Patterns of friendship among girls with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Examined patterns of friendship participation, stability, and quality among previously unfamiliar, ethnically diverse girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; n = 140) and comparison (n = 88) girls, aged 6–12 years, who attended 5-week naturalistic summer camps. Each girl completed sociometric nominations during Weeks 1, 3, and 5 of the camps; friendships were indexed by examining patterns of reciprocal nominations. At each assessment point, girls with ADHD had fewer mutual friends and were more likely to have no friends. Girls with Combined-type ADHD exhibited difficulties maintaining friendships from the beginning to middle of camp, whereas girls with Inattentive-type ADHD demonstrated poor friendship stability from the middle to end of camp. In general, girls with ADHD had higher levels of negative relationship features—including conflict and relational aggression—than did comparison girls, but levels of positive relationship features did not differ across subgroups. Friendship status predicted positive and negative peer regard, controlling for Verbal IQ and diagnostic status. Overall, although girls with ADHD were able to make friends to some extent, they differed from comparison girls in terms of the likelihood of doing so, the ability to maintain the friendships that they did form, and the levels of negative features found in their friendships.     

Family Unification with Reactive Attachment Disorder Children: A Brief Treatment

This is a case study of a family with a child (age eight) with reactive attachment disorder and the subsequent individual and family therapy. Treatment of choice for the child was Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and supportive educational counseling for the parents and family. Qualitative evaluation of the process demonstrated that the parents observed an instant change in the child's attitude. The child reported that she felt better about family, school, and truthfulness, and stated about the therapy: It opened a window for me. A 12-month evaluation demonstrated continued positive effects.     

Neurocognitive Functioning in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This paper reviews the literature on performance on standard neuropsychological tests among individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Of 19 studies, 16 reported impairment of attention or immediate memory (or both); however, most of these studies included PTSD patients with significant psychiatric comorbidity, so that the extent to which the observed deficits are specifically attributable to PTSD remains unclear. Other potential confounds, including medical illness, substance abuse, and motivational factors, further preclude definitive conclusions at present. Results of structural and functional neuroimaging studies of PTSD are also summarized. Two studies have reported correlations between hippocampal volume and cognitive findings in PTSD patients; functional studies have indicated specific findings in limbic regions, although the relationship of these results to neuropsychological performance remains to be explored.     

Police Officer Performance Under Stress: A Pilot Study on the Effects of Visuo-Motor Behavior Rehearsal

This study examined the effectiveness ofvisuo-motor behavior rehearsal(VMBR) as a method of reducing acute stress and improving police officer performance. Fifty-four recruits were randomly assigned to a treatment and a nontreatment condition prior to undergoing a highly stressful, critical event training scenario involving live fire. A manipulation check showed that participants who received VMBR displayed significantly lower scores on the cognitive state anxiety subscale of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2; somatic state anxiety and self-confidence were unaffected by the VMBR treatment. Most importantly, participants in the VMBR training condition displayed better performance on the critical event scenario, including significantly more assailant hits. The findings are discussed with respect to the four-stage model of stress and human performance of Salas and colleagues.     

Pace of Life and Enjoyment of Life

The paper addresses the paradox that people in modern societies believe themselves to be very happy and satisfied with their lives while simultaneously are subjected to increasing time pressure and pace of life. It starts with presenting evidence for time pressure covering objective and subjective indicators. Evidence for Germany is given by comparing time-budgets in 1991/92 and in 1999. Time use among full time employed in Germany and other EU-societies in the 1990s is compared to the US and Japan by means of diary-data. As regards work life, overwork and the gap between actual and preferred working hours are examined. Survey-results on the relationship between work load, time pressure, stress and health are reported.Most of these data support the conclusion that time pressure has emerged as a major social problem. Hence citizens are beginning to consider time prosperity as a dimension of their well-being beyond their consumer wealth.However, this growing pace of life does not reduce life satisfaction and happiness. Here a paradox evolves as increasing time pressure goes hand in hand with increased subjective well-being (SWB) at country level in cross-cultural comparison as well as at individual level.In the third section some answers to this paradox are explored: A first answer is offered through the modernization theory: life satisfaction and QOL are proliferating along with economic growth and living standards. This process at the same time accelerates social life. Hence, the negative effects of time pressure are counterbalanced by various yields of the modernization process resulting in a pattern of "heavy-going" satisfaction.A second explanation is the psychological approach: time pressure fulfils positive functions for mobilizing individual resources. A variation of this argument is that the multiple-choice-society offers a wide variety of attractive options resulting in people engaging in too many activities. Here, the enjoyment of life is equated with taking advantage of every opportunity.However, this paper prefers a third approach based on Simmel's explanation of the ambivalent consequences of modernity. Even where the majority of citizens report high levels of happiness and life satisfaction – which can be explained through "arousal" or "eu-stress" – the need to ease the time-burden of disadvantaged groups and to down-speed work and social life in general is essential.     

