Transition planning and recidivism among mentally ill juvenile offenders

OBJECTIVES: To determine the extent to which transition planning and community service would predict lower levels of recidivism among mentally ill juvenile offenders. DESIGN: Review of legal, medical and social service records including examination of 3-month period following community release. PARTICIPANTS: Juvenile offenders incarcerated for 6 months or more (N = 44) transitioning to community. MEASURES: Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS), sum of different documented pre- and post-release discharge planning contacts, documented community service contacts. OUTCOMES: Re-offense during the first year post-release. RESULTS: Documented community service contacts in the 3 months following discharge were rare for mental health (20.5%), substance abuse (38.6%), financial assistance (29.5%), and school placement (34.1%). The average number of different pre-release and post-release discharge planning contacts was also low, M(SD)=1.86(1.68) and M(SD)= 2.34(1.71) respectively. Post-release discharge planning and the receipt of financial assistance and mental health services were all associated with lower levels of reoffending. CONCLUSIONS: Community transition planning, including the coordination and provision of community services, is an essential component of community reintegration for juvenile offenders and is associated with lower rates of recidivism during the first year post-discharge.     

The Koala Fear Questionnaire: a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in pre-school and primary school children

The Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ) is a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in children aged between 4 and 12 years. The current article presents six studies which examined the reliability and validity of the KFQ. Study 1 (N=108) demonstrated that the visual fear scales of Koala bears as employed in the KFQ are highly comparable to the standard 3-point scales that are used in other childhood fear measures. Study 2 (N=163) provided support for the convergent validity of the KFQ in a sample of 8- to 14-year-old children. That is, the scale correlated substantially with alternative measures of childhood fear and anxiety. Study 3 (N=189) showed that the KFQ possesses good internal consistency and test-retest stability in a group of 8- to 11-year-old children. The results of Studies 4 (N=129) and 5 (N=176) indicated that the KFQ is suitable for children aged 4 to 6 years and demonstrated that the psychometric properties of the scale in younger children are highly similar to those obtained in older children. Study 6 (N=926) showed that the factor structure of the KFQ was theoretically meaningful: although the data clearly pointed in the direction of one factor of general fearfulness, spurs of the commonly found five-factor solution of childhood fear were found in the KFQ. Altogether, the KFQ seems to be a valuable addition to the instrumentarium of clinicians and researchers who are working with fearful and anxious children.     

Shyness: relationship to social phobia and other psychiatric disorders

The relationship between shyness, social phobia and other psychiatric disorders was examined. The prevalence of social phobia was significantly higher among shy persons (18%) compared with non-shy persons (3%). However, the majority of shy individuals (82%) were not socially phobic. A significant and positive correlation was found between the severity of shyness and the presence of social phobia, but the data suggest that social phobia is not merely severe shyness. Social phobia was also positively and moderately correlated with introversion and neuroticism. Thus, shy persons with social phobia were shyer, more introverted, and more neurotic than other shy people, but none of these factors was sufficient to distinguish shy persons with social phobia from those without social phobia. The proportion of the shy group with psychiatric diagnoses other than social phobia was significantly higher than among the non-shy group, indicating that various diagnostic categories are prominent among the shy. The results are discussed in terms of the overlap in shyness and social phobia and the relationship of shyness to other psychiatric diagnoses and personality dimensions.     

Zones of consensus and zones of conflict: questioning the "common morality" presumption in bioethics

Many bioethicists assume that morality is in a state of wide reflective equilibrium. According to this model of moral deliberation, public policymaking can build upon a core common morality that is pretheoretical and provides a basis for practical reasoning. Proponents of the common morality approach to moral deliberation make three assumptions that deserve to be viewed with skepticism. First, they commonly assume that there is a universal, transhistorical common morality that can serve as a normative baseline for judging various actions and practices. Second, advocates of the common morality approach assume that the common morality is in a state of relatively stable, ordered, wide reflective equilibrium. Third, casuists, principlists, and other proponents of common morality approaches assume that the common morality can serve as a basis for the specification of particular policies and practical recommendations. These three claims fail to recognize the plural moral traditions that are found in multicultural, multiethnic, multifaith societies such as the United States and Canada. A more realistic recognition of multiple moral traditions in pluralist societies would be considerable more skeptical about the contributions that common morality approaches in bioethics can make to resolving contentious moral issues.     

