Attitudes towards psychotherapy manuals among clinicians treating eating disorders

Clinicians have relatively low uptake and implementation of evidence-based psychotherapies for the eating disorders, and this problem appears to be associated with low use of manualized approaches. This study examines clinicians' positive and negative attitudes to manuals, and possible beliefs and emotional factors that might drive those attitudes. The participants were 125 psychological therapists working with eating-disordered patients. Each completed standardised measures of attitudes to manuals and emotional states. A number of beliefs about the content of manuals were associated with both positive attitudes to the outcome of treatment and negative attitudes to their impact on the treatment process. In addition, a more positive mood was associated with more positive attitudes. Suggestions are made regarding how attitudes might be made more positive, in order to facilitate the use of evidence-based therapies for eating disorders.     

The Relationship Between Understanding of Self and Others in Children's Friendships

This study examined the relationship between Australian children's acceptance of self and their stage of friendship expectations. Subjects, 116 boys and 92 girls (8 to 13 years old), completed the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and a Picture Sequence Task. The results showed that children who were at the evaluation, admiration, and common activities stages of friendship expectations reported comparatively lower self-acceptance feelings for the global self and for a number of minor self-concept areas than did those who were at higher developmental levels.     

Cultural considerations using the structured clinical interview for DSM-III for mood and anxiety disorders assessment

This paper focuses on the impact that culture has upon standardized or structured interviews. It briefly reviews how these interviews evolved from a primary research function, what they can teach us about clinical work, and the multiple ways that culture influences these supposedly objective instruments and the diagnoses which follow from their use. Although the use of structured interviews and standardized diagnostic criteria has been a major advance for the field in terms of reliability, care needs to be exercised when evaluating individuals from disparate cultural backgrounds.     

Anger In Or Out,Which Is Healthier? An Attempt To Reconcile Inconsistent Findings

Abstract

A survey of the literature concerning the relationship between style of anger expression and health disorders does not lead to a clear-cut conclusion. Some studies suggest that the outward expression of anger (anger-out) contributes to health problems of various types, while others present evidence suggesting that it is the suppression of anger (anger-in) which contributes to health problems. The present study examined three conceivable explanations for the contradictory evidence produced in this research area: (1) different aspects of anger expression are differentially related to the individual's health; (2) the pattern of anger expression is related differentially to health disorders of different types; (3) the degree of matching between the individual's style of anger expression and social desirability accounts for the inconsistency in the empirical findings. A sample of 134 men underwent comprehensive medical examinations and also filled in several anger expression questionnaires. The results supported the first hypothesis, namely that intensity of anger expression was negatively correlated with ill health while frequency of anger expression was positively correlated with ill health. No support was found for the hypothesis that anger expression relates differentially to health disorders of different types. However, the matching hypothesis was confirmed in part. It was found that individuals low on both intensity of anger expression and social desirability reported the highest frequency of health problems. The theoretical significance of these findings and their practical implications are discussed.     

The affective personality,sleep, and autobiographical memories

Patterns of affect, sleep, and autobiographical memories seem related but there are no studies we know of to verify the notion. The purpose of this research is to investigate interrelationships’ between profiles of affect, sleep, and autobiographical memories. A cross-sectional design is employed. Three hundred and thirteen adult students participated. The data generated are viewed from two complementary perspectives. Our cluster analyses identified a group of individual states whose lives appear to be arousing and stressful (high positive and negative affect) yet they slept significantly better than self-destructive states (high on negative affect and low on positive affect). Our regressions imply that negative autobiographical memories are involved in a relationship with sleep independently of fairly stable patterns of affect, biological sex, and age. We finish by noting that apart from investigating these relationships longitudinally, cultural differences in patterns of affect and their health correlates should be explored.     

