Personal and communal resilience in communities exposed to missile attacks: Does intensity of exposure matter?

Based on the salutogenic model, this study aimed to examine the role of personal and communal resiliency in reducing individuals’ psychological distress when facing intensive missile attacks. We examined the relationships between these resources and psychological distress in communities which were exposed to different intensities of attacks. Data was gathered via anonymous self-report questionnaires from 843 adults during the period from one week to one month after intensive attacks in southern Israel. Questionnaires included demographic data as well as sense of coherence (SOC), community resiliency and psychological distress. Differences in levels of resiliency and distress were found among the groups with different ‘exposure levels’. Moreover, only personal resilience SOC explained psychological distress in the entire population, while community resiliency had no effect. Results are discussed on the basis of the salutogenic model with implications for developments of interventions with populations who are exposed to differing intensities of missile attacks.     

Effects of telephone support on exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a meta-analysis

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effects of disease education or pulmonary rehabilitation programs assisted with telephone support on physical capacity and quality of life (QOL) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. A systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library was conducted until May 2017. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the effects of telephone-assisted intervention versus a control group on exercise tolerance and QOL in patients with COPD were included. Two independent authors assessed the methodological quality of the trials using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. A meta-analysis was conducted with the Revman5.3 to quantify the effects of telephone-assisted interventions on walking capacity and QOL. In total, 10 studies involving 1037 participants were included. Due to the effect of telephone-assisted interventions, statistically significant results were found on Saint-George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) symptom scores [standard mean difference (SMD) ?.18, 95% confidence interval (CI) ?.33, ?.03, p-value .02)], SGRQ impact scores [SMD ?.35, 95% CI ?.60, ?.10, p-value .006)], SGRQ activity scores [SMD ?.30, 95% CI ?.45, ?.15, p-value < .0001)], SGRQ total score [SMD ?.36, 95% CI ?.51, ?.21, p-value < .00001)]. The effects on 6-min walk test (6MWT) and all Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ) subscales were not significant (p > .05) based on the insufficient evidence. In conclusion, the role of telephone-assisted interventions in the management of COPD remains equivocal. Some encouraging results were seen with regard to SGRQ symptom, SGRQ impact, SGRQ activity and SGRQ total score. We believe that more methodologically rigorous large-scale randomized controlled trials are necessary to answer this study question.     

Support groups for parents with an adult child suffering from bipolar disorder

Confronted with the disconcerting behaviour exhibited by their children, parents of bipolar patients are in severe distress. Research focuses on the study of the ‘burden’ that the pathology puts on caregivers, owing to their experience of depression, sometimes combined with the presence of hostile attitudes and negative affects. In France, parents of adult patients encounter an initial specific difficulty: they are not systematically included in the care management system. Thanks to the initiative of an association of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, the authors set up a psychoanalytic support group for the parents of ‘bipolar’ adults. The diagnosis of a bipolar disorder is established by a psychiatrist within a medical structure. Support groups for parents do exist in France, but their experiences have not led to scientific publications on this specific topic. Existing publications focus on other types of pathology and other therapeutic approaches. In this article, we will highlight how this type of psychoanalytic support group, with operating rules based on the theoretical work of Anzieu, can help parents of patients with bipolar disorders. Group participants accepted the principle of a research study that maintained their anonymity. We collected and analysed qualitative data from the first year of the group, so we highlight the specific difficulties of these parents, faced with chronic disease. The relevance of our qualitative study also resides in the data collected over a period of time, enabling us to see the progress made, and encouraging us to reflect on the place of psychoanalytic groups for parents, as well as on the care management of this pathology.     

Action‐semantic and syntactic deficits in subjects at risk for Huntington's disease

Frontostriatal networks play critical roles in grounding action semantics and syntactic skills. Indeed, their atrophy distinctively disrupts both domains, as observed in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's disease, even during early disease stages. However, frontostriatal degeneration in these conditions may begin up to 15 years before the onset of clinical symptoms, opening avenues for pre‐clinical detection via sensitive tasks. Such a mission is particularly critical in HD, given that patients’ children have 50% chances of inheriting the disease. Against this background, we assessed whether deficits in the above‐mentioned domains emerge in subjects at risk to develop HD. We administered tasks tapping action semantics, object semantics, and two forms of syntactic processing to 18 patients with HD, 19 asymptomatic first‐degree relatives, and sociodemographically matched controls for each group. The patients evinced significant deficits in all tasks, but only those in the two target domains were independent of overall cognitive state. More crucially, relative to controls, the asymptomatic relatives were selectively impaired in action semantics and in the more complex syntactic task, with both patterns emerging irrespective of the subjects’ overall cognitive state. Our findings highlight the relevance of these dysfunctions as potential prodromal biomarkers of HD. Moreover, they offer theoretical insights into the differential contributions of frontostriatal hubs to both domains while paving the way for innovations in diagnostic procedures.     

Increasing the salience of fluency cues does not reduce the recognition memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease!

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is now well established that recollection is impaired from the beginning of the disease, whereas findings are less clear concerning familiarity. One of the most important mechanisms underlying familiarity is the sense of familiarity driven by processing fluency. In this study, we attempted to attenuate recognition memory deficits in AD by maximizing the salience of fluency cues in two conditions of a recognition memory task. In one condition, targets and foils have been created from the same pool of letters (Overlap condition). In a second condition, targets and foils have been derived from two separate pools of letters (No‐Overlap condition), promoting the use of letter‐driven visual and phonetic fluency. Targets and foils were low‐frequency words. The memory tasks were performed by 15 patients with AD and 16 healthy controls. Both groups improved their memory performance in the No‐Overlap condition compared to the Overlap condition. Patients with AD were able to use fluency cues during recognition memory as older adults did, but this did not allow to compensate for dysfunction of recognition memory processes.     

