Atypical antipsychotic medications: Pharmacological profiles and psychological implications.

Advances in psychopharmacology and the development of new antipsychotic medications may represent increased opportunities for psychologists to provide expanded psychosocial services to patients with schizophrenia. The new agents, referred to as the atypical antipsychotics, are as efficacious as the older conventional antipsychotics but demonstrate a more favorable side effect profile. Preliminary data suggest improvements in cognitive deficits and negative symptoms typically associated with schizophrenia, which may enhance long-term outcome. Psychologists may be increasingly called on to provide psychosocial services to this population, thereby requiring that they have a sound working knowledge of the pharmacological and psychological properties of these agents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Drugs and the law: A psychological analysis of drug prohibition.

There is an ongoing American policy debate about the appropriate legal status for psychoactive drugs. Prohibition, decriminalization, and legalization positions are all premised on assumptions about the behavioral effects of drug laws. What is actually known and not known about these effects is reviewed. Rational-choice models of legal compliance suggest that criminalization reduces use through restricted drug availability, increased drug prices, and the deterrent effect of the risk of punishment. Research on these effects illustrates the need for a more realistic perspective that acknowledges the limitations of human rationality and the importance of moral reasoning and informal social control factors. There are at least 7 different mechanisms by which the law influences drug use, some of which are unintended and counterproductive. This framework is used to explore the potential behavioral effects of decriminalization and legalization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond law and ethics: A proposal for collaboration in psychological practice.

Few below-standard activities result from deliberate choice. Psychologists in practice should have regular contact with some of their colleagues; the level of performance will be higher if psychologists do not operate in isolation from professional colleagues. Institutionalizing small collaborating groups of psychologists is desirable on the assumption that the groups would take up at the point where training procedure left off. Other advantages are increased opportunities for discussing problems, clarifying issues, getting help, checking judgments with others, and a continuous re-examination of one's own professional technique. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reflectivity and learning from aversive events: Toward a psychological mechanism for the syndromes of disinhibition.

E. E. Gorenstein and J. P. Newman (1980) proposed that poorly modulated responding for reward is the common diathesis underlying disinhibited behavior in several traditionally distinct person categories: psychopathy, hysteria, early onset alcoholism, childhood hyperactivity, and nonpathological impulsivity (e.g., extraversion). The authors extend this proposal by theorizing a psychological mechanism that highlights relations among disinhibition, reflection, and failure to learn from aversive feedback. The hypothesized mechanism is presented as 4 generic stages of response modulation: the dominant response set, the reaction to an aversive event, the subsequent behavioral adaptation, and the immediate and long-term consequences of reflection, or the lack thereof. The mechanism has implications for disinhibited individuals' impulsivity and provides a point of departure to study factors responsible for similarities and differences among these syndromes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychological profiles of patients with whiplash-associated headache

Headache often compounds chronic neck pain following whiplash injury. To better understand post-traumatic headache, the SCL-90-R symptom checklist was used to determine the psychological profiles of patients with whiplash-associated headache and of patients with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. The psychological profiles of these patients were compared with previously published SCL-90-R profiles of patients with post-traumatic and nontraumatic headache, and of the normal population. Patients with whiplash-associated headache were not significantly different from those with other forms of post-traumatic headache or with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. However, when patients with whiplash-associated headache and patients with nontraumatic headache were compared to normal data, significant differences emerged. Patients with nontraumatic headache exhibited higher scores on all subscales, whereas patients with whiplash-associated headache differed from the normal sample only on somatization, obsessive-compulsive, depression and hostility subscales, and the global severity index. These differences imply that patients with whiplash-associated headache suffer psychological distress secondary to chronic pain and not from tension headache and generalized psychological distress.     

Cross-cultural generalizability of the Child Behavior Checklist cross-informant syndromes.

Principal factor analysis followed by promax rotations were performed on Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) scores of 2,339 children randomly drawn from a sample of 4,674 clinically referred Dutch children, aged 4–18 years. Dutch syndromes were very similar in item composition to the 8 CBCL cross-informant syndromes derived by T. M. Achenbach (1991), except for the Social Problems syndrome. Cross-national correlations ranged from .82 for the Social Problems syndrome to .99 for the Somatic Complaints and Anxious/Depressed syndromes. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Dutch and American syndromes in a cross-validation sample of the remaining 2,335 Dutch children supported both the Dutch and the American scales to the same degree. Exploratory and confirmatory results both strongly supported the cross-cultural generalizability of the CBCL cross-informant syndromes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictive validity of psychological testing in law enforcement settings.

This study reports the relation between scores on psychological tests and subsequent law enforcement officer performance. 69 officers were administered the Inwald Personality Inventory (IPI; R. Inwald, H. Knatz, and L. Shusman, 1983) and the MMPI while in training. One year later subjective and objective job performance data were collected. Analyses indicated that the subjective and some of the objective indicators of performance were related to both MMPI and IPI subscales; the IPI subscales generally exhibited stronger relations. These results suggest that psychological functioning as measured by these personality inventories may be useful for identifying potential officers who will evidence poorer job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The pentoxifylline experience: exercise testing reconsidered

