Is Rape-Related Self Blame Distinct From Other Post Traumatic Attributions of Blame? A Comparison of Severity and Implications for Treatment

Rape treatment generally takes the form of standard trauma intervention, which may limit its ability to resolve rape-specific symptoms. For the sake of optimizing such treatment, the present study seeks to distinguish specific post-rape symptoms from those observed following other forms of trauma, particularly in respect to self-blame and related PTSD. Given typical societal victim-blaming following rape, self-blame is expected to be considerably more extreme among survivors of rape than in other victims, and predictive of relatively elevated post-trauma symptoms. Three hundred and four participants completed measures of blame attribution and PTSD, substantiating the hypotheses. Implications for rape treatment and social change are discussed.     

Longitudinal Evaluation of a Preparation Program for Mandatory Military Service

This multivariate longitudinal study explored the relative contribution of 12th-grade students' (a) participation in a preparation program for mandatory military service, (b) feelings of adjustment at high school, and (c) perceptions of school climate to their evaluation of the program's impact on them, as well as to their later adjustment to military service. The sample included 247 male and female 12th graders, divided into an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group participated in a 10-meeting preparation program focusing on the enhancement of empowerment feelings regarding entrance into military service. We conducted measurements at three points in time: (a) before exposure to the preparation program, (b) after exposure to the preparation program, and (c) 6–12 months after military enlistment. Research findings supported the notion that the preparation program had a short-term impact on students' feelings of preparedness for military service. Activities in which students were directly exposed to military life or to Army representatives gained more positive evaluations. But some of the activities conducted by school staff were also positively related to the overall evaluation of the program's contribution to preparedness. However, in the long run, students' later military adjustment was not related to participation in the preparation program but rather to their pre-intervention attitudes toward military enlistment as well as their preliminary general feeling of adjustment. Altogether, study findings indicate that the preparation program had a positive impact mainly for those students who manage well in high school before enlistment. Hence, it is suggested that efforts to foster school-to-Army transition should unfold in a three-step process: (a) preliminary screening for maladaptive behavior, (b) pre-enlistment preparation, and (c) post-enlistment support to all recruits.     

Sex and Sociocultural Correlates of Urinary Incontinence in Israeli Preschool Children

Urinary incontinence in children aged 2 to 6 years whose mothers varied in ethnic descent, in level of education, and in immigration status was studied in Israel. Mothers of 302 children were interviewed in well-baby clinics regarding primary and secondary urinary incontinence of their children. A significant age trend was found for attaining primary urinary continence. However, various interactions between mothers' ethnic descent, mothers' level of education, and mothers' immigration status were associated with different rates of primary and secondary urinary incontinence in their children. Moreover, sex differences in rates of primary and secondary urinary incontinence were also associated with mothers' ethnic descent and level of education. It is suggested that different levels of maternal emotional availability to the child in the various subgroups can account for most of the findings.     

Working memory capacity for spoken sentences decreases with adult ageing: recall of fewer but not smaller chunks in older adults

Previous studies show that older adults have poorer immediate recall for language but the reason is unknown. Older adults may recall fewer chunks from working memory, or may have difficulty binding words together to form multi-unit chunks. We examined these two hypotheses by presenting four types of spoken sentences for immediate free recall, differing in the number and length of chunks per trial: four short, simple sentences; eight such sentences; four compound sentences, each incorporating two meaningful, short sentences; and four random word lists, each under a sentence-like intonation. Older adults recalled words from (accessed) fewer clauses than young adults, but there was no ageing deficit in the degree of completion of clauses that were accessed. An age-related decline in working memory capacity measured in chunks appears to account for deficits in memory for spoken language.     

Telepsychiatry with rural American Indians: issues in civil commitments

The use of live interactive videoconferencing to provide psychiatric care, telepsychiatry, has particular relevance for improving mental health treatment to rural American Indian reservations. There is little literature on civil commitments in telepsychiatry and none specifically addressing this topic among American Indians. This article reviews telepsychiatry in the mental health care of American Indians, civil commitments and telepsychiatry in general, and the current state of civil commitments in American Indian communities. We conclude by considering commitment through telepsychiatry in rural reservations and offering guidelines to assist practitioners in navigating this challenging landscape. Civil commitments of American Indian patients residing in rural reservations can be successfully accomplished through videoconferencing by thoughtful and informed clinicians. However, much more work is needed in this area, including research into the cultural attitudes and perspectives towards commitments and further inquiry regarding potential legal precedents, as well as case reports and examples of this work.     

