Faculty Bibliography

Limited research has examined the relation between exposure to stressors and internalizing symptoms among Latino adolescents, including factors that account for this relation. This study examined whether sleep played a role in the relation between exposure to neighborhood- (i.e., neighborhood disadvantage) and individual-level (i.e., negative life events) stressors and symptoms of anxiety and depression among a sample of 144 low-income, Latino adolescents (54% males, mean age = 16.25, SD = 1.46) attending a charter high school in a large, Midwestern city. The bias corrected bootstrap method was used to evaluate indirect effects. Significant findings indicated an indirect effect via sleep problems in the link between negative life events and anxiety. Alternative models were also explored. Results suggest that sleep problems are important to consider for interventions among Latino youth, particularly those exposed to neighborhood and individual stressors, as this may also have implications for reducing internalizing symptoms among this population. (PsycINFO Database Record

Smartphones offer a flexible tool to collect data about mental health, but less is known about their effectiveness as a method to assess variability in children's problem behaviors. Caregivers of children with autism completed daily questions about irritability, anxiety and mood delivered via smartphones across 8-weeks. Smartphone questions were consistent with subscales on standard caregiver questionnaires. Data collection from 7 to 10 days at the beginning and 7 to 10 days at the end of the study were sufficient to capture similar amounts of variance as daily data across 8-weeks. Other significant findings included effects of caregiver socioeconomic status and placebo-like effects from participation even though the study included no specific treatment. Nevertheless, single questions via smartphones collected over relatively brief periods reliably represent subdomains in standardized behavioral questionnaires, thereby decreasing burden on caregivers.

Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal dominantly inherited, progressive neurodegenerative disorder which is accompanied by executive dysfunctions and emotional alteration. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of emotion/stress on on-going highly demanding cognitive tasks, i.e., temporal processing, as a function of age in BACHD rats (a "full length" model of HD). Middle-aged (4-6 months) and old (10-12 months) rats were first trained on a 2 vs. 8-s temporal discrimination task, and then exposed to a series of bisection tests under normal and stressful (10 mild unpredictable foot-shocks) conditions. The animals were then trained on a peak interval task, in which reinforced fixed-interval (FI) 30-s trials were randomly intermixed with non-reinforced probe trials. After training, the effect of stress upon time perception was again assessed. Sensitivity to foot-shocks was also assessed independently. The results show effects of both age and genotype, with largely greater effects in old BACHD animals. The older BACHD animals had impaired learning in both tasks, but reached equivalent levels of performance as WT animals at the end of training in the temporal discrimination task, while remaining impaired in the peak interval task. Whereas sensitivity to foot-shock did not differ between BACHD and WT rats, delivery of foot-shocks during the test sessions had a disruptive impact on temporal behavior in WT animals, an effect which increased with age. In contrast, BACHD rats, independent of age, did not show any significant disruption under stress. In conclusion, BACHD rats showed a disruption in temporal learning in late symptomatic animals. Age-related modification in stress-induced impairment of temporal control of behavior was also observed, an effect which was greatly reduced in BACHD animals, thus confirming previous results suggesting reduced emotional reactivity in HD animals. The results suggest a staggered onset in cognitive and emotional alterations in HD, with emotional alteration being the earliest, possibly related to different time courses of degeneration in cortico-striatal and amygdala circuits.

UNLABELLED:The risk for diabetes risk is significantly elevated in persons who are older, overweight and have serious mental illness. However, primary care practitioners (PCP) tend to underestimate this risk. Although there are few opportunities for early detection of diabetes, blood exuded during routine oral exams in dental settings can be used to assess glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels. The current study sought to understand how primary care practitioners would react to patients who screened positive for elevated HbA1c, how they estimated risk, and whether they provided treatment recommendations or counseling. METHOD/UNASSIGNED:Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted on 61 subjects three months after demonstrating elevated HbA1c levels from dental screenings. Data were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS/UNASSIGNED:Qualitative analyses revealed four themes according to patients: (1) "Being told I needed to make lifestyle changes" (41%); (2) Realizing I needed a new health care provider or medication change" (10%); (3) "Being told of the need for monitoring but no counseling/treatment change" (16%); and (4) "Being told everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about" (31%). CONCLUSIONS/UNASSIGNED:Only half of the 61 cases reporting elevated HbA1C levels at screening experienced their PCP's as responding with counseling or medication changes. Almost a third of cases perceived that their PCP's dismissed the results, making no recommendations, and the rest perceived no counseling or interventions being proposed. Based on subjects' perceptions of their PCP's responses to their elevated HbA1c values, the impact of this intervention is substantially reduced over expectations.

The purpose of this article is to determine the risk of schizophrenia in offspring of women exposed to x-ray radiation during pregnancy. The risk of schizophrenia was evaluated using cohort data collected in The Jerusalem Perinatal Study. The cohort of 92,408 births from 1964 to 1976 was linked to Israel's National Psychiatric Registry of all individuals hospitalized for psychiatric conditions. Cross-tabulations were analyzed for development of schizophrenia in offspring of mothers who were exposed to an x-ray procedure during the first four months of pregnancy. Relative risks (RRs) were estimated using proportional hazards models, adjusted for male sex, paternal age, family psychiatric history, and social class. The adjusted RRs for schizophrenia spectrum associated with maternal x-rays in months 3 and 4 were, respectively, 2.97 (0.94-9.35) and 1.23 (0.39-3.87). Among 80 cases with narrowly defined schizophrenia (ICD-10 = F20) maternal x-rays in months 3 and 4 were associated, respectively, with adjusted RRs of 3.08 (0.75-12.6, based on 2 cases), and 2.04 (0.64-6.46, 3 cases). Offspring of mothers exposed to x-ray radiation during the third and fourth months of pregnancy may have an increased risk of developing schizophrenia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)