Psychosocial Treatment Strategies in the MTA Study: Rationale, Methods, and Critical Issues in Design and Implementation

The Collaborative Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the MTA, is the first multisite, cooperative agreement treatment study of children, and the largest psychiatric/psychological treatment trial ever conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health. It examines the effectiveness of Medication vs. Psychosocial treatment vs. their combination for treatment of ADHD and compares these experimental arms to each other and to routine community care. In a parallel group design, 579 (male and female) ADHD children, aged 7–9 years, 11 months, were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental arms, and then received 14 months of prescribed treatment (or community care) with periodic reassessments. After delineating the theoretical and empirical rationales for Psychosocial treatment of ADHD, we describe the MTA's Psychosocial Treatment strategy applied to all children in two of the four experimental arms (Psychosocial treatment alone; Combined treatment). Psychosocial treatment consisted of three major components: a Parent Training component, a two-part School Intervention component, and a child treatment component anchored in an intensive Summer Treatment Program. Components were selected based on evidence of treatment efficacy and because they address comprehensive symptom targets, settings, comorbidities, and functional domains. We delineate key conceptual and logistical issues faced by clinical researchers in design and implementation of Psychosocial research with examples of how these issues were addressed in the MTA study.Deceased     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.     

Do Executive Function Deficits Differentiate Between Adolescents with ADHD and Oppositional Defiant/Conduct Disorder? A Neuropsychological Study Using the Six Elements Test and Hayling Sentence Completion Test

Two neuropsychological measures of executive functions—Six Elements Tests (SET) and Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT)—were administered to 110 adolescents, aged 12–15 years. Participants comprised four groups: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) only (n = 35), ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder (ODD/CD) (n = 38), ODD/CD only (n = 11), and a normal community control group (n = 26). Results indicated that adolescents with ADHD performed significantly worse on both the SET and HSCT than those without ADHD, whether or not they also had ODD/CD. The adolescents with ADHD and with comorbid ADHD and ODD/CD were significantly more impaired in their ability to generate strategies and to monitor their ongoing behavior compared with age-matched controls and adolescents with ODD/CD only. It is argued that among adolescents with clinically significant levels of externalizing behavior problems, executive function deficits are specific to those with ADHD. The findings support the sensitivity of these two relatively new tests of executive functions and their ecological validity in tapping into everyday situations, which are potentially problematic for individuals with ADHD.     

Parenting and Family Stress Treatment Outcomes in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): An Empirical Analysis in the MTA Study

Parenting and family stress treatment outcomes in the MTA study were examined. Male and female (579), 7–9-year-old children with combined type Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), were recruited at six sites around the United States and Canada, and randomly assigned to one of four groups: intensive, multi-faceted behavior therapy program alone (Beh); carefully titrated and monitored medication management strategy alone (MedMgt); a well-integrated combination of the two (Comb); or a community comparison group (CC). Treatment occurred over 14 months, and assessments were taken at baseline, 3, 9, and 14 months. Parenting behavior and family stress were assessed using parent-report and child-report inventories. Results showed that Beh alone, MedMgt alone, and Comb produced significantly greater decreases in a parent-rated measure of negative parenting, Negative/Ineffective Discipline, than did standard community treatment. The three MTA treatments did not differ significantly from each other on this domain. No differences were noted among the four groups on positive parenting or on family stress variables. Results are discussed in terms of the theoretical and empirically documented importance of negative parenting in the symptoms, comorbidities and long-term outcomes of ADHD.     

Testing the ability of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to accurately report the effects of medication on their behavior

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are often treated with central nervous system stimulants, making the evaluation of medication effects an important topic for applied behavior analysts. Because assessment protocols emphasize informant reports and direct observations of child behavior, little is known about the extent to which children themselves can accurately report medication effects. Double-blind placebo-controlled procedures were used to examine whether 6 children with ADHD could recognize the effects of their medication. The children were given math worksheets to complete for 15 min during each of 14 sessions while on medication and placebo. Children completed a self-evaluation form at the end of each session, and ratings were compared to observed behavior and academic performance. Results indicated that 3 children were able to accurately report their medication status at levels greater than chance, whereas the accuracy of reports by all children was related to dosage level, differences in behavior, and the presence of adverse effects. The implications of these results for placebo-controlled research, self-monitoring of dosage levels, and accuracy training are discussed.