Patient Suicide: A Survey of Therapists' Reactions

A substantial proportion of therapists will at some point in their professional life experience the loss of a patient to suicide. Our aims were to assess how therapists react to patient's suicide over time and which factors contribute to the reaction. One third of the therapists, mostly women, suffer from severe distress. The impact is not different for therapists in institutional settings and therapists in private practice. The item “overall distress” immediately after the suicide predicts emotional reactions and changes in behavior. Our data suggest that identifying the severely distressed subgroup could be done using a visual analogue scale for overall distress. As a consequence, more specific and intensified help could be provided to these individuals.     

Modeling Updating of Perceived Detection Risk: The Role of Personal Experience,Peers, Deterrence Policies,and Impulsivity

ABSTRACT

We investigate how changes in deviant personal experiences, vicarious information, perceptions of deterrence policies, and impulsivity as a conditioning factor affect the perceived detection risk (PDR). We examine this by using the example of plagiarism by German university students using panel data (N = 1,684). Results show, for example, that gaining experience with plagiarism lowered the PDRs, while detection increased the PDRs. Vicarious information indicating low detection risks lowered the PDR of non-plagiarists only. An increase in the estimated use of computer-assisted plagiarism-checks, affected predominantly the PDR of plagiarists. Moreover, more impulsive plagiarists gave less weight to announcements of the use of plagiarism checks.     

Conforming to coordinate: Children use majority information for peer coordination

Humans are constantly required to coordinate their behaviour with others. As this often relies on everyone's convergence on the same strategy (e.g., driving on the left side of the road), a common solution is to conform to majority behaviour. In this study, we presented 5‐year‐old children with a coordination problem: To retrieve some rewards, they had to choose the same of four options as a peer partner – in reality a stooge – whose decision they were unable to see. Before making a choice, they watched a video showing how other children from their partner's peer group had behaved; a majority chose the same option and a minority chose a different one. In a control condition, children watched the same video but could then retrieve the reward irrespective of their partner's choice (i.e., no coordination was necessary). Children followed the majority more often when coordination was required. Moreover, conformers mostly justified their choices by referring to the majority from the video demonstration. This study is the first to show that young children are able to strategically coordinate decisions with peers by conforming to the majority.     

Caffeine attenuates vasovagal reactions in female first-time blood donors.

The experience of vasovagal reactions during blood donation (e.g., faintness, dizziness, lightheadedness) can be a deterrent to repeat donation. Because these reactions are associated with decreases in blood pressure, caffeine was examined as a potential modulator of vasovagal reactions by virtue of its pressor effects. Using a randomized, double-blind design, 62 female undergraduate 1st-time blood donors received either 0, 125, or 250 mg of caffeine prior to blood donation. Participants who received 250 mg of caffeine had lower scores on the Blood Donation Reactions Inventory, required fewer interventions by phlebotomists for negative reactions, and reported a greater likelihood of repeat donation than participants who received placebo. These findings suggest that a moderate dose of caffeine attenuates negative reactions in novice female blood donors and may increase the likelihood of repeat donations.