Learning-induced arg 3.1/arc mRNA expression in the mouse brain

The effector immediate-early gene (IEG) arg 3.1, also called arc, encodes a protein interacting with the neuronal cytoskeleton. The selective localization of arg 3.1/arc mRNA in activated dendritic segments suggests that the arg 3.1/arc protein may be synthesized at activated post-synaptic sites and that arg 3.1/arc could participate in structural and functional modifications underlying cognitive processes like memory formation. To analyze whether learning itself is sufficient to trigger expression of arg 3.1/arc, we developed a one-trial learning paradigm in which mice learned to enter a dark compartment to escape from an aversively illuminated area. Arg 3.1/arc mRNA expression was analyzed by in situ hybridization in three groups of mice as follows: a control group with no access to the dark compartment, a learning group having access to the dark compartment for one trial, and a retrieval group having access to the dark compartment for two trials on consecutive days. All animals from the learning and retrieval groups escaped the illuminated area, and those tested 24 h later (retrieval group) showed a strongly reduced latency to enter the dark compartment, demonstrating the validity of our learning paradigm to induce long-term memory. Our results show that acquisition of a simple task results in a brain area-specific biphasic increase in arg 3.1/arc mRNA expression 15 min and 4.5 h post-training. This increase was detected specifically in the learning group but neither in the control nor in the retrieval groups. The pattern of arg 3.1/arc mRNA expression corresponds temporally to the two mRNA- and protein-synthesis-dependent periods of long-term memory formation. Our study provides the first unequivocal evidence that arg 3.1/arc expression is induced by a learning task and strongly suggests a role of arg 3.1/arc mRNA in the early and late cellular mechanisms underlying the stabilization of the memory trace.     

Brain areas sensitive to coherent visual motion

Detection of coherent motion versus noise is widely used as a measure of global visual-motion processing. To localise the human brain mechanisms involved in this performance, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation during viewing of coherently moving random dots with that during viewing spatially and temporally comparable dynamic noise. Rates of reversal of coherent motion and coherent-motion velocities (5 versus 20 deg s-1) were also compared. Differences in local activation between conditions were analysed by statistical parametric mapping. Greater activation by coherent motion compared to noise was found in V5 and putative V3A, but not in V1. In addition there were foci of activation on the occipital ventral surface, the intraparietal sulcus, and superior temporal sulcus. Thus, coherent-motion information has distinctive effects in a number of extrastriate visual brain areas. The rate of motion reversal showed only weak effects in motion-sensitive areas. V1 was better activated by noise than by coherent motion, possibly reflecting activation of neurons with a wider range of motion selectivities. This activation was at a more anterior location in the comparison of noise with the faster velocity, suggesting that 20 deg s-1 is beyond the velocity range of the V1 representation of central visual field. These results support the use of motion-coherence tests for extrastriate as opposed to V1 function. However, sensitivity to motion coherence is not confined to V5, and may extend beyond the classically defined dorsal stream.     

Examining the effectiveness of a community-based self-help program to increase women's readiness for smoking cessation

This study investigated the effectiveness of two components of a smoking cessation intervention: a reading manual and a series of televised programs. Female smokers in the Chicago metropolitan area with a high school education or less were interviewed at 4 different times: baseline, immediate postintervention, and 6 and 12 months. We examined the effects of several baseline measures (race, age, number of cigarettes smoked, and stage of readiness to change) and exposure to the intervention components on subsequent stage of change. Race, baseline smoking rate, baseline stage, and exposure to both intervention components had direct effects on stage at immediate postintervention, with both intervention components increasing readiness to quit. Furthermore, exposure to the manual interacted with baseline stage, such that the manual benefited women at earlier stages more than women at later stages. Effects of both components were sustained at 6 months, and the effects of the manual were sustained at 12 months.