Parent Perspectives of Support Received from Physicians and/or Genetic Counselors Following a Decision to Continue a Pregnancy with a Prenatal Diagnosis of Trisomy 13/18

Families that choose to continue a pregnancy with a prenatal diagnosis of Trisomy 13/18 are a minority that present unique challenges for those in charge of their care. This study investigated the extent to which these patients felt supported by their healthcare providers, and any differences in the perceived level of support experienced by those working with a physician versus those working with a genetic counselor. Two online support groups, SOFT and Hope for Trisomy, distributed an online survey to their members. Means, standard deviations and chi-square analysis were calculated to describe their responses. One-hundred fourteen surveys were included in the final analysis. Respondents were more likely to agree that genetic counselors provided unbiased information in a way that they understood, compared to physicians. Review of qualitative responses found that portrayal of Trisomy 13/18 by healthcare providers used directive language when describing the lethality, morbidity and burden of the condition. Language included terms such as “incompatible with life” and comments on burden to other family members. Healthcare providers can assist families that receive a prenatal diagnosis of Trisomy 13 or 18 by providing up-to-date written resources and connecting them with support groups for parents who have received a similar diagnosis. Our study found that involving genetic counselors in the prenatal care of these patients is likely beneficial.     

Ensuring quality in online career mentoring

This article explores the issue of quality in online career mentoring. It builds on a previous evaluation of Brightside, an online mentoring system in the UK which is primarily aimed at supporting young people's transitions to further learning. The article notes that participants in Brightside's mentoring programmes reported satisfaction with their experiences, with many stating that it helped them to make decisions and to positively change their learning and career behaviours. However, the article argues that there are challenges in ensuring quality and consistency connected to both the voluntary nature of mentoring and the online mode. The article proposes a 10-point quality framework to support quality assurance, initial training and professional development for online mentors.     

Animal Activists,Civil Disobedience and Global Responses to Transnational Injustice

Traditionally, acts of civil disobedience are understood as a mechanism by which citizens may express dissatisfaction with a law of their country. That expression will typically be morally motivated, non-violent and aimed at changing their government’s policy, practice or law. Building on existing work, in this paper we explore the limits of one well-received definition of civil disobedience by considering the challenging case of the actions of animal activists at sea. Drawing on original interviews with advocates associated with Sea Shepherd, Greenpeace and Humane Society International we find that even if animal activists are morally motivated and civil, the transnational nature of their activity makes it difficult to assess their intention to bring about a change in law or public policy. This means that a civil disobedience defence may not be available to activists operating across international borders. This raises important questions about the usefulness of the civil disobedience concept within the context of a globalised world. We conclude that while the actions of some anti-whaling activists may not meet definitions of civil disobedience as conventionally understood, this says more about the narrow way in which that concept has been traditionally defined, than it does about the type of activity some anti-whaling activists have undertaken in the Southern Ocean. Finally, we argue that activists wishing to make a stand against whaling may have no choice but to act as global citizens because policy change within a single nation-state is unlikely to lead to the cessation of this inherently transnational activity.     

How prioritized is self-prioritization during stimulus processing?

Recent research has suggested that self-relevance automatically enhances stimulus processing (i.e., the self-prioritization effect). Notably, information associated with one’s self elicits faster responses than comparable material associated with other targets (e.g., friend, stranger). Challenging the assertion that self-prioritization is an obligatory process, here we hypothesized that self-relevance only facilitates performance when task sets draw attention to previously formed target-object associations. The results of two experiments were consistent with this viewpoint. Compared with arbitrary objects owned by a friend, those owned by the self were classified more rapidly when participants were required to report either the owner or identity of the items (i.e., semantic task set). In contrast, self-relevance failed to facilitate performance when participants judged the orientation of the stimuli (i.e., perceptual task set). These findings demonstrate the conditional automaticity of self-prioritization during stimulus processing.     

Stress administered prior to encoding impairs neutral but enhances emotional long-term episodic memories

Stressful events frequently comprise both neutral and emotionally arousing information, yet the impact of stress on emotional and neutral events is still not fully understood. The hippocampus and frontal cortex have dense concentrations of receptors for stress hormones, such as cortisol, which at high levels can impair performance on hippocampally dependent memory tasks. Yet, the same stress hormones can facilitate memory for emotional information, which involves interactions between the hippocampus and amygdala. Here, we induced psychosocial stress prior to encoding and examined its long-term effects on memory for emotional and neutral episodes. The stress manipulation disrupted long-term memory for a neutral episode, but facilitated long-term memory for an equivalent emotional episode compared with a control condition. The stress manipulation also increased salivary cortisol, catecholamines as indicated by the presence of alpha-amylase, heart rate, and subjectively reported stress. Stressed subjects reported more false memories than nonstressed control subjects, and these false memories correlated positively with cortisol levels, providing evidence for a relationship between stress and false memory formation. Our results demonstrate that stress, when administered prior to encoding, produces different patterns of long-term remembering for neutral and emotional episodes. These differences likely emerge from differential actions of stress hormones on memory-relevant regions of the brain.     

Racial and gender differences in weight status and dietary practices among college students

A questionnaire was used to assess nutritional intake, weight status, and dietary practices among 630 U.S. college students. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated using self-reported heights and weights, and nutritional status was assessed via 24-hour recall. Sixty-four percent of the students had acceptable BMI levels (between 19 and 25); 16% of African-American females and 15% of African-American males had BMIs indicating obesity (30 or above). Approximately 18% of the students consumed 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables, 7% consumed 6 or more grain products, and 53% consumed 2 or more dairy products. Twenty-seven percent reported never/rarely eating fast foods. Recommendations are presented for the development of culturally appropriate health education/promotion programs in order to help college students meet Healthy People 2010 objectives.     

Learning from women with psychosis

The article describes psychoanalytic reflections in the work of a consultant psychiatrist responsible for a recently developed female intensive care unit. The manifestations of aggression were observed to be different from that of male patients. The behavioural manifestation of aggression by women was linked to the themes of secrets, and of hidden aggression, which are described in the analytic literature as feminine characteristics. The relationships between women as sibling inpatients and with female staff may explain some of the difficulties in managing aggression. Hidden aggression in the dyad of female-to-female transferences and countertransference may contribute to problems in all female inpatient settings. Bringing together the themes of psychosis and of women from a psychoanalytic perspective, the author suggests that the care pathway leading to transfer to the intensive care unit may exacerbate psychotic symptoms in acute states, due to specific vulnerabilities of women. The provision of specialized inpatient services for women may be more therapeutic if female development and the nature of their relationships were better understood.     

Rorschach Intercoder Reliability for Protocol-Level Comprehensive System Variables in an International Sample

This study examines the intercoder reliability of Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2001) protocol-level variables. A large international sample was combined to obtain intercoder agreement for 489 Rorschach protocols coded using the CS. Intercoder agreement was calculated using an Iota coefficient, a statistical coefficient similar to kappa that is corrected for chance. Iota values for the variables analyzed ranged from .31 to 1.00, with 2 in the poor range of agreement, 4 in the fair range, 25 in the good range, and 116 in the excellent range of agreement. Discrepancies between variables are discussed.