Suicide in bipolar disorder: Risks and management

Bipolar disorders are prevalent, often severe, and disabling illnesses with elevated lethality largely due to suicide. Suicide rates average approximately 1% annually, or perhaps 60 times higher than the international population rate of 0.015% annually. Suicidal acts typically occur early in bipolar disorders and in association with severe depressive or mixed states. The high lethality of suicidal acts in bipolar disorders is suggested by a much lower ratio of attempts:suicide (approximately 3:1) than in the general population (approximately 30:1). Risk factors can help to identify patients at increased suicidal risk, but ongoing clinical assessment is essential to limit risk. Empirical short-term interventions to manage acute suicidal risk include close clinical supervision, rapid hospitalization, and electroconvulsive therapy. Remarkably, however, evidence of the long-term effectiveness of most treatments against suicidal behavior is rare. A notable exception is lithium prophylaxis, which is associated with consistent evidence of major (approximately 80%), sustained relative reductions of risk of suicides and attempts, and lower lethality (increased attempts:suicide ratio). Such benefits are unproved for other treatments commonly used to treat bipolar disorder patients, including anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and psychosocial interventions. Applying available knowledge systematically, with close and sustained clinical supervision, can enhance management of suicidal risk in bipolar disorders patients.     

"In the storminess": multi-disciplinary approaches to scriptural images representing ethical challenges in the pastor-congregant relationship

In this qualitative study the authors examine the Scriptural images that 10 Lutheran pastors employed in describing the ethical challenges in the pastor-congregant relationship. The analysis of Scriptural images is part of a larger study on pastors' experiences of a mandatory workshop, "Crossing the Boundaries (CTB),"which is required of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) seminarians. The pastors' images were analyzed from the four perspectives of depth psychology, theology, social ethics, and sociology. In commenting on tensions in the pastors' Scriptural images the authors note commonalities among the four theoretical perspectives and discuss implications for practice and future research.     

Temporal differences in trait self-ascription: when the self is seen as an other

Seven studies exploring people's tendency to make observer-like attributions about their past and future selves are presented. Studies 1 and 2 showed temporal differences in trait assessments that paralleled the classic actor-observer difference. Study 3 provided evidence against a motivational account of these differences. Studies 4-7 explored underlying mechanisms involving differences in the focus of attention of the sort linked to the classic actor-observer difference. In Study 4, people perceived past and future selves from a more observer-like perspective than present selves. In Studies 5 and 6, manipulating attention to internal states (vs. observable behavior) of past and future selves led people to ascribe fewer traits to those selves. Study 7 showed an inverse relationship for past and present selves between observer-like visual focus and salience of internal information.     

Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment

There is growing evidence for the relationship between working memory and academic attainment. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether working memory is simply a proxy for IQ or whether there is a unique contribution to learning outcomes. The findings indicate that children’s working memory skills at 5 years of age were the best predictor of literacy and numeracy 6 years later. IQ, in contrast, accounted for a smaller portion of unique variance to these learning outcomes. The results demonstrate that working memory is not a proxy for IQ but rather represents a dissociable cognitive skill with unique links to academic attainment. Critically, we find that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ. This result has important implications for education, particularly with respect to intervention.     

How to have a radically minimal ontology

In this paper I further elucidate and defend a metaontological position that allows you to have a minimal ontology without embracing an error-theory of ordinary talk. On this view ‘there are Fs’ can be strictly and literally true without bringing an ontological commitment to Fs. Instead of a sentence S committing you to the things that must be amongst the values of the variables if it is true, I argue that S commits you to the things that must exist as truthmakers for S if it is true. I rebut some recent objections that have been levelled against this metaontological view.     

Empathic Accuracy,Meta-Perspective,and Satisfaction in the Coach-Athlete Relationship

This study investigated the empathic accuracy of sixty coach-athlete dyads, its antecedents (meta-perceptions of relationship) and consequences (perceptions of satisfaction). An adaptation of Ickes's (2001) unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm was used to assess empathic accuracy whereby coach-athlete dyads were filmed during training. A selection of video clips containing the dyads' interactions during a typical training session were shown to them. The dyad members were asked to report their recollected thoughts and/or feelings while making inferences about what their partners' thought and felt at specific points of interaction. Empathic accuracy was estimated by comparing the dyads' self-reports and inferences. The results of a structural equation model analysis indicated an association between members' meta-perceptions or judgments that their partner is positive about the athletic relationship and increased empathic accuracy. Increased empathic accuracy was in turn associated with higher levels of satisfaction. These results are discussed based on issues they raise for theory and measurement.     

A tool for measuring stress tolerance in elite athletes

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the nature of pre-performance routines used in golf. Six male international golfers were recruited to participate in this study (Age M = 29; handicap M = +1.5; years playing golf M = 16.25). The golfers were interviewed individually to gain an understanding of participants’ perceptions of the nature and function of their pre-performance routines. The data were thematically analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. In total, 9 super-ordinate themes emerged: allocation of attention, psychological skills, shot selection, routine mind set, routine composition, compulsive behaviors, routine evolution/application, top players, and moderating factors. Results suggest that the development of routines is dependent on the personality, coping resources, and situational appraisals of each individual performer.     

Symmetry, Compact Closure and Dagger Compactness for Categories of Convex Operational Models

In the categorical approach to the foundations of quantum theory, one begins with a symmetric monoidal category, the objects of which represent physical systems, and the morphisms of which represent physical processes. Usually, this category is taken to be at least compact closed, and more often, dagger compact, enforcing a certain self-duality, whereby preparation processes (roughly, states) are interconvertible with processes of registration (roughly, measurement outcomes). This is in contrast to the more concrete “operational” approach, in which the states and measurement outcomes associated with a physical system are represented in terms of what we here call a convex operational model: a certain dual pair of ordered linear spaces–generally, not isomorphic to one another. On the other hand, state spaces for which there is such an isomorphism, which we term weakly self-dual, play an important role in reconstructions of various quantum-information theoretic protocols, including teleportation and ensemble steering. In this paper, we characterize compact closure of symmetric monoidal categories of convex operational models in two ways: as a statement about the existence of teleportation protocols, and as the principle that every process allowed by that theory can be realized as an instance of a remote evaluation protocol—hence, as a form of classical probabilistic conditioning. In a large class of cases, which includes both the classical and quantum cases, the relevant compact closed categories are degenerate, in the weak sense that every object is its own dual. We characterize the dagger-compactness of such a category (with respect to the natural adjoint) in terms of the existence, for each system, of a symmetric bipartite state, the associated conditioning map of which is an isomorphism.