Searched for: school:SOM
Department/Unit:Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Assessment of mental distress among prison inmates in Ghana's correctional system: a cross-sectional study using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale
Ibrahim, Abdallah; Esena, Reuben K; Aikins, Moses; O'Keefe, Anne Marie; McKay, Mary M
BACKGROUND: Applying global estimates of the prevalence of mental disorders suggests that about 2.4 million Ghanaians have some form of psychiatric distress. Despite the facts that relatively little community-based treatment is available (only 18 psychiatrists are known to actively practice in Ghana), and that mental disorders are more concentrated among the incarcerated, there is no known research on mental disorders in Ghana prisons, and no forensic mental health services available to those who suffer from them. This study sought to determine the rate of mental distress among prisoners in Ghana. METHODS: This cross-sectional research used the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale to estimate the rates and severity of non-specific psychological distress among a stratified probability sample of 89 male and 11 female prisoners in one of the oldest correctional facilities in the country. Fisher's exact test was used to determine the rates of psychological distress within the study population. RESULTS: According to the Kessler Scale, more than half of all respondents had moderate to severe mental distress in the four weeks preceding their interviews. Nearly 70% of inmates with only a primary education had moderate to severe mental distress. Though this was higher than the rates among inmates with more education, it exceeded the rates for those with no education. CONCLUSIONS: The high rate of moderate to severe mental distress among the inmates in this exploratory study should serve as baseline for further studies into mental disorders among the incarcerated persons in Ghana. Future research should use larger samples, include more prison facilities, and incorporate tools that can identify specific mental disorders.
PMCID:4383079
PMID: 25838841
ISSN: 1752-4458
CID: 1862292
Emotion-recognition abilities and behavior problem dimensions in preschoolers: Evidence for a specific role for childhood hyperactivity
Chronaki, Georgia; Garner, Matthew; Hadwin, Julie A; Thompson, Margaret J J; Chin, Cheryl Y; Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J S
Facial emotion-recognition difficulties have been reported in school-aged children with behavior problems; little is known, however, about either this association in preschool children or with regard to vocal emotion recognition. The current study explored the association between facial and vocal emotion recognition and behavior problems in a sample of 3 to 6-year-old children. A sample of 57 children enriched for risk of behavior problems (41 were recruited from the general population while 16 had been referred for behavior problems to local clinics) were each presented with a series of vocal and facial stimuli expressing different emotions (i.e., angry, happy, and sad) of low and high intensity. Parents rated children's externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Vocal and facial emotion recognition accuracy was negatively correlated with externalizing but not internalizing behavior problems independent of emotion type. The effects with the externalizing domain were independently associated with hyperactivity rather than conduct problems. The results highlight the importance of using vocal as well as facial stimuli when studying the relationship between emotion-recognition and behavior problems. Future studies should test the hypothesis that difficulties in responding to adult instructions and commands seen in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be due to deficits in the processing of vocal emotions.
PMID: 24344768
ISSN: 0929-7049
CID: 904062
Media matters
Henderson, Schuyler W [Ed]
This article provides an overview of the books featured in the Book Forum section of the present issue of Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. The books seek to understand what one can gain from appreciating the reality of children's immersion in media. The power of the media is enormous for all. Its power comes not from how fantastical or extraordinary or strange it can be, but from how real it is. It is always tempting to think of the media as a vast, undulating metaphor for humanity, but it is not representing humanity: it is humanity.
PSYCH:2015-24326-015
ISSN: 1527-5418
CID: 1901482
The relation of general socio-emotional processing to parenting specific behavior: a study of mothers with and without posttraumatic stress disorder
Moser, Dominik A; Aue, Tatjana; Suardi, Francesca; Manini, Aurelia; Sancho Rossignol, Ana; Cordero, Maria I; Merminod, Gaelle; Ansermet, Francois; Rusconi Serpa, Sandra; Favez, Nicolas; Schechter, Daniel S
Socio-emotional information processing during everyday human interactions has been assumed to translate to social-emotional information processing when parenting a child. Yet, few studies have examined whether this is indeed the case. This study aimed to improve on this by connecting the functional neuroimaging data when seeing socio-emotional interactions that are not parenting specific to observed maternal sensitivity. The current study considered 45 mothers of small children (12-42 months of age). It included healthy controls (HC) and mothers with interpersonal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder (IPV-PTSD), as well as mothers without PTSD, both with and without IPV exposure. We found that anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity correlated negatively with observed maternal sensitivity when mothers watched videos of menacing vs. prosocial adult male-female interactions. This relationship was independent of whether mothers were HC or had IPV-PTSD. We also found dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity to be correlated negatively with maternal sensitivity when mothers watched any kind of arousing adult interactions. With regards to ACC and vmPFC activity, we interpret our results to mean that the ease of general emotional information integration translates to parenting-specific behavior. Our dlPFC activity findings support the idea that the efficiency of top-down control of socio-emotional processing in non-parenting specific contexts may be predictive of parenting behavior.
PMCID:4625041
PMID: 26578996
ISSN: 1664-1078
CID: 2736622
How Do Young Adults View 12-Step Programs? A Qualitative Study
Kingston, Sharon; Knight, Emily; Williams, Justin; Gordon, Hannah
Given the limited research on young adults' reactions to 12-Step programs the purpose of this study was to explore young adults' views of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Qualitative interviews with 26 young adults who had attended AA or NA were conducted. Most participants viewed 12-Step programs favorably reporting that the programs provided hope and emotional support. Participants who rejected the programs often refused to accept the concepts of powerlessness and a higher power. Many participants who rejected AA and NA were unaware of some of the key tenets of the programs suggesting that 12-Step facilitation would benefit this population.