Verdi's Rigoletto: The dialectic interplay of the psychic positions in seemingly 'mindless' violence

In this paper the author demonstrates the interplay of the psychic positions (paranoid-schizoid and depressive, alongside more primitive mental states) as they may appear in experiences of overwhelming anxieties relating to fragmentation and disintegration. These are examined in relation to the appearance of what has been described in the literature as 'mindless' violence. The vehicle for this demonstration is Verdi's opera Rigoletto , which the author examines using Fonagy and Target's model for the understanding of mindless violence. The opera is 'read' as a case study of the protagonist, using the drama as a reflection of Rigoletto's internal object representations. The author attempts to extend Fonagy and Target's model to include primitive mental states, in order to understand 'mindless' violence as a result of collapse of the dialectical relationship of the psychic positions, leading to the violent act as a desperate attempt at re-establishing a sense of self. From this perspective, the moment of the violent act may be seen as use of an autistic object and as supplying of autistic shape. The violence is ultimately directed against the already fragmenting self, especially cherished parts of it, however it may enable acknowledgement of repudiated, unmentalised emotions previously experienced as a void.     

Short Communication: Helpers' characteristics and problem intimacy as determinants of emotions associated with help-seeking

Female university students (N = 158) rated their readiness to seek help from a professional helper described to them, as well as the emotions that would accompany their decision. Readiness to seek help was associated with the anticipation of positive emotions. A significant 3-way interaction indicated that helpers' emotional behavior is especially meaningful when either the helper is not perceived as an expert and the help-seeker is bothered by a non-intimate problem, or when the helper is an expert and the help-seeker is bothered by an intimate problem. It is suggested that helper's characteristics may significantly influence the amount of positive, rather than negative, emotions anticipated through help-seeking, as well as the readiness to ask for help.     

Examining Current Conceptualizations of Psychopathology With the MMPI–2/MMPI–2–RF Restructured Clinical Scales: Preliminary Findings From a Cross-Cultural Study

Watson (2005 Watson, D. (2005). Rethinking the mood and anxiety disorders: A quantitative hierarchical model for DSM–V. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 522–536.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) proposed a hierarchical reorganization of the underlying structure of emotional disorders. This study cross-culturally evaluated Watson's (2005) structure of mood and anxiety disorders, using mainly dichotomous criteria, and explored the placement of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) in this model. It also tested Sellbom, Ben-Porath, and Bagby's (2008) proposed elaboration of the 2-factor model (positive and negative activation) that incorporates a higher order dimension of demoralization. One hundred men and 133 women from psychiatric settings in Israel completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 (Butcher et al., 2001 Butcher, J. N., Graham, J. R., Ben-Porath, Y. S., Tellegen, A., Dahlstrom, W. G., &; Kaemmer, B. (2001). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 (MMPI–2): Manual for administration, scoring and interpretation (Rev. ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and the Maudsley Obsessional–Compulsive Inventory (Hodgson &; Rachman, 1977 Hodgson, R. J., &; Rachman, S. (1977). Obsessive–compulsive complaints. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 15, 389–395.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). They were interviewed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (Sheehan et al., 1998 Sheehan, D. V., Lecrubier, Y., Sheehan, K. H., Amorim, P., Janavs, J., &; Weiller, E. (1998). The Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.): The development and validation of a structured diagnostic psychiatric interview for DSM–IV and ICD–10. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 59, 22–33.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Confirmatory factor analyses replicated Watson's structure for women but not for men. Mixed results were obtained regarding OCD's location in the model. Findings among women support the applicability of Watson's (2005) model across a variety of assessment modalities, as well as in a different language and for diversified cultural backgrounds. This conclusion, however, should be tempered in consideration of the results among men. Findings also provide evidence of the importance of demoralization in mood and anxiety disorders.