The Effectiveness of Brief Versus Intermediate Duration Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Adjustment Disorder

Treatment studies and particularly psychotherapeutic treatment studies of patients suffering from an adjustment disorder are very scarce, leading to insufficient evidence regarding the efficacy of treatment in this population. Whereas timely psychotherapy is known to be of benefit in the treatment of adjustment disorders, the ideal duration of psychotherapeutic interventions is not known. This study examined whether a brief 12-session focused psychodynamic psychotherapy may be as efficient as a longer intermediate-term (1?year) psychodynamic psychotherapy in treating patients suffering from an adjustment disorder. Subjects (n?=?66) were randomly assigned to either brief or intermediate psychotherapy. They were assessed by self-report measures and clinician’s evaluation at baseline, end of therapy, and 9?months after therapy was terminated. The results showed a good overall improvement in the whole group. Furthermore, brief psychotherapy was found to be as good as intermediate psychotherapy both at the end of treatment and at follow-up. Although our study was not designed to confirm the efficacy of dynamic psychotherapy in the treatment of adjustment disorders, our results suggest that brief interventions may be good enough in adjustment disorder, thus allowing treatment of a greater number of patients without compromising for the quality and suitability of treatment.     

Cultural influences on body dissatisfaction,body change behaviours,and disordered eating of Japanese adolescents

We administered a paper‐and‐pencil questionnaire to 133 female and 99 male Japanese high school students 13–18 years old (M = 15.9, SD = 1.57) from the Kansai area to examine cultural influences on their body image and body change behaviours. Our aim was to ascertain the independent and combined influences from traditional Japanese, modern Japanese, and Western values. Cluster analyses identified four ‘acculturative’ groups: ‘anti‐modern’, ‘traditional’, ‘pro‐modern/anti‐traditional’, and ‘pro‐Western/anti‐Japanese’. Pro‐modern and pro‐Western adolescents were most dissatisfied with their bodies, and pro‐Western adolescents were also most likely to attempt weight loss. The results demonstrate the value of assessing cultural interactions in Japan along three dimensions.     

The perception of empty and filled time intervals by pigeons

Pigeons were trained in a within-subjects design to discriminate durations of a filled interval (2 s and 8 s of light) and durations of an empty interval (2 s and 8 s bound by two 500-ms light markers). Filled intervals required a response to one set of comparisons (e.g., blue vs. yellow), whereas empty intervals required a response to a different set of comparisons (e.g., red vs. green). Psychophysical testing indicated that empty intervals were judged to be longer than equivalent durations of a filled interval. This finding was replicated when the anchor durations used during training were changed to 1 s and 4 s, or 4 s and 16 s. The difference between the point of subjective equality (PSE) for the empty intervals and the PSE for filled intervals increased as the magnitude of the anchor duration pairs increased. In addition, the difference limens (DL) for empty intervals were smaller than those for filled intervals, and they also increased as the magnitude of anchor duration pairs increased. An analysis of the Weber fractions (WF; i.e., DL/PSE) provided evidence for superimposition of the empty and filled timing functions across the different sets of anchor durations. These results suggest that the accumulation of subjective time was greater for empty intervals than for filled intervals. Within the framework of scalar timing theory, this difference in timing appeared to be the result of a clock rate difference rather than a switch latency difference.