OBJECTIVE: This study provides the first objective assessment of a complete patient population undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy in the steady state. The authors determined the frequency of complications, particularly bile duct, bowel, vascular injuries, and deaths. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: This retrospective study, conducted for the Department of Defense healthcare system by the Civilian External Peer Review Program, is the second complete audit of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Data were collected on 9130 patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy between January 1993 and May 1994. METHODS: The study sample consisted of clinical data abstracted from the complete records of 9054 (99.2%) of the 9130 laparoscopic cholecystectomies performed at 94 military medical treatment facilities. RESULTS: Of 10,458 cholecystectomies performed in the Military Health Services System, 9130 (87.3%) were laparoscopic and 1328 (12.7%) were traditional open procedures. Seventy-six medical records were incomplete: however, there was sufficient data to determine mortality and bile duct injury rates. Of the remaining 9054 cases, 6.09% experienced complications, including bile duct (0.41%), bowel (0.32%), and vascular injuries (0.10 percent). The mortality rate was 0.13%. Access via Veress technique was used in 57.6% and Hasson technique in 42.4% of patients. Intraoperative cholangiograms were performed in 42.7% of the cases with a success rate of 86.2%. Eight hundred ninety-two (9.8%) patients were converted to open cholecystectomies. CONCLUSIONS: In the steady state, despite an increase in the percentage of laparoscopic cholecystectomies performed for nonmalignant gallbladder disease, there continues to be minimal complications and low mortality.     

Clinical, psychological, and psychophysiological characteristics of neurotic-functional, cardiovascular and neurotic-depressive syndromes

A total of ninety women classified into three groups (with cardiovascular, depressive, and other principal symptoms) according to clinical criteria were characterized by clinico-anamnestic, psychological, and psychophysiological data with the goal of arriving at a practically oriented differentiation of neurotic syndromes. The relevant variables were determined by means of a factor analysis. The physiological reaction patterns determined in experiments on psychically strained individuals proved unsuitable for the differentiation of the two syndromes. The problems associated with a symptom-oriented classification are discussed.     

Female homosexuality: classical psychoanalytic theory reconsidered

The psychoanalytic theory of female homosexuality occupies an unusual position in modern psychoanalytic thought because it continues to be influenced by models of the mind that have largely been discarded in other areas of psychoanalytic psychology. Psychoanalytic ideas regarding female homosexuality are considered here from an historical perspective. It is suggested that modern psychoanalytic theory about sexual orientation in women must include recent contributions on the psychological development of women, the psychoanalytic psychology of male homosexuality, and relevant extraanalytic observations.     

Providing information to clients about psychological tests: A survey of attorneys' and law students' attitudes.

Surveyed 70 practicing attorneys and 150 law students to determine the extent to which they felt it was their responsibility to inform clients they referred for psychological testing about the testing process and about the validity scales on tests. Results showed that almost 50% of the attorneys and over 33% of the students believe that clients referred for testing always or usually should be informed of validity scales on tests. These results suggest that many test takers, particularly in forensic settings, may have information about validity scales that facilitates their giving biased responses without detection. Psychologists doing forensic evaluations should be alert to this possibility and should consider using more than one approach to detect response distortions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Education and thinking skills reconsidered.

Comments on R. Glaser's (see record 1984-32635-001) discussion of the role of knowledge that general thinking-skills courses need to be explored and evaluated further. Evidence is needed to make clear the complex relationships between general thinking-skills training, domain-specific knowledge, and transfer into other situations. It is concluded that the contributions of Glaser and L. B. Resnick (1983) should not be embraced in a manner that forecloses research on effects of different kinds of thinking-skills training. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cardiac death and acute myocardial infarct after psychological or physical stress--causality questions and insurance law

Often, it is the question to the medical expert, if there is a causality in the lawful sense from professional effort or psychical stress to acute coronary death or acute myocardial infarction. Following the German social law the connection has to be probably. Probability is well defined juridically opposite to possibility. The medical expert has to answer if the physical or psychical stress has caused the fatality or not more than manifested. Here are discussed arguments that the atheromatosis of the coronary vessels has much more importance than the manifestation of acute death or myocardial infarction caused by spasmus. There is no evidence for the existence of spastic genesis without any arteriosclerotic focus.     

Adolescent storm and stress, reconsidered.

G. S. Hall's (1904) view that adolescence is a period of heightened "storm and stress" is reconsidered in light of contemporary research. The author provides a brief history of the storm-and-stress view and examines 3 key aspects of this view: conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risk behavior. In all 3 areas, evidence supports a modified storm-and-stress view that takes into account individual differences and cultural variations. Not all adolescents experience storm and stress, but storm and stress is more likely during adolescence than at other ages. Adolescent storm and stress tends to be lower in traditional cultures than in the West but may increase as globalization increases individualism. Similar issues apply to minority cultures in American society. Finally, although the general public is sometimes portrayed by scholars as having a stereotypical view of adolescent storm and stress, both scholars and the general public appear to support a modified storm-and-stress view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children experiencing social difficulties: Sociometric neglect reconsidered.

Evaluates an oft-used sociometric procedure, the peer nomination technique. Examination of the data reveals support for the assumption that some rejected children are aggressive; however, the data concerning the behavioral characteristics of neglected children are equivocal. Data revealed that neglected children could not be distinguished from their average counterparts on any dependent measure. Rejected children were found to be more unpopular, aggressive, as well as withdrawn than the other sociometric groups. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the use of sociometry to identify children "at risk" for social and emotional difficulties. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Holism reconsidered: a reply to T?ljedahl

In his article Weak and Strong Holism, Inge-Bert Tljedahl criticises some modern theories of health which define health without reference to disease. As an alternative he suggests a kind of theory called Strong holism which emphasises the lawful interrelations between all ontological layers in the human being. In this reply it is argued (1) that T?ljedahl does not accurately describe the contents and intentions of the criticised theories and (2) that he does not put forward any alternative theory of health. Strong holism, as characterised by T?ljedahl, is a general biological and social-biological research programme, which is very fruitful for scientific research projects, but which does not suggest any particular theory of health.