Acta paedopsychiatrica最新文献

This paper is part of a special section on 'self-injurious behavior and autism' and reports new data that variously support the suggested involvement of dopaminergic, serotoninergic and opiatergic neurotransmitter systems in the expression of self-injurious behaviour. Further, some notions concerning the underlying biological mechanisms of self-injurious behaviour related to brain function and brain topography are described. Finally, besides the critical evaluation of several drugs used to treat self-injurious behaviour, four cases of autism are reported where sulpiride, a benzamide derivative, clearly reduced self-injurious behaviour.

This paper is part of a special section on 'psychopharmacotherapy in children'. In contrast to adult psychiatry, research of placebo uses and effects in child and adolescent psychiatry is practically nonexistent, except in the context of clinical drug trials. Any type of therapy in pedopsychiatry may have positive or negative placebo effects, not only on the patients but also on their parents, teachers and therapists. The use of placebo in this population has controversial clinical, research, ethical and legal implications. Pedopsychiatrists should achieve consensus related to the clinical and research uses of placebo in their patients. Further research is needed to clarify the specific and nonspecific placebo factors related to short-term and long-term treatment outcome.

In this paper, the childbearing and childrearing attitudes of 1,443 primigravid women are characterized in relation to their level of knowledge of childbirth. Mothers with little childbirth knowledge needed extra support in the transition to parenthood. Their attitude toward pregnancy was more negative and they were less interested in obtaining childbirth information. The level of childbirth knowledge was measured by means of a questionnaire during the mother's first visit to the maternity health care clinic. The knowledge had some prognostic value in identifying the mothers who acutely needed support in coping with the experiences of pregnancy and in the transition to parenthood.

The study of teenager behaviour and adaptation in the family context is an important trend in psychology. This article records one attempt at evaluating the adolescent's adjustment in the family context, from the perspective of interaction of socialization and psychological health. It shows the problems in the family and home of adolescents and how the socialization effects the teenager's mental health and the behaviour of the family members, knowing that not only the parents' behaviour influences the adolescent adjustment, but adolescent development affects the parents' behaviour. The group differences in the behaviour problems among youths are presented. The younger, urban and female adolescents suffered more problems than older, rural, male adolescents.

This study describes the occurrence of mood disorder in a group of adolescent inpatients involved in self-cutting behavior. Although self-cutting is generally said to be associated with borderline personality disorder, a substantial number of patients who cut themselves in our study were clinically depressed. In addition, the self-cutting adolescents had a high prevalence of child abuse, past psychiatric history, and family psychiatric history. The incidents tended to spread by contagion and occur at times of change affecting the milieu. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

The Visual Test is subject to a critical appraisal, according to the standards of psychological tests. Investigating the test results of clients from a school counselling service it is shown that this test does not comply with the requirements of item analysis and reliability; referring to validity this test might be useful to estimate the general intelligence of pupils.

A historical review of the concepts and classification of the hyperkinetic child is presented, ranging from the supposed biological origins in the late nineteenth century to the hyperkinetic impulse disorder, and then to the concept of minimal brain dysfunction. The differences in European and North American approaches are described.

The psychopathology of 33 adolescents (11 inpatients and 22 out-patients) was measured by a variety of standardized and non-standardized instruments, immediately prior to treatment (baseline), and 10 weeks later (outcome). Their parent were assessed on measures of current mood and personality traits, over the same time interval, also on quality of life, marital satisfaction, and amount of contact with family, friends and relatives, at baseline only. Together with extensive measures of family life and demography, a psychosocial profile of subjects and their families was obtained. The demographic homogeneity of the sub-groups was demonstrated, the only significant differences being that in-patients were older, and out-patients' households larger. Significant clinical differences at baseline were also few; all in-patients were clinically disordered, as were 19 out-patients. There was an even spread of disorders (conduct, emotional, and mixed) between sub-groups. Parents of in-patients rated their children as more disordered than out-patient's parents rated their children. Outcome measures, including the repeated measure of child psychopathology, indicated more significant and substantial trends for improvement over baseline conditions for in-patients than for out-patients, although both sub-groups were less disordered, overall. Both sub-groups of mothers were depressed at baseline, and out-patients' mothers remained so, at outcome. Anxiety in mothers of in-patients was significantly less at outcome. Personality traits among both sub-groups of parents were similar, showing slight introversion and neuroticism, and these traits remained stable over time.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

A survey of the prevalence of sexual abuse of children in two different areas of Germany (Würzburg - former West Germany and Leipzig - former East Germany) was conducted using a multiple screen questionnaire. The sample consisted of 1841 students from different institutions in Würzburg and 310 students from vocational schools in Leipzig (n = 2151). Data on a similar number of males and females were recorded. Problems of definition, sample characteristics and methodology are discussed. Sexual abuse was reported by 16.1% of the women and 5.8% of the men in the Würzburg sample and 9.6% and 5.8%, respectively, in the Leipzig sample. More comparable subsamples showed less discrepancy in the prevalence rates for women in the two cities.

Conditioned blocking tests for the use of superfluous (irrelevant) information in task-solving. Paranoid psychotic, obsessive-compulsive and healthy subjects usually showed normal blocking, but non-paranoid subjects tended to learn about the superfluous stimulus. Attenuated blocking was usually associated with increased dopamine utilization measured in 24h urine samples. This may reflect poor stabilization of response to neuroleptic medication.