Evidence-Based Assessment in Children and Adolescents with Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

The assessment of varied psychiatric disorders, including obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), is shifting towards the use of evidence-based assessments (EBAs). This shift has fostered the development, validation and adaptation of several measures to rate obsessive–compulsive symptoms and other related problematic areas such as functional impairment or family attitudes among others. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic review of psychometric studies on pediatric OCD-specific measures to classify these according to assessment evidence-based criteria. Selection criteria that determined which studies were included in the review were: (1) analyzing an OCD measure and (2) including participants’ age being 18 years or younger. The literature search procedure was conducted in Medline, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, Cochrane Library, and Scholar Google databases and enabled us to locate 42 studies which analyzed psychometric properties of 14 OCD measures studied in children and adolescents. Instruments were grouped into the following assessment areas: symptom presence and severity, functional impairment, family functioning and cognitive dimensions of OCD. Psychometric data regarding internal structure, internal consistency, reliability, validity and diagnostic precision were also reported. Further, measures were classified as well-established, approaching well-established and promising assessments in terms of reliability and validity. We concluded that the assessment of OCD in pediatric populations is a growing field that in a short-medium term could provide a wide variety of EBAs for the evaluation obsessive–compulsive symptoms and other OCD-related dimensions. The paper concludes by highlighting directions for future research.     

Semen Loss and Sexual Anxiety Among Young Unmarried Men: Being Young and Vulnerable in Rural India

Premarital sex remains stigmatized even as the unmarried period of life is lengthening in India. This paper examines how young unmarried men in rural central India conceptualize and understand their sexual health and vulnerability. The data is qualitative, derived from four focus group discussions (N = 38 persons) of young unmarried males that were carried out in conjunction with a larger study on male involvement in reproductive health in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 2005. Young, unmarried rural men experience a wide range of functional situations which are culturally defined as health problems, such as “weakness,” thought to be caused by masturbation, nocturnal ejaculations, and the loss of semen. Despite constraints on communication on sexuality with married men, young unmarried men largely share with them the culturally hegemonic notion of semen loss as a health hazard. All four discussions pointed to the negative image of psycho-physiological changes related to maturation and further, to the belief that the reproductive functions of men can render them vulnerable and even harm them. Sexual anxiety in young men may in part reflect young men’s socially dependent and insecure life situation and social suffering. Young, unmarried rural men see marriage as the only release from sexual health problems although temporary relief is sought from private health care providers. In the future, men’s unmarried life stage is bound to lengthen in rural India, and consequently sexual health prior to the commencement of active intercourse should receive more attention in public health services and sex education.     

Effects of training condition on the contribution of specific items to relational processing in baboons (Papio papio)

Relational processing involves learning about the relationship between or among stimuli, transcending the individual stimuli, so that abstract knowledge generalizable to novel situations is acquired. Relational processing has been studied in animals as well as in humans, but little attention has been paid to the contribution of specific items to relational thinking or to the factors that may affect that contribution. This study assessed the intertwined effects of item and relational processing in nonhuman primates. Using a procedure that entailed both expanding and contracting sets of pictorial items, we trained 13 baboons on a two-alternative forced-choice task, in which they had to distinguish horizontal from vertical relational patterns. In Experiment 1, monkeys engaged in item-based processing with a small training set size, and they progressively engaged in relation-based processing as training set size was increased. However, in Experiment 2, overtraining with a small stimulus set promoted the processing of item-based information. These findings underscore similarities in how humans and nonhuman primates process higher-order stimulus relations.     

The mark of adaptive memory in healthy and cognitively impaired older adults and elderly

The survival processing paradigm has recently drawn attention to the functional aspects of memory functioning. The survival effect, characterized by better memory performance when information is processed in a survival context, as compared with a variety of controls, is now well established in healthy populations. The main goal of this study was to test this paradigm in a group of cognitively impaired older adults and elderly; their data were compared to the data obtained in a group of healthy older adults and elderly. Seventeen cognitively impaired and 17 healthy participants performed a typical survival task using a blocked within‐subject design procedure and free recall as the memory test. The healthy older adults and elderly performed better on this memory task as well as on other tests included in a neuropsychological evaluation protocol. Importantly, both groups benefited from survival processing. These results provide further support for the power of survival processing, extending this phenomenon to cognitively impaired aging participants. The data also suggest that the survival effect is not simply a form of deep processing. Potential applied considerations are presented.     