The Science and Theology of Dreams

ABSTRACT

Although dreams were an important theological topic for the early Christians and the Church Fathers, there has been less Christian theological work on dreams in the modern era. I argue that dreams of the OT/NT should be treated together with “visions,” and that these dreams/visions are rooted in REM neurobiology and are manifestations of the utilization of the higher capacities of the mind/brain/soul that allow the individual to access information not otherwise available to the waking mind. Thus knowledge derived from dreams/visions should be (after appropriate discernment criteria are applied) treated as an ongoing and additional source for revelation.     

The Facilitation of Children's Social Interaction by a Picture-Cue Training Program

A social-interaction training procedure employing picture cues (photographs of play materials in their settings), prompts, and reinforcement was investigated to determine its effcct on subject-peer and subject-teacher interaction. The picture cues were designed to facilitate social interaction between three socially deficient language-delayed 4- to 6-year-old children and their respective classroom peers. One target child was deaf, one was unusually aggressive, and one was an elective mute. The picture-cue technique was designed to minimize reacher involvement: it allowed onc child to invite another to interact by displaying a picture of the interaction desired. Despite the children's differences, appropriate social interaction increased dramatically over each child's bascline rate during the Picture-Cue Conditions, required less tcacher time than traditionaI prompting procedures, and increased the functional aspect of naturally maintaining contingencies. This result may have been influenced by prompting procedures used in earlier conditions. The results indicate that picture cues facilitate communication and allow independent social interaction, and thus are functional and efficient mediating devices.     

Behandling av en ormfobi med fading

En fallstudie av en ormfobi presenteras. Behandlingen skedde med hjälp av fading som innebär att diabilder utnyttjas som stimulusmaterial. Före och efter behandlingen gjordes kontinuerliga mätningar av fobiskt beteende på alia tre responssystemen (overt motoriskt, kognitivt, fysiologiskt). Resultaten visade att de fobiska symtomen utsläcktes på alia tre systemen, dock till olika grad. I diskussionen konstateras att fading verkar vara ett alternativ till mera traditionella metoder vid behandling av smådjursfobier. Slutligen diskuterades begränsningar med studien vad gäller generalitet etc.     

Most people with mental disorders are happy: A 3-year follow-up in the Dutch general population

The nature of the associations between life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression remains elusive. Using questionnaire data from a large population-based sample (N = 6326) of young adult Norwegian twins (aged 18–31 years) we explored the extent to which latent genetic and environmental factors are (1) common or distinct, and (2) sex-specific. Phenotypic correlations ranged between 0.44 and 0.70 in females, and between 0.41 and 0.69 in males. Environmental influences accounted for 75% of these correlations in females, and less than 50% in males. Genetic and environmental sources of life satisfaction, symptoms of anxiety, and symptoms of depression were shared mostly, but the magnitude of the effects was different in males and females. In both sexes, however, aetiological factors enhancing life satisfaction were simultaneously protecting against feelings of sadness and displeasure, but contributed less to countervailing anxiety and tension.     

The Northwestern-UCLA youth emotion project: Associations of cognitive vulnerabilities, neuroticism and gender with past diagnoses of emotional disorders in adolescents

Neuroticism has been hypothesized to be a non-specific risk factor for both anxiety and unipolar mood disorders whereas some cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities have been hypothesized to be more specific to depression. Using a retrospective design with a sample of 575 high school juniors, we tested three competing models of the associations among these variables. Both neuroticism and the cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities had significant zero-order associations with rates of past diagnoses of both anxiety and unipolar mood disorders. Neuroticism had significant unique associations with past anxiety disorders and comorbid anxiety and unipolar mood disorders whereas the other vulnerabilities did not. In addition, gender interacted with neuroticism but not with the other vulnerabilities in associating with past diagnoses of mood disorders, showing that neuroticism is more highly associated with past unipolar mood diagnoses in males than in females. Finally, the cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities overlapped with substantial portions of the variance that neuroticism shared with diagnoses. These results suggest that, at least for retrospective associations with past anxiety and unipolar mood disorders, the cognitive and other personality-cognitive vulnerabilities are non-specific facets of neuroticism.