multiple schedules can facilitate reinforcer schedule thinning during FCT. Most studies tha have used multiple schedules with FCT have included therapist‐arranged stimuli (e.g., colored cards) as the discriminative stimuli (S^Ds), but recently, researchers have evaluated similar multiple‐schedule training procedures with naturally occurring S^Ds (e.g., overt therapist behavior). The purposes of the current study were to compare the effects of arranged and naturally occurring S^Ds directly during (a) acquisition of discriminated functional communication responses (FCRs) and (b) generalization of discriminated FCRs when we introduced the multiple schedules in novel contexts in which the naturally occurring stimuli were either relatively easy or difficult to discriminate. Results showed that (a) 2 of 3 participants acquired discriminated responding of the FCR more rapidly with arranged than with naturally occurring stimuli, (b) 2 of 3 participants showed resurgence of problem behavior , and (c) 2 of 3 participants showed greater generalization of discriminated responding to novel contexts with arranged stimuli than with naturally occurring stimuli. We discuss these results relative to the conditions under which naturally occurring and arranged S^Ds may promote rapid and generalized treatment gains.     

Examining the Latent Structure of Posttraumatic Growth Between Male and Female Survivors in the Immediate Aftermath of a Flash Flood Disaster

The study examined and compared the latent structure of posttraumatic growth (PTG) based on three proposed models: 1-factor, 3-factor and 5-factor models in order to (1) find out the factor structure that has the best fit for the Filipino sample; (2) find out the factor structure that best represents PTG in the immediate aftermath of a flash flood disaster; and (3) examine the generalizability of the best-fitted model across gender. A sample of 895 survivor-respondents answered the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) within a month after a deadly flash flood. Based on the best-fitted model, a multi-group comparison between male and female was conducted to determine gender generalizability. Results showed that the 3-factor model comprising of Changes in Self/Positive Life Attitudes, Philosophy of Life, and Relating to Others fitted best in contrast to the other two models. The data also demonstrated the generalizability of the 3-factor model across gender, with invariance in factor loadings, item intercepts, factor variance and covariance, and factor means.     

Beyond Discrete Categories: Studying Multiracial,Intersex, and Transgender Children Will Strengthen Basic Developmental Science

Developmental research on social categorization has overwhelmingly focused on perceptions about and experiences of individuals who are clear or prototypical members of discrete and usually dichotomous social categories. For example, studies of social categorization, stereotyping, prejudice, and social identity have generally explored how children reason about others who are gender-typical boys or girls or monoracial White or Black children. Similarly, research participants have generally been gender-typical and monoracial. However, our efforts to build theories that account for the true range of variation require acknowledging the increasing visibility of children who do not fit into these discrete categories and raise the question of whether existing theories can capture the dynamics that arise for them. Focusing on race and gender/sex, the social categories that have received the most attention in the developmental literature, we review research that has gone beyond simple dichotomies by including multiracial, gender-nonconforming, or intersex children, either as the targets of social perception or as participants themselves. We argue that this emerging work reveals problematic assumptions built into our theories and methods and highlights the value of building a more inclusive science.