An experimental test to reveal negative side-effects of high treatability information on preventative health behaviour

Objectives: When the course of a disease can be positively changed by health professionals the disease can be indicated as ‘highly treatable’. This ‘high treatability information’ (HTI) may have negative side-effects on people’s preventative motivation. This study examined the effects of HTI regarding skin cancer on preventative motivation.

Design: This study employed a 2 (high treatability (HTI) versus low treatability (LTI)) × 2 (high versus low susceptibility)?experiment with a hanging control group. (family) History and self-efficacy were assessed as moderators. Participants (N = 309) were randomly assigned to one of the five conditions.

Main outcome measures: The main outcome was intention to engage in preventative actions regarding skin cancer.

Results: HTI significantly lowered the intention compared to LTI, under the condition of high susceptibility in people with low self-efficacy. In addition, in people with a (family) history of skin cancer, HTI significantly lowered the intention compared to the no-information group.

Conclusion: HTI regarding skin cancer can cause a drop in the preventative motivation. The effects can be conceptualised as negative side-effects of HTI. As substantial proportions of the general population have a (family) history of skin cancer or low self-efficacy, the side-effects may be widespread, possibly increasing the incidence of skin cancer.     

The Visual Spatial Learning Test: Differential impairment during the premanifest and manifest stages of Huntington's disease

Visual spatial memory was assessed using the Visual Spatial Learning Test (VSLT) in individuals with mild to moderate Huntington's disease (HD), pre‐manifest gene carriers for HD, and demographically similar controls. The VSLT has been demonstrated to be a valid, normed measure of non‐verbal memory involving minimal motoric responses. The VSLT assesses immediate and delayed memory for designs, positions of the designs, and design/position associations. The HD group was significantly impaired (p < .05) relative to both the control and Pre‐HD groups on immediate and delayed memory for the designs, positions, and design/position associations. Although there were no differences between the Pre‐HD and control groups on immediate or delayed memory for designs or positions, the Pre‐HD group was significantly impaired (p < .05) relative to the control group on immediate and delayed memory for design/position associations. The results offer novel insight into a relatively unexamined memory deficit that may occur in gene carriers for HD prior to phenoconversion. The data indicate that the VSLT may be a useful measure of visuospatial memory during the premanifest and manifest stages of HD.     

The relationship between the Five‐Factor Model personality traits and peptic ulcer disease in a large population‐based adult sample

The current study examined the relationship between the Five‐Factor Model personality traits and physician‐confirmed peptic ulcer disease (PUD) diagnosis in a large population‐based adult sample, controlling for the relevant behavioral and sociodemographic factors. Personality traits were assessed by participants themselves and by knowledgeable informants using the NEO Personality Inventory‐3 (NEO PI‐3). When controlling for age, sex, education, and cigarette smoking, only one of the five NEO PI‐3 domain scales – higher Neuroticism – and two facet scales – lower A1: Trust and higher C1: Competence – made a small, yet significant contribution (p < 0.01) to predicting PUD in logistic regression analyses. In the light of these relatively modest associations, our findings imply that it is certain behavior (such as smoking) and sociodemographic variables (such as age, gender, and education) rather than personality traits that are associated with the diagnosis of PUD at a particular point in time. Further prospective studies with a longitudinal design and multiple assessments would be needed to fully understand if the FFM personality traits serve as risk factors for the development of PUD.     

Embodiment Effects and Language Comprehension in Alzheimer's Disease

It has been shown that when participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences that describe a transfer of an object toward or away from their body, they are faster to respond when the response requires a movement in the same direction as the transfer described in the sentence. This phenomenon is known as the action compatibility effect (ACE). This study investigates whether the ACE exists for volunteers with Alzheimer's disease (AD), whether the ACE can facilitate language comprehension, and also whether the ACE can still be produced if the order of the two events is inverted, that is, whether overt movement can prime comprehension of transfer sentences. In Study 1, participants with AD, younger, and older adults were tested on an adaptation of the ACE Paradigm. In Study 2, the same paradigm was modified to include an arm movement that participants had to perform prior to sentence exposure on screen. In Study 1, young, older adults, and individuals with AD were faster to respond when the direction of the response movement matched the directionality implied by the sentence (ACE). In Study 2, no traditional ACE was found; participants were faster when the direction of the movement immediately preceding the sentence matched the directionality of the sentence. It was found that compatibility effects generated a relative advantage, that transfer schemata are easier to process, and that an ACE‐like effect can be the result of mutual priming between language and movement. Results suggested preservation in AD of the neural systems for action engaged during language comprehension, and conditions under which comprehension in AD can be facilitated in real life may be identified.     

Depression and Suicidal Ideation After Predictive Testing for Huntington's Disease: A Two-Year Follow-up Study

The present study reports a two-year follow-up of psychological effects of predictive testing for Huntington's disease. Questionnaires assessing depression, general health, well-being, self injurious behavior, life satisfaction, and lifestyle were completed by 35 carriers and 58 non-carriers before the predictive test, and 2, 6, 12, and 24 months afterwards. Both carriers and non-carriers showed high suicidal ideation before the predictive testing. Depression scores and frequency of suicidal thoughts increased for carriers, compared to non-carriers, over time. There were no differences regarding life satisfaction or life style between carriers and non-carriers. Predictive testing was beneficial in reducing overall ill-health symptoms and increasing well-being for those initially expressing concern about Huntington's disease. The importance of assessing suicidal ideation and of continuing to provide adequate support is emphasized.