Dysfunctional isolation in the elderly: Increasing marital and family closeness through improved communication

Unique developmental crises in old age may lead to social withdrawal that negatively affects the individual and his/her marital and family relationships. Without an awareness of these aging dynamics, the therapist can inadvertently perpetuate these distancing behaviors which can exacerbate marital and family conflict. This paper discusses certain developmental crises which can result in increased isolation for the older adult, and suggests therapeutic interventions to facilitate increased closeness among family members.     

Recent Suicidal Ideation Among Patients in an Inner City Emergency Department

The rates and associated features of suicidal ideation among 5,641 patients seeking routine, nonsuicide related care in an inner‐city emergency department were examined. Approximately 8% of patients seeking routine care in the emergency department reported some form of suicidal ideation within the past 2 weeks. Suicidal ideation was common in individuals who were single with poorer mental health, had higher depression, and had received some drug or alcohol treatment in the past 3 months or had used cocaine or marijuana in the past 30 days. Improved screening procedures could help to identify routine care patients who are at risk for suicide.     

Family Functioning in Pediatric Trichotillomania

Little is known about how pediatric trichotillomania (TTM), a clinically significant and functionally impairing disorder, is impacted by, and impacts, family functioning. We explored dimensions of family functioning and parental attitudes in a sample of children and adolescents who participated in an Internet-based survey and satisfied conservative diagnostic criteria for TTM (ages 10–17, n = 133). Analyses reveal trends toward higher levels of dysfunction in families of TTM youth relative to normative samples, although no differences achieved statistical significance. However, scores on the Family Assessment Measure and the Attitudes Toward My Child scales were similar to those in clinical samples of youth with cystic fibrosis, an eating disorder, or an anxiety disorder. While these results indicate that family functioning and parental attitudes in TTM were not generally or extremely problematic, family issues may nevertheless warrant particular clinical evaluation and attention in more severe TTM cases.     

Parent-Collected Behavioral Observations: An Empirical Comparison of Methods

Treatments for disruptive behaviors are often guided by parent reports on questionnaires, rather than by multiple methods of assessment. Professional observations and clinic analogs exist to complement questionnaires, but parents can also collect useful behavioral observations to inform and guide treatment. Two parent observation methods of child aggression and noncompliance were compared: the Parent Daily Report (PDR) and Behavior Record Cards (BRC). Parents tracked misbehavior for 2 weeks using the PDR or BRC. BRC data proved to be more accurate, though both systems yielded strong reliability and moderate validity. The BRC is recommended to clinicians on empirical and conceptual grounds.     

Parental Emotion Coaching: Associations With Self-Regulation in Aggressive/Rejected and Low Aggressive/Popular Children

This study investigated associations between maternal and paternal emotion coaching and the self-regulation skills of kindergarten and first-grade children. Participants were 54 children categorized as either aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular by peer reports. Findings indicated a statistical trend for fathers of low aggressive/popular children to engage in more emotion coaching than fathers of aggressive/rejected children. Paternal emotion coaching accounted for significant variance in children's regulation of attention. Maternal emotion coaching moderated the relation between children's status and regulation of emotion. Findings suggest that interventions focused on parental emotion coaching may prove beneficial for increasing the self-regulation and attention skills of children with social and conduct problems.     

The Attention and Executive Function Rating Inventory (ATTEX): Psychometric properties and clinical utility in diagnosing ADHD subtypes

Klenberg, L., Jämsä, S., Häyrinen, T., Lahti‐Nuuttila, P. & Korkman, M. (2010). The Attention and Executive Function Rating Inventory (ATTEX): Psychometric properties and clinical utility in diagnosing ADHD subtypes. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 439–448. This study presents a new inventory, the Attention and Executive Function Rating Inventory (ATTEX), and examines the psychometric properties and the clinical utility of ATTEX in indentifying the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder combined type (ADHD‐C) and the ADHD predominantly inattentive type (ADHD‐I) in school environments. A normative sample of Finnish 7‐ to 15‐year‐old children and adolescents (N = 701) and a clinical sample consisting of children with ADHD‐C (N = 190) and ADHD‐I (N = 25) were examined with the ATTEX and the ADHD Rating Scale‐IV. The ATTEX and its scales had good internal consistency reliability (0.67–0.98) and criterion validity (0.68–0.95). Normative data was provided for the total normative sample and for boys and girls separately. Gender differences were noted in the ATTEX scores, boys having consistently higher scores on all ATTEX scales. The effect of age was significant only for one of the ten scales, the Motor hyperactivity scale, 7‐year‐olds having more problems of hyperactivity than 14‐year‐olds. Lower parent education level and the child’s learning difficulties were related to higher ratings of EF problems in ATTEX. When different cutoff scores for boys and girls were applied, ATTEX was sensitive in identifying children with attention deficit disorders. In addition, ATTEX was accurate in differentiating children with ADHD‐I from children with ADHD‐C. In this Finnish sample, ATTEX showed solid psychometric properties and could be used as a reliable tool in the diagnostic evaluation of ADHD‐C and ADHD‐I.     

Predictors of Multiple Suicide Attempts among Suicidal Black Adolescents

Psychopathology, social support, and interpersonal orientation were studied in relation to suicide attempt status in acutely suicidal, psychiatrically hospitalized Black adolescents and a matched sample of White adolescents. In the total sample, multiple attempters were differentiated by lower perceived support. Within the Black youth subsample, social comparison and positive stimulation from others differentiated multiple attempters from single attempters/ideators. Only suicidal ideation predicted multiple attempts among White youth and only higher interpersonal orientation predicted multiple suicide attempts within Black adolescents.     

Fearful faces modulate looking duration and attention disengagement in 7-month-old infants

The present study investigated whether facial expressions modulate visual attention in 7-month-old infants. First, infants' looking duration to individually presented fearful, happy, and novel facial expressions was compared to looking duration to a control stimulus (scrambled face). The face with a novel expression was included to examine the hypothesis that the earlier findings of greater allocation of attention to fearful as compared to happy faces could be due to the novelty of fearful faces in infants' rearing environment. The infants looked longer at the fearful face than at the control stimulus, whereas no such difference was found between the other expressions and the control stimulus. Second, a gap/overlap paradigm was used to determine whether facial expressions affect the infants' ability to disengage their fixation from a centrally presented face and shift attention to a peripheral target. It was found that infants disengaged their fixation significantly less frequently from fearful faces than from control stimuli and happy faces. Novel facial expressions did not have a similar effect on attention disengagement. Thus, it seems that adult-like modulation of the disengagement of attention by threat-related stimuli can be observed early in life, and that the influence of emotionally salient (fearful) faces on visual attention is not simply attributable to the novelty of these expressions in infants' rearing environment.