The mediating role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and the consumption of tobacco and alcohol

Earlier studies have shown that feelings of guilt appear to be involved in the burnout process. However, the exact nature of the relationship between burnout, feelings of guilt, and tobacco and alcohol use is unclear. The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Role conflict, Role clarity, and Feedback were included as predictors of burnout. The sample of this cross‐sectional study consisted of 260 Chilean administration and customer service workers. Hypotheses were tested using a path model. The hypothesized model (i.e., Indolence to guilt to tobacco/alcohol use) showed an adequate data fit, including a mediator role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and alcohol use. The results of this study recommending taking into consideration the evaluation of feelings of guilt as a symptom of burnout in order to develop a more reliable diagnosis of burnout syndrome and its consequences.     

Effect on Comprehension of Preposed versus Postposed Adverbial Phrases

A challenge for psycholinguistics is to describe how linguistic cues influence the construction of the mental representation resulting from the comprehension of a text. In this paper, we will focus on one of these linguistic devices: the sentence-initial positioning of spatial adverbials such as In the park.... Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted to test the ‘Discourse Framing Hypothesis’ according to which preposed adverbials can be seen as frame builders announcing that incoming contents satisfy the same informational criterion specified by the adverbial. Our results indicate that spatial adverbials do not play the same role when they are in sentence-initial and in sentence-final position. These results are discussed in the framework of Zwaan’s Event Indexing Model.     

Eating behaviors and emotional distress are predicted by treatment and adverse outcome in patients with type 2 diabetes

Depression and anxiety are hightly prevalent among patients with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), however not commonly related to outcomes, treatment and comorbidities. Eating behaviors could also have an implication. To evaluate the relation between mood and eating behaviors with demographic, physical, treatment, biochemical profiles and chronic comorbidities in T2D we conducted this exploratory cross sectional study in a population from Mexico. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire Revised 21 (TFEQ-R21) were correlated with age, gender, blood pressure, treatment and comorbidities (nephropathy, neuropathy, retinopathy and cardiopathy). Multi-linear regression models and 2^k factorial analyses were conducted. Sixty-one patients (31 male) 55 years old (SD 13) with at least 5 years of T2D were included. Anxiety correlated with depression (r = 0.25, p < 0.05). Gender (women) (std B 0.026, p < 0.001), insulin therapy (std B 0.3, p = 0.11), systolic blood pressure (std B 0.263, p = 0.02) and cardiovascular disease (std B 0.232, p = 0.035) predicted depression. Insulin therapy had a positive effect in cognitive restraint. (std B 0.32, p = 0.001). Age (std B 0.37, p = 0.003) and systolic blood pressure (std B 0.237, p = 0.048) predicted positively emotional eating (not previously published). 2^k factorial analyses proved additive interaction between complications and insulin therapy with depression. This study supports the relation between mood disorders and eating behaviors with demographic, physical, treatment, biochemical profiles and chronic comorbidities in T2D and the additive interaction between factors and mood disorders.     

Canadian Arab Youth at the Border: Cultural Dissociation,Fear Management,and Disciplining Practices in Securitized Spaces

In this paper, we explore what Canadian Arab youth do to navigate border and travel transit sites. Arab youth are the focus for this study because they are a neglected demographic of research in ethnic studies, compared to the more copious studies on Canadian Arabs. Our research empirically investigates the struggles that this youth demographic faces, and the efforts they undertake to manage their marginalization. Some of these efforts involve practices of cultural dissociation, fear management, and self-disciplining through behavioral self-surveillance. Drawing upon an existing body of research that recognizes the highly fraught and securitized nature of air travel and border transfer, particularly for Arab/Muslim populations, we use the findings from focus groups conducted in Kitchener-Waterloo to theoretically situate some of the real struggles of Canadian Arab youth. As prominent racialized and securitized identities in the War on Terror (WoT), Arab youth are often forced, or feel that they are forced to perform their Canadian-ness to substantiate their innocence, and in some cases, this requires minimalization, or even erasure of part of who they are.