PMID: 26280498
ISSN: 1545-0848
CID: 1745162
Risky behaviors
Chapter by: Glawe, Charles J
in: Helping kids in crisis: Managing psychiatric emergencies in children and adolescents by Haddad, Fadi; Gerson, Ruth [Eds]
Arlington, VA : American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.; US, 2015
pp. 109-125
ISBN: 978-1-58562-482-9
CID: 1522382
Review of Life, animated: A story of sidekicks, heroes, and autism
Glawe, Charles J
Reviews the book, Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism by Ron Suskind (2014). The book is not about autism and it is not even a story of a boy with autism. At times while experiencing Life, Animated, the reviewer thought that it was the story of a parent and family coming to understand and cope with a child with autism. The book, in fact, could be read with that idea in mind and still be an immensely rewarding experience for anyone who treats or works with children with autism and their families. In the end, however, the story is much more universal than that. It is the story of a father coming to know his son. It is the story of members of a family coming to know themselves. It is the story of a child's unique experience of his internal and external worlds. Beyond showing us the experience families have in dealing with difficult mental illness and disability or suggesting unique ways of engaging with children who might communicate in a different way, the book expands what one thinks of as the human experience. It suggests that experiencing life in a way that is considered more normative in the spectrum of human experience is not necessarily a better or right way to see things.
PSYCH:2015-24326-016
ISSN: 1527-5418
CID: 1951042
Wavelet-Based Weighted LASSO and Screening Approaches in Functional Linear Regression
Zhao, Yihong; Chen, Huaihou; Ogden, RTodd
One useful approach for fitting linear models with scalar outcomes and functional predictors involves transforming the functional data to wavelet domain and converting the data-fitting problem to a variable selection problem. Applying the LASSO procedure in this situation has been shown to be efficient and powerful. In this article, we explore two potential directions for improvements to this method: techniques for prescreening and methods for weighting the LASSO-type penalty. We consider several strategies for each of these directions which have never been investigated, either numerically or theoretically, in a functional linear regression context. We compare the finite-sample performance of the proposed methods through both simulations and real-data applications with both 1D signals and 2D image predictors. We also discuss asymptotic aspects. We show that applying these procedures can lead to improved estimation and prediction as well as better stability. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
ISI:000361373800003
ISSN: 1537-2715
CID: 1795082
BDNF Methylation and Maternal Brain Activity in a Violence-Related Sample
Moser, Dominik A; Paoloni-Giacobino, Ariane; Stenz, Ludwig; Adouan, Wafae; Manini, Aurelia; Suardi, Francesca; Cordero, Maria I; Vital, Marylene; Sancho Rossignol, Ana; Rusconi-Serpa, Sandra; Ansermet, Francois; Dayer, Alexandre G; Schechter, Daniel S
It is known that increased circulating glucocorticoids in the wake of excessive, chronic, repetitive stress increases anxiety and impairs Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) signaling. Recent studies of BDNF gene methylation in relation to maternal care have linked high BDNF methylation levels in the blood of adults to lower quality of received maternal care measured via self-report. Yet the specific mechanisms by which these phenomena occur remain to be established. The present study examines the link between methylation of the BDNF gene promoter region and patterns of neural activity that are associated with maternal response to stressful versus non-stressful child stimuli within a sample that includes mothers with interpersonal violence-related PTSD (IPV-PTSD). 46 mothers underwent fMRI. The contrast of neural activity when watching children-including their own-was then correlated to BDNF methylation. Consistent with the existing literature, the present study found that maternal BDNF methylation was associated with higher levels of maternal anxiety and greater childhood exposure to domestic violence. fMRI results showed a positive correlation of BDNF methylation with maternal brain activity in the anterior cingulate (ACC), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), regions generally credited with a regulatory function toward brain areas that are generating emotions. Furthermore we found a negative correlation of BDNF methylation with the activity of the right hippocampus. Since our stimuli focus on stressful parenting conditions, these data suggest that the correlation between vmPFC/ACC activity and BDNF methylation may be linked to mothers who are at a disadvantage with respect to emotion regulation when facing stressful parenting situations. Overall, this study provides evidence that epigenetic signatures of stress-related genes can be linked to functional brain regions regulating parenting stress, thus advancing our understanding of mothers at risk for stress-related psychopathology.
PMCID:4674054
PMID: 26649946
ISSN: 1932-6203
CID: 2736612
The Interaction between Rejection Sensitivity and Emotional Maltreatment in Borderline Personality Disorder
Chesin, Megan; Fertuck, Eric; Goodman, Jeanne; Lichenstein, Sarah; Stanley, Barbara
BACKGROUND: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder associated with significant distress, dysfunction, and treatment utilization. Though, theoretically, BPD is posited to arise from a combination of trait and environmental risk factors, few studies have tested trait-by-environment interactions in BPD. We investigated the roles of rejection sensitivity (RS) and childhood emotional neglect and abuse (ENA) as well as their interaction in BPD. SAMPLING AND METHODS: Eighty-five adults with a lifetime mood disorder who were recruited for outpatient studies in a psychiatric clinic were assessed for ENA using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and for RS with the Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire. BPD diagnoses were made by consensus using data collected on the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to test associations between RS, ENA, their interaction and BPD. RESULTS: RS and ENA interacted to predict co-occurring BPD in our sample of mood-disordered patients, with the strength of the relationship between RS and BPD depending on the severity of ENA. In the context of little or no ENA, RS and BPD were more strongly related than when ENA was more severe. CONCLUSIONS: Our results extend previous findings suggesting RS and ENA are risk factors for BPD. They also provide preliminary support for contemporary theories of BPD positing trait-by-environment interactions in the development of BPD. Prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings. (c) 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.
PMID: 25277634
ISSN: 0254-4962
CID: 1450092