Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy in a Community Mental Health Center

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has been shown to be effective in randomized controlled trials with women with borderline personality disorder and histories of chronic self-inflicted injury including suicide attempts. The present study is a pre-post replication of a comprehensive DBT program in a community mental health center for individuals who chronically injure themselves and/or have experienced multiple treatment failures. Twenty-four subjects were given the Treatment History Interview to obtain information regarding medically treated self-inflicted injuries and the use of crisis services. After 1 year of treatment, DBT showed a significant reduction in the number and severity of self-inflicted injuries, psychiatric-related emergency room visits, psychiatric inpatient admissions and days, and the number of crisis treatment systems engaged. Results are compared to benchmarks from 3 other clinical trials of DBT. While this pre-post comparison has threats to internal validity, it supports the feasibility of DBT when fully implemented in a community mental health clinic.     

The production of bimanual percussion in 12- to 24-month-old children

Bimanual coordination represents a complex self-organizing system that is subject to both internal and contextual constraints. Although there has been interest in examining bimanual development throughout the lifespan, few data exist relative to the bimanual activity of children between 1 and 4 years of age. The study reported here represents an initial effort to address this gap. Twenty-seven children who were either 12, 18 or 24 months old were videotaped while drumming with sticks on a plastic drum. Two independent observers recorded bout length as well as number and phase relation of movement cycles within bouts. Kinematic analysis provided more detailed information about the timing and form of children's activity. Results indicate that bimanual drumming becomes preferred over unimanual drumming by 2 years of age, that the proportions of different phase relations exhibited by children change between 1 and 2 years of age, and that the behavior appears to go through periods of stability and variability within this age range. These results are discussed in the context of the child's physical development and interactions with the environment during this period.     

Gender differences: emotional expression and feelings of personal inauthenticity

This survey study examined the emotional expression content of human resources jobs and how the content varies by gender. On the basis of findings, it appeared that women more often conform to feminine display rules, which require the suppression of negative emotions and the simulation of positive emotions. In contrast, men more often adopted masculine display rules, which require the suppression of positive emotions and the simulation of negative ones. For both men and women, emotional dissonance generated by a feminine display-rule pattern was positively correlated with feelings of personal inauthenticity at work. Gender modified the relationship between emotional dissonance and gender only in that women who adopted the masculine display-rule pattern reported feeling the least personally inauthentic of all.     

When accuracy hurts, and when it helps: a test of the empathic accuracy model in marital interactions

This study tested predictions from W. Ickes and J. A. Simpson's (1997, 2001) empathic accuracy model. Married couples were videotaped as they tried to resolve a problem in their marriage. Both spouses then viewed a videotape of the interaction, recorded the thoughts and feelings they had at specific time points, and tried to infer their partner's thoughts and feelings. Consistent with the model, when the partner's thoughts and feelings were relationship-threatening (as rated by both the partners and by trained observers), greater empathic accuracy on the part of the perceiver was associated with pre-to-posttest declines in the perceiver's feelings of subjective closeness. The reverse was true when the partner's thoughts and feelings were nonthreatening. Exploratory analyses revealed that these effects were partially mediated through observer ratings of the degree to which partners tried to avoid the discussion issue.     

Suspicious minds: The motive to acquire relationship‐threatening information

In four studies, we obtained evidence for the reliability and validity of a 21‐item scale designed to measure a new theoretical construct: individual differences in the motivation to acquire relationship‐threatening information (hereafter, MARTI). Study 1 provided evidence for the MARTI scale's reliability and discriminant validity, revealing that it was reliable and not significantly correlated with measures of the Big Five personality traits, adult attachment styles, or more general social orientations. Studies 2 and 3 provided evidence for the scale's convergent and discriminant validity, showing that dating partners with higher MARTI scores (i.e., those who were more motivated to acquire relationship‐threatening information) scored lower in relational trust and reported engaging in more “suspicion behaviors.” Study 4 provided behavioral evidence for the scale's predictive validity, revealing that (a) dating partners with higher MARTI scores were more likely to break up within 5 months, and (b) the breakup rate was most pronounced for dating partners who scored higher on the scale and who also reported being less close. We discuss how this new construct and measure can be used to study important relationship dynamics.

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Trait-specific dependence in romantic relationships

ABSTRACT Informed by three theoretical frameworks—trait psychology, evolutionary psychology, and interdependence theory—we report four investigations designed to develop and test the reliability and validity of a new construct and accompanying multiscale inventory, the Trait-Specific Dependence Inventory (TSDI). The TSDI assesses comparisons between present and alternative romantic partners on major dimensions of mate value. In Study 1, principal components analyses revealed that the provisional pool of theory-generated TSDI items were represented by six factors: Agreeable/Committed, Resource Accruing Potential, Physical Prowess, Emotional Stability, Surgency, and Physical Attractiveness. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis replicated these results on a different sample and tested how well different structural models fit the data. Study 3 provided evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity of the six TSDI scales by correlating each one with a matched personality trait scale that did not explicitly incorporate comparisons between partners. Study 4 provided further validation evidence, revealing that the six TSDI scales successfully predicted three relationship outcome measures—love, time investment, and anger/upset—above and beyond matched sets of traditional personality trait measures. These results suggest that the TSDI is a reliable, valid, and unique construct that represents a new trait-specific method of assessing dependence in romantic relationships. The construct of trait-specific dependence is introduced and linked with other theories of mate value.     

Motivational Influences in Persons Found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder: A Review of Legislation and Research

This paper provides a review of the legislative reforms and case law that have impacted the defense of Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) in Canada over the past three decades. As in other jurisdictions internationally, we observe that legislative reforms of procedural, as opposed to substantive, aspects of the NCRMD defense have impacted the manner in which NCRMD criteria are applied in common practice. More people are being declared NCRMD in recent years, and there is greater heterogeneity in the offending and psychiatric profiles of these individuals, suggesting that NCRMD criteria are being applied more liberally over time. In light of the substantial growth of the forensic mental health system over the past two decades, witnessed both in Canada and abroad, we propose that the study of motivational influences underlying the offending behaviors of persons with serious mental illness (SMI) is necessary to begin disentangling symptom‐based offending from violent and antisocial behaviors that may have other motives. This, in turn, can help to determine legal issues, better define the nature of each person's offending and treatment needs, and provide a more fine‐grained analysis of the drivers behind the growth experienced by the forensic system. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Do Partners Find out About the Risk of Huntington’s Disease in Couple Relationships?

Whilst a growing body of work has explored family communication about Huntington’s disease and how at-risk individuals learn about their risk, the experience of telling a partner and partners’ experiences of finding out about this potentially devastating hereditary illness have received little attention. This study describes the experiences of partners in finding out about Huntington’s disease and any impact on couple’s relationships/marriages. We undertook a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews which explored the dynamics of partners’ marriages after predictive testing and partners’ views of genetic counseling. A main theme from partners’ accounts was how they found out about their spouse’s risk of Huntington’s disease and the impact this had on marital relations. The analysis revealed four types of disclosure experiences: (1) marital secrets; (2) alerting, but not telling; (3) knowing and seeing; (4) marital ignorance. Our findings demonstrate that partners’ experiences of (non)disclosure about the risk of HD within marriages is an important factor which contributes to couples’ coping or marital problems. Exploring how spouses found out about their partner’s risk of HD will illuminate issues about a couple’s past and future patterns of communication and their coping strategies. A practical and ethical implication is the extent to which genetic counselors should inform partners about the course and nature of Huntington’s disease when a partner is the support person for the individual being tested.