Faculty Bibliography

A questionnaire was sent to 244 psychiatrist-administrators from the metropolitan New York City area to assess the actual and perceived effects of five factors--personality traits, clinical psychiatric training, formal training in administration, administrative experience, and a mentor relationship--on their professional development. The results, based on 200 completed questionnaires, revealed a discrepancy between the respondents' actual and ideal experiences in the areas of the mentor relationship and formal administrative training. The authors recommend structural changes in training programs to attract psychiatrists to administrative careers and to enhance their training and professional development

The authors present data showing that the number of mentally ill individuals brought by police officers to psychiatric emergency rooms in New York City increased by 69 percent from 1983 to 1989. They conclude that while the statutory criteria for the involuntary removal of mentally ill persons to hospitals have not changed, case law decisions and public policies that facilitate the involuntary treatment of patients who neglect their essential needs have contributed to this trend. The impact of these visits on hospital based psychiatric emergency room is discussed in terms of increased clinical and legal responsibility for the disposition of persons who are considered dangerous including those who are self-neglectful of their own essential needs

The author describes the functions of the news media and their influence on public mental health policy making. News media functions are divided into the categories of selecting the news, reporting information, serving as a channel of communication, presenting views and opinions, and legitimizing the issues. These functions are illustrated by focusing on a highly publicized New York City policy to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill homeless people living in the streets. Strategies are suggested to mental health professionals on how to effectively interact with the news media.

This investigation studies the extent to which stress affects the assumed functional separation of coordinate bilingual's linguistic organization. Spanish/English bilinguals were subjects in a GSR linguistic conditioning experiment using two intensities of buzzer sounds (stressful conditions) and two lists of words. One word for each list functioned as the conditioned stimulus. Generalization to semantically, phonemically, and unrelated words occurred in both languages and buzzer conditions. We found a differential impact of the buzzer on the functional separation of the languages, although not in the direction predicted. We concluded that stress produced code-switching, and hence, a primitivization of the subject's cognitive and linguistic functioning is assumed to have occurred. These findings are important in understanding the way stress affects the bilingual's languages at the linguistic and cognitive levels. They are also important in understanding the role of stress in language development and in the transfer of linguistic information.

The authors reviewed the literature on the factors influencing the development of psychiatrist-executives. The results indicate that personality traits, clinical psychiatry training, training in administration, mentors, and administrative experience have an impact on the making of the psychiatrist-executive. On the basis of these findings, the authors make recommendations for further research